"West Country" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to them. My only objection to the practice came from the appearance of literary ostentation, to which I felt myself to be subject when going to work before four or five fellow-passengers. But I got used to it, as I had done to the amazement of the west country farmers' wives when asking them ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... were before my day in foreign service, and yet I thought I knew by repute every Campbell that ever fought for the hard-won dollars of Gustavus even before my day. There were not so many of them from the West Country." ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Fern (Adiantum capillus veneris), of exquisite foliage, and of a dark crimson colour, is a stranger in England, except in the West country. But we have in greater abundance the common Maidenhair (Asplenium trichomanes), which grows on old walls, and which will act as a laxative medicine; whilst idiots are said to have taken it remedially, so as to recover their senses. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Barbara's Desert was being formed and equipped under the direction of Abe Lee. Horses, mules, wagons, camp outfits and supplies, with Indian and Mexican laborers, teamsters of several nationalities and here and there a Chinese cook, were assembled. Toward the last from every part of the great West country came the surveyors and engineers—sunburned, khaki-clad men most of them, toughened by their out-of-doors life, overflowing with health and good spirits. They hailed one another joyously and greeted Abe with extravagant ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... attend the Grammar School with Cass; but Mrs. Lidderdale's dread nowadays was that her son would acquire a West country burr, and it was considered more prudent, economically and otherwise, to let him go on learning with his grandfather and herself. Mark missed Cass when he went to school in Rosemarket, because there was no such thing as playing truant there, and it was so far away ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... discontent was fermenting among the lower classes, which finally issued in the communistic uprising of the peasantry, under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. This state of things is reflected in the Vision of Piers Plowman, written as early as 1362, by William Langland, a tonsured clerk of the west country. It is in form an allegory, and bears some resemblance to the later and more famous allegory of the Pilgrim's Progress. The poet falls asleep on the Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, and has a vision ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Stapleton's career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the West Country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistoling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Stapleton recruited his ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... forth alone on his journey into the west country. There he sought seven or eight days, and at the last came to the nunnery where was Queen Guenever. Once only he had speech with her, and then took his horse and rode away to forsake the world, ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was not in the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fortnight which they spent down in the genial West Country, Owen gave himself up entirely to the service of his young wife. He divined pretty well what she was feeling—guessed that her marriage, after only three weeks' engagement, must have meant a complete upheaval of her entire life; and the very fact that he did not love her gave an added gentleness ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Nineve with all his company of sundry nations and feasted. In the eighteenth year, Nabuchodonosor called the chief captain of his army, Holofernes, and commanded him to take one hundred and twenty thousand footmen and twelve thousand horsemen and go against all the west country because they had disobeyed his commandment. He charged also Holofernes to spare none that would not yield, and put them to the slaughter, and spoil them. And the army went forth with a great number of allies like locusts ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... was soon noticed that in Eastroyal the people became discontented and quarrelsome and poor, and were always finding fault with the government; whereas in the west country over the border they were so happy and kindly that they praised each queen from the beginning of her reign to the end. Nobody knew why there should be so great a difference, but a great difference there was. Things grew worse and worse in Eastroyal, until at last the people rose and turned the reigning ...
— Wonderwings and other Fairy Stories • Edith Howes
