"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Achilles, sing, O Muse, The vengeance, deep and deadly; whence to Greece Unnumbered ills arose; which many a soul Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades Untimely sent; they on the battle plain Unburied lay, a prey to rav'ning dogs, And carrion birds; but so had Jove decreed, From that sad day when first in wordy war, The mighty Agamemnon, King of men, Confronted stood by Peleus' ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and smell of carrion, so common in camping places during that first journey, also were gone. No bleached bones, even, showed where the exhausted dumb brute had died. The graves of the dead pioneers had all been leveled by the hoofs of stock ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... carefully organized our plan of campaign. We fixed in our memories the exact location of each and every bush; we determined compass direction from camp, and any other bearings likely to prove useful in finding so small a spot in the dark. Then we left a boy to keep carrion birds off until sunset; and ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... thick-strewn graves; here the jackal roams at night—it thrusts its pointed snout through the ephemeral masonry of townsmen's tombs or scratches downward within the ring of stones that mark some poor bedouin's corpse, to take toll of the carrion horrors beneath; so you may find many graves rifled. And if you come by day you will probably see, crouching among the ruins, certain old men, pariahs, animated lumps of dirt and rags. They are so uncouth and unclean, so utterly non-human, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... in fact, nothing alive which it can master seems to come amiss, and failing to make a meal from something it has caught and killed, the Arctic fox is glad, like foxes in more favoured lands, to feed on carrion. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... appeared here and there the crown of some mighty tree towering above the banks of vapour. To the left, cliffs and crags were to be seen which had the appearance of being baseless, and of swimming on the top of the mist. The vultures and carrion-birds circled screaming above the huge caldron, or perched on the tops of the tall palms, which looked like enormous umbrellas, or like the roofs of Chinese summer-houses. Out of the swamp itself proceeded the yellings, snarlings, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... l'Eveques, each adding its own particular sharp scent to the malodorous bouquet, till it became perfectly pestilential; the Livarots, ruddy in hue, and as irritating to the throat as sulphur fumes; and, lastly, stronger than all the others, the Olivets, wrapped in walnut leaves, like the carrion which peasants cover with branches as it lies rotting in the hedgerow ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... is about as gay as a Trappist feast of carrion and ant's milk, but this princess ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... in bringing up my journal; interrupted by two of these most sedulous visitants who had objects of their own to serve, and smelled out my arrival as the raven scents carrion—a vile comparison, though what better is an old fellow, mauled with rheumatism and other deplorables? Went out at two and saw Miss Dumergue and other old friends; Sotheby in particular, less changed than any one I have seen. Looked in at Murray's and renewed old habits. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... both struggle and fight till one sun is thrown into darkness, or one eagle, blind and winged, falls down the rocks and leaves the whole nest to its conqueror. The Arrapahoes would not fight a cowardly Crow except for self-defence, for he smells of carrion; nor would ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... existence in harmony with the general forecast and economy of nature. Of the self-originating spring of life, some of the examples adduced by the author are proofs, and of which we have familiar illustrations in cheese-mites, maggots in carrion, and the green fly that breeds so profusely in weak and decaying vegetation; in all which by some inscrutable law the organic germ, without an antecedent, appears to evolve from the dead or putrifying mass ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... A carrion crow, perceiving a brood of fourteen chickens under the care of the parent-hen, on a lawn, picked up one; but on a young lady opening the window and giving an alarm, the robber dropped his prey. ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... were Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes Called social, haunts of Hate, and Vice, and Care:[dn] How lonely every freeborn creature broods! The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair; The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow Flock o'er their carrion, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... You shall never be able to utter more than pec, pec, pec; and while with your mouths open you are stammering and stuttering to get out cavi, Satan and his blackguards shall come and peck you, even as crows peck carrion. Yes, Jehu and Jezebel! Remember! ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... ground, with a swamp at the back. Men and women clad in a single cotton garment lay about smoking cigars. Naked and pot-bellied children played in the mud. On the threshold of the doors, in the huts, fish, bullock heads, hides, and carrion were strewn, all in a state of decomposition, while in the rear was the jungle and a lake of stagnant water with a delicate bordering of greasy blue mud. There was but one hotel, called the Crescent City, which boasted of no floor and no food. The newcomers who ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... to rich folk, millet to the poor, Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door to door; Battle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low— Parbati beside him watched them come and go; Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest— ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... crimes in Santa Maria del Fiore, his living body was added to the string of stinking corpses, upon the side of the Campanile, which still dangled in their iron chains, betwixt earth and heaven, rained on and withered by the elements, and fed upon by carrion! ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... steel or shot 'gainst that charmed life secure, Till cunning France, in last resource, tossed up the golden lure; And the carrion buzzards round him stooped, faithless, to the cast, And the wild hawk of the desert is caught and ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their prey; some climbing into the tops of the trees the better to take aim at the rescuers below; and when hit themselves frequently lodging in the branches, where they continued to hang a convenient carrion for the foul ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... afternoon. But one thing you did not know—that in the nature of things you were bound to meet with such men and see such things done. I have not lived beside treasure all these years without learning that it attracts such men as carrion attracts the vultures. Hide it where you will, from the end of the earth some bird of prey will spy it out, or at least some scent of it will lie and draw such prowlers as this fellow." Dr. Beauregard touched the sleeping man contemptuously ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... they were not soft like the English (their general boast), who must have their daily food; they were hardy enough to work without eating ten days in succession, if the emergency required it. Here a second camel was on the point of dying, when his flesh was saved from becoming carrion by a knife ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... you like to put it so, it was kindness and generosity and universal compassion that ruined him; but it would be nearer the truth to call him a fool and a simpleton and a blunderer; he did not realize that his proteges were carrion crows and wolves; vultures were feeding on his unfortunate liver, and he took them for friends and good comrades, showing a fine appetite just to please him. So they gnawed his bones perfectly clean, sucked out with ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... all this lot used to go about saying he'd shoot me at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He didn't get much show 'ere, I can tell you; that little foreign snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... at the bone in amazement. The Justice, after he had examined it, replied: "A cow's bone, Mr. Schmitz! You discovered a carrion-pit, not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... also been made that these giant carnivores were carrion-eaters rather than truly predaceous. The hypothesis can hardly be effectively supported nor attacked. It is ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... those black outbursts he felt that he must cling to her as his only hope of saving himself. He had made another mistake in lighting a campfire during the morning. Any fool ought to have known that the smoke would draw his hunters as the smell of carrion does a buzzard. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... would never be enough of her victims left to come back for; and even if there had been, one short day's time in the hot, steaming jungle atmosphere sufficed to cause the flesh to decay. Suma had ideas of her own about spending the days away from her proper rendezvous; and as for carrion, she never failed to give it a ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... energetic manager of the Mongolian adventure which, by a happy coincidence, required a bank, land development companies and railway schemes, as well as an army. About this military centre as a nucleus gathered the vultures who fed on the carrion. This flock took the name of the Anfu Club. It did not control the entire cabinet, but to it belonged the Minister of Justice, who manipulated the police and the courts, persecuted the students, suppressed liberal journals and imprisoned inconvenient critics. ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... of grace, from the ground he then Skillfully piles up the scattered parts Of the graceful body, gathers the bones, 270 Which the funeral fire aforetime devoured; Then brings altogether the bones and the ashes, The remnant of the flames he arranges anew, And carefully covers that carrion spoil With fairest flowers. Then he fares away, 275 Seeking the sacred soil of his birthplace. With his feet he fastens to the fire's grim leavings, Clasps them in his claws and his country again, The sun-bright seat, he ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... discomposed. He barely returned the respectful greetings of his ministers, and by postponement of the customary invitation to be seated, kept them out of their chairs for quite an appreciable time. Standing awkwardly about the board they looked like a group of carrion crows awaiting the symptoms of death before descending to their meal. To none did he accord any ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... lion and the tiger if these animals had not an unpleasant way of dealing with jokers. And the tomtit and canary have, no doubt, at least private agreement that the utterances of the nightingale are galimatias, while the carrion crow thinks the eagle a fool for dwelling so high and flying so much higher. But as for the other side of the matter, how thin and poor and puerile even those smartest things of Voltaire's, some of which have been ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... imam,[FN32] who prayeth with the true-believers, and a servant of the house of the Lord of the Worlds! "Quoth she, "Why wilt thou forbid me to drink thereof in thy house?" "Because," answered he, "it is unlawful." "O elder," rejoined she, "God hath forbidden [the eating of] blood and carrion and hog's flesh. Tell me, are grapes and honey lawful or unlawful?" Quoth he, "They are lawful;" and she said, "This is the juice of grapes and the water of honey." But he answered, "Leave this thy talk, for thou shall never drink wine in my house." "O Sheikh," ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... same wicked wight Her dwelling had— Dark, doleful, dreary, like a greedy grave That still for carrion carcases doth crave, On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owle, Shrieking his baleful note, which ever drave Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl, And all about it wandering ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... newspapers arrived, with full details of a horrible Washington scandal, and the murder consequent upon it. Now I must say that no swarm of bees ever settled upon a bed of roses more eagerly than our fair sisters pounced upon the carrion of that foul and dreadful tale. It flew from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, as if it had been glad tidings of great joy,—and the universal judgment upon it caused our heart to shudder with the remembrance, that it had heard some one somewhere propose that female ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... here record that, accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone pits, securing ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... swift horror and enduring caution. The two Dukes had been despatched, sorely against their will, in chase of this man. Was it to their hands that he had yielded up his life and by their doing that he lay like carrion? It might well be that he had sought refuge in this cottage, and having found there death, not comfort, had been flung forth a corpse. I pitied him; although he had been party to a plot which had well nigh caused my own death and taken no account of my honour, yet I was sorry for him. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the Queen said these words, her eyes fastened indignantly upon him, had slunk sulkily to his seat—'dogs,' said he, aiming suddenly to brave the matter, 'off with yonder carrion!—it offends the Queen.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... hands of a Catholic priest, should they recover, they were punished with confiscation of property and consignment to the galleys for life. If they did not recover, their bodies were refused respectful burial, and were dragged on a hurdle and thrown into a ditch, to be devoured by carrion crows. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the intelligence of all dark mysteries through the Scotch in his highness's bed-chamber." A close communication took place between the duke and Preston, who, as Hacket describes, was "a good crow to smell carrion." He obtained an easy admission to the duke's closet at least thrice a week, and their notable conferences Buckingham appears to have communicated to his confidential friends. Preston, intent on carrying all his points, skilfully commenced ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Tossing in the great sunset of an Empire, Dawn of a sovereign people, are all manned By heroes, ragged, hungry, who will die Like flies ere long, because they have no food But turns to fever-breeding carrion Not fit for dogs. They are half-naked, hopeless Living, of any reward; and if they die They die a dog's death. We shall reap the fame While they—great God! and all this cannot quench The glory in their eyes. They will be served Six at the mess of four, eking it out With ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... devil, was looked upon as a great and undeserved mercy. But not only during their lifetime, but after their death, too, the hand of the Church fell heavily on all those who had strayed beyond her pale; their bodies were dragged from their graves and thrown into the carrion-pit. A man whom the Church had excommunicated was buried in the cemetery of a German convent. The Archbishop of Mayence ordered the exhumation of the body, threatening to interdict divine service in the convent if his command were disobeyed. But the abbess, Hildegarde of Bingen (1098-1179), ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... find on a carrion but flies?" cried she. "The Grand Duke is rotting on his bed, and these are the vermin about him. Before long he will be dust, and then it will be the turn of Don Gastone, and frati will give ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... country, where there is such a want of glass, and a superabundance of pine-trees and sand." It had almost escaped us, that he here for the first time made the acquaintance of a "great many large vultures, called buzzards, the shooting of which is prohibited, as they feed upon carrion, and contribute in this manner to the salubrity of the country." This "parlous wild-fowl" has the honor to attract the attention of his Highness again in Charleston, where he informs us that its life is, in like manner, protected ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... know what that means, hey? Well, I will tell you. It is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The lion is a gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and do not say a word, or I shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us. Here is your health!' said I, and pledged him in the prison ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the boys could see a strip of blue sky and the outlines of the graceful tops of some bulbous stemmed palms but nothing else. Once a vulture sailed across the strip and sighting the two boys came lower to investigate. The sight of the carrion bird made both ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... inn. An' I think there was but two bad men among all the servants of the house—myself and Glascock. He was an under hostler, and a bad boy. He chose us two out of the whole lot, with a look. He never made a mistake. He knew us some way like a crow knows carrion, and he used ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... advertising, George. It comes of little silver books, and big wooden stockings, and men in armour, and cats-carrion shirts; that's what it's come ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... realistically, if a shade too methodically at times, the racking torments of hunger and thirst, the dreary importunity of the rain, the loathsomeness of the all-invading mud, the sickening horror of the carrion smells, the pathetically inadequate relaxations of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... to find how numerous the grubs are. They may often be found to the number of a score or more of each cubic foot of material. Many of the species which develop underground come from eggs which have carefully been encased in organic matter before their deposition in the earth. Thus some of the carrion beetles are in the habit of laying their eggs in the bodies of dead birds or field mice, which they then bury to the depth of some inches in the earth. In this way nearly all the small birds and mammals of our woods disappear ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... actual values, and innumerable persons have parted with good money in exchange for mere phantoms of imaginary values. At such times the short sales of discernment, directing the X rays of clear-sighted criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten carcass of some gigantic humbug, strewing the highway with its ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighboring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows hovering about a cypress-tree. He looked up and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... and get out fast enough," the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. "Not if I was a strong man with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You'll all stay, I wouldn't advise you if I thought you'd go, You can't drive buzzards away from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp. Old Parlay's selling out, and the buzzards are gathering—old Parlay who was a stronger man in his day than any of them and who ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... right, Miss Porter," he said, "but I do not think that any of us need worry about our carrion-eating acquaintance. The chances are that he is some half-demented castaway who will forget us more quickly, but no more surely, than we shall forget him. He is only a beast ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... exulted, with the mirth of a vulture that has just found a peculiarly revolting mass of carrion. "Fool that I was, not to ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... quantity of sand suspended in the atmosphere. We met some large herds of cattle, and with them flocks of birds of a black colour with an olive shade. They are of the genus Crotophaga,* and follow the cattle. (* The Spanish colonists call the Crotophaga ani, zamurito (little carrion vulture—Vultur aura minuta), or garapatero, the eater of garaparas, insects of the Acarus family.) We had often seen them perched on the backs of cows, seeking for gadflies and other insects. Like many birds of these desert places, they fear so little the approach of man, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... you fool! Would you call up our enemies with your noise? (The wailing drops to a moan.) Put out that fire—they can sniff smoke as far as a vulture smells carrion. (CHOCO stamps out the fire.) You, Choco, do you show your face to me, misgotten whelp of a coyote! It was ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... face towards him. He was smiling with extreme complacence, but there was to her something sinister, something even threatening, about the bushy brows that shadowed his gleaming eyes. He put her in mind of a carrion-crow searching for treasures on a heap ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... and counting-rooms, from libraries and laboratories, our young men have gone forth to service as arduous as that which tried their fore-fathers. How many of them have borne every hardship and privation of war, every cruelty of filthy prisons and carrion-food, yet have breasted the slave-masters' treason till its bullet struck the pulse of life! Let us remember that the most divergent tendencies of character, even such as we cannot associate with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... at their near approach. I took aim at one of the largest of them with my rifle, and it fell a little to my left, with an impetus I can only compare to the fall of a human being. Directly it touched the ground, it vomited carrion and died. It was many feet in breadth from tip to tip of wing, but we were too perturbed to stop and measure it. When I discharged the rifle, the report was unusually faint, owing to the state of the air; ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Bagarag heard mention of Shagpat, and the desire for vengeance in the Vizier, he was as a new man, and he smelt the sweetness of his own revenge as a vulture smelleth the carrion from afar, and he said, 'I am thy servant, thy slave, O Vizier!' Then smiled he as to his own soul, and he exclaimed, 'On my head ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all his stories. Friend Jabez," he went on to the Israelite who was still crouching in the corner with the eyes starting from his head, "get you back to your gentle-hearted people and make it clear to them why the lady Merapi cannot companion you, taking with you that carrion to prove your tale. Tell them that if they send more men to molest your niece a like fate awaits them, but that now as before I do not turn my back upon them because of the deeds of a few madmen or evil-doers, as I have given them proof to-day. Ana, make ready, since soon I ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... intermediate between fish and reptiles, haunt the seas. It is held unwise to exterminate them, since they do their part in keeping down an immense variety of smaller creatures, noxious for one reason or another, and also in clearing the water from carrion and masses of seaweed which might otherwise taint the air of the sea-coasts, especially near the mouths of large tropical rivers. But these sea-monsters devour enormous quantities of fish, and the hunters appointed to deal with them are instructed to limit ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... subject to the bone, without once relinquishing a point. An engineer by trade, Mackay believed in the unlimited perfectibility of all machines except the human machine. The latter he gave up with ridicule for a compound of carrion and perverse gases. He had an appetite for disconnected facts which I can only compare to the savage taste for beads. What is called information was indeed a passion with the man, and he not only delighted to receive it, but could pay you back ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up his point entirely; he knew he could not face the hill. Look! look at those carrion crows! how low they stoop over that woody bank. That is his line. Here is the road again. Over it once more merrily! ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... birds to feed upon; but, says the narrative, before much of it was consumed, it was discovered by a poor family (whose name and residence are given), and by them used as food. Father, mother and six children prolonged life for a week upon this disgusting carrion, and even regretted the loss of it, when the supply failed; and the poor mother said to the person who made the fact public, "the Lord only knows what I will now do for my starving children, since it is gone!" A ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... frightfully like to the shouts and cries of human beings. If you lie awake in your tent at night you are almost continually hearing some hungry family as it sweeps along in full cry. You hear the exulting scream with which the sagacious dam first winds the carrion, and the shrill response of the unanimous cubs as they sniff the tainted air, “Wha! wha! wha! wha! wha! wha! Whose gift ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... her functionaries bore to three grave-pits in the prison-yard three lumps of lifeless clay, that a few short hours before had been three of God's noblest creatures. Like carrion, they were flung into those unconsecrated pits, and strewed with quicklime. For this was British law. The wolf and the tiger leave some vestiges of their victims; but a special ordinance of English law required even the corpses of those ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... British agent who had caused Moore to advance took the trouble to inform him of the surrender of the capital; he learnt it from an intercepted French despatch. From the same despatch Moore learnt that to the north of him, at Saldanha, on the river Carrion, there lay a comparatively small French force under the command of Soult. The information was enough for Moore, heart-sick at the mockery to which his army had been subjected, and burning for decisive action. He turned northwards, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... corpse. The persons being afterwards brought to trial at the assizes, an old minister swore that, the body being taken out of the grave and laid on the grass, the accused were required to touch it. On laying their hands on the brow, which before was of a livid and carrion colour, it began to have a dew or gentle sweat upon it, which increased by degrees until the sweat ran down the face. The brow then turned to a lifelike and flesh colour, and the dead woman opened one of her ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the pharaoh, deliberately, "there is no need to imprison any one. I have too much power on my side and too much contempt for the priesthood. A man does not put into a box bound with iron the carrion which he meets on the highway; he merely ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... the river in the spring, and, when the river retired into its banks, became a series of mud flats, described as "mere quagmires of black dirt, stretching along for miles, unvaried except by the limbs of half-buried carrion, tree trunks, or by occasional yellow pools of what the children called frog's spawn; all together steaming up vapors redolent of the savor of death." In the previous year—not an unusually bad one—one-ninth of the Indian population on these flats had died in two months. The Mormons ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the dead and the dying lay everywhere, in houses and streets, and even in the temples; half-dead sufferers gathered around the springs, tortured by violent thirst; the very dogs that meddled with the corpses died of the disease; vultures and other carrion birds avoided the city as if by instinct. Many bodies were burnt or buried with unseemly haste, many doubtless left to fester where they lay. Misery, terror, despair, overwhelmed all within the walls, while the foe without drew ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of war and carnage; she was wont to appear in the form of a carrion-crow. Sometimes she is the sister of the Morrigan, and, as in the Tain Bo Cualnge, is even identified with ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... and lifted fist, And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly crush'd beneath you, The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife, The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much, To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth, An offal rank, to the dunghill ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... began, "you all know that the pay train is due here this afternoon. You are all eager to get your money—for what? It is a strange fact that gold is the carrion that draws all of the vultures. A few minutes ago you saw one of the vultures here, preparing to get his supposed share of your money away from you. Does Jim Duff care a hang about any of you? Do any of you care anything whatever for Jim Duff? Then why should you be so eager to get into ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... to do won't be as beautiful! We must wait a while, until there are no men left to fight on either side, until no sound of shot rings through the air save from the mob as carrion-like it falls upon the booty; we must wait until the psychology of our race, condensed into two words, shines clear and luminous as a drop of water: Robbery! Murder! What a colossal failure we would make of it, friend, if we, who offer our enthusiasm and lives to crush a wretched tyrant, ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... jay, a carrion bird about the size Of a robin that is generally known through the north as the "whiskey jack," had always hovered about our camps and been very tame when, in the earlier days of our trip, we had refuse to throw ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... father and brother of my Alison. Ye come to remind me of this; and that, as a reward for the shedding of our blood, the head of the chief of our house has been fixed upon the gate of Edinburgh as food for the carrion crow and the night owl! Go, get thee refreshment, Trotter; then go to rest, and dream of other heads exalted, as your late master's is, and I will be the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... passed, in terror and tumult they now rushed into his tent; "watchful sentinels ye are, to leave me to do such hangman's work with my own hand. Be silent, all of you, and cease your senseless clamour!—saw ye never a dead Turk before? Here, cast that carrion out of the camp, strike the head from the trunk, and stick it on a lance, taking care to turn the face to Mecca, that he may the easier tell the foul impostor on whose inspiration he came hither how he has sped on his errand.—For thee, my swart and silent friend," he added, turning to ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... and took him down, and knowing who he was, threw him into a deep ravine, into which they were in the habit of throwing dead horses and cats and other carrion. ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... and jagged teeth, while she fixed her cold, sinister gaze on the door of the jail, which was covered with indecent drawings. She had succeeded in persuading her husband, whose victory had made him amiable, to let her witness the inquiry and perhaps the accompanying tortures. The hyena smelt the carrion and licked herself, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... out here; we have Pirates waiting for every American thing of mark, as you have for every British; to the tender mercies of these, on both sides, I fancy the business must be committed. They do good too; as all does, even carrion: they send you faster abroad, if the world have any use for you;—oftenest it only thinks it has. Your Essays, the Pirated Essays, make an ugly yellow tatter of a Pamphlet, price 1s. 6d.; but the edition is all sold, I understand: and even Nickerson ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "No, not carrion," said Bob, picking out a good-sized fragment of the fruit upon his knife; "it's what the captain ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... pass through the town, since it could be avoided, because in his eyes the Beni-M'Zab were dogs, and in their eyes he, though heir to an agha, would be as carrion. ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... endured a period of mental agony which took all the heart out of him. He understood the methods of the prairie so well that he feared the very worst. A tree—a lariat—and he saw, in fancy, a crowd of carrion swarming round his swinging body. He could conceive no other object, and his nerves became ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... disgusting and abominable appearance; that even the hungry Simurgh, on the same account, forebore to feed upon him, but conveyed him to her nest among her own young ones, who, pitying his wretched condition, supplied him with part of the carrion they were accustomed to devour. Naked and filthy, he is thus said to have subsisted on garbage, till Sam was induced to commiserate his wretchedness, and take him to Sastan, where, by the indulgence of his family and royal bounty, he was instructed in human manners and human ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... annual revenue In keeping jolly Christmas all the year: The nostrils of his chimney are still stuft With smoke, more chargeable then Cane-tobacco; His hawks devour his fattest dogs, whilst simple, His leanest curs eat him hounds carrion. Besides, I heard of late, his younger brother, A Turkey merchant, hath sure suck'de the knight By means of some great losses on the sea, That, you conceive me, before God all is naught, His seat is weak: thus, each ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... at all in the winter, they die fast. You have only to drag the carcass to an outhouse at a little distance from the town, and with your rifle watch during the night. The wolves will come down to prey upon the carrion, and it is hard if you do not kill your couple during the night, and then you are rewarded by the commune. I do not know what the price is now, but when the King of Holland was in possession of Belgium it was one hundred francs for a male, and three hundred francs for a female ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of course, a strong Eastern colouring. It is best appreciated by dwellers in those lands. They tell us that no sooner is some sickly animal dead, or some piece of carrion thrown out by the way, than the vultures—for the eagle does not prey upon carrion—appear. There may not have been one visible a moment before in the hot blue sky, but, taught by scent or by sight that their banquet is prepared, they come ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... his. His younger brother Oliver is worth a whole pack of such down-looked, smooth-faced hypocrites. Oliver Chadwyck is the boy for a snug quarrel. His fingers itch for a drubbing, and he scents a feud as a crow scents out carrion. The other—mercy on me!—is fit for nought but to be bed-ridden and priest-ridden like his father and his mother ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... care and the inhuman treatment which they received at the hands of their owners. Once out of the line of the mad rush, perhaps unable to extricate themselves from the holding meshes of soft snow and of quagmires, they were allowed to remain where they were, a food-offering to the army of carrion eaters which were hovering about, only too certain of the meal which was being prepared ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... wrote one of the men subsequently, "found every man mounting guard, without food, fire, or light and in a drizzling rain. The Indian dogs, during the dark hours, produced frequent alarms by prowling in search of carrion about the sentinels." There being no further sign of hostilities, early on the 8th of November a body of mounted riflemen set out for the Prophet's village, which they found deserted. The place had evidently been abandoned in haste, for nothing—not even ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Northmen, and would no more enrich the lord of Elam with their treasure, but they rebelled against him. Onward the hosts advanced, intent on death. (Loud sang the javelins.) Amid the spears the blackbird, dewy-feathered, croaked in hope of carrion. In multitudes, with steadfast hearts, the warriors hastened till the hosts were gathered from afar, from ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... a rock on Mount Caucasus by the vindictive deity. There, on a dizzy height, his body thrust against the sun-baked rock, Prometheus had to endure the torment of having a foul-beaked vulture tear out his liver, as though he were a piece of carrion lying on the mountain side. All day, while the sun mercilessly smote him and the blue sky turned from red to black before his pain-racked eyes, the torture went on. Each night, when the filthy bird ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... hast heard of it—four men and eight men With the edges of Skrymir to aid me I have urged to their flight from the battle. Now the singer, the steward of Odin, Hath smitten at last even Bersi With the flame of the weapon that feedeth The flocks of the carrion crows." ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... scruples concerning the matter. Besides, every one along the Arizona border hated a wolf almost as badly as they did a cowardly coyote; for while the former may be bolder than the beast that slinks across the desert looking for carrion, its capacity for mischief is a good ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... by the most unearthly squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an infuriated animal madly rushing round and round the sty. Ye gods! what had I done? I had not surely, like the tailor in the old song of the 'Carrion Crow,' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... look at this carrion! One may as well see upon whom our friend here has put his mark." So saying he stooped and turned over the man, the first of the two who had fallen. He lay half in a stagnant pool of water, and was quite dead, as we could see, for the moon fell clearly on his evil and distorted ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... not grown old with it. For it seems pretty sure that progress means, with many other things, the survival of the unfit and the transmission of unfitness to a generation of old babies; but where men are not disinfected, sterilised, fed on preserved carrion and treated with hypodermics from the cradle to the grave, the good old law of nature holds its own and the weak ones die young, while the strong fight for life and are very much ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... a Magpie, He lives at the west, Steals and scolds and eats carrion; He's none of ...
— The Illustrated Alphabet of Birds • Unknown
... and Miss Ethel Newcome to a young eaglet. Is it not a rare provision of nature (or fiction of poets, who have their own natural history) that the strong-winged bird can soar to the sun and gaze at it, and then come down from heaven and pounce on a piece of carrion? ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the drink did put but coldness within I. And when the door was closed, 'twas as if one did come running round the house and did beat upon it for to be let in. Then I did go for to open it, but the place outside was full of emptiness, and 'twas they old carrion crows what did talk to I out of ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... yellow, colors best seen at night, and in addition usually are very strongly scented so as to attract the night-flying moths which usually fertilize them. Sometimes dull-colored flowers, which frequently have a very offensive odor, are visited by flies and other carrion-loving insects, which serve to convey pollen ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... the snow, they walked on and on for a long time, burying themselves in the vague, infinite, unfamiliar depths of a street that follows the same wall, the same trees, the same lanterns, and leads on to the same darkness beyond. The damp, heavy air that they breathed smelt of sugar and tallow and carrion. From time to time a vivid flash passed before their eyes: it was the lantern of a butcher's cart that shone upon slaughtered cattle and huge pieces of bleeding meat thrown upon the back of a white horse; the light upon the flesh, amid the darkness, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... high-wrought strain, fastidious In his acceptance, dreading all delight That speedy dies and turns to carrion. . . . . . . A nature half-transformed, with qualities That oft bewrayed each other, elements Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects. . . . . . A spirit framed Too proudly special for obedience, Too subtly pondering for mastery: Born ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... a lie is quite another. It is impossible for me to live side by side with another human being except in absolute truth. A lie, the lie, crushes what there is in me of the divine. A lie to me is carrion and corruption. Tell me, then, whether you have been and are true to me! Don't be afraid, Dorothea, and don't be ashamed. Everything may be right yet and work out as it should. But tell me: Have ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... sufficient size to close it. A carcass of a sheep or dog, or a fish or fowl, being previously without at the distance of from twelve to twenty yards, the lyer-in-wait watches patiently for the descent of the eagle, and, the moment it has fairly settled upon the carrion, fires. In this manner, multitudes of eagles are yearly destroyed in Scotland. The head, claws, and quills, are kept by the shepherds, to be presented to the factor at Martinmas or Whitsunday, for the premium of from half-a-crown to five shillings which is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... a young man, of a shabby appearance, who was mounted upon a very fine horse. At first Marvel took it for granted that he was one of Sir Plantagenet's people, and he was riding past him, when he heard the stranger say, in a friendly tone, "Your horse gallops well, sir: but have a care; there's a carrion a little way farther on ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... needful to guard my little brood with fine wire-work, for some carrion crows kept hovering near, and a weasel was constantly on the watch to carry them off; but these enemies were successfully baffled, and three of the ducks survived all dangers and grew to beautiful maturity, the fourth ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... Youth: There being nothing so proper for Sallet Herbs and other Edule Plants, as the Genial and Natural Mould, impregnate, and enrich'd with well-digested Compost (when requisite) without any Mixture of Garbage, odious Carrion, and other filthy Ordure, not half consum'd and ventilated and indeed reduc'd to the next Disposition of Earth it self, as it should be; and that in Sweet, [72]Rising, Aery and moderately Perflatile Grounds; where not only Plants but Men do last, and live ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... my handkerchief to my mouth, and the kawwasses running as though they had been pursued by devils. Everywhere in Damascus, but especially in this quarter, the labyrinthine streets are piled with heaps of offal, wild dogs are gorged with carrion, and dead dogs are lying about. One must never judge Damascus, however by externals: every house has a mean aspect in the way of entrance and approach. This is done purposely to deceive the Government, and not to betray what may be within in times of looting. You often approach through ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... snare the little tender birds because it is too much trouble for her to chew honest food, how much of a great warrior do you feel then? You slay the tiger at the risk of your life; but who gets the striped skin you have run that risk for? She takes it to lie on, and flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You fight because you think that your fighting makes her admire and desire you. Fool: she makes you fight because you bring her the ornaments and the treasures of those you have slain, and because she is courted and propitiated with power and gold by the people who fear you. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... my neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one alone who also works among carrion. This is Onthophagus ovatus, LIN., a constant frequenter of dead Moles and Rabbits. But the dwarf undertaker does not on that account scorn stercoraceous fare: he feasts upon it like the other Onthophagi. Perhaps there is a twofold diet here: the bun for the adult; the highly-spiced, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... rascals have loaded their beasts already, and most probably have gone to hide their plunder, that they may be back and make sure of a second haul, before any of their precious brother vultures, up in the sands, get a scent of the carrion. D—n the rogues; I thought at one time they had me in a category! Well, joy be with them! Mr. Monday, I return you my hearty thanks for the manly, frank, and diplomatic manner in which you have discharged the duties of your mission. Without you, we might not have ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... scene for a young man brought up as he had been! Could he really find any satisfaction in it? Yes, birds that love carrion flock together, and there was plenty of moral carrion here. A long deal table occupied the middle of the room, a smaller round one stood under the window and supported a tray loaded with glasses ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... painful enough it was to the kind—hearted negro—I was looking out towards the eastern horizon, watching the first dark—blue ripple of the sea—breeze, when a rushing noise passed over my head. I looked up and saw a gawnaso, the large carrion—crow of the tropics, sailing, contrary to the habits of its kind, seaward over the brig. I followed it with my eye, until it vanished in the distance, when my attention was attracted by a dark ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... ghost of godhead, false and foul As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we, Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl: The corpse be theirs to mock; the ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wish, little one, would do nothing. Others of their kind would fill their places. The seekers of gold are like ants. Slay thousands, tens of thousands come on; if once the scent of gain be on the wind it brings men in crowds from all parts, as the smell of carrion brings meat-flies. If they think of seizing the Edera it is because men of business will turn it into gold. The Edera gives us our grain, our fruits, our health, our life; but if it will give money to the foreigner, the foreigner will take it as he would take the stars and coin them if he could. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... show to what desperate means Luther's Catholic critics will resort in order to make out a case against him, we note that one of the most recent disparagers of Luther informs the public that Luther's original name had been Luder. This name conveys the idea of "carrion," "beast," "low scoundrel." When Luther began to translate the Bible, we are told, he changed his name into "Squire George." Once before this, at the time of his entering the university, Catholics note that he changed his name from Luder to Lueder. But these changes ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... a flower amongst them. Trees there were yet, but the most of them stark dead, and the best dying fast. No beasts she saw, nor fowl; nothing but lizards and beetles, and now and again a dry grey adder coiled up about a sun-burned stone. But of great carrion flies, green and blue, were there a many, and whiles they buzzed about her head till she sickened with loathing of them. All this she found on her way as she went up toward the place where erst was the great perron. But when she came to the top there was no sign either of the ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... in. He had been sporting with the wavelets, and waving with the sportlets for some minutes, when he heard a bellowing on shore, and he looked up to see a cow pawing the ground and running her horns into his clothes. You know how the smell of blood or carrion will cause the mildest mannered cow to get on her ear and paw the ground and bellow. Not that there was any blood or carrion there, but the cow acted that way. She may have got the smell of a Democrat from his clothes. Anyway she ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... to gluttony that it will go a thousand miles to eat a carrion [carcase]; therefore is it that ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... has. Oh, give him back to me, give him back, I say, Or I will tear your body limb from limb, And to the common gibbet nail your head Until the carrion crows have stripped it bare. Better you had crossed a hungry lioness Before you came between me and my love. [With more pathos.] Nay, give him back, you know not how I love him. Here by this chair he knelt a half ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... his elbows and knees had become hardened from going on all-fours with the wolves. The village boys amused themselves by throwing frogs to him, which he caught and devoured; and when a bullock died and was skinned, he resorted to the carcass like the dogs of the place, and fed upon the carrion. His body smelled offensively. He remained in the village during the day, for the sake of what he could get to eat, but always went off to the jungle at night. In other particulars, his habits resembled those already described. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... no right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... any human habitation; it might be days before a human being chanced to pass that way! Would his body confront some wandering shepherd or some sportsman months hence, when the snows had gone, and, perhaps—horrible thought, yet possible to be realized!—after carrion birds had made their onslaught on the ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... reproach among men, an outcast and a vagabond on the face of the earth! And when, at last, your sinful race is run, and your guilty soul has been ushered into that dreaded eternity you have plucked upon it, may your polluted carcass become the prey of the carrion-crow and the buzzard, and the wild beasts of the desert wilderness howl a requiem over your bones! Go now, and meet your doom! Go with the curse of wretched innocence ever abiding upon you! Go with the canker-worm of festering corruption ever hanging, like an incubus, upon your prostituted heart, ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... mortgages, buying half-starved horses and steers for a song, selling hay and straw at fabulous prices. And we were reeling upon the ragged edge of bankruptcy! He, the beast of prey, the vulture, was gorging on our carrion. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Africa," Max explained. "I'm not sure of any being met with in Europe, though there are plenty of wolves. They feed on carrion mostly, and are cowardly by nature; but all the same, they're nasty looking brutes, and always snarling the worst you ever heard. It makes your flesh creep just to hear them growl, worse than the ugly tempered ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... green, and red, and blue! There's a complexion beats the ROUGE of Warren! See those red lips; oh, la! they seem so nice! What rosy cheeks then, cousin, to entice!— Compar'd to this, all other heads are carrion. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Princess shuddered; for she knew too well that such an atrocity was easy and common enough. She knew it well. Why should she not? The story of the Cid's Daughters and the Knights of Carrion; the far more authentic one of Robert of Belesme; and many another ugly tale of the early middle age, will prove but too certainly that, before the days of chivalry began, neither youth, beauty, nor the sacred ties of matrimony, could protect women from the most horrible outrages, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... degraded, horrible, inglorious end—to be caught by the heels after the real battle was lost; to die of fever in a cell; to be stabbed with bayonets on the wharf, and thrown to the carrion harbor- sharks. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... their boss the little mob stopped. Then the Irishman spoke in a voice that rumbled and shook with menacing rage. "Ye, Manuel an' Pedro—drag that carrion off the right-av-way, an' tell him when he wakes up av he values his life to shtay out av rache av me two hands. The rest av ye hombres git ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... beaten into a hawthorn bush on Bosworth Field, and his defaced, mangled, and ill-shaped body thrown, like carrion, across a pack-horse and driven off to Leicester, and Henry VII., the astute, the wily, the thrifty, reigned in his stead. After Henry's victory over Simnel he came two successive days to St. Paul's to offer his thanksgiving, and Simnel (afterwards a scullion in the royal kitchen) ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... treason, and detestable infidelitie." Then fleashing her selfe vpon the dead body, as a hungry lion vpon his praye, she lefte no parte of him vnwounded: and when shee had mangled his bodye all ouer, with an infinite number of gashes, she cried out: "O infected carrion, whilom an organ and instrumente of the moste vnfaithfull and trayterous minde that euer was vnder the coape of heauen. Nowe thou art payed with deserte, worthy of thy merites!" Then shee sayed to Ianique (whiche ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god, kissing carrion—Have you a daughter? Polonius. I have, my lord. Hamlet. Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may conceive:—friend, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... of stones carefully rounded. But for these were substituted on occasion rough stones with fuses attached,[5] pieces of red-hot iron, pots of fused metal, or casks full of Greek fire or of foul matter to corrupt the air of the besieged place. Thus carrion was shot into Negropont from such engines by Mahomed II. The Cardinal Octavian, besieging Modena in 1249, slings a dead ass into the town. Froissart several times mentions such measures, as at the siege of Thin l'Eveque on the Scheldt in 1340, when "the besiegers ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... shoulder, I flashed my sword in their eyes; and not till the crescent of weapons encircled me in one blinding gleam, vain grew defence, vain honor, vain bravery. Of what use was my soul to me thenceforth? I became but carrion prey. I fell, and the world fell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father's. 'I feel ill,' he gasped, 'horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone of these carrion flies confounds ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... traders—and gruesome endings to them. I well remember, in my young days, the clanking gibbet on the sands near Preston and the three tarred and iron-riveted carcases hanging, each in its chains, with the perpetual guard of carrion crows.... Hanging in chains is still on the statute book, I believe. But I'll stop my croaking now. You are not one to be drawn into brutal ways; nor one, I fear, to be frightened into prudence. Nevertheless," laughing ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... What is your Law to me? When the horses fight on the runs do they regard the boundary pillars; or do the kites of Ali Musjid forbear because the carrion lies under the shadow of Ghor Kuttri? The matter began across the Border. It shall finish where God pleases. Here, in my own country, or in Hell. All ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... these dreadful things about my fellows!" cried Miss Du Prel, flinging up her fine head defiantly; "one is likely to find in them more or less what one expects. It's the same everywhere. If you go seeking mole-hills and worms, and put nose to ground on the scent for carrion, you will find them all, with the range of snow-capped Alps in full view, and the infinite of blue ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... now, humming a bass war-song as they march, are in high glee, for there are more villages to raid. And as the whole party moves forth from the glade once more to plunge within the forest gloom, the air is alive with the circling of carrion birds; and the newly risen sun darts his first arrowy beam upon the scene of horror, lighting up the red gore and the slain corpses, and the ghastly staring heads upon the gateway. Even as his last ray fell upon a tragedy of blood and of cruelty so now does his first, for in truth this is one ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... examine the course of this river, a certain distance up. On entering the stream, they saw a great number of birds, which they took at first for turkeys, so much they resembled them, but which were only a kind of carrion eagles, vulgarly called turkey-buzzards. We were not a little astonished to see Mr. de Montigny return on foot and alone; he soon informed us of the reason: having ascended the Kowlitzk about a mile and a half, on rounding a bend of the stream, they suddenly came in view ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion-kites that scream below; He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... hat and a pair of trousers." It was probably with a similar leaning towards the more liberal religion that the Lalbegis, though themselves Hindus, adopted a Muhammadan for their tutelary saint. In the Punjab Muhammadan sweepers who have given up eating carrion and refuse to remove night-soil rank higher than the others, and are known as Musalli. [241] And in Saugor the Muhammadans allow the sweepers to come into a mosque and to stand at the back, whereas, of course, they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... rose's sigh Were as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee, Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, unhappily, I'm ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... grand battery opened on the Spanish defences, it presently took fire, was consumed, and had to be made anew. Fresh water failed, and the troops died by scores from thirst; fevers set in, killed many, and disabled nearly half the army. The sea was strewn with floating corpses, and carrion-birds in clouds hovered over the populous graveyards and infected camps. Yet the siege went on: a formidable sally was repulsed; Moro Castle was carried by storm; till at length, two months and eight days after the troops landed, Havana fell into their hands.[873] At the same time Spain ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... few seconds the man stood up. "David," said he to one of his comrades, "come and help me to carry away this carrion. The horses wont be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... physical type, of comparatively good stature and light complexion; [82] this may perhaps be due to a large admixture of Hindu blood through their women, during a social contact with the Hindus extending over many centuries, and also to the fact that they eat flesh when they can obtain it, including carrion. Such types are, however, exceptional among the impure castes, and there is no reason to doubt their general origin from the non-Aryan tribes, which in a few instances can be directly traced. Thus it seems likely that the Kanjars, Berias, Sansias and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... (I., 57), "in whatever state of decomposition, is ever discarded by Bushmen." They dispute carrion with wolves and vultures. Rabbits they eat skins and all, and their menu is varied by all sorts ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck |
