"Peasantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... de Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Peasantry A Man of Business ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... found, not in Asia Minor only, but wherever Turks are to be found in power. Throughout the whole extent of their territory, if you believe the report of travellers, the peasantry are indigent, oppressed, and wretched.[54] The great island of Crete or Candia would maintain four times its present population; once it had a hundred cities; many of its towns, which were densely populous, are now obscure villages. Under the Venetians it used to export ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... of people who passed around her, not as persons, but as looming presences. It was very difficult for her to adjust herself. In Poland, the peasantry, the people, had been cattle to her, they had been her cattle that she owned and used. What were these people? Now she was coming awake, she ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... These places are generally situated among high rocks on the precipitous sides of the hills overlooking rivers; and when the wind is very boisterous their terrible screams and incantations can be distinctly heard by the peasantry inhabiting ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... the following outlines of a plan for a gradual, but general and universal emancipation is proposed. Let the slaves be attached to the soil,—give them an interest in the land they cultivate. Place them in the same situation as their masters, as the peasantry of Russia, in relation to their landlords. Let wise and salutary laws be enacted, in the several slave holding states, for their general government. These laws should provide for the means of extending to the children of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... folk-tales began in IRELAND as early as 1825, with T. Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. This contained some 38 anecdotes of the first class mentioned above, anecdotes showing the belief of the Irish peasantry in the existence of fairies, gnomes, goblins, and the like. The Grimms did Croker the honour of translating part of his book, under the title of Irische Elfenmaerchen. Among the novelists and tale-writers of the schools of Miss Edgeworth and ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... knotted—is considered, when an ointment is made with it, using the whole plant bruised and treated with unsalted lard, a sovereign remedy against "burnt holes" or gangrenous chicken-pox, such as often attacks the Irish peasantry, who subsist on a meagre and exclusively vegetable diet, being half starved, and pent up in wretched foul hovels. This herb is said to be certainly curative of hydrophobia, by taking every morning whilst fasting a slice of bread and butter on which the powdered knots of the roots have ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... or from beggar-women and ballad-singers nearer Dublin; and I am glad to acknowledge how much I owe to the folk imagination of these fine people. Anyone who has lived in real intimacy with the Irish peasantry will know that the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in any little hillside cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay. All art is a collaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... is said to be paved with "good" ones, and surely "bad" ones would not lead us upwards. Then the phrase of a man "slapping the gates of Heaven in his own face," is one of those wild poetic figures of speech in which the Irish peasantry often indulge. The phrase "slapping the door" is every-day and common; but when applied to "the gates of Heaven," and "in a man's own face," the common phrase becomes fine. But how often the commonest things become poetry ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Seville, the upper classes camp out in tents or huts, and the girls pass their time in singing and dancing, like the peasantry. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... only exist in community, so much does it depend on cooperation and common laws. One must not think primarily of a French Peasant; any more than of a German Measle. The plural of the word is its proper form; you cannot have a Peasant till you have a peasantry. The essence of the Peasant ideal is equality; and you cannot be equal ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... who apparently did nothing to make history or thought. They are mentioned but incidentally, and generally without interest, if not with some contempt, except where a poet is choosing to glorify the simple life and therefore turns his gaze on the frugal peasantry, who doubtless did, in sober fact, retain most of the sturdy old Roman spirit. About the soldiers we know much, and not a little about the schoolmasters. The connection of the one occupation with history and of the other with authors ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... service. Wellington had not yet begun that career of victory which created a national enthusiasm for war, and filled our ranks with willing soldiers. And another clause of the same bill was framed in the hope of making the service more acceptable to the peasantry, by limiting the time for which recruits were to be enlisted, and entering men, at first, in the infantry for seven years, or in the cavalry (as that branch of the service required a longer apprenticeship) for ten; then allowing them the option of renewing their engagement ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... unhappy France, my liege!" said the noble Hellitysplit. "The ranks of the P.Q.R.'s are daily swelling, and the G.R.J.A.'s are constantly on the increase. Already the peasantry scout at