... Edgcumbe for Penlee Point, with its marvellous seaward view. He was an excellent walker and a most delightful little companion, keenly interested in all he saw, and absorbing eagerly the beauty of earth and sea and sky. No wonder he had happy memories of the West country and that his mind retained clear images of Plymouth, the sea, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... a most beautiful lady, Light of step and heart was she: I think she was the most beautiful lady That ever was in the West Country. But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rare—rare it be; And when I crumble who will remember This ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... but which exist now. Northumbria is still a truer thing than Northumberland. Sussex is still Sussex; Essex is still Essex. And that third Saxon kingdom whose name is not even to be found upon the map, the kingdom of Wessex, is called the West Country and is to-day the most real ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... seems to have had sufficient strength to recover after each disaster. Gloucester was even of sufficient importance for Edward the Confessor to have kept his courts there for a considerable time. Being in the west country, it naturally suffered severely during the parliamentary struggle, and a great portion of the city was destroyed. But although the town lost many of its old buildings at this time, it has still a good deal of antiquity to boast, and for this reason alone is attractive to the stranger. ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... their route through the wide brown land the soldiers might be sure of drawing as much sympathetic attention as that lonesome west country could concentrate on any given line. Probably there would be no one disposed, like Mick Doherty, to get out of the way, unless some very small child roared and ran, if of a size to have acquired ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... substantial kitchens. No things could seem further apart than the doubt of grey and the decision of scarlet. Yet grey and red can mingle, as they do in the morning clouds: and also in a sort of warm smoky stone of which they build the little towns in the west country. In those towns even the houses that are wholly grey have a glow in them; as if their secret firesides were such furnaces of hospitality as faintly to transfuse the walls like walls of cloud. And wandering in those westland parts I ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... but I had better tell you first what goes before the dream, that you may understand. I was a schoolmaster when I was a very young man; it was only a parish school in a little village in the West Country. No need to mention any names. Better not. I was engaged to be married to a young girl whom I loved and almost reverenced. It was the old story. While we were waiting for the time when we could afford to set up ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... memories of Invernahyle, of Miss Nairne, of many persons of the last generation for his guides. In "Old Mortality" his fancy had to wander among the relics of another age, among the inscribed tombs of the Covenanters, which are common in the West Country, as in the churchyards of Balmaclellan and Dalry. There the dust of these enduring and courageous men, like that of Bessie Bell and Marion Gray in the ballad, "beiks forenenst the sun," which shines on them from beyond the hills of their wanderings, while the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... few minutes I perceived the bait was taking. Mr. Fitzpatrick's west country blood was up: all thought of the legal resource was abandoned; and he flung out of the room to find a friend, I having given him the name of "one of ours" as mine upon ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... when I get to the other world will be to report you to the board of Supervision there, and get you dismissed." A most extraordinary sensation was once produced on a congregation by Rab Hamilton, a well-remembered crazy creature of the west country, on the occasion of his attendance at the parish kirk of "Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a toun surpasses," the minister of which, in the opinion of Rab's own minister, Mr. Peebles, had a tendency to Socinian doctrines. Miss Kirkwood, Bothwell, relates the story from the recollection of her ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... cultivate the family idea as at present understood, which in the main is designed to teach the children to think more of their own family than any other; I want to see the broader family life of society taught in the spirit of the West Country motto, 'One for all and all ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... and inland along the downs high over the left bank of the Fowey River; with good turf and heather underfoot, and with the moon behind our right shoulders. She was the harvest moon, now in her last quarter, and from her altitude I guessed it, by west country time, to be well past four of the morning or within an hour of daybreak. But because she hung bright up here, we pricked forward warily, using every pit and hollow. We had left our breast-pieces, back-pieces, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... afternoon there was a sound in Cullerne that few of the inhabitants had ever heard, and the little town stopped its business to listen to the sweetest peal in all the West Country. How they swung and rung and sung together, the little bells and the great bells, from Beata Maria, the sweet, silver-voiced treble, to Taylor John, the deep-voiced tenor, that the Guild of Merchant Taylors had given ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... place I knew, where I put up my horse—could be quiet there, and asked no questions. Starlight, as usual, went to the best hotel, where he ordered everybody about and was as big a swell as ever. He had been out in the north-west country, and was going to Sydney to close for a couple of stations that had been ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... occasion carefully guarded by mounted 'serjeants-at-arms,' since the wealth which was being conveyed to St. Giles's-hill attracted bands of outlaws from all parts of the country."*[4] Weyhill Fair, near Andover, was another of the great fairs in the same district, which was to the West country agriculturists and clothiers what Winchester St. Giles's Fair was to ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... of steel which count in a hand-to-hand encounter. But you see he is one of that widely known body of men called the Royal North-West Mounted Police. They have patrolled and guarded and guided this whole North-West Country for the last forty years and more. During that period they have built up a great tradition which rests on a solid foundation of achievement. Their reputation for courage is unchallenged, their record for giving every man of whatever race ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... which such experiences repeated themselves. General Preston of the Castle refused to admit the cowards within his gate, so there was nothing for them but to turn their horses' heads again and spur off into the west country. As for Cope, he managed to collect some ragged remnant of his ruined army about him, and to make off with all speed to Berwick, where he was received by Lord Mark Ker with the scornful assurance that he was the first commander-in-chief in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to be scientific men. Now scientific men are exceedingly useful members of a community; and so are engineers, and bakers, and blacksmiths, and artists, and chimney-sweeps. But we can't all be bakers, and we can't all be painters in water-colours. There is a dim West Country legend to the effect that the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in one another's washing. As a matter of practical political economy, such a source of income is worse than precarious—it's frankly impossible. "It takes all sorts to make a world." A community ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of Cornwall—it's in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There is a house there still. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... benevolence. For one year only, it seems, he is governor of Jersey; yet to this day, it is said, the islanders honour his name, only second to that of Duke Rollo, as their great benefactor, the founder of their Newfoundland trade. In the west country he is 'as a king,' 'with ears and mouth always open to hear and deliver their grievances, feet and hands ready to go and work their redress.' The tin-merchants have become usurers 'of fifty in the hundred.' Raleigh ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... But right at the very beginning of my expedition I had a warning, if ever a man had one. The country through which my route lay is of very curious formation. If you can imagine a section of your own west country viewed through a giant magnifying glass, you have some sort of picture of the territory in which I ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... this proposal to my friends I hurriedly left town. I went down to a West Country place where there was shortly afterwards an election, at which I enjoyed myself very much canvassing for the Liberal candidate. The extraordinary thing was that he got in. I sometimes lie awake at night and meditate ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... he hath affirmed that he only intended the proverb used in the west country, nor do ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... royal father himself gave me audience, to ask news of you (for it became known that you had visited the realm by stealth); and after I had told him all my tale, he with his own hand bestowed that honour upon me. Then the noble earl made over to me a fair manor in the west country, which I have not yet visited, but which has put money once more into my purse. And here am I, your grace's loyal servant, to ask no better than to follow and fight for you until the crown is safely placed ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to the West Country, a region of castles. The Saxons were obliged to erect their rude earthen strongholds to keep back the turbulent Welsh, and these were succeeded by Norman keeps. Monmouthshire is famous for its castles. Out of the thousand erected in Norman times ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... sent Ambassador by King Henry the Eighth to Charles the Fifth Emperor, then residing in Spain, died of the Pestilence in the West Country, before he could ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... of his bills long before the year was done; one of which bills I had an opportunity of seeing, to my wonder—how any one could eat L15 worth of tarts and sweetmeats in the course of not many months! Hamilton was the son of a west country proprietor, and enjoyed the privilege of using, to his ruin, a yearly allowance of L250. In the midst of their sauntering they hailed two of their friends,—one Campbell, a sworn companion of the young West Indian; and the other Cameron, as closely allied to Hamilton;—all ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... rack ran his trees grew, and the plantations supplied him with stabs to make STAKE AND RICE between his fields, which soon gave them a trig and orderly appearance, such as had never before been seen in the west country; and his example has, in this matter, been so followed, that I have heard travellers say, who have been in foreign countries, that the shire of Ayr, for its bonny round green plantings on the tops of the hills, is above comparison ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... "You mean the West Country bankers," said he. "They failed for a million, ruined half the county families of Cornwall, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Brattalithe in Ericsfrith, had been a notable man all his life, and a man of mettle. In Earl Hakon's day in Norway he had been a Viking, had made a few friends and many enemies; then he had gone out to Iceland and founded a family in the west country, which might have endured to this day if it had not been for his headstrong way of doing. But, as before, he made more enemies than friends; and when he killed the son of Thorgest the Old, and was pursued for the slaughter at the Thing, he found that ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... about me one way or the other. When I had finished my dinner—and I ate enough to last me till the night—I got upon my chair, without being pressed, and sang the ballad of "The White Cockade," then very popular all over the West country. My voice was not bad in those days, and I was used to singing; indeed, people sang more then than they ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... house-carles of Thorvald, from Drangar; Onund asked if all land through the Strands had been settled; they said there was little unsettled in the inner Strands, and none north thereof. Then Onund asked his shipmates, whether they would make for the west country, or take such as they had been told of; they chose to view the land first. So they sailed in up the bay, and brought to in a creek off Arness, then put forth a boat and rowed to land. There dwelt a rich man, Eric Snare, who had taken ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... explicit and secure, the Scottish people have been led to entertain a jealousy of building-leases, of however long duration. Not long ago, a great landed proprietor took the latter mode of disposing of some ground near a thriving town in the west country. The number of years in the lease was settled at nine hundred and ninety-nine. All was agreed to, and the deeds were ordered to be drawn. But the tenant, as he walked down the avenue, began to reflect that the lease, though so very long as to be almost perpetual, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... for a House to open, eh? Can't find a business to be disposed of on a scale as is up to your resources, humph?" To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminent at the West Country Hotel, and by some considered the Father of the Waitering, found himself under the obligation to fall into it through so many years that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity towards himself) believed it! And what ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... the west country, And a clearer one never was seen; There is not a wife in the west country But has heard of the Well ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... a west country seedsman and sportsman, who loved a good song, a social glass, and relished a shot so well that he expressed a wish to die and be buried in the moors. On this hint Burns wrote the Elegy: when Tam heard o' this he waited on the poet, caused him to recite it, and expressed displeasure at ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and there learn the exact methods to be employed in the visitation; but it was a long ride, and he took two days over it, sleeping on the way at Waverly in the Cistercian House. This had not yet been visited, as Dr. Layton was riding up gradually from the west country, but the rumour of his intentions had already reached there, and Ralph was received with a pathetic deference as one of the representatives ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... side had been friends at Harrow in Byron's time. The Rev. Septimus wore rather a shabby coat and a terrible hat, but the consummate Caterpillar, who respected pedigrees, regarded him with pride and veneration. He came up from his obscure West Country vicarage to town just once a year—to see the match. If you asked him, he would tell you quite simply that he would sooner see the match and his old friends than go to Palestine; and the Rev. Septimus had yearned to visit Palestine ever since ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... what got you into this trouble, that deplorable habit of swearing aloud in German. But I will say, for a tinker, you put a very neat West Country whipping on that bit of broken harness. I've been admiring it. Didn't know they taught you that in the German ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... suffered in his strained and stiffening joints, he watched with a feeling of pleasure the avidity with which the boy drank; and as he saw the strange bird flit by once more he recalled having heard of such a bird living in the west country. ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... me some pleasure and killed an hour. You relate the even course of your days since my departure from Cornwall, and I envy the good health and happy contentment of mind which your note indicates. I gained no slight benefit from my visit to the West Country, and it had doubtless carried me bravely through this summer but for an unfortunate event. A sharp cold, which settled on my chest, has laid me low for some length of time, though I am now as well again as I shall ever be. So much for facing the night air in evening dress. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... a correspondent in the Cornish Telegraph remarked a few familiar expressions which we West country folks are accustomed to use in so vague a sense that strangers are often rather puzzled to know precisely what we mean. He might also have added to the list many old Cornish words, still in common use, as skaw ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... and unrivalled attraction was the personification of Bailie Jarvie by Charles Mackay, who, being himself a native of Glasgow, entered into the minutest peculiarities of the character with high gusto, and gave the west country dialect in its ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... sir, what may your trouble be? Pa. Indeed, Doctor, I'm not very sure; but I'm thinking it's a kind of weakness that makes me dizzy at times, and a kind of pickling about my stomachs;—I'm just na right. Dr. You are from the West country, I should suppose, sir? Pa. Yes, sir, from Glasgow. Dr. Ay; pray, sir, are you a glutton? Pa. God forbid, sir; I'm one of the plainest men living in all the West country. Dr. Then, perhaps, you are a drunkard? Pa. No, Dr. Gregory; thank God, no one ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... marriage or the wild scenes leading to it; she never presented herself in society. She would sit on the top of Estlemont towers—as they formerly spelt it—all day and half the night in midwinter, often, looking for the mountains down in her native West country, covered with an old white flannel cloak, and on her head a tall hat of her Welsh women-folk; and she died of it, leaving a son in her likeness, of whom you will hear. Lord Fleetwood had lost ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... satisfactory impression of his own importance. In fact, had not this feeling been participated in by others, Mr. Billy Crow would never have been deputed by No. 13,476 to carry their warrant down to the west country, and establish the nucleus of an Orange Lodge in the town of Foxleigh; such being, in brief, the reason why he, a very well known manufacturer of "leather continuations" in Dublin, had ventured upon the perilous journey from which he was now returning. Billy was going ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... and Robin Hood. The outlandish knight. Lord Delaware. Lord Bateman. The golden glove; or, the squire of tamworth. King James I. And the tinkler. The Keach i' the Creel. The Merry Broomfield; or, the west country wager. Sir John Barleycorn. Blow the winds, i-ho! The beautiful lady of Kent; or, the seaman of Dover. The Berkshire lady's garland. The nobleman's generous kindness. The drunkard's legacy. The Bowes tragedy. The crafty lover; or, the lawyer outwitted. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... recent visit to the West Country, among other old friends we paid our respects to Mrs Pawkie, the relict of the Provost of that name, who three several times enjoyed the honour of being chief magistrate in Gudetown. Since the death of her worthy husband, and the comfortable settlement in life of her youngest daughter, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... in deserts, in mountains, in dens, and in caves of the earth, destitute, afflicted, tormented; besides the other severe impositions upon the country in general, the bonds imposed, and rage of the Highland host then raised, which, together with the soldiers, greatly spoiled and robbed the west country especially, by which means, poor people were brought to ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... said Uncle Tommy. "When I was a lad like you, b'y, just here from the West Country, me fawther told me if I steered a course out o' the tickle an' kept me starn fair for the meetin'-house, I'd sure get home ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... such parts of the earth as are deeply blended in our hearts and minds with old familiar associations! Whilst wandering through the Lake District of England, how are we reminded of Wordsworth and the "Excursion"! How can we visit Devonshire and the West Country without summoning up pleasant thoughts of Charles Kingsley and Amyas Leigh; of the men of Bideford, Sir Richard Grenville, Kt., and "The little Revenge"? How vividly do the Trossachs recall "The Lady of the Lake" and Walter Scott! ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... for any vacant throne!"—contemptuously—"and in the event of a big European War, Ruvania in German hands would provide an easy entrance into Russia. So you see, Nadine, alive and in safety, was a perpetual menace to the German plans. For some years she was hidden in a convent down in the West Country, not very far from Crailing, and after a while people came to believe that she, too, had perished in the revolution. It was only then that Max allowed her to emerge from the convent, and by that time ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... Fishmongers ventured on a St. Peter, a dolphin, and two mermaids, and the Skinners on Indian princes dressed in furs. Sir Samuel Fludyer was a Cloth Hall factor, and the City's scandalous chronicle says that he originally came up to London attending clothier's pack-horses, from the west country; his second wife was granddaughter of a nobleman, and niece of the Earl of Cardigan. His sons married into the Montagu and Westmoreland families, and his descendants are connected with the Earls Onslow and Brownlow; and he was very kind to young ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury |
