"Tartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the smith, who, as the reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. "I will wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that debate: the devil will have the tartan, that is sure enough." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... gathered together and printed before it was lost and forgotten for ever. For since the '45 the English had done everything to make the Highlanders forget their old language and customs. They were forbidden to wear the kilt or the tartan, and everything was done to make them ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... I then frequented, and didn't he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to say, 'I have trustworthy information that that is the way they do it in the Highlands'? Was he not exemplary and very poor, so that I supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan was what he slept under at night? Was he not working very hard still, and wouldn't he be in the natural course, not yet satisfied that he knew enough to launch out? He would be a man of long preparations—Miss ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... spats flashing in time with their step, their kilts swaying free over their tartan hose and naked knees, their white tunics gleaming through the dusk of the evening, and over all the tossing plumes of their great feather bonnets nodding ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... their wild homes amidst the sands and caves of Palestine. The stranger supported his steps by a long staff. His hair and beard hung long and matted over his broad shoulders. A rusted mail, once splendid with arabesque enrichments, protected his breast; but the loose gown—a sort of tartan, which descended below the cuirass—was rent and tattered, and his feet bare; in his girdle was a short curved cimiter, a knife or dagger, and a parchment roll, clasped ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... long-breasted waistcoat, a white scarf, and the white cockade, adorning Alex, who, with a boot-jack under his arm, looked as tall and as rigid as he possibly could, with a very low bow, which was gracefully returned by a royal personage in a Scottish bonnet, also bearing the white cockade, a tartan scarf, and the blue ribbon. Altogether, Prince Charles Edward and the Baron of Bradwardine stood confessed; the character was solemnly read, and the shoe pulled off, or supposed to be, as the lower screen still remained ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bookbinder, have a sitting-room to themselves—their work-shop they call it. They were there still, I suppose, for I did not see them until dinner. We used to meet once a year at Mrs. Carruthers's Christmas parties ever since ages and ages, and I remember I hated their tartan sashes, and they generally had colds in their heads, and one year they gave every one mumps, so they were not asked the next. The altar-cloth one, Jean, is my age, the other ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... that the dark curtain is indistinguishable at a little distance, and the effect of slowly falling is admirably conveyed. In one instance, where the Spiritual garments were not white, but particolored (the Spirit was a Scotch girl and wore the tartan), the effect of de-materializing was capitally given by the Spirit's standing just inside the slightly parted curtains, and then allowing the whole outer costume, even to the head-dress, to fall swiftly to the floor. Perhaps the best effect in this line, ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at first affected him, 'you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off: if not,' she added, with a sobbing sigh, 'it does ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... like in former years, and a face which could be no other than Haggarty's. It was Haggarty, ten years older than when we last met, and greatly more grim and thin. He had on one shoulder a young gentleman in a dirty tartan costume, and a face exceedingly like his own peeping from under a battered plume of black feathers, while with his other hand he was dragging a light green go-cart, in which reposed a female infant ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... make the patent sham more transparent still; and over her topknot she wore a rusty black cap that enclosed the keen monkeyish face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation which even she did not care should be seen. She wore a black stuff apron full of fine tones from fruit-stains and fire-scorchings; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... made precarious, began to let me go, without them, along the 'Meseglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan scandalised Francoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was wholly unsatisfactory, since ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... 20th July, Captain Mitchell and Lieutenant Davidson went in the pinnace, furnished with all necessaries, in order to make a discovery of a passage on the southern side of the straits, through which a French tartan is said to have gone into the South Sea in May, 1713, and to examine if there were any anchorage beyond Cape Quad. The pinnace returned on the 29th, having found the passage, but so narrow that it was deemed too hazardous. Their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... or covering, e.g., the sheath of a sword is a sarong, and the envelope enclosing a letter is likewise its sarong. The sarong or sheath of the Brunai human being is a piece of cotton cloth, of Tartan pattern, sewn down the side and resembling an ordinary skirt, or petticoat, except that it is not pleated or attached to a band at the waist and is, therefore, the same width all the way down. It is worn as a petticoat, being fastened ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... with amazement. Black he wore once a year, on Sacrament Sunday, and, if possible, at a funeral; topcoat or waterproof never. His jacket and waistcoat were rough homespun of Glen Urtach wool, which threw off the wet like a duck's back, and below he was clad in shepherd's tartan trousers, which disappeared into unpolished riding boots. His shirt was grey flannel, and he was uncertain about a collar, but certain as to a tie which he never had, his beard doing instead, and his hat was soft felt ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Spaniard but for his blue eyes. The second was a mere boy with a ruddy face and eyes full of dancing merriment. The third was tall and red-haired, tanned of countenance and lean as a greyhound. He wore trews of a tartan which Mr. Lovel, trained in such matters, recognised as that ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... as Scotch as may be—chairs and tables, with few exceptions, of polished birch hangings and carpets with the tartan check on the velvet pile, the royal "sets" in all their bewildering variety: "royal Stewart," strong in scarlet; "Victoria," with the check relieved on a white ground; "Albert," on a deep blue, and "hunting Stewart," which suddenly passes into a soft vivid green, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... a message reviewing the situation in Armenia, states that the Armenians have captured the ancient town of Nakhitchevan, where a Tartan ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... Our Iris, whom mortals know as Trotting Nelly in her tartan cloak, will bring us the stranger's answer to our ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Bijou," she said to an old woman dressed in tartan stuff, and who looked like a porter's wife in her Sunday best, "so you are all very happy? Your daughter ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... lords. Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of a motley band of soldiery who came at her call—half-clad, uncouth, and savage—she rode into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground, sharing the camp food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierce as any eagle. Her spirit ran like fire through the veins of those who followed her. She crushed the insurrection, scattered its leaders, and returned in triumph to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... one. A Highlander, in a shrunk kilt and with long bare legs, had his head bound about with bandages till it looked like a great melon, and his sleeve dangled empty from his great-coat. Others of the Seaforths, and mere boys of the Highland Territorials, wore khaki shirts over their tartan, and these were bullet-torn and hanging in great rents. And some boys still wore their caps with the wee dambrod pattern jauntily, and some had no caps to wear, and some were all daubed about with white bandages stained crimson, and none had hose, and few had brogues. They ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... was coming, doubtless, to visit a prisoner. It was Rigolette, ever neat and coquettish. A little plain cap, very clean, and trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons, which harmonized wonderfully with her jet-black hair, surrounded her pretty face; a very white collar was turned over her long brown tartan. She carried on her arm a straw basket, and, thanks to her neat and graceful manner of walking, her thick-soled boots were of marvelous cleanliness, although she came, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... crucifix above it, the same little table with the same books of devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the quarter, with steam-trams—diminished ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... or twice was tempted to ask the coachman to stop till she had gathered a nosegay. She began to dread the end of her little journey of seven miles; the only drawback to which was, that her silk was not a true clan-tartan, and a little uncertainty as to Miss Rose's punctuality, At length they came to a village; straggling cottages lined the road, an old church stood on a kind of green, with the public-house close by it; there was a great tree, with a bench all round the trunk, midway between ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... truth, their Celtic bonnets, with their long single eagle feathers, set somewhat obliquely on their abundant auburn hair; their saffron-colored shirts, tight-fitting trews of tartan plaid, and variegated mantles floating over their brawny shoulders, their chains and bracelets of gold and silver, their long daggers in their girdles, and their tremendous broad-swords swinging at their thighs, did present a strange contrast to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... world for us to do and we could be useful men, honored and respected, if we always did what was right. It was a repetition of Helen Macgregor, in her reply to Osbaldistone in which she threatened to have her prisoners "chopped into as many pieces as there are checks in the tartan." But the reason for the outburst was different. It was not because the occupation suggested was peaceful labor, for we were taught that idleness was disgraceful; but because the suggested occupation was somewhat vagrant in character and not entirely respectable in her eyes. Better death. Yes, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... to lead my horse to grass,' replied George, giving a peculiar whistle, which brought to his side a shock-headed, barefooted lad, in a shepherd's tartan and little else, but with limbs as active as a wild deer, and an eye ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the room bore mute evidence of regimental discipline. The blankets—with the sheets placed in the centre—were strapped into a neat roll at the head of each tartan-rugged cot, at the foot of which lay a folded black oil-sheet. Above, on a small shelf, were the spare uniform and Stetson hat, flanked on either side by a pair of high brown "Strathcona" riding-boots, with straight-shanked "cavalry-jack" ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... was slightly frosty. A clear moon shone over the sloping reaches of the park; the trees shone silverly in the cold light, their black shadows cast along the grass. Robert found himself quartered in the Stuart room, where James II. had slept, and where the tartan hangings of the ponderous carved bed, and the rose and thistle reliefs of the walls and ceilings, untouched for two hundred years, bore witness to the loyal preparations made by some bygone Wendover. He was mortally tired, but by way of distracting his thoughts ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is a translation made at Tobolsk by Swedish officers, prisoners of war from the battle of Pultava, from a Tartan manuscript by Abulgasi Bayadur Chan. The original manuscript (?) is in the library at Upsala, to which it was presented in 1722 by Lieutenant-Colonel Schoenstroem. The translation has notes by Bentinck, a Dutchman by birth, who was also taken prisoner ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... I've a wild fad for scarlet. I get crazes for various colors. Last term I'd look at nothing but pale blue, till Bertha Ford got that new blue chiffon dress, and that, of course, set me against it forevermore. I'd a rage for tartan once, only Jess was rather nasty about it; she thinks no one in the school has a right to wear Scotch plaids except herself. I've spent all my pocket money for this week, so I can't buy another ribbon till next Saturday. I shall have to go about in pink. Miau! I'll be such a good little pussy-cat. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Malay praus, with their bamboo sides and decks, and copper-coloured wide-nostrilled Malays in little flat military caps, and each wearing the national check sarong, so much after the fashion of a Highlander's tartan, baju ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... and by the neat shrubberies, up the steps to the hall-door, which old John opened, Mr. Wagg noted everything that he saw; the barometer and the letter-bag, the umbrellas and the ladies' clogs, Pen's hats and tartan wrapper, and old John opening the drawing-room door, to introduce the new-comers. Such minutiae attracted Wagg instinctively; he seized them ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr. Canning; "we have no preaching like that ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... trichroism; iridescence, play of colors, polychrome, maculation, spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite^, mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae^, strigae^; chessboard, checkers, chequers; harlequin; Joseph's coat; tricolor. V. be variegated &c adj.; variegate, stripe, streak, checker, chequer; bespeckle^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... himself that night, as he confronted his brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... with forms branching out on one side or on both. Figs. 18 and 19 are border designs, for which purpose this arrangement is often used, though it can also well form an all-over pattern; sometimes these lines used over a surface are made to cross each other, tartan wise, by running in two directions, producing an apparently complicated design by ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... Gaily clustering in the thronged precincts of the College, might be observed many a glistening form: airy Greek or sumptuous Ottoman, heroes of the Holy Sepulchre, Spanish Hidalgos who had fought at Pavia, Highland Chiefs who had charged at Culloden, gay in the tartan of Prince Charlie. The Long Walk was full of busy groups in scarlet coats or fanciful uniforms; some in earnest conversation, some criticising the arriving guests; others encircling some magnificent hero, who astounded ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... she said. "That is a pity. It is worth while being in Inverness then; you see all the different families and their guests; and the balls are picturesque—with the kilt and tartan. It is really the wind-up of the season; the parties break up after that. We come back here and remain until about the middle of October; then we go on to the Braes—worse luck for me. I like the rough-and-tumble of this place; ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... a' ye Hieland pollismen That whustle through the street, An' A'll tell ye a' aboot a man That's got triple expansion feet. He's got braw, braw tartan whuskers That defy the shears and kaim: There's an awfu' row in Brigton When ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... called in England the parrot of the sun, is very remarkable: he can erect at pleasure a fine radiated circle of tartan feathers quite round the back of his head from jaw to jaw. The fore-part of his head is white; his back, tail and wings green; and his ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... prince, repeatedly acknowledged the cheering of the people. Prince Leinengen was also in the royal carriage, and shared the attentions of the people. Next to her majesty and her royal consort, the Prince of Wales was the object of interest, as, led by his royal father, and wrapped in a tartan cloak, he walked down to the bridge. The royal party then entered a carriage in waiting on the south shore, and drove slowly off to the lodge. The Duchess of Norfolk and Lady Jocelyn followed; and in a third carriage came the Duke of Norfolk, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... looked up in the air as they walked along. In those days Marjolin wore a big scarlet waistcoat which hung down to his knees; it had belonged to the defunct Monsieur Chantemesse, who had been a cab-driver. Cadine for her part wore a white and blue check gown, made out of an old tartan of Madame Chantemesse's. All the canaries in the garrets of the Latin Quarter knew them; and, as they passed along, repeating their cry, each echoing the other's voice, every cage poured ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and tartan agues, continual and intermitting fevers, imposthumes, erisepelas, carbuncles, fistulas, dysentery, and similar hot and ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... mercantile brilliancy best described perhaps as stylish; nor could anything be said against him, as a rule, but that he looked a trifle too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman. To-day he had fallen altogether from these heights. He wore a flannel shirt of washed-out shepherd's tartan, and a suit of reddish tweeds, of the colour known to tailors as "heather mixture"; his neckcloth was black, and tied loosely in a sailor's knot; a rusty ulster partly concealed these advantages; and his feet were shod with rough walking boots. His hat was an old soft ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the Prince's private affairs (May 12) by Waters's note of his inability to get a packet of Scottish tartan, sent by Archibald Cameron, out of the hands of the Custom House. It was confiscated as 'of British manufacture.' Again, on May 18, Charles wrote to Mademoiselle Luci, in Paris. She is requested 'de faire avoire une ouvrage ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... or almost pure, tragedy and pathos, again, Monsieur Parent stands first—the history of the late vengeance of a deceived husband and friend. Miss Harriet gives us something more than a stage Englishwoman with large feet, projecting teeth, tartan skirts, and tracts, though it gives us this too. Madame Baptiste—the very short tale of a hapless woman who, having been the victim of crime in her youth, is pursued by the scandal thereof to suicide, in spite of her having found a worthy husband—is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of the Philistines. The Egyptians, having seized it some time before, had fortified it with such care, that it was their strongest bulwark on that side. Nor could Sennacherib enter Egypt, till he had first made himself master of this city,(456) which was taken by Tartan, one of his generals. The Assyrians had possessed it hitherto; and it was not till after the long siege just now mentioned, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the field to the habited place, and not from the place of habitation to the desert; for Shanet, her nainsell, kent a glen where there were men as weel as there may be in Croftangry, and if there werena altogether sae mony of them, they were as good men in their tartan as the others in their broadcloth. And there were houses, too; and if they were not biggit with stane and lime, and lofted like the houses at Croftangry, yet they served the purpose of them that lived there, and mony a braw bonnet, and mony a silk snood and comely ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... in buckskin, led the way in birch canoes. Lord Howe was there, dressed like a bushfighter; and with bagpipes setting the echoes ringing amid the lonely mountains, were the Highland regiments in their tartan plaids. Flags floated from the prow of every boat. Each battalion had its own regimental {257} band. Scarcely a breath dimpled the waters of the lake, and the sun shone without a cloud. Little wonder those who passed through the fiery Aceldama that ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two leaden statuettes (headless)—a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat, with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old tartan shawl, which she had pinned about her to imitate a horse-woman's habit. As she paced to and fro between the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the soldier reached the nearest point of the island, and was laying hold of a black rock to get on shore, a heroine who stood on the very point where he meant to land, hastily snatching a dagger from below her tartan apron, with one quick, sharp stroke severed his ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... drawn a charming picture of him in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" as the patriotic Scotchman, whose heart must "be cold as death can make it when it does not warm to the tartan"—the kind and generous protector of Jeanie Deans. Argyll was a man of many gifts. He was a soldier, a statesman, and an orator. He had charged at Ramilies and Oudenarde, had rallied a shrinking column at Malplaquet, and served ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... stood ready with pails of water for sending down through the machicolations, stood gazing at a tall weird figure in full war-paint, with the front of his bonnet cocked up with its eagle pinion feathers, his grey hair flying in the breeze, his eyes flashing, tartan scarf buckled with his great cairngorm brooch, as old Tonal' climbed slowly into sight, and stood on the narrow ledge of battlement at the very ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... saw Lady Randolph was at Punchestown races, in 1887, where I went with my new friends, Mrs. Bunbury, Hatfield Harter and Peter Flower. I was standing at the double when I observed a woman next to me in a Black Watch tartan skirt, braided coat and astrachan hussar's cap. She had a forehead like a panther's and great wild eyes that looked through you; she was so arresting that I followed her about till I found some one who could ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... Besides, even as it is, our men have to put up with a compromise in the matter of kilts which makes their retention almost ridiculous, i.e., in order to screen his gay attire from the keen eyes behind the Mauser barrels every Highlander wears over the tartan a dingy apron of khaki. The war pictures we occasionally see in illustrated papers of Scotch regiments charging with flying sporrans are probably drawn in England. Even when the apron is used, the khaki jacket, ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... but Irish; and in former time were those people which were called the Red-shanks.[22] Their habit is shoes with but one sole apiece; stockings (which they call short hose) made of a warm stuff of divers colours, which they call tartan: as for breeches, many of them, nor their forefathers never wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuff that their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreaths of hay or straw, with a plaid about their ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... trial to him to assume them in the changed aspect of his circumstances; for alas! he wore them in right of service only, not of birth, and the tartan of his lord's family was all he ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... with mottled legs and a tartan costume, who was frisking about between his grandpapa's legs, who heartily wished ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... Old Rag, being indisposed in a hotel in London, the landlord came to enumerate the good things he had in his larder, to prevail on his guest to eat something. The earl at length, starting suddenly from his couch, and throwing back a tartan night-gown which had covered his singularly grim and ghastly face, replied to his host's courtesy; "Landlord, I think I could eat a morsel of a poor man." Boniface, surprised alike at the extreme ugliness of Lord B.'s countenance, and the nature of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... who left Doune in the morning, and with the purpose we have described, not a Glunamie of them all cocked his bonnet more briskly, or gartered his tartan hose under knee over a pair of more promising spiogs (legs), than did Robin Oig M'Combich, called familiarly Robin Oig, that is Young, or the Lesser, Robin. Though small of stature, as the epithet Oig implies, and not very strongly limbed, he was as light and alert as one of the deer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... well-proportioned, very tanned and ruddy. He had a quick lively eye and a firm good-humoured mouth. In brief, he was the very picture of a frank open-hearted Highland gentleman, and in the gay Macleod tartan looked as gallant a figure of a soldier as one would wish to see. He greeted me with charming friendliness and expressed himself as deeply gratified for my care of his sister, offering again and again to put himself at my service in any ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... of famous Neil, The man who play'd the fiddle weel; He was a heartsome merry chiel', And weel he lo'ed the whisky, O! For e'er since he wore the tartan hose He dearly liket Athole brose![63] And grieved he was, you may suppose, To bid "farewell to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... been The McTavish (and many people did call her that)—and her middle names were like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a charge—Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family tartan—heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses—and she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland loch, her cheeks from the briar ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... idlers and porters with great words, put me grandly in the lead, come gasping at a respectful distance behind, modelling his behavior (as he thought) after that of some flunky of nobility he had once clapped eyes on; and as we thus proceeded up the hill—a dandy in tartan kilt and velvet and a gray ape in slops—he would have a quick word of wrath for any passenger that might chance to jostle me. 'Twas a conspicuous progress, craftily designed, as, long afterwards, I learned; we were not long landed, you may be sure, before the town was aware ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... that minute of dreadful uncertainty, Phil was reminded of what he had read about some Highland chief leading his tartan clan to battle, a Rob Roy ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... as his twenty-seventh campaign, a great war in Armenia that brought about the submission of all the districts of that country that still resisted the Assyrian monarch. In the thirty-first campaign (873), the last mentioned on the obelisk, the King sent the general-in-chief of his armies, Tartan, again into Armenia, where he gave up to pillage fifty cities, among them Van; and during this time he himself went into Media, subjected part of the northern districts of that country, which were in a state ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... thicket which overhung the road. How often, as a cloud obscured for an instant the moon's light, and threw a transitory shade across the path, did her heart bound with the thought that her watching was at an end! It was he whom she had seen start from the abrupt rock! They were the folds of his tartan that darkened the white cliff! But the moon again rolled through her train of clouds and threw her light around. Where then was her Wallace? Alas! it was only a shadow she had seen! the hill was ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... have me swathe the clamorous tartan In lieu of trousers round my waist, Then they evoke the spirit of the Spartan Inherent in my simple taste; Inexorably I decline To drape the kilt on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... among the earliest of my recollections," wrote he in 1824, "that I lay in bed one morning during the grievous famine in Britain in 1800-1, while my poor mother took from our large kist the handsome plaid of the tartan of our clan, which in her early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof to make our scanty breakfast; and of another time during the same famine when she left me at home crying ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... this place am I once more returned, after having made an excursion to the far-famed city of Granada and still more renowned palace of the Alhambra. My last letter was dated from Gibraltar on the 17th of Decr. We left the Rock in a Vile Tartan,[12] rendered still less agreeable by belonging to Spaniards, who, at no time remarkable for cleanliness, were not likely to exert themselves in that point in a small trading Vessel. We were crowded with Passengers and empty Casks—both ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... ancient garb. The philibeg or kilt, as distinct from the plaid, in all probability, is comparatively modern. The truis, consisting of breeches and stockings, is one piece and made to fit closely to the limbs, was an old costume. The belted plaid was a piece of tartan two yards in breadth, and four in length. It surrounded the waist in great folds, being firmly bound round the loins with a leathern belt, and in such manner that the lower side fell down to the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... to each other. They were dressed in the same coarse homespun, carried similar sticks, were equally begrimed about the nose with snuff, and each wound in an identical plaid of what is called the shepherd's tartan. In a back view they might be described as indistinguishable; and even from the front they were much alike. An incredible coincidence of humours augmented the impression. Thrice and four times I attempted to pave the way for some exchange of thought, sentiment, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the barracks. The guests fall back as the sound swells on the night, drawing nearer. Pipes are shrieking now; the rattle of drums shakes the windows. Two folding doors fall wide, and through them stalks a ghostly guard headed by the ghost of Sergeant Hugh McQuarters, in kilt and tartan and cross-belt yet spotted with the blood of a brave Highlander who died in 1775, defending Quebec. The guard looks neither to right nor to left; it passes on through hall and passage and ballroom, halts beneath ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... firm of stevedores. He was an office-bearer of the local Scottish Society, talked braid Scots on occasions (though his command of Yankee slang when stimulating his men in the holds was finely complete), and wore a tartan neck-tie that might aptly be called a gathering ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne; O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... an admiral in the service of George III. According to the information collected by Baron von Reumont, the joint authors of the Tales of the Century had made themselves conspicuous by their affectation of the Stuart tartan, to which, as Hay Allans, they could have no right; by a certain Stuart make-up (by the help of a Charles I. wig which was once found and mistaken for a bird's-nest by an irreverent Highlander) on the part of the elder, and by a habit of bowing to his brother whenever the King's health was drunk ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... his sister's amusement, "Anybody at home to-day? any one within here?" Her feet were dressed somewhat after the same fashion as her brother's; while round her shoulders, crossed in front and tied by Darby's fumbling fingers in a clumsy knot behind, was a faded tartan shoulder-shawl that had once been Perry's, but for many a month and day had been used as the nursery blanket of all the invalid dolls in Joan's ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... people these Lowlanders are!" exclaimed the senior lady—"so different from the brave and noble mountaineers. My brother, the chieftain, is lucky in having such a splendid set of retainers, and the tartan he invented ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... other than the old man's two sons, who had been at poor Menie's last funeral, but were now grown up, and studying for the medical profession at the college in Glasgow. Their father evidently kept them on short allowance, judging from their coarse tartan clothes, and continual munching of oaten cakes: but I was told they were hard students, and particularly clever in the anatomy class. One dark, dreary morning, about the Christmas-time, I noted that Lady Catherine and her family had been in my dreams all night—their grand house, and gay goings-on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... rest, namely and severally white, lemon, light pink, and pale green—an idea which I candidly confess was inspired by the spectacle of a Neapolitan ice. If you think that this is merely an idle whim, just imagine endeavouring to sleep in pyjamas patterned like an Axminster carpet or a Scotch tartan. No wonder Macbeth "murdered sleep" if he was arrayed in garments of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... this condition of property at home, if a wise appropriation were made of the virgin soil of the Empire. Give the Scotchman who has no land a piece of North America, purchased by the blood which stained the tartan on the Plains of Abraham. Let the Irishman or the Englishman whose kindred clubbed their muskets at Bloody Creek, or charged the enemy at Queenston,[3] have a bit of the land their fathers fought for. Let ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... well proportioned,—with a manly countenance, tanned by the weather, yet having a ruddiness in his cheeks, over a great part of which his rough beard extended. His eye was quick and lively, yet his look was not fierce, but he appeared at once firm and good-humoured. He wore a pair of brogues[484],—Tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare,—a purple camblet kilt[485],—a black waistcoat,—a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord,—a yellowish bushy wig,—a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button. I never saw a figure that gave a more perfect representation ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... their dens in the rocks to stare wildly at the strangers. On the contrary, there was a prevailing air of comfort and "bienness" about the people and their houses. He saw handsome girls with coal-black hair and fresh complexions, who wore short and thick blue petticoats, with a scarlet tartan shawl wrapped round their bosom and fastened at the waist; stalwart, thick-set men, in loose blue jacket and trowsers and scarlet cap, many of them with bushy red beards; and women of extraordinary breadth of shoulder, who carried enormous loads ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... accomplished fact, I was impressed, sharply enough, and I went nearer to the crescent, drawn by a sort of dreadful fascination. I found that the cottages all had names. One cottage was Mermaid's Rock; another (which had fluttering window-curtains of Stuart tartan), Spray o' the Sea; another, The Nest; another, Brinynook; and yet another had been named, with less fitness, but in an ampler and to me more interesting spirit, Petworth. I looked from them to the not-yet-converted railway-car. It had a wonderful dignity. In ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... thought, rather undersized, but still too big for his clothes, which were stretched on him tightly, his short trousers showing the tops of his patched boots, which were several sizes too large for him, and gave him a very ungraceful appearance. He had not even a collar, only an old tartan scarf knotted round his neck, and from the shrunk sleeves of the old jacket his hands, red and bony, appeared abnormally large. But when she looked at his face, at the eyes which looked out from the tangle of his hair, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... voice called 'Shelley!' A thrilling voice answered, 'Mary!' And he darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting King. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale, indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time, had called him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Alec. "I have been watching him, and I have noticed that the only two things he seems to have any love for are his red-beaded leggings and his brilliant red neckerchief. So I have been thinking that if I offer him that red tartan shirt of mine it will so please him that it will break through his reserve, and ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... furs, and faced him now in such garb as is worn by the poorest in the Islands: a short gown of hodden gray, coarse-knitted stockings, and stout shoes. Across her shoulder, for a "turn-over," she wore a faded shawl of Tartan pattern. (The Commandant recognised it for a surplus one which Mrs. Treacher kept in the Barracks kitchen, to wear "against the draughts" on occasions when she helped Archelaus with the cooking.) But most wonderful of all was her hair. By some swift art ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... brandy grog and gin twist; with poodle Benjamins, and greatcoats, and cloaks of all sorts and sizes, steaming on their pegs, with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of seal—skin, and blue cloth, and tartan, arranged ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... regiments, the 42nd and 73rd, so called from the dark colour of the tartan; raised originally for the preservation of the peace ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... garb five, six, and even seven times a day. The consequence is that it is necessary to have at hand not only a vast number of naval and military uniforms, but also a diversity of shooting suits, hunting suits, civilian clothes, Tyrolese jaeger costumes, and even the kilt, sporran and tartan of a Highlander, for he is very proud of the fact that Stuart blood flows in his veins, and considers that he is quite as much entitled to wear the Stuart tartan as his uncle, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... nephews, seemed inclined rather to take the opposite side. My uncle, on the other hand, said nothing either for or against the display. He had been a keen Highlander in his younger days; and when the inhibition against wearing tartan and the philabeg had been virtually removed, in consideration of the achievements of the "hardy and dauntless men" who, according to Chatham, conquered for England "in every quarter of the globe," he had celebrated the event in a merrymaking, at which the dance was kept up from night till ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... were three or four different sorts of studs, and a butterfly brooch, made of various coloured glasses, sat in the centre. His cravat was of a yellow silk with a flowered border, confining gills sharp and pointed that looked up his nostrils; his double-breasted waistcoat was of red and yellow tartan with blue glass post-boy buttons; and his trousers, which were very wide and cut out over the foot of rusty-black chamois-leather opera-boots, were of a broad blue stripe upon a white ground. A curly, bushy, sandy-coloured ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... enemy's craft, one French and the other Spanish, struck to him. On the 24th of February a French brig fell into his hands. The same fate was shared by another vessel on the 11th of April, by another on the 13th, and by two others on the 15th. He captured a Spanish tartan and a Spanish privateer on the 4th of May; and on the 13th occurred his celebrated victory over the Gamo—carrying four times the tonnage, six times the number of men, and seven times the weight ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... what they choose on all occasions. In most places they are as fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where everything else is methodical and well arranged, you will find the dishes plumped on the table by a young woman wearing a tartan blouse decidedly decolletee, and ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I have dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all luxurious; while the girl who waited on us wore a red and white checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie with floating ends, and an enormous ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... sorry to incommode you, ma'am," he said apologetically to the white-faced woman, whose little tartan shawl scarcely covered her shoulders, painfully conscious of his dripping condition, as he took off his hat, and laid it on the floor between his equally soaking feet. But, instead of moving away from ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... Majesty, in this visit to Edinburgh, the benefit of that preponderating loyalty which he last year threw into the scale of the Dublin Corporation; and that he has recently purchased from a Highland tailor in the Hay market, a complete suit of tartan, philebeg, &c. with which he means to invest himself, as the appropriate costume, to meet his royal master on ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was subdued. Not another word passed on the subject. Emilie returned to the piano, and soon had the joy of seeing Joe in a tranquil sleep; she shaded the lamp that it might not awake him, covered his poor cold feet with her warm tartan, and with a soft touch lifted the thick hair from his burning forehead, and stood looking at him with such intense interest, suck earnest prayerful benevolence, that it might have been an angel visit to that poor sufferer's pillow, so soothing was it in its influence. He half opened his eyes, saw ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... were received by Mr. Allan Macdonald and his wife, the celebrated Miss Flora Macdonald. She is a little woman of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. Dr. Johnson was rather quiescent, and went early to bed. I slept in the same room with him. Each had a neat bed with tartan curtains. Dr. Johnson's bed was the very bed in which the grandson of the unfortunate King James II. lay on one of the nights after the failure of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... with very big flowers, but the man said it was meant for curtains, not for dresses, so I persuaded him not to get it; but he says now he wishes he had, as it was much the best. Then he got a red shawl, and a bonnet ribbon of a kind of green tartan. Nurse was very much pleased, but she said they were too smart by half. But Papa told her it was because she knew no better, and had never seen the parrots in the East Indian Islands. Yesterday we all went to church. Carlo came too, and when we got to the porch, Papa put up his hand, ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... noiseless step, like a bird of night flying in a circle. A black hat, of the hue of charred paper, confined her bandeaux of grizzled hair. From her square, high masculine shoulders, hung a sombre-hued Scotch tartan. When she reached the door, she cast a last glance about the hall, that embraced everyone therein, with the eye of a vulture seeking in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... of the bars of colour in square chequers. And we are thus urged naturally to enquire what is the effect on the moral character, in each nation, of this vast difference in their pursuits and apparent capacities? and whether those rude chequers of the tartan, or the exquisitely fancied involutions of the Cashmere, fold habitually over the noblest hearts? We have had our answer. Since the race of man began its course of sin on this earth, nothing has ever been done by it so ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Forbes, a bishop of the persecuted Episcopalian Church in Scotland. Mr. Forbes collected his information very carefully, closely comparing the narratives of the various actors in the story. Into the boards of his volumes are fastened a scrap of the Prince's tartan waistcoat, a rag from his sprigged calico dress, a bit of his brogues—a twopenny treasure that has been wept and prayed over by the faithful. Nobody, in a book for children, would have the heart to tell the tale of the Prince's later years, of a moody, heart-broken, degraded exile. But, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... and Grizel, set off excitedly for the town, the country folk were already swarming in. The Monypenny road was thick with them, braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan waistcoats, scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the strutting wearers in two minds—whether to take off the scarf to display the shirt, or hide the shirt and trust to the scarf. Came lassies, too, in wincey bodices they ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... broadsword as we found it, rent and broken with the blow, That, before he died, avenged him on the foremost of the foe. Leave the blood upon the bosom—wash not off that sacred stain; Let it stiffen on the tartan, let his wounds unclosed remain, Till the day when he shall show them at the throne of God on high, When the murderer and the murdered meet before their Judge's eye. Nay—ye should not weep, my children! leave it to the faint and weak; Sobs are but a woman's weapons—tears ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Crimini! Nimini- Pimini Representatives of the Tartan hero, Who wildly tear a passion into rags More ragged than the hags That round about the cauldron go! Murderers! who murder Shakspeare so, That 'stead of murdering sleep, ye do not do it; But, vice versa, send the audience to it. And, oh!— But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... valour! thou guardian of freedom and truth, Thou stay of old age, and thou guidance of youth! Still, still thy enthusiast transports pervade The breast that is wrapt in the green tartan plaid. And ours are the shoulders that never shall bend To the rod of a tyrant, that scourge of a land; Ours the bosoms no terror of death ever shakes, When call'd in defence of the dear ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... we sit on the hill-side with a downward slope before us, and an upward slope beyond, and the unmounted men are working their way onward and upward, whilst we are held inactive. And now the war begins in earnest. The tartan fellows are lounging along, half of them with the stem of a grape bunch between their teeth, loading and firing as they go, scarcely a man of them having stood fire before, and walking towards their baptism of death and blood with an ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... Scotch CAILEN, Green Colin, the laird of Dunstaffnage, so called from the green colour which prevailed in his tartan. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... and slender frame, But firmly knit, was Malcolm Graeme. The belted plaid and tartan hose Did ne'er more graceful limbs disclose; His flaxen hair, of sunny hue, Curled closely round his bonnet blue. Trained to the chase, his eagle eye The ptarmigan in snow could spy; Each pass, by mountain, lake, and heath, He knew, through Lennox and Menteith; ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... agriculture and the vintage performed with wine-skins; (3) the simple arts, such as weaving, where the dancers, each holding a long coloured ribbon, dance round a pole on which is gradually formed a pattern like a Scotch tartan; (4) war-dances, as the sword-dance and others; (5) religious dances in procession before the Host and before the altar; (6) ceremonial dances in which both sexes take part at the beginning and end of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... that it had been remarked among a party of Edinburgh masons that, though regarded as the first of Glasgow stone-cutters, he would find in the eastern capital at least his equals, he attired himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed coat of tartan, and, looking to the life the untamed, untaught, conceited little Celt, he presented himself on Monday morning, armed with a letter of introduction from a Glasgow builder, before the foreman of an Edinburgh squad of masons engaged upon one of the finer buildings at that ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... work was over, But nearer shouts were heard, And came, with Gibbs to head it, The gallant Ninety-third. Then Pakenham, exulting, With proud and joyous glance, Cried, "Children of the tartan— Bold Highlanders—advance! Advance to scale the breastworks And drive them from their hold, And show the staunchless courage That mark'd your ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... by the irony of fate full of Scottish soldiers on their way up the line. Such a bit of luck in the shape of a free cinema show had rarely come their way and they were bent on enjoying it to the fullest extent. The fact that the officer now standing ruefully on the bank was in Tartan riding "troos" of course added to the piquancy of ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... sitting down on the steps. "It's a book, of course." Even more than her sisters, she had inherited her father's love of books, and a new book was an event at the parsonage. "Oh," she cried again, taking off the paper and disclosing the pretty tartan cover within, "O Paul! It's 'Penelope's Progress.' Don't you remember those bits we read in those odd magazines Josie lent us? And how we wanted ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Scotch inmates, whom I have but too much reason to believe my father means to quarter in his house as a brace of honourable spies; a sort of female Rozencrantz and reverend Guildenstern, one in tartan petticoats, the other in a cassock. What a contrast to the society I would willingly have secured to myself! I shall write instantly on my arriving at our new place of abode, and acquaint my dearest Matilda with the further ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... but the bulk of it was made up of native levies, to which foreign auxiliaries were added in numbers varying with the times.* A permanent nucleus of troops was always in garrison in the capital under the "tartan," or placed in the principal towns at the disposal of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge. It was spring indeed—bluebirds in the air, and all the sky shone clear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various |