cat-fish, and demand pickled salmon for their noonday repasts. But, my liege," and the brave Hellitysplit eyes flashed fire, "myself and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... women are said to be, believe themselves to be, and show to everyone that they believe themselves to be, the handsomest women in France. Their type is quite distinct from that of the inhabitants of Nimes, Marseilles, Aix, and even of the peasantry outside the gates of Arles. What is the more singular is that this peculiarity of type is not noticeable among the men. Among the women it is quite unmistakable. Their straight brows and noses are sometimes Greek, but the Roman arch appears as frequently as the straight nose; they have ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... for the gentry, who, in spite of an academical dislike to Ormsby's conversion, gathered to witness this Catholic marriage, as a rare thing in Ireland, at least amongst their own class. But behind them, and I should say in unpleasant proximity (for the peasantry do not carry handkerchiefs scented with White Rose or Jockey Club,—only the odor of the peat and the bogwood), surged a vast crowd of men and women, on whose lips and in whose hearts was a prayer for her who was entering on the momentous change in her sweet ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... to inform you,' said his lordship, 'that the police in that barbarous district are as superstitious as the peasantry. I, myself, told the chief constable my theory, and for six weeks he has been trying to run down the miscreants, who, I am sure, are making a rendezvous of the castle. Would you believe it, sir, that the constabulary, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... but positively much more than negatively.... Education cultivated a system of verbal etiquette so multiform that only the training of years could enable any one to master it. The astonishment evoked by Japanese sumptuary laws, particularly as inflicted upon the peasantry, is justified, less by their general character than by their implacable minuteness,—their ferocity of detail." "That a man's house is his castle cannot be asserted in Japan, except in the case of some high potentate. No ordinary person can shut his door to lock out the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... temperate zone,—seems to act harmfully on the poetical character of the Swiss; but take its inhabitants all in all, as with deep love and stern penetration they are painted in the works of their principal writer, Gotthelf, and I believe we shall not easily find a peasantry which would ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... organizing and consolidating among Jews and Gentiles alike. At the time when Abraham Lincoln was proclaiming his famous "United we stand, divided we fall," Julius Slovacki in Poland pleaded the cause of the peasantry of his country, and the Alliance Israelite Universelle issued a call to the entire house of Israel "to defend the honor of the Jewish name wherever it is attacked; to encourage, by all means at our disposal, the pursuit of useful handicrafts; to ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... revolution, fomented chiefly by the Leghornese, expelled the Grand Duke in March 1849; about seven weeks later a counter-revolution, chiefly by the peasantry, recalled him.] ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... rattled off through the village for the foot of Carrock. The journey at the outset was not remarkable. The Cumberland road went up and down like all other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their race. The approach to the foot of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other mountains all over the world. The cultivation gradually ceased, the trees grew ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... registers, sack the lodgings of the clerks, carry off the money and pillage the wine on hand in the depot. In the mean time a rumor has circulated all round through the country that there is free entrance into the town for all provisions. During the following days the peasantry stream in with enormous files of wagons loaded with wine and drawn by several oxen, so that, in spite of the re-established guard, it is necessary to let them enter all day without paying the dues. It is only on the 7th of July ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... White Armies and the problems of peaceful construction in connection with the incredible catastrophes of public economy demand an extraordinary effort of all the powers of the proletariat and the drafting into the process of public labour of the wide masses of the peasantry. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... was always a day of rejoicing that was looked forward to all the year by every one in Svartsjoe and in Bro, not only by the gentry, who participated in all the festivities, but also by the young folk of the peasantry, who came in crowds to Loevdala to look at the smartly dressed people and to listen to the ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... case of lack of imagination; it is that we Germans have, properly speaking, no understanding of political tendencies. We are more or less educated in business, in science, in thought, but in politics we are about on the same level as the East Slavonic peasantry. At best we know—and even that not always—what oppresses, vexes and tortures us; we know our grievances, and think we have conceived an aim when we simply turn them upside down. Such processes of thought as "the police are to blame, the war-conditions are to blame, the Prussians ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... the white man's table. Let there be such industrial education of the Negro as will fit him to serve the white man. Only Southerners understand the Negro question. Let the South settle the Negro question. The status of peasantry is all the Negro may hope for, if the races are to live together in peace. Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest Negro. The above statements indicate the leadings ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... on "The Potato Truck System of Ireland," will be found the ground-work of the misery of the peasantry. The whole recompense for their labour is the potato. If it fail, they starve. In summer's heat and winter's cold the potato is their only food; water their only drink. They hunger from labour and exertion—the potato satisfies their craving appetite. Sickness comes, and they ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... congratulations, the guests of quality descended into the garden, where the assembled peasantry were awaiting ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of the same tradition. Thus it may be said that so long as any of these three are alive, a faint flicker of living Cornish remains, even if there is no verity in the weird legends of the survival of more as an esoteric language among the peasantry and the mining and fishing folk of the West. But even if the spoken Cornish be dead, its ghost still haunts its old dwelling, for the modern English speech of West Cornwall is full of Celtic words, and nine-tenths ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... submission, and put a mass of obstacles in the way of the transfer of his national officials to the new government. In these things he was enthusiastically supported by his subjects, still for the most part an illiterate peasantry, passionately if confusedly patriotic, and so far with no practical knowledge of the effect of atomic bombs. More particularly he retained control of ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... of their own. Paul, to whom nothing human was alien, studied them with keen curiosity. He found them gay-hearted, chivalrous gentlemen, and soon shared their enthusiasm for horses. His experiences with the 9th Brigade are described in his letters. The psychology of the French peasantry and tradespeople with whom he came into contact also vastly interested him. It was very responsible work he had to do for a lad of 19, but he did it ably and zealously. He liked the work for its variety; it involved a great deal of riding on horseback and much motoring, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... knew what—fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France on her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe—these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp; but these were transitory chords. There had been others of deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... precipitous. Within, the church is not perhaps quite so impressive as without, but it has monuments appertaining probably to the Culpepers, once a far-reaching aristocratic Sussex family, which we met first at Ardingly, and which is now extinct or existent only among the peasantry. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... be angry when he reflects that, to maintain this reckless and utterly useless extravagance of the king and the court, the millions of the peasantry of France were compelled to live in mud hovels, to wear the coarsest garb, to eat the plainest food, while their wives and their daughters toiled barefooted in the fields. One would think that guilty consciences would often be appalled by the announcement, "Know thou that for all these things God ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the Emperor and elaborated by the Committee of Affairs and four members nominated by the Emperor, who sit in St. Petersburg. The Emperor has the veto power over any act of theirs. That National Assembly consists of representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasantry, the consent of all of whom must be obtained to any measure that makes a change in the constitution or imposes taxes. But the royal veto can set aside ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... official that it would not be well they should replace, no interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral practice. To the world their serious faces were never deformed by the suspicion ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unknown in other parts of Scotland, the peasantry have in most places planted orchards ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... ignorance. And his colleague contrasted the plantations, overrun with weeds on one side of Mason and Dixon's line, with the cultivated farms on the other: in Pennsylvania, he observed "a neat, blooming, animated, rosy-cheeked peasantry"; in Maryland, "a squalid, slow-motioned black population." These were barbed ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the peasantry, Jeff says, whereever they goes; an' then clods pursoocs Jeff an' the others, from start to finish, with hoes an' rakes an' mattocks an' clothes-poles an' puddin'- sticks an' other barbarous an' obsolete arms, an' never lets up ontil Jeff an' Morgan all' their gallant comrades ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... difficulties. He declared that the onset of this new phase in human life, the modern phase, wherein there was apparently to be no more "proliferating," but instead a settling down of population towards a stable equilibrium, became apparent first with the expropriation of the English peasantry and the birth of the factory system and machine production. "Since that time one can trace a steady substitution of wholesale and collective methods for household and family methods. It has gone far with us now. Instead ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... reiterated entreaties of his friends that he at last proceeded to Scotland to consult a celebrated physician. His return to his parish after that short absence proved the estimation in which he was held among the people. As he rode by the cabins of the peasantry, the occupants rushed out, and, with all the impulsive devotion of the Irish toward those whom they regard as benefactors, fell upon their knees, and invoked blessings upon him, and pursued the carriage in which he rode, with fervent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the army of the future," cried Olympius enthusiastically. "It does not count a man as yet, but is already distributed into several legions. The vigor of mind and body—our learned youth on one hand and strong-armed peasantry on the other—form the nucleus of our force. Maximus could collect, in the utmost haste, the army which deprived Gratian of his throne and life, and was within a Hair-breadth of overthrowing Theodosius; and what was he but an ambitious rebel, and what tempted his followers but their hopes of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Russia, came home again from Dantzig; to notable increase of the Anarchies in Mecklenburg, though without other result for himself. The irrational Duke proved more contumacious than ever, fell into deeper trouble than ever;—at length (1733) he made Proclamation to the Peasantry to rise and fight for him; who did turn out, with their bill-hooks and bludgeons, under Captains named by him, "to the amount of 18,000 Peasants,"—with such riot as may be fancied, but without other result. So that the Hanover Commissioners ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Prince had now advanced far into that county which has no rival in this Island in the beauty and diversity of its scenery, in the simple, honest character of its fine peasantry, or in the rank and influence of its landed proprietors. The history of these families is connected with the civil, and foreign wars of the kingdom; and already had the moors and valleys of Derbyshire been the scene of contest which had the Restoration ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... into the big hall sitting room of the house, selected "Pancoast's Family Practice of Medicine" from a bookcase, and began to read. John came in, took the book away from me, and led me outside. He has a farm of three hundred acres furnished with the usual complement of barns, mules, peasantry, and harrows with three front teeth broken off. I had seen such things in my childhood, and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... for naturally they are much more significant than those that have been woven around the older heroes of a more superstitious, less civilized age. These legends must have been handed down to generation after generation, for, writing about 1835, Mrs Bray mentions that the peasantry near Tavistock still talked of the 'old warrior,' as they called him. To choose one or two at random, there is the story that once, after he had been away for a very long time, his wife supposed him to be dead, and thought that ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... stones, of flowers and laces; the gentlemen in their gold-embroidered uniforms, their breasts ornamented with orders; but among them were seen also the dark figures of Lutzow's riflemen, the plain coats of the citizens, and even some of the peasantry in their becoming rural costumes. All classes were represented at this great ball, which the municipal authorities of Breslau gave in honor of the Emperor of Russia, for these representatives of all classes were to offer to Alexander the homage of the Prussian people, and to return ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... sacred favour; I in floods of ink Must drown thy graces, which white papers drink, Even as thy beauties did the foul black seas; I must describe the hell of thy decease, That heaven did merit: yet I needs must see Our painted fools and cockhorse peasantry Still, still usurp, with long lives, loves, and lust, The seats of Virtue, cutting short as dust Her dear-bought issue: ill to worse converts, And tramples in the blood of all deserts. Night close and silent now goes fast before The captains and the soldiers to ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... of Theodore was even more rapid than his rise. He was still unconquered in the battlefield, as, after the example of Negoussi's fate, none dared to oppose him; but against the passive warfare of the peasantry and the Fabian-like policy of their chiefs he could do nothing. Never resting, almost always on the march, his army day by day becoming reduced in strength, he went from province to province; but in vain: ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... the log house: the inside is quite unlike that of the cottages of the peasantry of Europe: it contains more than is superfluous, less than is necessary. A single window with a muslin blind; on a hearth of trodden clay an immense fire, which lights the whole structure; above the hearth a good rifle, a deer's skin, and plumes ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... along the belt of that march the things that were the sacrament of civilization had gone. Rheims was possessed, the village churches of the "Island of France" and of Artois were ruins or desolations. The peasantry already knew the destruction of something more than such material things, the end of a certain social pact which war in Christendom had spared. They had been massacred in droves, with no purpose save that of terror; they had been ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... the local insurrection made by FitzOsbert. Two centuries had passed, and in those centuries the beginnings of representative government had been set up and some recognition of the rights of the peasantry had been ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... had to contend with the still wilder wanderers of Scandinavia in fierce combats that he was too little skilful to record, and which appears so obscure and remote to his descendants, presents a phase comparatively near, and an outline proportionally sharp and well-defined to the intelligent peasantry of Iceland. Their Barbours and Blind Harries came a few ages sooner than ours, and the fog, in consequence, rose earlier; and so, while Scotch antiquaries of no mean standing can say almost nothing about the expedition or death-bed of Haco, even the humbler Icelanders, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... morning the whole battalion was lined up before the colonel while the adjutant read aloud the law which we boys term the "riot act." This document informed us very clearly that if any soldier was found to have taken anything from the peasantry for his own use; if any man was found drunk on active service, or if he committed any other crime or offense which might be counted as minor to these two, the punishment for a first offense would be six months first field punishment. For ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... removed the superincumbent pressure which in the Old World confines the servants to a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is. They are for the most part the raw, untrained Irish peasantry, and the wonder is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, there should be the measure of comfort and success there is in our domestic arrangements. But, so long as things are so, there will be constant changes and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... comprehending in it all who had anything to lose, a period of reaction ensued. In the reign of Richard II, whichever faction might be in the ascendant, and whatever direction the king's own sympathies may have originally taken, the last state of the peasantry was without doubt worse than the first. Wycliffism as an influence rapidly declined with the death of Wyclif himself, as it hardly could but decline, considering the absence from his teaching of any tangible system of church government; and Lollardry ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... a fantastic world in which Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio might feel at home; but with Dame Chat, Gammer Gurton and Hodge we feel the solid earth beneath our feet and around us the strong air which nourished the peasantry and yeomen ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... this place, which soon followed, roused the enthusiasm of the Moriscos to the highest pitch. From all sides the warlike peasantry flocked to the standard of their able chief, and a war began resembling that of a century before, when the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella were invading the Kingdom of Granada. From peak to peak of the sierras beacon-fires flashed their signals, calling the bold mountaineers to forays on the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... incapacity to retain it, Prince Otto loses the regard, affection, and esteem of his wife. He goes eavesdropping among the peasantry, and has to sit silent while his wife's honour is coarsely impugned. After that I hold it is impossible for Stevenson to rehabilitate his hero, and, with all his brilliant effects, he fails. . . . I cannot ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the months flew by in a whirl of gaiety and elegant revelry. The groans of an oppressed peasantry, the curses of an overtaxed burgherdom, could not pierce through the chorus of merriment. Smaller stars waxed and waned, favourites of a day disappeared, but the Landhofmeisterin's power grew greater, and her ambition became each day more tremendous. She was treated with royal ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... a nick name given to the western peasantry of Scotland, from then using the words frequently in driving strings of horses. Hence, as connected with Calvinistical principles in religion, and republican doctrines in policy, it was given as a term of reproach to the opposition party in the latter ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... for halting at each booth and inspecting the wares, and each time that I made as if to do so, the obsequious peasantry fell away before me, making way invitingly. But Messer Arcolano urged me along, saying that we had far to go, and that in Piacenza there were better shops and that I should have more time ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... worse misery of the rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks volumes as to the actual state of our "boasted peasantry, their country's pride." ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... illustrative of superstition in English peasant folk, and Piers had only to draw upon his Russian experiences for pursuit of the subject. He told how, in a time of great drought, he had known a corpse dug up from its grave by peasantry, and thrown into a muddy pond—a vigorous measure for the calling down of rain; also, how he had seen a priest submit to be dragged on his back across a turnip field, that thereby a great crop might be secured. These things interested the great man, who sat opposite; he beamed upon Otway, and sought ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... moreover, expected to know who could, and who could not, make out the money; to have obtained, and always have ready, that secret knowledge of the affairs of the estate, which is thought to be, and is so, necessary to the managing of the Irish peasantry in the way they are managed. Pat Brady was all this; moreover, he had as little compunction in driving the cow or the only pig from his neighbour or cousin, and in selling off the oats or potatoes of his uncle or brother-in-law, as if he was doing that which would ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... allowed to remain at home when wanted if he has attended school regularly during the six previous months. The interest of the parent and the inclination of the child are thus combined to the retarding of the intellectual progress of the boer. And yet, although they are so badly taught, the peasantry have a very good opinion about things in general, and if you assist them in their work and show them that you can use your hands as well as they can they have great respect for you, and will listen to ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... it was so strange to find another language the people's actual and earnest medium of thought within so short a distance of England. But English is scarcely more known to the body of the Welsh people than to the peasantry of France. However, they sometimes pretend to ignorance, when they might speak it ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... under the guns of Annapolis. At the time of the cession the French population seems not to have exceeded two thousand souls, about five hundred of whom lived within the banlieue of Annapolis, and were therefore more or less under English control. They were all alike a simple and ignorant peasantry, prosperous in their humble way, and happy when rival masters ceased from troubling, though vexed with incessant quarrels among themselves, arising from the unsettled boundaries of their lands, which had never been properly surveyed. ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... the belligerents to destroy their labouring element is wonderfully ludicrous in its extravagance. We are led to infer that those best of friends, der Kaiser and his cousins George and Nicholas, are merely pretending hostility in order to rid themselves of a troublesome peasantry! We do not know what Mr. Shufelt has been reading lately, but we hope that time may modify his ideas to such a degree that he will turn his dignified style and pure English to some object worthy of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... carcases of men and animals. The greater number were buried amid the ruins of the houses, while others perished in the fires that were kindled in most of the towns, particularly in Oppido, where the flames were fed by great magazines of oil. Not a few, especially among the peasantry dwelling in the country, were suddenly engulfed in fissures. Many who were only half buried in the ruins, and who might have been saved had there been help at hand, were left to die a lingering death from cold and hunger. Four Augustine monks at Terranuova perished thus miserably. Having ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... imagine that they had written at least "Childe Harold." There is the case of a living publisher (not either of the brothers Murray) whose presence at his country chateau is indicated to the surrounding nobility, gentry, and peasantry by the unfurling of the Royal ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... that the Guarani language, among the peasantry, has almost superseded that of their ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... A peasantry so rich too, that the wives and daughters of the farmer go dressed in jewels; and those of no small value. A pair of one-drop ear-rings, a broadish necklace, with a long piece hanging down the bosom, and terminated with a cross, all ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... are also architecturally different from those of the country-folk of the north-east; their high thatched roofs are curiously decorated with bundles of straw fastened to a pole of bamboo parallel with the roof-ridge, and elevated about a foot above it. The complexion of the peasantry is darker than in the north-east; and I see no more of those charming rosy faces one observes among the women of the Tokyo districts. And the peasants wear different hats, hats pointed like the straw roofs of those little wayside temples curiously ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... for the French army: 700 men were embarked, with 7000 stand of arms, on board the frigates and other vessels, who were to land between Voltri and Savona. There a detachment from the French army was to join them, and the Genoese peasantry were to be invited to insurrection—a measure for which everything had been prepared. The night of the 13th was fixed for the sailing of this expedition; the Austrians called loudly for Nelson to prevent it; and he, on the evening of the 13th, arrived at Genoa. His presence checked the ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... letters from different correspondents—all to the effect that the notion of new moon on Saturday bringing wet weather is one of widely extended currency. One correspondent (who gives his name) states that he has constantly heard it at sea, and among the farmers and peasantry in Scotland, Ireland, and the North of England. He proceeds thus: 'Since 1826, nineteen years of the time I have spent in a seafaring life. I have constantly observed, though unable to account for, the phenomenon. I have also heard the stormy ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... nationalist movement, hatched in the little independent republic of Cracow. As such it had little importance; though, owing to the incompetence of the Austrian commander, the Poles gained some initial successes. More fateful was the attitude of the Orthodox Ruthenian peasantry, who were divided from their Catholic Polish over-lords by centuries of religious and feudal oppression. The Poles had sought, by lavish promises, to draw them into their ranks; their reply was to rise in support of the Austrian government. In the fight at Gdow (February 26th), where ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Nennius may probably be trusted upon the point. As late as the beginning of the tenth century, King AElfred in his will describes the people of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Wilts, as "Welsh kin." The physical appearance of the peasantry in the Severn valley, and especially in Shropshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire, indicates that the western parts of Mercia were equally Celtic in blood. The dialect of Lancashire contains a large Celtic infusion. Similarly, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... one Bartholomew Bearsley, a prosperous and influential English wine-grower, whose father had acquired considerable vineyards in the Douro. He was reminded of the almost hostile disposition of the peasantry in certain districts; warned to handle them with tact and to suffer no straggling on the part of his troopers; and advised to place himself in the hands of Mr. Bearsley for all that related to the purchase of the cattle. Let it be admitted ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... early Christian fathers frequently argued the truth of Christianity from the way in which demons departed at the command of Christian exorcists, while in the middle ages and down to modern times belief in demoniac possession has been common, particularly among some of the more superstitious of the peasantry in Europe. Moreover, from missionaries in China and other eastern lands it is learned that diseases closely resembling the cases of possession recorded in the New Testament are frequently met with, and are often cured by native ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... possessed them, and could find people disposed to play with them. However, I made the most of circumstances, and roamed about the desolate fields and bogs in the neighbourhood, sometimes entering the cabins of the peasantry, with a "God's blessing upon you, good people!" where I would take my seat on the "stranger's stone" at the corner of the hearth, and, looking them full in the face, would listen to the carles and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... goods, but the keeper didn't seem to understand. "Why," says Craney, "you see, these people have a sort of mysterious reverence for you. Maybe you have an idea of the reason." The keeper said it was probable that the peasantry were ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... There were as many women as men, and each was clothed in the wondrously wrought harness of his station and his house. With each black was from one to three slaves, drawn from the domains of the therns and from the outer world. The blacks are all "noble." There is no peasantry among the First Born. Even the lowest soldier is a god, and has his ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... undeviating transmission from sire to son of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher"—an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Diogenes, he admitted the possibility of a type of peasantry he had seen in old tapestries, old pictures, old sculptures, and which, up to this time, had seemed to him imaginary. He resolved for the future not to utterly condemn the school of ugliness, perceiving a possibility that in man beauty may be but the flattering exception, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... forget that while France weaves silks and satins to deck the wives of German financiers, the Empress of Russia, and the Queen of the Sandwich Islands, and while Paris fashions wonderful trinkets and playthings for rich folk all the world over, two-thirds of the French peasantry have not proper lamps to give them light, or the implements necessary for modern agriculture. Lastly, unproductive land, of which there is plenty, would have to be turned to the best advantage, poor soils enriched, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... a victory, But tempered is our exultation; We have lost a host of peasantry And all the best knights of ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... traditionary tale, his peculiar province. It was Wackenroder who first drew his attention to "those old, poorly printed Volksbuecher, with their coarse wood-cuts which had for centuries been circulating among the peasantry, and which may still be picked up at the book-stalls of the Leipzig fairs." [22] Tieck's volume of "Volksmaehrchen" (1797) gave reproductions of a number of these old tales, such as the "Haimonskinder," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the Padre, felt alike by Englishmen and Hindoos, was inestimable in procuring and carrying out regulations for the temporal prosperity of the peasantry at Tanjore, under the Board which had pretty well taken the authority out of the hands of the inefficient and violent Ameer Singh. Districts that, partly from misery, had become full of thieves, were brought ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... inn that is called the Zebra, a strange thing—two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in the front rank of the kneelers; unconscious, transfixed, staring. Yes, and clothed in the coarse garb of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers sprang at them in a fury to teach them better manners; but just as they seized them Joan cried out "Forbear!" and slid from her saddle and flung her arms about one of those peasants, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... active employment. And Lavretsky did deserve to be contented; he had really become a good landlord; he had really learnt how to till the soil; and in that he labored, he labored not for himself alone, but he had, as far as in him lay the power, assured, and obtained guarantees for, the welfare of the peasantry on ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Roman Catholics of the neighbourhood, of which faith were the large majority of the population, and even with the priests; so that our family had few enemies, and were never in any way molested by the peasantry. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... stoop in front, with women perpetually washing the floors and the windows, with beautiful and brilliant flowers blooming profusely in every window, and often trailing and climbing about its whole area. Here, I take it, is the home of a real peasantry, a contented class, comfortable and looking for no higher lot. These houses seem durable and ultimate. The roofs of both houses and piazzas are broken, projected, picturesque, and often ornamented. They shelter, they protect, they brood, they embrace. There are little trellises ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... and civil rulers; the Feudal System, which had received a mortal blow by the intermingling of the classes and the masses in the era of the Crusades, was threatened, from above, by the movement towards centralisation and absolutism, and from below, by the growing discontent of the peasantry and artisans, who had begun to realise, but as yet only in a vague way, their own strength. In every department the battle for supremacy was being waged between the old and the new, and the printing-press was at hand to enable the patrons of ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Florence, called Paradiso, a poor gardener and his wife, whose names were Francis and Costanza. They had several children, of whom the youngest was named Dominica, who was brought up to the life of labour and hardship ordinary among the poorer peasantry of Italy, and whose daily task it was to help in the cultivation of the garden on which the whole family depended for support. Beyond the first rudiments of the Christian faith, Dominica received no education; for her parents were in no way superior in intelligence to others ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete. The Metawali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of "Bilad B'sharrah," which I would derive from Bayt Ashirah, still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-Kabirah, the Great Lady. Orthodox Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Bachelor's Establishment Colonel Chabert The Thirteen Jealousies of a Country Town The Peasantry Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Country Parson The Magic Skin The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... those who are outside them, how little their natural history has been studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our art as well as by our political and social theories. Where, in our picture exhibitions, shall we find a group of true peasantry? What English artist even attempts to rival in truthfulness such studies of popular life as the pictures of Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo? Even one of the greatest painters of the pre-eminently realistic school, while in his picture of "The Hireling Shepherd" he gave us ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... grenadiers, chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, had easily attained a position in front of the van of the army commanded by Marmont, which had rested a few hours at St. Prix, where the road crossed the Petit Morin on a bridge. His requisition on the peasantry had been honored, and great numbers of fresh, vigorous draft horses had been brought in from all sides. There was not much speed to be got out of these farm animals, to be sure, but they were of prodigious strength. The ordinary gun teams were relieved, and numbers of ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... feel at times an interest in the lowly things around him. The face of the landscape pleased him, but more than this the face of the poor woman who sat knitting in the shade. It was a pale, meek countenance, with more delicacy in its features than is usual among peasantry. It wore also an expression of patient suffering. As he was looking at her, a deformed child came out of the door and hung upon her knees. She caressed him affectionately. It was her child; in whom she beheld her own fair features ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... brothers, to feed the pigs and the poultry, and to keep house during the almost constant absence of her father. She was a quick, clever lass, of a high spirit, a firm temper, some pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief, which is every day becoming rarer amongst the peasantry; but which forms the surest safeguard to the sturdy independence of the English character. Our little damsel possessed this quality in perfection; and when her father talked of giving up their comfortable cottage, and removing to the workhouse, whilst she and her brothers must ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... collies, whose half-savage nature fits them to cope with the jackals which infest the country. The shepherds did not check their sudden onslaught upon us until we were pressed to very close quarters, and had drawn our revolvers in self-defense. These Yuraks are the nomadic portion of the Turkish peasantry. They live in caves or rudely constructed huts, shifting their habitation at will, or upon the exhaustion of the pasturage. Their costume is most primitive both in style and material; the trousers and caps being made of sheepskin and the tunic of plaited wheat-straw. In contradistinction ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben |
