"Ribald" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glances towards him; but he continued to walk on, speaking so low that no one else but the unhappy lady could hear him; and thus the band of prisoners arrived at Smithfield. Here they were saluted by the ribald shouts of the populace, who seemed to delight in hurling all sorts of abusive epithets on their heads. A'Dale wanted to remain, but I kept to my purpose. My chief interest was with the unhappy lady. I rejoiced, however, to ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... too, we find, in the half-random and wholly scurrile slander of womankind, a touch of real humour, of the humour that has feeling behind it, as here, where a sufficiently ribald variation on the theme of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the horns wear thin And the noise, like a garment outworn, Falls from the night, The tattered and shivering night, That thinks she is gay; When the patient silence comes back, And retires, And returns, Rebuffed by a ribald song, Wounded by vehement cries, Fleeing again to the stars— Ashamed of her sister the night; Oh, then they steal home, The blinded, the pitiful ones With their gew-gaws still in their hands, Reeling with ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... near the middle hour of the night. Many, just out of banquet-hall, theatre, and circus, thronged the main thoroughfares of the capital. Cries of venders, ribald songs, shouts of revelry, the hurrying of many feet roused the good people who, wearied by other nights of dissipation, now sought repose. They turned, uneasily, reflecting that to-morrow they would have ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... trusted and reverenced by all the little world about him. I have known him as a farmer, and seen him sitting at the head of his table in the farm kitchen, with his sons and daughters and men-servants and women-servants about him, and, save for ribald gossip, no one of whatever condition abridged the flow of talk for his presence. I have known him as a parson, when he has been the father of his parish, the patriarch of his people, the "ould angel" of all the hillside round about. Such sweetness ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... Weatherwax had assumed the centre of the ring. The sanctified were without sense of humor, but the unregenerate onlookers were not proof against the comic aspects of emotional religion, and from the dark outskirts rang a ribald laugh. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... however. Hradzka became more insistent in his manner, making signs to indicate his hunger and willingness to work. The other men in the shop left their tasks and gathered around; there was much laughter and unmistakably ribald and derogatory remarks. Hradzka was beginning to give up hope of getting employment here when one of the workmen approached the master and whispered something ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... flinging out an arm to drag forward her son. "Is he to waste his youth here in softness and idleness? But yesternight that ribald mocked him with his lack of scars. Shall he take scars in the orchard of the Kasbah here? Is he to be content with those that come from the scratch of a bramble, or is he to learn to be a fighter and leader of the Children of the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... cabin-boy from a British merchant ship, and the tender-hearted lion some genius from the "halls." Even after months of this sodden camp it was possible to find a youth to play Lavinia, with so pretty a face, such a velvet voice, such a pensive womanliness that the flat-capped, ribald young cockneys in the front row blushed with embarrassment. A professor of archaeology, or something, said that he had never seen more accurate reproductions of armor, though this was made but of gilded and silvered cardboard—in short, if Mr. Shaw's ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... priest who had begged his way to Scotland, and whose nature was that of the spy and sycophant, approached and volunteered the information to the Abbot that this lad to whom he was desirous of showing favour, was a ribald and hypocritical youth. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... of it, my lad. But look here, Murray; the people are quite friendly towards us, so help me in making our lads behave themselves. I mean, there must be no ribald laughing at the poor wretches. That is not the way to appeal to their better feelings. Look at that! Poor benighted creatures. These slave-owners must keep them in a darkness ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... prophetic insight. He had touched the man vitally enough at last, and it was through the boy. He had murdered Bill Fletcher, and he had done it through the only thing Bill Fletcher had ever loved. From this he returned again to the memory of the deliberate purpose of that day—to the ribald jests, the coarse profanities, the brutal oaths. Then to the night when he had forced the first drink down Will's throat, and so on through the five years of his revenge to the present moment. Well, his triumph had come at last, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... looked rather like a frog rampant, and the crowned cushion bore a singular resemblance to a mushroom with an angry ladybird on its apex. How this family insignia had been obtained Peter did not know. His ribald questions had been treated by his sister with silent scorn. He would not be surprised if Ena had designed ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... in vain for the ribald songs, the biting jests, the terrible threats and vows of vengeance; in their stead I heard praises of the Queen-Mother; openly expressed admiration of the youthful monarch, who has, since then, advanced ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... on the ground—a letter that had dropped out of M. de Poissy's pocket—a letter from his wife, full of tender words of endearment and pretty babblings of love. This was read aloud, with coarse ribald comments on every sentence, each trying to outdo the previous speaker. When they came to some pretty words about a sweet Maurice, their little child away with its mother on some visit, they laughed at M. de la ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the like of him, antic-jesters, [Footnote: [Greek: Mimous geloion], players of drolls, mimes, or farces. Our ancient word droll signifies, like [Greek: mimos], both the actor and the thing acted.] and composers of ribald songs to lampoon their companions, such persons Philip caresses and keeps about him. Small matters these may be thought, Athenians, but to the wise they are strong indications of his character and wrong-headedness. Success perhaps throws a shade over them now; prosperity is a famous hider of ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... pyrrhonism, can ever hear reviled and scoffed without a shock to the conscience and a revolt of the heart. As the deer recoils by instinct from the tiger, as the very look of the scorpion deters you from handling it, though you never saw a scorpion before, so the very first line in some ribald profanity on which the Tinker put his black finger, made Lenny's blood run cold. Safe, too, was the peasant boy from any temptation in works of a gross and licentious nature, not only because of the happy ignorance of his rural life, but because of a more enduring ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... of the monarchy which was celebrated that day; and this great, heavy carriage, surrounded by soldiers, and the ribald, mocking populace—this great carriage, which now drove along the streets leading to the Tuileries, amid the thunder of cannon, and the peals of bells from towers, was the funeral car ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the warlike ranks; for had not all the sturdy citizens of New York come down to see the hated British evacuate the city, forced out by the troops of Gen. Washington (plain Mr. Washington, the British liked to call him)? The ragged gamins scurried here and there, yelling ribald jests at the departing soldiers; and the scarlet-coated troopers had hard work keeping down their rising anger, as suggestive cries of "boiled lobsters" rose on every side. Even the staid citizens could ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... moment, and down below, near the gateway, I heard some brute screaming, "Pretty pigeons! Pretty pigeons, are your feathers singeing? Come then into our pie, pretty pigeons, pretty pigeons!" followed by shouts of ribald laughter. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... anarchists bearing the torch and axe. This specialty is Mr. Cleveland's long suit. Little wonder that his school should place him at its head. His preeminence in the field where self-admiration is a supreme virtue and ribald abuse passes for irrefutable argument will scarcely be denied by anybody who shall have read the following characteristic specimens from this Waldorf essay, carefully written down and calmly delivered: "We ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... man of huge stature, pressing onward, like some bulky ship, casting the noisy waves right and left from its prow, "this is hot work; but for what, in the holy Mother's name, do ye crowd so? See you not, Sir Ribald, that my right arm is disabled, swathed, and bandaged, so that I cannot help myself better than a baby? And yet you push against me as if I ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his feet, forgot his wrath on the instant, and began to sing drunkenly the words of a ribald air. I took him by both shoulders and pushed him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hanged by royalist soldiers—"Kirke's lambs," as they were called—without form of law. Others were committed for trial until Jeffreys came to hold his "Bloody Assize," when to the cruelty of the sentences passed on most of them was added the ribald insolence of the judge. The opportunity was taken of giving the city of London a lesson, and Henry Cornish, late alderman and sheriff, was suddenly arrested. This took place on Tuesday the 13th October. He was kept a close prisoner, not allowed to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... bonnet-buying, about drunken men, about beer, all of them jokes worn threadbare. A similar kind of fun, with local differences, prevails in the States, but is wonderfully mixed up with scriptural and religious jokes. To us sober Britons, whatever our opinions, these latter japes appear more or less ribald, though ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... talk to me in that ribald tone, Mark; I have enough to bear as it is. Once for all I ask you, Is it true what my brother tells me, that you have returned to the mire like the sow in the Scriptures; that you are going to let your name be connected with—with ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... remarks meet the eye of the reader, the infamous conduct of the drunken Delaware Southern-ape Senator, SAULSBURY, will in all probability have been forgotten. We have for so many years been so familiarized with the ribald or rowdy pranks of the chivalry, and of those more miserable wretches their Northern servants, that the mass of the public seems even yet quite willing to endure, for the poor payment of an apology, conduct which should anywhere have promptly consigned to imprisonment, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gentleman's table. Parrots, too, gave a sense of colour and companionship to her house; and it was in this love of pets, and her devotion to cleanliness, that she showed a trace of dormant womanhood. Abroad a ribald and a scold, at home she was the neatest of housewives, and her parlour, with its mirrors and its manifold ornaments, was the envy of the neighbours. So her trade flourished, and she lived a life of comfort, of plenty even, until the Civil War threw her out of ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... shall never forget that election night. I walked home through the Bowery in the midnight hour, and saw it gorging itself, like a starved wolf, upon the promise of the morrow. Drunken men and women sat in every doorway, howling ribald songs and curses. Hard faces I had not seen for years showed themselves about the dives. The mob made merry after its fashion. The old days were coming back. Reform was dead, and decency ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... and ribald crew faster than ever, already exulting in her capture, and threatening punishment for her flight. For a moment she looked wildly and anxiously around to see if there was no hope of escape. On either hand, far down below, rolled the deep, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... but it was not the soft music such as a lover demands if he is to give of his best. It was a brassy, clashy rendering of a ribald one-step, enough to choke the eloquence of the most ardent. Couples were dipping and swaying and bumping into one another as far as the eye could reach; while just behind him two waiters had halted in order to thrash out one of those voluble arguments ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... affording me a brief respite, had enabled me to collect my thoughts, and, disregarding the ribald interruptions, which at first were frequent, I began as follows: 'I am no Rabelais, sire,' I said, 'but droll things happen to the most unlikely. Once upon a time it was the fortune of a certain swain, whom I will call Dromio, to arrive in a town not a hundred miles from Blois, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... "d'ye think I'll brook Being worse treated than a Cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... are allowed to converse in the mines, and as a result of this almost necessary rule, every convict has an opportunity to listen to the vilest obscenity that ever falls upon human ears. At times, when some of these convicts, who seem veritable encyclopedias of wickedness, are crowded together, the ribald jokes, obscenity and blasphemy are too horrible for description. It is a pandemonium—a miniature hell! But worse than this horrible flow of language are the horrible and revolting practices of the mines. Men, degraded ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer of Shakespeare. A true lover of his excellences he certainly was not; for would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and whispered in the ear of Ernest. Meantime joke followed jest, among Polydore and the rest of the gay youths, in riotous and ribald succession, which, however characteristic of the rude speakers, may as well be omitted here. Their effect was to shake in some degree the fortitude of the Saxon maiden, who had some difficulty in mustering ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... it. In spite of misconceptions, and such mistaken estimates as those of Mirabeau and Bonaparte, such insolent mockery of good and able men, such ridiculous caricatures as that of the "Feast of Pikes" and the trial of the King, such ribald horse-play as "Grilled Herrings" and "Lion Sprawling," in spite of blots and blunders in every chapter—the French Revolution is destined to live long and to stand forth to posterity as the typical ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... "Take your ribald impertinences elsewhere, but beware how you attempt them upon me elsewhere," answered Commines, with a stern contempt. "Here Monseigneur and mademoiselle's presence ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... French call "Glacidas"—commanded the English post at the Tourelles, and he and another English officer replied by bidding her go home and keep her cows, and by ribald jests that brought tears of shame and indignation into her eyes. But, though the English leaders vaunted aloud, the effect produced on their army by Jeanne's presence in Orleans was proved four days after her arrival, when, on the approach of reenforcements and stores ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... time back the mob had not been gratified with a spectacle of this nature. In the ribald language of the day, the "holy guillotine had grown thirsty from long drought;" and they read the announcement with greedy eyes, commenting as they went upon those whose names were familiar to them. There were many ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... harvest home, which was usually a scene of great merry-making. In Devonshire, when a farmer's wheat was ripe he sent round notice to the neighbourhood, and men and women from all sides came to reap the crop. As early as eleven or twelve, so much ale and cider had been drunk that the shouts and ribald jokes of the company were heard to a considerable distance, attracting more helpers, who came from far and near, but none were allowed to come after 12 o'clock. Between 12 and 1 came dinner, with ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Quarryman had not been a week in Washington before he was heartily home-sick for Indiana. No maid-of-all-work in a cheap boarding-house was ever more harassed. Everyone conspired against him. His enemies gave him no peace. All Washington was laughing at his blunders, and ribald sheets, published on a Sunday, took delight in printing the new Chief Magistrate's sayings and doings, chronicled with outrageous humour, and placed by malicious hands where the President could not but see them. He was sensitive to ridicule, and it mortified him to ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... upon others. We come in this field also, as in others, upon the assertion of the human as nobler and more beautiful than that which had by the theologians been alleged to be divine. The assertion came indeed to be made in ribald and blasphemous forms, but it was not without ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... exploded Mr. Dreadful, "the Court, having with shame listened to your ribald effusion, I will ask you what you had to drink upon the night you and the Lord Mayor were found wandering under ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... the screens and the altars, "all the carved work thereof they break down with hatchet and hammer," they tore the hangings from the shrines, they found the sacred cups, and filling them with sacramental wine, drank with gusts of ribald laughter. In the centre of the choir they built a bonfire, and fed it with pictures, carvings, and oaken benches, so that it blazed and roared furiously. On to it—for this mob did not come to steal ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... within were told to say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked how many three times three made, the answer from the outside would be "ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper, headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:—"We have just learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... paradise per saltum, but 'by slow degrees;' and an irreverent ballad supports the vulgar belief that the only attorney to be found on the celestial rolls gained admittance to the blissful abode more by artifice than desert. The ribald broadside ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... two years later, be answered by his dying word of reproach! The horsemen of the army followed, and then the legions, every spear wreathed, every head crowned with bay, so that an evergreen grove might have seemed marching through the Roman streets, but for the war songs, and the wild jests, and ribald ballads that custom allowed the soldiers to shout out, often in pretended mockery of their ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kinds of strong waters now pervaded the atmosphere, mingled with that close sickly odor which is felt where great numbers of uncleanly human beings are closely packed together; and from some distance was heard the sounds of riotous merriment, ribald song, and hoarse, unfeeling laugh, with curses and execrations not a few. It was a time when the abominations of the prison system were at ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the while. But I didn't realize how wrong till I saw it was making you sad. At first it seemed to me that this would be the finer way, quiet and soon over, no fuss nor any crowd. I have seen weddings that were ribald and not sacred, and I wanted ours to be none of that. Just you and I and the minister, with Hamilton and English standing by; and then just you and I going away together, leaving no wise winking, no meaning whispers behind. And that ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... threatening night.[11] This house stood half-way up Holliday's Hill ("Cardiff" Hill), and its sole occupants were a poor but quite respectable widow and her young and blameless daughter. The invading ruffian woke the whole village with his ribald yells and coarse challenges and obscenities. I went up there with a comrade—John Briggs, I think—to look and listen. The figure of the man was dimly risible; the women were on their porch, but not visible in the deep shadow of its roof, but we heard ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... platform of the freight station. Dusk settles down over the valley. An engine near by begins to throb and electric lights spring up here and there. All over the town the flames of the great bonfires leap out of the gloom. From the camps of the workmen come ribald songs and jests, The presence of death has no ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... spot; but when he saw our large, and, I fear me, rather unimpressed party, he turned upwards, and disappeared. After inscribing our names in a book—into which also appropriate poetry, as well as ribald nonsense finds its way—we drank to Napoleon's immortal memory in his own favourite spring, and mounting our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... patience of the Hind did almost fail; For well she mark'd the malice of the tale;[127] 640 Which ribald art their Church to Luther owes; In malice it began, by malice grows; He sow'd the Serpent's teeth, an iron-harvest rose. But most in Martin's character and fate, She saw her slander'd sons, the Panther's hate, The people's rage, the persecuting state: Then said, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... soul may have understood his meaning, or she may not, as she rocked herself to and fro in the roadway. The ribald songs of these patriots, these apostles of freedom, had not died as they marched and danced out of Tremont when there was a smell of burning in the air, and first smoke, then flame burst from the tavern, quickly reducing it to a heap of ashes. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... its appearance, so as to aid the comic effect of his action, and armed with a dagger of lath, perhaps as symbolical that his use of weapons was but to the end of provoking his own defeat. Therewithal he was vastly given to cracking ribald and saucy jokes with and upon the Devil, and treating him in a style of coarse familiarity and mockery; and a part of his ordinary business was to bestride the Devil, and beat him till he roared, and the audience roared with him; the scene ending with his being carried off to Hell ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... came this ill temper? He could not have told himself. Was it because the sky was gray? or was the buckle of his old belt of Montlhery badly fastened, so that it confined his provostal portliness too closely? had he beheld ribald fellows, marching in bands of four, beneath his window, and setting him at defiance, in doublets but no shirts, hats without crowns, with wallet and bottle at their side? Was it a vague presentiment of the three hundred ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the English, and bade them depart, otherwise they would meet with shame and woe. Sir William Gladsdale (whom the French call GLACIDAS) commanded the English post at the Tourelles, and he and another English officer replied by bidding her go home and keep her cows, and by ribald jests, that brought tears of shame and indignation into her eyes. But though the English leaders vaunted aloud, the effect produced on their army by Joan's presence in Orleans, was proved four days after her arrival; when, on the approach of reinforcements ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Peninsula. In a few weeks he found himself the acknowledged head and front of a little coterie which assembled nightly at the George Inn, on King street. This, however, did not last long, as the late potations and ribald carousings of the company disturbed the entire neighborhood, and attracted attention to the place. The landlord received a stern admonition to keep earlier hours and less uproarious guests. When Boniface sought to carry this admonition into effect Captain Bywater mounted his high ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... seek to make sport of me, your governor? Thanksgiving for the breaking up of school! Out on you for a set of malapert young knaves! Do you think the world goeth but for your pleasures alone? Why, this is ribald talk! I made no Thanksgiving for your convenience, rascals, but because that the Lord in His grace hath relieved ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... merely look on at the rapidities of change with unalloyed interest. As the Head of the House of Coombe I am not sure WHAT I am an Example of—or to. Which is why I at times regard myself in that capacity with a slightly ribald lightness." ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Watkins put in under his breath, "the best thing to do with them is to chop 'em up." He was swinging them back and forth under his arm. My wife took them firmly from him. "He shall have his pictures, and not from your ribald hands." ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... meadow, and when the sheriff stood again to set his censorious eye upon someone responsible, the last ripple was on the farther rows. Nobody can catch a laugh in a crowd; it is as evasive as a pickpocket. Nobody can turn with watchful eye upon it and tell in what face the ribald gleam first breaks. It is as impossible as the identification of the first stalk shaken when a breeze assails a field ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... jokes of these young beggars had much effect upon him: the cabmen and watermen at the cabstand knew him and passed their comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and warned the boys off him, with looks of scorn and pity; what did the scorn and pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, matter to the General? He reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense enough to know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat homewards. He went to bed not knowing how he had reached it, as often as any man in London. He woke and found himself there, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze was upon ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... and the humor of the world. This is because, when ingested in any amount, its absorption produces changes in the flow of thought, in the attitude toward life, in the mood, the emotions, the purposes, the conduct,—in a word, in character. One sees the austere man, when drunk, become ribald; the repressed, close-fisted become open-mouthed and open-hearted; the kindly, perhaps brutal; the controlled, uncontrolled. In the change of character it effects is the regret over its passing and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... women could stand that test? How many could bear the ribald distortions of that lens-like seidel bottom and yet keep their charm? How many thus caricatured and vivisected, could command this free reading notice from a casual American, dictating against time and space to a red-haired stenographer, three thousand ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... it from the opening of Jonson's "Poetaster," the furious dramatic satire which blasted for upward of two centuries the fame or the credit of the poet to whose hand this masque has been hitherto assigned. In it, after a full allowance of rough and ribald jocosity, the presence of a poet becomes manifest with the entrance of an allegoric figure whose declamatory address begins with ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... begun to march, closely followed by the trumpeters. Behind them a bevy of Columbines in many-coloured tarlatan skirts and hair flying wildly in the breeze, giggling, pushing, exchanging ribald jokes with the men behind, and getting kissed ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... interrupted the conversation. The two youths looked down. The deck plan of the tug lay flat and empty save for the inert form of Gaskin. The noise came from inside the cabin and arose to a shouting. It was a drunken ribald sound. A suspicion flashed on ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... together to mass and thence, after a glass, to settle their yearly reckoning at the smith's. At noon there was a big dinner at the inn. They ate much and drank more; and, from afternoon till late in the evening, the smiths' men and the peasants loafed along the streets and sang ribald songs. The steadiest of them walked about talking, from one tavern to the other. They were nearly all drunk. She sat peeping at it from behind her curtain and was vexed at all this wantonness and rather glad that she had not ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... went to a place which they had selected in Massachusetts Bay, then called Wessagusset, now the town of Weymouth, which they had selected for their residence. They left their sick behind them, to be nursed by those Christian Pilgrims whose piety had excited their ribald abuse. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Western spirits out in front. Before her parting lips uttered a line she had thoroughly mastered them, the innate purity of her perfected womanhood, the evident innocence of her purpose, shielding her against all indecency and insult. The ribald scoffing, the insolent shuffling of feet, the half-drunken uneasiness, ceased as if by magic; and as her simple act proceeded, the stillness out in front became positively solemn, the startled faces picturing an awakening to higher things. It was a triumph far exceeding the noisy outburst that greeted ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... masculine in general build, with a squeaky voice, but her ways, attitude, and habits were all essentially masculine. She associated with politicians, drank somewhat to excess, though not heavily, swore a great deal, smoked and chewed tobacco, sang ribald songs; could run, dance, and fight like a man, and had divested herself of every trace of feminine daintiness. She wore clothes that were always rather too large in order to hide her form, baggy trousers, and an overcoat even in summer. She is said to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... issued commanders of the Union armies, were frequently brought to the attention of Parliament, as if America were in some way accountable to the judgment of England. Harsh comment came from leading British statesmen, while the most ribald defamers of the United States met with cheers from a majority of the House of Commons, and indulged in the bitterest denunciation of a friendly Government without rebuke from the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the third train and the fourth and all the rest of them. The station became a sty where before it had been a kennel; the flies multiplied; the stenches increased in volume and strength, if such were possible; the windows of the littered waiting room, with their cracked half panes, were like ribald eyes winking at the living afflictions which continually trailed past them; the floors looked as though there ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... but Don Rodrigue, with a band of ribald followers, succeeds in carrying her off with all the other nuns. They are all driven by the King's soldiers into the cemetery of the Aliscamps. Nerto wanders away during the battle and is lost among the tombs. At dawn the next day she strays ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... like such jesting,' said I. 'The dead are very dead and will not disturb anybody, but even the prejudices of respectable persons ought to be respected. A ribald like Jacques counts for nothing, but I did not expect ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... near that everything was plainly visible, and the hum of conversation reached their ears. They could even hear the commands of the officers vainly trying to restore order, the curses of the teamsters upon their jaded animals, the ribald songs of the few whose canteens furnished them with forgetfulness of defeat, and ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... what chastity, what becoming signs of civic wealth! When he came to its massive steps he cast his eyes upon them, and behold, they were dripping with poverty! The victims of want in mid-career were there, and drooping age, unequally yoked with poverty, and frowzy women with ribald face; and chief among them all, little children, some blear-eyed, some pallid with want, some with the legacy of sores—for they ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... very odd indeed; some that girls could not understand; some that boys, indeed, had best not see. We swiftly turn over those prohibited pages. How many of them there were in the wild, coarse, reckless, ribald, generous book of old ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reach the souls of these river people who sang ribald songs, danced to lively music, and lived clear of all laws except the one they called "The Law," a deadly, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... smoked his pipe in peace; the substantial solace of his domestic cares, after her daily toils were done, sat soberly at the door, with her arms crossed over her apron of snowy white without being insulted by ribald street walkers or vagabond boys—those unlucky urchins who do so infest our streets, displaying under the roses of youth the thorns and briars of iniquity. Then it was that the lover with ten breeches, and the damsel with petticoats of half a score, indulged ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... own day. George Chalmers, in Constable's "Life and Correspondence" (i. 431), sneers at his want of learning. "His notes are loose and unlearned, as they generally are." Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, his friend in life, disported himself in jealous and ribald mockery of Scott's archaeological knowledge, when Scott was dead. In a letter of the enigmatic Thomas Allen, or James Stuart Hay, father of John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, this mysterious person avers that he never knew Scott's opinion ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... youths, Romeo reeled off more ribald remarks, things that created a sudden chill among the passengers on the Fall of Rome. Mrs. Tinneray, looked upon as a leader, called up a shocked face and walked away; Mrs. Mealer after a faint "Excuse ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... disgusting sights in all directions. Fat women, with red, perspiring faces and dirty fingers, still clutching their rosaries; tawdry girls, field-workers, with flushed faces, dancing with country lads, most of whom are more than half tipsy; ribald jokes and laughter and leering eyes; reeling, drunken men; maudlin affection in one corner, and jealous disputing in another; crying babies; beer and gin spilt on the tables; and all sorts of indecency and hideous ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... A mocking, ribald cheer arose from the men around me. The platform was ascending. Why the long delay? A premonition of disaster chilled me. I shrugged ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... scene a picture, and he the onlooker, free to look at will upon what he wished. He saw these other scenes through drifting vapors and swirls of sullen fog dissolving before shafts of red and garish light. He saw cowboys at the bar, drinking fierce whiskey, the air filled with obscenity and ribald language, and he saw himself with them drinking and cursing with the wildest, or sitting at table with them, under smoking kerosene lamps, while the chips clicked and clattered and the cards were dealt around. He saw himself, stripped to the waist, with naked fists, fighting ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... sex, and whose love of hanging negroes is not to be outdone, is exceedingly lenient with female cases, as he is pleased to style them. Though her virtue is as chaste as the falling snow, Maria is compelled to suffer, for nearly an hour, the jeers and ribald insinuations of a coarse crowd, while the fact of her being in the guard-house is winged over the city by exultant scandal-mongers. Nevertheless, she remains calm and resolute. She sees the last struggle of an eventful life before her, and is resolved ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... others, honey-yellow in a green mist of palms, against an indigo sky with streaks of sunshine like bright bayonets of Djinns. And then Medinet, through which our caravan had to pass en route to camp, much to the ribald joy of smart, silk-robed Egyptian "undergrads" who strolled hand in hand along the broad streets near the University. They were big, fantastic houses to suit modern Oriental taste, painted pink ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... now draw this painful narrative to a close, dismissing with merely a few lines those facts that in a garbled form have already reached the public eye through the medium of a ribald and disrespectful press—how my youthful companions, returning betimes to our camping place and finding me gone, and finding also abundant signs of a desperate struggle, hastened straightway to return home by the first train to spread the tidings that I had been kidnapped; ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... it distressed him as he walked along, larding the earth as he passed, to hear bystanders making ribald comments about the inadvisability of trying to move bank vaults through the streets in the daytime. And now that, after fifteen years of fatness, I am getting thin again—glory be!—wherein, I ask, is the impropriety in furnishing the particulars for publication; the more especially ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... was, I would have continued to use this gift of mine to discover a fresh way had a proper spirit been displayed towards me. But I am not an angel—I admit this frankly,—and I decline to exert myself for the ungrateful and the ribald. Besides, I doubt if George and Harris would have followed me further in any event. Therefore it was that I washed my hands of the whole affair, and that Harris entered upon ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... —from ribald lips and throats turned brazen with laughter, from singers who toss their hats aloft and roll in their seats; the chorus swells to the accompaniment ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... 'So romantic—a young girl giving up all for God;' and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself— a shocking sound. 'Rose Mallett,' Sophia went on, so lost in her vision that the jarring laughter was not heard, 'such a pretty name—a nun! She would never be forgotten: people would ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... were laboring and pressing onward, and locked and bound and hustling together in the narrow channel of Chepe. The imprecations of the charioteers were terrible. From the noble's broidered hammer-cloth, or the driving-seat of the common coach, each driver assailed the other with floods of ribald satire. The pavid matron within the one vehicle (speeding to the Bank for her semestrial pittance) shrieked and trembled; the angry Dives hastening to his office (to add another thousand to his heap,) thrust his head over the blazoned panels, and displayed ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she had come afoot, despite the knowledge that she would have suffered many inconveniences, accidental and intentional jostling, insolence and ribald jest. The Cantonese, excepting in the shops where he expects profit, always resents the intrusion of the fan-quei—foreign devil. The chair was torture. It hung from the centre of a stout pole, each end of which rested upon the calloused shoulder of a coolie; an ordinary ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... brother who is an English officer; a husband who is an American one. Be careful, sir, in what way you use my name in connection with this night's work, for, be assured, they will not fail to punish a ribald, a slanderous, or a libertine tongue. Consent to Captain Armstrong's release, and your discomfiture remains a secret; refuse, and with one word, I'll have all our guests upon the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... the matter very hard, and rebuked the ribald mirth of Mr. Tubbs. He had to shed tears over a devastating poem called "The Drunkard's Home," before she would forgive him. Cookie made his peace by engaging to vote the prohibition ticket at the next election. My own excuses for ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... invited the surviving Union and Confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... different clay. A chorus of shouts addressed to "Sister" bade her step up and have a drink. A wit, in a falsetto scream, asked if he might have the next dance. Jokes, or what passed in that crew for them, flew thickly, growing more ribald and suggestive as the girl stood, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly surrounded on such occasions by buffoons selected, for the most part, from among the vilest pettifoggers who practiced before him. These men bantered and abused each other for his entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed to soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very different. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I think his fine motive was apparent) took care to bring their ribald remarks under Burton's notice. Furny's idea evidently was to point out to Burton that his position was untenable, that it was not fitting that the same man should deal with Mr. Wrackham and with Ford Lankester. He had to keep ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Canadian Canoe" To practise what the ribald call "canoodling;" But what the deuce does the Dominion do, "In this galley," with this new game of "boodling?" "Paddle your own Canoe," dear, if you will, But kick all "cross coves" out, and trust to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... before the examination began, there was a strange commotion in GORTON's College. GORTON, who was supposed to have been reading hard, was found at about twelve o'clock in the quad in his nightgown. He was on all fours, and was engaged in eating grass and roaring out ribald snatches of Latin songs in a shrill voice. When the porter approached him he said he was a hippogriff, and that in another ten minutes he intended to fly to Iffley and back in half a second. He was carried up to bed raving horribly. On the following day he grew calmer, and in a week ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... for by those words, wittingly or unwittingly, their general had confessed his faith, and that day they made ribald songs about him in the camp. But on the morrow when they learned how that the man whom the prince spared had been seized by a lion and taken away as he sat at night with his companions in the bivouac, his mouth full of boasting of his own courage in ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... when he learned the truth, and the younger Checkleigh, who delighted to sketch her, left off because his hand shook so, and he couldn't see clearly. The Spanish student in the velvet coat, who could sing lustily to a guitar, came and sang for her, not the ribald songs the Quartier heard from him, but the beautiful and soft love songs he had heard as a child in Andalusia—how love is an immortal rose one carries through the gates of the grave into the gates of paradise. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... became aware that two men were following him through the lots, and that with a closeness of attention indicating more than common interest. To the perception of his keenly sensitive Southern nature they at once became ribald Yankee vandals, hoping for unseemly amusement from the detection of some awkwardness in the Indian-club-play of a defeated but not conquered Southern Gentleman; and, in the haughty sectional pride of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... replied by telegraph to the effect that I should as soon think of making inquiries about the character of an archangel, or that of one of his High Church saints. This telegram, he told me afterwards, he considered unseemly and even ribald, especially as it had given great offence to the postmaster, who was one of the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... and leant far out into the darkness as though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before became now the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of a comic song which one of ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... building sheds for themselves or barracks for the German army. We saw a procession of about two thousand who came in from a near-by forest carrying tremendous bundles of faggots for firewood. As they marched they were singing, with a good deal of spontaneous gusto, a ribald French song. We considered their condition a ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... prostitute the beauties of this magnificent region to such a purpose. To make of these beetling crags a joke! To invade these vast gorges with the spirit of commercialism and to bring a pack of movie actors to desecrate the virgin silence with ribald jests and laughter! Lizzie, I ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... two common soldiers of ruffianly aspect playing at dice, betting whether the Lord or the Devil would get the soul of Barneveld. Many a foul and ribald jest at the expense of the prisoner was exchanged between these gamblers, some of their comrades, and a few townsmen, who were grouped about at that early hour. The horrible libels, caricatures, and calumnies which had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... genius was acknowledged and no profundity of thought was deemed possible unless allied with those pagan ideas which Saint Augustine had exploded and Pascal had ridiculed. Even while living among these people, Rousseau had all the while a kind of sentimental religiosity which revolted at their ribald scoffing, although ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... on," pursued Miss Sally, "to tell how you and Saunders—that's your new bailiff's name, is it not?—cooked up this woman's race between you as a step towards saving the Empire. The language is ribald in places, I allow; but I shouldn't greatly wonder if that, more or less, is how it happened. And any way I've come to the rescue, and kept the Imperial Ham ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... operation, and one of the prosecutions was against Callender, known to be a friend of Jefferson; he was indicted and convicted for asserting among other things that "Mr. Adams has only completed the scene of ignominy which Mr. Washington began." So far from silencing the ribald journalists, the Act and its execution simply drew down worse criticism. On the other hand, the Federalist press, which had been hardly inferior in violence, was permitted to thunder unchecked. The Alien and Sedition Acts were party measures, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... most amiable condition of mind, and a hint of the ribald would have instantly transformed a passive anger into a blind fury. Thus, a scene hung precariously; but its potentialities became as nothing on the appearance of ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... as the ribald doggerelist has it. Sounds a little "predatory," perhaps, as SALISBURY would say. But quite capable of being "spiritualised" into a sound Liberal policy, directed against the purblind Poluphemos ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... only an hour but a drink; and (though I am a sympathetic soul) I can only say that those who like it like it. For my part, I preferred the concoction sold at rustic soda-fountains, which is known locally as a "Chautauqua highball,"—a ribald term devised by college men who make up the by-no-means-despicable ball-team. This beverage is compounded out of unfermented grape-juice and foaming fizz-water; and, if it be taken absent-mindedly, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... kicked, she kicked with force. She booted the terrible brute round the cage. She seemed to glory in her triumph, and when Mahdi butted into a corner and refused to stir, she took him by one leg, and towed him twice round the cage, and the tittering the crowd swelled to yells of derisions and ribald laughter, while Professor Thunder pranced about and cursed furiously. To save his show from being ruined with ridicule, he rushed in, seized the woman, and bundled ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... where night and morn the abbot used to pray. All the old religious and hospitable uses of the abbey are foregone. The reverend stillness of the cloisters, scarce broken by the quiet tread of the monks, is now disturbed by armed heel and clank of sword; while in its saintly courts are heard the ribald song, the profane jest, and the angry brawl. Of the brethren, only those tenanting the cemetery are left. All else are gone, driven forth, as vagabonds, with stripes and curses, to seek refuge ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... principles of literature and painting; of people, of sunsets, of Italy, of the high seas, of the Paris streets—of what, in fine, you pleased. Or he would spin you yarns, sober, farcical, veridical, or invented. And, with transitions infinitely rapid, he would be serious, jocose—solemn, ribald—earnest, flippant—logical, whimsical, turn and turn about. And in every sentence, in its form or in its substance, he would wrap a surprise for you—it was the unexpected word, the unexpected assertion, sentiment, conclusion, that constantly arrived. Meanwhile it would ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... its laugh a little ribald, its talk a shade high-pitched, drifted towards the street, or was wafted up in elevators. The throng thinned to an occasional group. Then these became rarer and rarer. The revolving door admitted one man, or two, perhaps, who lingered not at all in the unaccustomed ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber |
