"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... handsome young women in scarlet bodices came on board with baskets of melons, grapes, figs and peaches; and under the trellises on the landings, lads and girls with flowers in their hair were dancing the monferrina to the rattle of tambourines or the chant of some wandering ballad-singer. These scenes were so engaging to the comedians that they could not be restrained from going ashore and mingling in the village diversions; and the Marquess, though impatient to rejoin his divinity, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... her bark was worse than her bite; that she really loved both him and his daughter; but she had a queer way of showing it. And unfolding the paper, he read aloud, to the great annoyance of the fair writer, the fragment of a ballad, of which, to do him justice, he understood not a single word; and had he called upon her to explain its meaning, she would, in all probability, have ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... father, not only consenting to the cutting out of the match, but willing to see you two as closely united together as ever needle stitched buckskin. And with all this on thy side—fortune, father, and all—thou lookest like a distracted lover in a ballad, more like to pitch thyself into the Tay than to woo a lass that may be had for the asking, if you can ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... teaching was at the hearth-stone: when he was in the fields, either driving a cart or walking to labour, he had ever in his hand a collection of songs, such as any stall in the land could supply him with; and over these he pored, ballad by ballad, and verse by verse, noting the true, tender, and the natural sublime from affectation and fustian. "To this," he said, "I am convinced that I owe much of my critic craft, such as it is." His mother, too, unconsciously led him in the ways ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... ballad of the Armada. The lines have helped to perpetuate a popular error—one of the many connected with the story as it is generally told in our English histories. It somehow became the fashion at a very early date to speak of the defeat of the so-called "Invincible Armada" of Spain. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... of it, and of that girlish figure crowned with a glory of fair curls that fell low upon her waist and mingled with the wild pink roses at her bosom. The fiddler sat quietly as if he heard nothing until she began to sing, when he turned to look at her. The elder announced, after the ballad, that he had brought with him a wonderful musician who would favour them with some sacred music. He used the word 'sacred' because he had observed, I suppose, that certain of the 'hardshells' were looking askance at the fiddle. There was an ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... different instruments—if we observe the many forms of sacred music, from the simple hymn, the chant, the canon, motet, anthem, &c., up to the oratorio; and the still more numerous forms of secular music, from the ballad up to the serenata, from the instrumental solo up to the symphony. Again, the same truth is seen on comparing any one sample of aboriginal music with a sample of modern music—even an ordinary song for the piano; which we find to be relatively very heterogeneous, not only in respect of ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Mancunium, as the Caesars called it, in the first century of the Christian era; and we are also told that in the days when giants lived in England it was the scene of a terrific combat between Sir Launcelot of the Lake and the giant Tarquin. A ballad tells the story, but it is easier read in prose: Sir Launcelot was travelling near Manchester when he heard that this giant held in durance vile a number of knights—"threescore and four" in all; a damsel conducts him to the giant's castle-gate, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Mrs. Opie, and the "Passionate Little Girl," by Mrs. Hofland—all sparkling trifles in prose. Among the poetry is "the African Mier-Vark," or Ant-eater, by Mr. Pringle, and "the Deadly Nightshade," a sweetly touching ballad, dated from Florence; "the Vulture of the Alps" is of similar character; and we are much pleased with some lines on Birds, by Barry Cornwall, one set of which we copy, the best prose papers being too long ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him; and then began the night, and such a night! Those who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars; and she gave them Constance's speeches and "Helvellyn," the ballad then much in vogue, and all her repertoire,—Scott showing her off, and being ofttimes rebuked by her ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... respect, and possessing a good competent share of such reading as is little read, I was sometimes able to put under his eye objects which had for him the interest of novelty. I remember particularly repeating to him the fine poem of Hardyknute, an imitation of the old Scottish Ballad, with which he was so much affected, that some one who was in the same apartment asked me what I could possibly have been telling Byron by which he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... me greatly, and lifted the depression which the eternal drizzle had settled on my spirits. That bold girl singing a martial ballad to the storm and taking pleasure in the snellness of the air, was like a rousing summons or a cup of heady wine. The picture ravished my fancy. The proud dark eye, the little wanton curls peeping from the hood, the whole ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... immediately ordered the lady to be seized, and to be tied up in a sack, and cast into the lake. Various versions of this tragical tale are met with in all parts of the country, and the fate of Phrosyne is embodied in a ballad ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... before Christ, while the latest of the selections must have been written at the beginning of the sixth century before Christ. These poems are of the highest interest, and even nowadays may be read with delight by Europeans. The ballad and the hymn are among the earliest forms of national poetry, and the contents of the Shi-King naturally show specimens of lyric poetry of this sort. We find there not only hymns, but also ballads of a really fine and spirited character. Sometimes the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... That's nice. We must have some grand singing matches, but you mustn't sing that ballad. It's Ruth's special property. She ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Cid and his wife. Such as the bones were we found they were not to be seen themselves, and I do not know that I should have been the happier for their inspection. In fact, I have no great opinion of the Cid as an historical character or a poetic fiction. His epic, or his long ballad, formed no part of my young study in Spanish, and when four or five years ago a friend gave me a copy of it, beautifully printed in black letter, with the prayer that I should read it sometime within the twelvemonth, I found the time far too short. As a matter of fact I have never read the poem ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... slight in figure but harmoniously proportioned had placed herself about two yards from the bow window. She fixed her eyes on Gay and her pretty mouth curved into a smile. Then she sang. The ditty was "Cold and Raw," a ballad that two hundred years ago or so, never failed to delight everybody from the highest to the lowest. She gave it with natural feeling and without any attempt at display. The voice was untrained but this did ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... with the waters done in quicksilver. Whether his evil deeds were interred with his bones, who can say?—certainly his living wives were, and the thousands of living workmen who had built the mausoleum. Ts'innish doings, not Chinese. In the Book of Odes, Confucius preserved a Ts'in ballad mourning over men so buried alive with ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... know that formerly the gondoliers sung always, and Tasso's Gierusalemme was their ballad. Venice is built on ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... disapproval? Yes, 'if and in so far as his opinions are true.'[140] To attack opinions on which the framework of society depends is, and ought to be, dangerous. It should be done, if done at all, sword in hand. Otherwise the assailant deserves the fate of the Wanderer in Scott's ballad: ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... song; and then her husband gave imitations of Sir Henry Irving, and of Miss Maggie Kline in "T'row him down, McCloskey," with a cockney accent. A frightened little girl, whose mother had volunteered her talent, gasped a ballad to her mother's accompaniment, and two young girls played a duet on the mandolin and guitar. A gentleman of cosmopolitan military tradition, who sold the pools in the smoking-room, and was the friend of all the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there is an unmistakably conservative tone in the "Ballad" purporting to have been sent by him "to King Richard," with its refrain as to all being "lost for want of steadfastness," and its admonition to its ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... would have imposed upon him, should now remain quiet in the very midst of turbulence. You realize how he regarded these men who were rallying to the banners of liberty—the banners woven by the virgins of Taunton, the girls from the seminaries of Miss Blake and Mrs. Musgrove, who—as the ballad runs—had ripped open their silk petticoats to make colours for King Monmouth's army. That Latin line, contemptuously flung after them as they clattered down the cobbled street, reveals his mind. To him they were fools rushing in ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... before the hearth. In one corner of this seat reclined a figure bent with age, her face concealed by a thick veil. In the other corner was an old cheerful-looking woman, busily knitting, and mumbling rather than singing a quaint old ballad. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... eyes of the rate-collector fully occupied, has now for several weeks stood with an unmistakably vacant stare. My cook alone, with a young lady friend for company, dwells there. What our great ballad-writers call the patter of tiny feet is stilled. The seaside has demanded its toll, and I have for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... is, of course, the tradition commemorated by Southey in his ballad of 'The Inchcape Bell.' Whether true or not, it points to the fact that from the infancy of Scottish navigation, the seafaring mind had been fully alive to the perils of this reef. Repeated attempts had been made to mark ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... country-dance—a musical recitative accompanied by the cithern and set to a tune sufficiently rhythmical to act as one of the original purposes of a ballad, ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... is an example of the power of creative imagination. Out of one line from an old ballad quoted by Shakespeare, Browning has built up a marvellous succession of vivid pictures. The twilight deepens as Childe Roland advances; one can feel the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... would scarce prove our wisdom," said Christina, "to run away with thy mother like a lover in a ballad. Nay, let me first deal gently with thine uncle, and speak myself with Sir Kasimir, so that I may show him the vanity of his suit. Then will we back to Adlerstein without leaving wounds to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and sang that other pathetic coster-ballad, "Dear Old Dutch," and, to the credit of Harriet, the nurse, it must be said that he was marvellously well instructed. It could not have been done better had the small vocalist been the own son of a London coster-monger instead ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the ditty, which was but little relished by the company, it was evident that Solomon had followed Grimstone's advice, for his snoring formed a loud and most inharmonious bass to the sweet boy-like melody of Springall's ballad. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... go to the music room. Harvey's voice is a remarkably rich baritone. At Ethel's request he sings a ballad which ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... of the most appalling misunderstandings of history. Like Faust, the German people have sold their soul to Mephistopheles: Bismarck. And they have sold it for power. They are now paying the price. As in the wonderful old ballad of Burger, the Prussian horseman has taken the maiden "Germania" on his saddle. The death's-head hussar has carried her away on his wild career through space until he has brought her ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... after-years, some party of adventurers may come upon our white bones, what the gluttons leave of them." I even went farther; for I was presuming enough to imagine that our melancholy disappearance might become the subject of some future ballad. How would it begin? What would they say of me? What had I done in the world to deserve any thing by way of a line of praise or a tear of pity? Nothing that I could think of. At best, the ballad, if written at all (and of that I was ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... succession of downright blows. This strong rhetorical instinct is shown conspicuously in the 'Lays of Ancient Rome,' which, whatever we might say of them as poetry, are an admirable specimen of rhymed rhetoric. We know how good they are when we see how incapable are modern ballad-writers in general of putting the same swing and fire into their verses. Compare, for example, Aytoun's 'Lays of the Cavaliers,' as the most ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... herself to Frederic the night before he left her, and as she finished the artless ballad, he took her in ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... of Neptune, glittering and shining, and with its white statues, seemed to inspire him with a happy suggestion, and he trolled to himself a ballad with a nonsensical chorus, popular in ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Lewis. As the author of the Monk and the Tales of Wonder, he not only found his way into the best circles, but had gained a high reputation in the literary world. His poetic talent was undoubted, and he was intimately connected with Walter Scott in his ballad researches. His Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene was recited at the theatres, and wherever he went he found a welcome reception. His West Indian fortune and connections, and his seat in Parliament, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... stand apart from them? If the world be a stage, and all the men and women in it merely players, am I to be the solitary spectator, with no part in the drama and no interest in the vicissitudes of its plot? Many there are, no doubt, who covet as little as I do the part of 'Lover,' 'with a woful ballad, made to his mistress's eyebrow;' but then they covet some other part in the drama, such as that of Soldier 'bearded as a pard,' or that of Justice 'in fair round belly with fat capon lined.' But me no ambition fires: I have no longing either to rise or to shine. I don't desire ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instance, he would write a chanson; In England a six-canto quarto tale; In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war—much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on Would be old Goethe's—(see what says de Stael) In Italy, he'd ape the 'Trecentisti'; In Greece, he'd sing some sort of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... But who that knows you have been a single Hour in Wilding's Hands, wou'd not swear you have lost your Maidenhead? And back again I'm sure you dare not go unmarried; that wou'd be a fine History to be sung to your eternal Fame in a Ballad. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Reviewers, From his Republic banished without pity The Poets; in this little town of yours, You put to death, by means of a Committee, The ballad-singers and the Troubadours, The street musicians of the heavenly city, The birds, who make sweet music for us all In our dark hours, as David ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from the quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... deceive if you chance to be a State constable in disguise, and to propitiate if you are a veritable customer: "Who was that woman, lamenting so, over in the grave-yard?" "O, I don't know, sir," answered the lady, making change for the price of a ballad. "Some Irish folks. They ginerally cries ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... though you were the maid, and all the while you rebuff me and suffer so that I fear to look on you. Men say you are no better than a highwayman; you confess yourself to be a thief: and I believe none of your accusers. Perion de la Foret," said Melicent, and ballad-makers have never shaped a phrase wherewith to tell you of her voice, "I know that you have dabbled in dishonour no more often than an archangel has pilfered drying linen from a hedgerow. I do not guess, for my hour is upon me, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... his cudgel over his head instead of a kerchief. The gaiety of the day seemed infectious, and to have seized even him. People stared to see Black Jem, or Surly Jem, as he was indifferently called, so joyous, and wondered what it could mean. He then fell to singing a snatch of a local ballad at that time in vogue in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Scottish shepherds sang a song, entitled "The frog that came to the myl dur." In 1580 a later ballad, called "A most strange wedding of a frog and a mouse," was licensed by the Stationers' Company. There is a second version extant in Pills to ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... strangest, wildest, and sweetest singing I ever had heard,—the singing of Lurleis, of sirens, of witches. First, one damsel, with an exquisitely clear, firm voice, began to sing a verse of a love-ballad, and as it approached the end the chorus stole in, softly and unperceived, but with exquisite skill, until, in a few seconds, the summer breeze, murmuring melody over a rippling lake, seemed changed to a midnight tempest, roaring ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... 'Poor Honest Men' The Conversion of St Wilfrid Eddi's Service Song of the Red War-Boat A Doctor of Medicine An Astrologer's Song 'Our Fathers of Old' Simple Simon The Thousandth Man Frankie's Trade The Tree of Justice The Ballad of Minepit Shaw ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... L. are the first two (a little altered) in the opening stanza of a ballad entitled The Berkshire Lady. The correct version (I speak on the authority of a copy which I procured nearly thirty years ago in the great ballad-mart of those days, the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... notable instance from Casimir de la Vigne's terrible ballad, "La Toilette de Constance." I must quote a few lines out of it here and there, to enable the reader who has not the book by him, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... serious damage in its long transit across the prairie. This was a surprise, for I had not suspected Harry of musical proficiency. There was power in his fingers, hardened as they were, and when the ringing prelude to an English ballad filled the room more than his partner felt that he could call up a response to his own spirit from the soul of the instrument. The lad beside him also sang well, perhaps because he was young and sentiment ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Pray let me have the proofs I sent all to-night. I have some alterations that I have thought of that I wish to make speedily. I hope the proof will be on separate pages, and not all huddled together on a mile-long ballad-singing sheet, as those of The Giaour sometimes are; for then I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... classic presinks of Bostin. In the parler of the bloated aristocratic mansion on Bacon street sits a luvly young lady, whose hair is cuvered ore with the frosts of between 17 Summers. She had just sot down to the piany, and is warblin the popler ballad called "Smells of the Notion," in which she tells how with pensiv thought, she wandered by a C beat shore. The son is settin in its horizon, and its gorjus light pores in a golden meller flud through the winders, and makes the young lady twice as ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... and latterly became a beggar; David Lindsay, the last Laird of Edzell [a lichtsome Lindsay fallen on evil days], who ended his days as hostler at a Kirkwall inn, and 'Mussel Mou'ed Charlie,' the Jacobite ballad- singer. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... from the darkness that surrounded it. For was it not with the daughter of his foe that the lover of Verona fell in love at first sight? And is not that a common type of us all—as if Passion delighted in contradictions? As the Diver, in Schiller's exquisite ballad, fastened upon the rock of coral in the midst of the gloomy sea, so we cling the more gratefully to whatever of fair thought and gentle shelter smiles out to us in the depths of ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by lot, God wot,] There was an old ballad entitled the song of Jephthah, from which these lines are probably quotations. The story of Jephthah was also one of the favourite ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... its shadows, the music must have taken hold of him too; for when Robert ceased, he sang a wild ballad of the northern sea, to a tune strange as itself. It was the only time Robert ever heard him sing. Mysie's eyes grew wider and wider as she listened. When it ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... of the Drum. Part I Part II Abd-el-Kader at Toulon; or, The Caged Hawk The King of Brentford's Testament The White Squall Peg of Limavaddy May-Day Ode The Ballad of Bouillabaisse The Mahogany Tree The Yankee Volunteers The Pen and the Album Mrs. Katherine's Lantern Lucy's Birthday The Cane-Bottom'd Chair Piscator and Piscatrix The Rose upon my Balcony Ronsard to his Mistress At the Church Gate The Age of Wisdom Sorrows of Werther A Doe in the City ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the blind violer at the Ashkirk change-house singing—songs which told how Sim o' the Cleuch smote Bewcastle in the howe of the Brunt Burn—ash against steel, one against ten. The fancy intoxicated him; he felt as if he, too, could make a ballad. It would speak of the soft shiny night with the moon high in the heavens. It would tell of the press of men and beasts by the burnside, and the red glare of Harden's fires, and Wat with his axe, and above all of Sim with his ash-shaft ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... ballad seems to have been made choice of for this ode, on account of the subject; and it has, indeed, an air of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... as familiar with sea-mysteries as those of any fish. Some think that the legend dates from Frederick II, to whom he brought up from the foaming gulf that golden goblet which has been immortalized in Schiller's ballad. But Schneegans says there are Norman documents that speak of him. And that other tale, according to which he took to his watery life in pursuit of some beloved maiden who had been swallowed by the waves, makes one think of old Glaucus as ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse's head along the road by which they had come. 'You've only a few yards to go,' he said, 'down the hill and over that little brook, and then you'll be a Queen—But you'll stay and see me off first?' he added as Alice turned with ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... his strange experiences, and illustrated them with flashes of his wit. For it was the habit of this eccentric earl, when refinements of the court began to pall upon him, or his absence from Whitehall became a necessity, to seek fresh adventure and intrigue disguised as a porter, a beggar, or a ballad-monger. And so carefully did he hide his identity in the character he assumed, that his most intimate friends failed to recognise ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... "Will you have a sup of porridge, Miss Ross, or a few broth to keep out the cold?" "Home, home, there is no place like home!"' And then they heard her singing at the top of her fresh young voice, as she roamed through the empty rooms, some old ballad Michael had ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is all very well in a humorous ballad, but we do not look for anything of the sort in a serious romance of real life. Nevertheless, a Welsh newspaper of recent ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... finished his prayer or exhortation, he says, "I have done," upon which there is a general exclamation in unison. With these religious services, probably derived from the white men, the tribes above-mentioned mingle some of their old Indian ceremonials, such as dancing to the cadence of a song or ballad, which is generally done in a large lodge provided for the purpose. Besides Sundays, they likewise observe the cardinal holidays of the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... men Norwich ever produced, the early and intimate friend of Southey, and who was the first, according to Lockhart's Life of Scott, to give that great writer a taste for poetry by his (Taylor's) spirited and inimitable translation of Burger's well known ballad beginning,— ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... flash of swords or oars that shine Through fight or foam Stirs yet the blood thou hast given thy sons like wine To hail in each bright ballad hailed as thine One heart, ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Moral Matron, and the Young Person, with a love of larkiness and lilt, but a distrust of politics, pugilism, and deep potations, the following eclectic adaptation of this prodigiously popular ballad may perhaps be not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... community in view of a certain set of circumstances, is a fact which is continually receiving fresh illustrations. The attitude of New York toward Mr. Theodore Thomas is a case in point. There is among the works of the Scottish poet Alexander Wilson, better known as the "American Ornithologist," a ballad entitled "Watty and Meg; or, The Wife Reformed." Its moral is for all to read. Watty's measure of domestic felicity was but scant, and when the burden laid upon him became greater than he could bear he determined to leave the cause of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... bands of harpers and pipers, were in vogue in Ireland before the coming of the English. Dante, quoted by Galilei, testifies to the fact that Italy received the harp from Ireland; and, it may be added, the Irish harp suggested the pianoforte. In the Anglo-Norman ballad, "The Entrenchment of New Ross"—in 1265—allusion is made to pipes and flutes, and carols and dancing. Another poem, dating from about 1320, refers to Irish dances in a ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... hall of irregular shape sat Pete and Maggie drinking beer. A submissive orchestra dictated to by a spectacled man with frowsy hair and a dress suit, industriously followed the bobs of his head and the waves of his baton. A ballad singer, in a dress of flaming scarlet, sang in the inevitable voice of brass. When she vanished, men seated at the tables near the front applauded loudly, pounding the polished wood with their beer glasses. She returned attired in less gown, ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... oak. About Chaucer swarm innumerable minstrels, anonymous poets, rhyming clerks, knightly ballad makers.[584] The fragile works of these rhyming multitudes are for the most part lost, yet great quantities of them still exist. They are composed by everybody, and written in the three languages used by the English; some being in French, some in English, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... midst the very Corypheus of infidelity, a compeer of Holyoake, a man who thinks no more of the Bible than if it were an old ballad—Colenso is a babe to him. This is a mighty man of valor, I assure you—a very Goliath in his way. He used to go starring it in the provinces, itinerating as a tuppenny lecturer on Tom Paine. He has occasionally appeared in our Lecture-Hall. He, too, as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... the castle and brought the harp thence, and the Lady Loise took the harp and tuned it and struck it and played upon it. And the lady sang very sweetly a ballad that she ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... all qualities, a keen sense of, and delight in beauty, the infection of which lays hold upon the reader, they are quite out of proportion to all his other compositions. The form in both is that of the ballad, with some of its terminology, and some also of its quaint conceits. They connect themselves with that revival of ballad literature, of which Percy's Relics, and, in another [96] way, Macpherson's Ossian are monuments, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... precedent. When our age too has passed, when its moments also, that are so common and many, seem scarce and precious, students will perhaps open these books, printed by village girls at Dundrum, as curiously as at twenty years I opened the books of history and ballad verse of the old 'Library of Ireland.' They will notice that this new 'Library,' where I have gathered so much that seems to me representative or beautiful, unlike the old, is intended for few people, and written by men and women with that ideal condemned by 'Mary of ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... ancient ballad of the time of good King Arthur, called "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," which you may some time read yourself, in stout English of early times; and as he sang, all listened to that noble tale of noble knight ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Mediterranean against seven Sallee rovers, in which, after a hard engagement lasting four hours, the Mary Rose triumphed decisively without losing a single sail of her convoy. A rude song was made about the action, and the two lines of the ballad, summing up the results, were ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Cowdenknowes, the Yarrow, and Ettrick, all lie on different sides within a circle of twenty miles, and most of them much nearer. Smailholme Tower, the scene of some of Scott's youthful days, and of his ballad of "The Eve of St. John," is also one of these. Grose tells us that "The ruins of Dryburgh Monastery are beautifully situated on a peninsula formed by the Tweed, ten-miles above Kelso, and three below Melrose, on the southwestern confine of the county ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... seemingly beyond retrieving, the humbler poetry which has much greater worth. In the Robin Hood Ballads which Professor Arber has printed from an edition by Wynkyn de Worde we have at least one piece of salvage. It must be owned, indeed, that to claim a ballad as the product of any one century is rather rash, and that in some form or another this cycle was probably in existence before Chaucer died. The 'Ballad of Otterburn,' again, is founded on an incident of border ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... favorite melodies which we had often sung in camp, when, as on a pleasant Sunday evening, we were met together in little knots, to mingle our emotions in plaintive song, thinking of dear friends at home. One of these was a simple ballad describing the following incident—one of the most touching of the war. A youthful soldier from the state of Maine died in New Orleans, with none but strangers—as has been the lot of many—to watch over him in his dying hours, or to perform ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... of the poor peasant parvenu when he heard his charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing a ballad; when he saw her writing French correctly, or making sepia drawings of landscapes, or listened while she read aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the beauties of the poetry. What happiness it was for him ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Young children, pray take heed to my little ballad, which shall lead you into all virtues. My mistakes ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... justiciars, like another kind of Jews, had ruined them with delay in their suits, and enriched themselves with wicked convictions." Of judicial corruption in the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. a vivid picture is given in a political ballad, composed in the time of one or the other of those monarchs. Of this poem Mr. Wright, in his 'Political Songs,' gives a free version, a part ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... too, over again two of Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Guy Mannering" and "Ivanhoe." How different they are, both in design and execution! The former, in all respects perfect—the latter, in design common-place, and but little enlarged from the old ballad tales of Robin Hood, and histories of the Crusaders; very slovenly in diction, and lengthened out by tiresome repetitions; the same things being told in protracted dialogues which had been previously narrated in the historic course. Then ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... nor Peirol gave so much as a glance at the captives, who were too much amazed to say anything at first, and quickly saw the danger of any betraying comment. The troubadour marched up to Biterres, asked permission to sing, and began a doggerel ballad about one Sir Orpheus and his magic harp. The harp, as the song explained, had the power of luring pigeons, rabbits, wild geese, lambs, sucking-pigs and even fish from the stewponds, into its owner's dinner-pot, so that Orpheus never lacked for good living and became very fat. The bouillabaisse of ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... thoughts and felt hopeless of loosing the snares which bound him. All that sustained his courage was the sanguine disposition of Joe Hawkridge, whose youthful soul had been so battered and toughened by dangers manifold on land and sea that he expected nothing less. Listening to the pirate's moving ballad, they sat and swung their legs from the ship's taffrail while their gaze idly roved to the green curtain of undergrowth which ran lush to the water's edge to the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... his sleep, and was afterwards discovered to be an imposter; the last benefaction in the parish church, for two poor Irish gentlewomen on their journey home, recommended by letters from the Council; the last new ballad. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... work. His feelings have already so much variety and so much apparent sincerity that it is impossible to tell in what direction his genius will develop. In whatever style he writes,—the mystical, the historical-dramatic, the impassioned description of natural beauty, the ballad, the love lyric,—he has the peculiarity of seeming in each style to have found the ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... volume on "Lyric Declamation: Recitative, Song and Ballad Singing," will be discussed the practical application of these basic principles of Style to the vocal music of the German, French, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... poems. The dinner was given for her, and her seat was between Wilbur and Mr. Dennison, the magazine editor. Selma had attended a dinner-party at the Williamses a fortnight earlier where there had been music in the drawing-room by a ballad-singer at a cost of $100 (so Flossy had told her in confidence). A poetess reading from her own works, a guest and not invited in after dinner on a business footing, appealed to Selma as more American, and less expensive. She, in her secret soul, would have liked to recite herself, but she ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... years after Bentley's main efforts appeared in Germany another epoch-making book—Wolf's Introduction to Homer. In this was broached the theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are not the works of a single great poet, but are made up of ballad literature wrought into unity by more or less skilful editing. In spite of various changes and phases of opinion on this subject since Wolf's day, he dealt a killing blow at the idea that classical works are necessarily to be taken at what may be ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... persevering labours of these ingenious gentlemen, converted into an instrument of public gratification. Most of the guards of the stage-coaches now make their entrance and exit to the tune of some old national ballad, which, though it may not, perhaps, be played at present in such exact time and tune as would satisfy the leader of the opera band, is yet pleasant in comparison to the unmeaning and discordant strains which formerly issued ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... preserved with great pride, of a fight on the beach between him and a bathing-machine boy, at whose father's property the Prince was throwing stones. An account of this historic battle is preserved in a doggerel ballad, printed and sold locally, and composed Heaven knows where, which is called "Tapping the War-Lord's Claret: ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Medsger, the naturalist of Lincoln High School, Jersey City, N. J., for reading with critical care those parts of the manuscript that deal with flowers and insects, as well as for the ballad of the Ox-eye, the story of its coming to America, and ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... of the commentators have observed. But what is the meaning and propriety of the name here, has not yet been shown. Justice Silence is here introduced as in the midst of his cups; and I remember a black-letter ballad, in which either a San Domingo or a Signior Domingo, is celebrated for his miraculous feats in drinking. Silence, in the abundance of his festivity, touches upon some old song, in which this convivial saint, or signior, was the burden. Perhaps, too, the pronounciation in here suited ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which he ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... wholly or mainly to retrospection. He is the middle point and the culmination of English romanticism. His name is, all in all, the most important on our list. "Towards him all the lines of the romantic revival converge." [2] The popular ballad, the Gothic romance, the Ossianic poetry, the new German literature, the Scandinavian discoveries, these and other scattered rays of influence reach a focus in Scott. It is true that his delineation of feudal society is not final. There were sides of mediaeval life which he did not know, or understand, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... though she had no thought beyond the full enjoyment of the early morning. Slowly, and with many pauses, she made her way towards the ruins, and passed in after standing at the door absorbed in contemplation of the beauty of the scene about her. She hummed the tune of a little ballad to herself, and sat down on the first convenient piece of fallen masonry. If men were watching this place she would give them ample opportunity to ask what her business there might be. Not a movement, not a sound disturbed her. The door into the tower ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... vast circle of minds. Our authors have described to us in copious and entertaining detail the romance and the poetry, the writings and the imaginations, of the Scandinavian races, interspersed with abundant and well-selected specimens of the historical, romantic, legendary, chivalric, ballad, dramatic, song, and critical literature of Northern Europe. They have brought to light the treasures of the illustrious poets, historians and bards of Scandinavia, in a work ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... to Horace, the robin-redbreast has been to the children of old England. In the celebrated ballad of the "Children in the Wood", we are told that, after their ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... or whirlpool of Stroma, has been mentioned by many ancient writers, but the most interesting story is that of its origin as given in the old Norse legend headed, "Fenja and Menja," and containing a famous ballad known as the "Grotta Songr," or the "Mill Song," grotta being the Norse for mill, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the end. I do not know which of the two was more surprised: Airy, to find an American woman who was interested in his favorite ballad, or she to find that he could repeat it by heart. The incident was the commencement of a family friendship which has outlived both the heads ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... at our leisure, passing out from Lamia over the Spercheios on the bridge of Alamana, at which Diakos, famous in ballad, resisted with a small band a Turkish army, until he was at last captured and taken to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... the spectacle, but made no comment, and Basil went on: "Do you suppose they scorned the idea of Sam Patch as they gazed upon the falls? On the contrary, I've no doubt that he recalled to her the ballad which a poet of their language made about him. It used to go the rounds of the German newspapers, and I translated it, a long while ago, when I thought that I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of time and events gone by, and lost in oblivion and dilapidation. At the end, immediately beneath the colossal window, grows an alder of considerable luxuriance, which, added to the situation of every other object, brought Mr. Southey's pathetic ballad of 'Mary the Maid of the Inn,' so forcibly before my imagination,[5] that I involuntarily turned my eye to search for the grave, where the murderers concealed their victim." He likewise tells us of "the former garden of the monastery, still cultivated, and exhibiting a fruitful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... moral of German troops as early as 1916. None of these partial explanations contain more than an element of truth, and a more comprehensive view is suggested by the likeness of Germany to the "one-hoss shay" of Oliver Wendell Holmes' ballad, a vehicle so skilfully compacted of durable materials that each part lasted exactly as long as every other, and that the whole eventually crumbled into a heap of dust in a single moment. German resources were vastly inferior to those which were slowly mobilized against her, but she organized them ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... greatly by her liveliness. One evening she told the story of John Gilpin's ride in a way that tickled the poet's fancy, set him laughing when he woke up in the night, and obliged him to turn it next day into ballad rhyme. Mrs. Unwin's son sent it to the Public Advertiser, for the poet's corner. It was printed in that newspaper, and thought no more of until about three years later. Then it was suggested to a ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Greek songs illustrate the conversion of the Armatole into the Klepht in the age preceding the Greek revolution. Thus, in the fine ballad called "The Tomb of Demos," which Goethe has translated, the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe |
