"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him with them more than once in robbing a Park that belong'd to Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecot near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. And tho' this, probably the first essay of his Poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was oblig'd to leave ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... adding one more quotation, from the most delightful of attacks upon the attackers of fairy tales, by Miss Repplier: "That which is vital in literature or tradition, which has survived the obscurity and wreckage of the past, whether as legend, or ballad, or mere nursery rhyme, has survived in right of some intrinsic merit of its own, and will not be snuffed out of existence by any of our precautionary or hygienic measures. . . . Puss in Boots is one long record of triumphant effrontery and deception. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of readers for such poetry ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... even increased violence. The proprietors now sent in hired bruisers, to MILL the refractory into subjection. This irritated most of their former friends, and, amongst the root, the annotator, who accordingly wrote the song of "Heigh-ho, says Kemble," which was caught up by the ballad-singers, and sung under Mr. Kemble's house-windows in Great Russell-street. A dinner was given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, to celebrate the victory obtained by W. Clifford in his action against Brandon ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterly perception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from Milton's Paradise Lost to Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad, from Butler's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... obviously referring to gentle birth, cf. William Bellenden's translation (1553) of Livy (ii. 124) "than was in Rome ane nobill childe ... namit Caius Mucius." The spelling "childe" is frequent in modern usage to indicate its archaic meaning. Familiar instances are in the line of an old ballad quoted in King Lear, "childe Roland to the dark tower came," and in Byron's Childe Harold. With this use may be compared the Spanish and Portuguese Infante and Infanta, and the early French use of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... without hope or thought of shelter; but, on the contrary, with every possible chance of a break-down or upset, which would have made the forest our bed, but stripped of the "Leaves so green, O!" about which your ballad-mongers love to sing, with their toes over the fender, and the hail pattering melodiously upon the pantiles. At last, our prayers were heard; and we all, I believe, breathed more freely as the gates of the sky opened, and the falling flood subdued and stilled ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... popularly imagined to be an apple. One may perhaps refer in this connection to the fact that at Rome and elsewhere the testicles have been called apples. I may add that we find a curious proof of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old Portuguese ballad, "Donna Guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the wars; her sex is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard, but Donna Guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, and turning away from the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... its compliments to Gabriele, and goes in the accompanying picture to pay her a visit. She must not imagine that I am cast down. I send also a little ballad or romance; the wood sung it to me last evening, and every harmonious sound, which life in my soul sings, must—go home! Oh, how ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... father Thames is desired to tell who drives the hoop, or tosses the ball, and then adds, that father Thames had no better means of knowing than himself; when he compares the abrupt beginning of the first stanza of the bard, to the ballad of Johnny Armstrong, "Is there ever a man in all Scotland;" there are, perhaps, few friends of Johnson, who would not wish to blot out both ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... more unfitted for any ordinary occupation, came down at last, by a path which it is not worth while to trace, to earn a living by delighting a Southwark audience nightly with his fine baritone voice, good enough for a ballad in those latitudes, and good enough indeed for something much better if it had been properly exercised under a master. He was not downright dissolute, but his experience with his father, who was weak and silly, had given him a distaste for what he called religion; and he was loose, as ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... is too good for such a scurvy fellow," she retorted. "But what would you here, fool? A song, a jest, a dance? Or have you come to learn a new story, or ballad, for the lordlings you must entertain?" Unabashed, she approached a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... excessive surprise. My grandmother had been esteemed a great beauty in her day and had been sung by the ballad-singers. Was it possible that my looks could be like hers? I had not thought about them hitherto any more than my cousin had about his. It was with almost a sense of relief that I heard my ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... but drink. I'll tell thee all about it presently, and then we'll sing the Andalusian Tirana."—[A kind of ballad.] ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... on other accounts, the ballad addressed to Geoffrey Chaucer by Eustache Deschamps deserves repetition. Its text requires to be established, in order that we may be aware of its real obscurities—for no future memoir of Chaucer can ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes." Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the blacksmith, Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fireside:— "Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad! Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them. Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe." Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him, And with a coal ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... change-house singing—songs which told how Sim o' the Cleuch smote Bewcastle in the howe of the Brunt Burn—ash against steel, one against ten. The fancy intoxicated him; he felt as if he, too, could make a ballad. It would speak of the soft shiny night with the moon high in the heavens. It would tell of the press of men and beasts by the burnside, and the red glare of Harden's fires, and Wat with his axe, and above all of Sim with his ash-shaft and his long arms, and how Harden drove the raiders up the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... to be over. His early experiments in verse are queerly suggested and full of hazard. It needs a foreign language—German—to encourage him to rhyme. The fascination of Buerger's Lenore is a reflection from English ballad poetry; the reflected image brought out what had been less remarkable in the original. The German devices of terror and wonder are a temptation to Scott; they hang about his path with their monotonous and mechanical jugglery, their horrors made all the more intolerable through the degraded ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... instruct to carry on my Cheats: Come, leave your Fooling, I have bus'ness for you; Uncase your self, and quickly go and find Ranter, and Swash, Dive, Fob, Snap, Gilt, and Pick-lock, Those are my Archest Devils; as you go Call upon Dog'rell the Ballad-maker, and say I want him strait, bid them be sure To bring home half a dozen more with them, For I shall need their help, let e'm not fail, ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... see the town full of lampoons and invectives against Dutchmen, only because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by insolent pedants, and ballad-making poets, for employing foreigners, and for being a foreigner himself, I confess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own original, thereby to let them see what a banter is put upon ourselves in it; since speaking of Englishmen ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... is more generally known through the medium of the novel, the opera, and the print-shop than by the pages of history. Procopius, Gibbon, and Lord Mahon have done less for his universal popularity than some unknown Greek romancer or ballad-singer in the middle ages. Our ideas of the hero are involuntarily connected with the figure of a tall old man, clad in a ragged mantle, with a stout staff in his left hand, and a platter to receive an obolus in his right, accompanied by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... in the history of the world. The great majority of the human race, from peasant girls to empresses, and from shepherd lads to omnipotent tyrants, have known, to some extent, the sadness and the joy of the love token. The ballad that the lover-poet addressed to one who was "just a porcelain trifle, just a thing of puffs and patches," but who was, just the same, his adored—the ballad love token pleased even that unemotional doll. "And you kept it and you read it, belle Marquise!" Silly or supreme, all ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... I cannot boast much of my acquisitions at this school; they consisted merely of the contents of the "Child's Spelling Book;" but from my mother, who had stored up the literature of a country town, which about half a century ago, amounted to little more than what was disseminated by itinerant ballad-singers, or rather, readers, I had acquired much curious knowledge of Catskin, and the Golden Bull, and the Bloody Gardener, and many other histories ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... and hillocks clear, in double folds, embrace; E'en Fairyland, forsooth, transcend they do in elegance and grace! The "Fragrant Plant" the theme is of the ballad fan, green-made. Like drooping plum-bloom flap the lapel red and the Hsiang gown. From prosperous times must have been handed down those pearls and jade. What bliss! the fairy on the jasper terrace will come down! When to our prayers she yields, this glorious ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Harry Stanton, Kentucky's soldier poet—and a score of others who won fame, even if some of them lost life—on far different fields. There rare "Ran" Tucker—later famed in Congress and law school—told inimitably the story of "The time the stars fell," or sang the unprecedented ballad of "The Noble Skewball," ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... situated just beyond the Border in Scotland, in that region of romantic and poetical traditions, full of the charm of early legendary and ballad lore, of the associations of Burns's songs and Scott's Border minstrelsy, pervaded with the old superstitions, half-beliefs, dating from as far back as the days of Thomas the Rhymer, and the later powerful influence ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Juggler, given in the Appendix, I claim to have discovered a new ballad, which has not yet been treated as such, though I make bold to think Professor Child would have included it in his collection had he known of it. I trust that the publicity thus given to it will attract the attention of experts more competent ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... quickly along, while post-chaises came driving in bringing Admiralty officials or Captains to join their ships. Groups were collected in front of the different inns, and Jews were looking out for customers, certain of obtaining a ready sale for their trumpery wares. Ballad singers, especially those who could troll forth one of Dibdin's new songs, were collecting a good harvest from eager listeners, and the apple-stall women were driving a thriving trade; as were the shopkeepers of high ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... and was returned for Westminster. Byron's Liberalism was intermittent, and he felt, or, as Hobhouse thought, pretended to feel, as a Whig and an aristocrat with regard to the free lances of the Radical party. The sole charge in this "filthy ballad," which annoyed Hobhouse, was that he had founded a Whig Club when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. He assured Murray (see his letter, November, 1820, Letters, vol. iv. Appendix XI. pp. 498-500) that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Jane was on the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old ballad, made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a great favorite of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in the present instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original hero and heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Brave ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is not an edifying figure, nor is Louis de Grimaldi, Bishop of Mans, saying Mass in his red hunting-coat and breeches. But the Protestant Dean of St. Patrick's thought the execution for felony of another Protestant dean a capital theme for a merry ballad; and at the end of the eighteenth century Arthur Young painted the English rural clergy in very dark colours. The curates, the rectors, the monks of France as a body, showed under the old regime the same qualities of devout faith and Christian sympathy with the people with which they ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... sound of trumpet, drum, fife, and such like music animates; metus enim mortis, as [3476]Censorinus informeth us, musica depellitur. "It makes a child quiet," the nurse's song, and many times the sound of a trumpet on a sudden, bells ringing, a carman's whistle, a boy singing some ballad tune early in the streets, alters, revives, recreates a restless patient that cannot sleep in the night, &c. In a word, it is so powerful a thing that it ravisheth the soul, regina sensuum, the queen of the senses, by sweet pleasure (which is a happy cure), and corporal tunes ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Reuben at last, breaking in upon his host's ecstasy over a ballad he had been reciting, with what he counted the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... tradition immortalized by a fine ballad of Southey's, it is said that the abbots of Aberbrothwick, in their munificent humanity preserved a beacon on that dangerous reef of rock in the German Ocean, which is supposed to have received its name of the "Bell Rock" from the peculiar character of the warning machinery ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... detail the romance and the poetry, the writings and the imaginations, of the Scandinavian races, interspersed with abundant and well-selected specimens of the historical, romantic, legendary, chivalric, ballad, dramatic, song, and critical literature of Northern Europe. They have brought to light the treasures of the illustrious poets, historians and bards of Scandinavia, in a work of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... whom they reverenced less as a ruler of the Church than as the head of an honourable house, and the heir through twenty descents of ancestors who had been of great note before the Normans had set foot on English ground. All over the county the peasants chanted a ballad of which the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his waist, while the latter was as bare as a billiard-ball. Preparing himself for the effort with a wine-glass full of raw cognac, this gentleman leaned back in his chair, stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and plunged at once into a doleful ballad about one Mademoiselle Rosine, and a certain village aupres de la mer, which seemed to be in an indefinite number of verses, and amused no one but himself. In the midst of this ditty, just as the audience had begun to testify their impatience by much whispering and shuffling ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... afterwards able to remember that his manner gave any indication of the dreadful event which was so near at hand. He joined freely in the conversation and badinage of such occasions, and towards the close of the feast sang a song,—the only one he knew,—the ballad of the Drum. But many remembered that Burr was silent and moody. He did not look towards Hamilton until he began to sing, when he fixed his eyes upon him and gazed intently at him until the song ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... author, N. P. Willis, who then saw her for the first time, wrote: "In one of the intervals, I walked under the King's stand, and saw Her Majesty the Queen, and the young Princess Victoria, very distinctly. They were leaning over the railing listening to a ballad-singer, and seeming as much interested and amused as any simple country-folk could be. The Queen is undoubtedly the plainest woman in her dominions, but the Princess is much better-looking than any picture of her in the shops, and for the heir to ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... castle banner; and why should I hesitate to say, that one of the most amiable of children perpetuates the heroic name within its walls? Had this renowned adventurer been ambitious of patriarchal honours, his descendants might have extended the ancestral renown, and have furnished many a ballad of those good old times; but when the Saxon Ulysses had returned from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and made an end of Colbrand and the Dun Cow, his fancy was to take alms in disguise from his own fair ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... danger, suggested perhaps by the scent of a stranger in their midst. Sometime in the small hours two youths, either drunk or enamored of the bedraggled senorita in the cubbyhole above, struck up a mournful, endless ballad of two unvarying lines, the one barely heard, the other screeching the eternal refrain until the night shuddered with it. All the clothing I possessed was not enough to keep me warm both ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... that fell low upon her waist and mingled with the wild pink roses at her bosom. The fiddler sat quietly as if he heard nothing until she began to sing, when he turned to look at her. The elder announced, after the ballad, that he had brought with him a wonderful musician who would favour them with some sacred music. He used the word 'sacred' because he had observed, I suppose, that certain of the 'hardshells' were looking askance at the fiddle. There was an awkward moment in which ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... Steirer}, a Styrian country-dance—a musical recitative accompanied by the cithern and set to a tune sufficiently rhythmical to act as one of the original purposes of a ballad, namely a dance tune. ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... had been cabin boy on Captain Riquer's xebec, and which assaulted the frigate Felicidad, captained by the formidable corsair "the Pope." Stirred by these heroic recollections, he hummed in his quavering old voice the ballad in which Ivizan sailors had celebrated the triumph, verses in Castilian, for greater solemnity, whose ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ourselves to instil into the infant mind an utter contempt for everything English, except those effigies of her illustrious mother which emanate from the Mint. The original of this exquisite and simple ballad is too well known to need a transcript; the Italian version, we doubt not, will become equally popular with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... some big, white stones, peeping from the golden pools, made a passage to the other side, and the trim lassie began to pick her way daintily across. Gilbert watched her with amused pleasure. He seemed to have stepped into some old rustic ballad. What was that song the boys used to sing at college? Something about the pretty, dainty maiden, going a-haying, or a-Maying, or a-something, all of a bright May morning, tra la la! This one was just like her, only she should be in her bare feet, and carry a pail and a stool, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... text, and which is best illustrated by the following extract from a contemporary letter, served, like every other event of his times, for the exercise of Lydgate's pen; but his description of it in the following ballad is infinitely more valuable from its historical accuracy, than its poetical merit. Of this article there are two copies extant; one in the Cottonian MS. Nero A. VI. and the other in the Cottonian MS. Vespasianus B. XVI.: the latter copy has been printed, though very erroneously, and with ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... giving a look of unequivocal contempt on every side, called out, 'Upon my soul, you're pleasant companions; but I'll give you a chant to enliven you!' So saying, he cleared his throat with a couple of short coughs, and struck up, with the voice of a Stentor, the following verse of a popular ballad:— ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... a novel," his thought came, "and drama always bored me, but I must confess to a weakness for poetry. I love to read it aloud, to throw myself into a heroic ballad and rush along, spouting grand phrases as though they were my own and feeling for a moment as though I were really striding the streets of ancient Rome, pushing west on the American frontier or ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... bitterly, "how rightly is my presumption punished. For I, with a fop's audacity, had thought my love for you of sufficient moment to have been long since observed; and, strong in my conceit, had scorned a pleasing declaration made up of faint phrases and whining ballad-endings. I spoke as my heart prompted me; but the heart has proven a poor counsellor, dear lady, and now am I rewarded. For you had not even known of my passion, and that which my presumption had taken for a reciprocal tenderness ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... diverged to the Alhambra and Washington Irving; and Flora ended the evening by singing the Moorish ballad of "Xarifa," which she said always brought a picture of Rosabella before ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... shrunk from the Tragic Muses, witness this Lamentable Ballad, first written in the vernacular by I know not what author and lately by myself put into Latin T. T. of Islington. Have you heard it? ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... feared the police might think I had designs against the house. I didn't know you were a musician. Miss Mayhew, I'm always finding out something new about you, and I'm going to ask you this evening to sing again for me a ballad the melody of which reminded me of a running brook. It took hold on my fancy and has been running in my ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... anxiously questioning his own future, and conscious of crude faults in Lady Inger, he set himself, as a task, to write in the manner of Hertz. It is difficult to doubt that it was a deliberate exercise, and we see the results in The Feast at Solhoug and in Olaf Liljekrans. These two plays are in ballad-rhyme and prose, like Hertz's romantic dramas; there is the same determination to achieve the chivalric ideal; but the work is that of a disciple, not of a master. Where Hertz, with his singing-robes fluttering ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... two lyrics in a measure differing from that of the rest of the poem. The ballad of the Bailiff Suffren has the swing and movement a sea ballad should possess. The stanza is of six lines, of ten syllables each, with the caesura after the fifth syllable, the rhymes ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... field, they journey through the heavy air to a thousand quiet homes, and play about the crackling blaze of as many firesides. But Lizzie's vision was never clouded. Mrs. Ford might gaze into the thickening summer dusk and wipe her spectacles; but her companion hummed her old ballad-ends with an unbroken voice. She no more ceased to smile under evil tidings than the brooklet ceases to ripple beneath the projected shadow of the roadside willow. The self-given promises of that tearful night of parting were forgotten. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... latter part of the story, the old ballad of The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, gives the framework. That ballad is believed to be Elizabethan in date, and the manners therein certainly are scarcely accordant with the real thirteenth century, and still less with our notions of the days of chivalry. Some liberties therefore ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the day seemed infectious, and to have seized even him. People stared to see Black Jem, or Surly Jem, as he was indifferently called, so joyous, and wondered what it could mean. He then fell to singing a snatch of a local ballad at that time in vogue ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Henry Brittle Bones Apples and Water Manticor in Arabia Outlaws Baloo Loo for Jenny Hawk and Buckle The "Alice Jean" The Cupboard The Beacon Pot and Kettle Ghost Raddled Neglectful Edward The Well-dressed Children Thunder at Night To E.M.—A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme Jane Vain and Careless Nine o'Clock The ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... Agnes was in the garden picking oranges and lemons, and filling the basket which her grandmother was to take to the town. The silver ripple of a hymn that she was singing came through the open door; it was part of a sacred ballad ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... not afraid of you, nor them neither; your hang-byes here. You must have your poets and your potlings, your soldados and foolados to follow you up and down the city; and here they must come to domineer and swagger. Sirrah, you ballad-singer, and slops your fellow there, get you out, get you home; or by this steel, I'll cut off your ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... castle, with its rich friendly battlements, looks over from afar, whereat the desolateness of the valley penetrates yet deeper into the soul. The friend who gave me this print added a letter, with a request that I would explain the mysterious forms by a ballad.... I bear the image with me in peace and in war, until it has now spun itself ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... proclivities,[146-1] and there is good reason to believe that the sacred fire watched by unspotted virgins among the Mayas had decidedly such a signification. Certainly it was so, if we can depend upon the authority of a ballad translated from the original immediately after the conquest, cited by the venerable traveller and artist Count de Waldeck. It purports to be from the lover of one of these vestals, and referring to her occupation asks with a fine allusion ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... agriculturists, shipbuilders and owners, besides intimates and relations; dear old 'Schetky' with his guitar among the most popular, and the delight of the children after dinner when he would sing his favourite ballad 'When on his Baccy Box he viewed.' Amateur music was greatly encouraged, not that it came up to the requisitions of the present day, but it was very pleasant. My mother's ballad singing was exceptional, and without ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... the trees, and gentle twilight steals on with her starry train ere he rests from his employment. Then the old farmer comes out on the porch to take his evening pipe; and the good dame sits by his side with her knitting, and the sweet voice of Ursula warbles a simple ballad to please the ears of the aged pair. The young man bares his brow to the delicious breath of evening, and carefully placing his sketch within the portfolio, saunters on toward the little gate. And now Ursula hushes her song, and the old man ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... projects; indeed, no period of his whole life was so fruitful in good work. He was going to write some Biblical plays; one entitled "Pharaoh" first, and then one called "Ahab and Jezebel," which he pronounced Isabelle. Deeper problems, too, were much in his mind: he was already at work on "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," but before coming to that let me first show how happy the song-bird was and how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed to use his wings ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... hear more of the Puritans and Christ-tide, only my scheme is to treat the season chronologically, and, consequently, there must be a slight digression; and the following ballad, which must have been published in the time of James I., because of the allusion to yellow starch (Mrs. Turner having been executed for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1615), ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... the inauguration, journeys, exploits, or death of some favourite chief, a large number of devotional poems on the passion of our Lord and the glories of the Blessed Virgin are known to be of this age. The first forerunners of what was destined to be a numerous progeny, the controversial ode or ballad, appeared in Elizabeth's reign, in the form of comparisons between the old and new religions, lamentations over the ruin of religious houses, and the apostacy of such persons as Miler Magrath and the son of the Earl of Desmond. The talents of many of the authors are admitted by Spenser, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... no ingredient of fiction in the historical incidents recorded in the following ballad. The indignities that were heaped upon Montrose during his procession through Edinburgh, his appearance before the Estates, and his last passage to the scaffold, as well as his undaunted bearing, have all been spoken to by eyewitnesses of the scene. A graphic and vivid sketch of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... harbor on the chance of finding Wenna there. Might he not hear her humming to herself, as she sat and sewed, some snatch of "Your Polly has never been false, she declares"? or was that the very last ballad in the world she would now think of singing? Then the delight of regarding again the placid, bright face and earnest eyes, of securing once more a perfect understanding between them, and their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... not you; my own abilities place me there. But come, each one sing"; and she commenced a ballad, well known to the ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men * have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of all charge of the kind and continued him in honor and office. It was proved that neither he nor his people could succor Don Alonso, or even know his peril, from the darkness of the night. There is a mournful little Spanish ballad or romance which breathes the public grief on this occasion, and the populace on the return of the count de Urena to Cordova assailed him with one of ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall? Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour's importance to the poor man's heart. 240 Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail; No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, 245 Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round; Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed, Shall kiss the cup to ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... Woodpecker" is remarkable for its simplicity and terseness: it is one of the best of all the poems; only we wish that in the last verse but one she had not thought it necessary to use the word "chode" for "chided." So in the fine ballad called "The Reapers of Landisfarne" it is a pity to mar a good stanza by using the queer participle "strawed" as a rhyme to sod and abroad, especially as the latter words do not rhyme either, save in New England parlance. But such blemishes as these in Mrs. Preston's work are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... The following quaint ballad-verses on the young hero give a realistic touch to one of the most providential occurrences in ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... in his sleep, and was afterwards discovered to be an imposter; the last benefaction in the parish church, for two poor Irish gentlewomen on their journey home, recommended by letters from the Council; the last new ballad. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... received her.' Mr Buller lived to marry Rebecca, daughter of the Bishop Trelawney who was one of the seven Bishops sent to the Tower by James II. His arrest created intense indignation in his own county; and he is the Trelawney referred to in the well-known fragment, all that remains of a ballad written at the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the piece that you played Is naught but a copy of Chopin or Spohr; That the ballad you sing is but merely "conveyed" From the stock of the Ames and the Purcells of yore; That there's nothing, in short, in the words or the score, That is not as out-worn as the "Wandering Jew"; Make answer—Beethoven ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... and children. There sprang a leak; all thought of death. Then rose a cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the Sea Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the young Englishman. He played his own accompaniment, his fingers, stiffened though they were with hard work, ran lightly over the keys. Every person sat still to listen. Even Martha Perkins forgot to twirl her fingers and leaned forward. It was a simple little English ballad he sang: ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Thick-headed Thoughts Thora's Song To a Proud Beauty To My Sister "Two Exhortations" Unshriven Visions in the Smoke Whisperings in Wattle-Boughs Wolf and Hound Wormwood and Nightshade Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad Zu der ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... to increase life's hustling; so that, unless we can dominate the mischief, we are really the worse off instead of the better. It is so much easier, apparently, to repeat the spell (once the magician has spoken it) which causes the broomstick to fetch water from the well, as in Goethe's ballad, than to remember, or know, the potent word which will put a stop to his floodings; that, indeed, seems reserved to the master wizard; while the tiros of life's magic, puffed up with half-science, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... This arbitrary act angered Charles II. and his advisers; the deemsters and others were punished, and some reparation was made to Christian's family. Christian is chiefly celebrated through the Manx ballad Baase Illiam Dhone, which has been translated into English by George Borrow, and through the references to him in Sir Walter Scott's Peveril of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... is the ballad of Boh Da Thone, Erst a Pretender to Theebaw's throne, Who harried the district of Alalone: How he met with his fate and the V.P.P.* At the hand of Harendra Mukerji, Senior ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... no nursery legend or border ballad that Betty crooned this time, but some peaceful lines of the old Quaker poet, and the quiet comfort of them stole into Lloyd's throbbing brain and soothed her excited fancy. Long after Betty was asleep she went on repeating ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... accompanied by a soft but regular footfall. It was plain that somebody—some woman, evidently—was pacing the floor of the room to which this window belonged, and that she was repeating poetry, either to herself or to some silent listener. As she came near the window, Stretton heard the words of an old ballad with which he ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... proceeded, though not without opposition, to the search. The key was soon produced, and accompanied by the repentant ballad-monger, he approached the mansion, which, as we have before noticed, was near ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... The World Encompassed, by Francis Fletcher, the chaplain, in 1628, with the addition of documents contemporary with Fletcher's by unknown writers. The title-page of The World Encompassed reads almost like an old ballad—"for the stirring up of heroick spirits to benefit their countries, and eternize their names by like {168} attempts." Kohl and Davidson's Reports of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1884 and 1886, are also invaluable as establishing Drake's land-fall in California. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... eccentric earl, when refinements of the court began to pall upon him, or his absence from Whitehall became a necessity, to seek fresh adventure and intrigue disguised as a porter, a beggar, or a ballad-monger. And so carefully did he hide his identity in the character he assumed, that his most intimate friends failed ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the most appalling misunderstandings of history. Like Faust, the German people have sold their soul to Mephistopheles: Bismarck. And they have sold it for power. They are now paying the price. As in the wonderful old ballad of Burger, the Prussian horseman has taken the maiden "Germania" on his saddle. The death's-head hussar has carried her away on his wild career through space until he has brought her to the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... in the meantime, had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a "sirvente" in the language of "oc", or a "lai" in the language of "oui", or a "virelai", or a ballad in the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... ballad or tune; a fanciful dialogue or light comic act introduced at the end or during an interlude ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... praise. Allan Cunningham, in his Songs of Scotland, thus freely comments on it:—"Tulloch-gorum is a lively clever song, but I would never have edited this collection had I thought with Burns that it is the best song Scotland ever saw. I may say with the king in my favourite ballad,— ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... pen of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the bete noire of all orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the Reviewers, From his Republic banished without pity The Poets; in this little town of yours, You put to death, by means of a Committee, The ballad-singers and the Troubadours, The street-musicians of the heavenly city, The birds, who make sweet music for us all In our dark hours, as David ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a kitten and cry mew Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers; I had rather ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... a queer light in the eye of the Irishman. I observed him narrowly—expectantly. Often I had read of this phenomenal art of improvised ballad-singing, but had always remained a little skeptical in regard to the possibility of such a feat. Even in the notable instances of this gift as displayed by the very clever Theodore Hook, I had always half ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... from her own poems. The dinner was given for her, and her seat was between Wilbur and Mr. Dennison, the magazine editor. Selma had attended a dinner-party at the Williamses a fortnight earlier where there had been music in the drawing-room by a ballad-singer at a cost of $100 (so Flossy had told her in confidence). A poetess reading from her own works, a guest and not invited in after dinner on a business footing, appealed to Selma as more American, and less expensive. She, in ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... ballad (together with the yet grander one of the "Fight with the Dragon") amongst those designed to depict and exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in AEgidius Tschudi—a Swiss chronicler—and Schiller (who, as Hinrichs suggests,) probably met with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... men, Sir Andrew sayes, A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; He but lye downe and bleede awhile, And then Ile rise and fight againe." Ballad of Sir ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... the young woman in so poetical a light," replied she in the same tone, "you had better turn the affair into a ballad. It is a grand subject, and worthy of supernatural machinery. The storm, the startling knock at the door, the entrance of the sable knight Hollingsworth and this shadowy snow-maiden, who, precisely at the stroke of midnight, shall melt away at my feet in a pool of ice-cold water and give ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... described in a ballad, made upon the quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, at the christening recorded at p. 83 when the Prince and all his household were ordered to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... ballad about him?" inquired she, laughing; "and if you are a little poetical in your praise, I can excuse you; for my royal brother thinks this bold Scot would have shone brightly ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... country for inspiration. No modern Oriental has given us so strange an insight into the conscience of the Asiatic as is presented in the stories of "Prehlad" and of "Savitri," or so quaint a piece of religious fancy as the ballad of "Jogadhya Uma." The poetess seems in these verses to be chanting to herself those songs of her mother's race to which she always turned with tears of pleasure. They breathe a Vedic solemnity and simplicity ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... midst the very Corypheus of infidelity, a compeer of Holyoake, a man who thinks no more of the Bible than if it were an old ballad—Colenso is a babe to him. This is a mighty man of valor, I assure you—a very Goliath in his way. He used to go starring it in the provinces, itinerating as a tuppenny lecturer on Tom Paine. He has occasionally appeared in our Lecture-Hall. He, too, as well as other conjurers, has thrown ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... of generous physique was singing in a shrill, nasal voice a pathetic ballad. She sang without expression, bringing her hands with monotonous gestures alternately to her breast. Her squat, matronly figure, beef from the heels up, looked singularly absurd in her short skirt. Her face ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Northern ballads, and which are, in fact, found among all nations whose ballad poetry has been preserved, merit some attention. Sometimes melancholy and sad, sometimes gay and joyous, they impart character wonderfully to the piece. There is something peculiarly mournful in the recurring of these sad, touching thoughts and words, and as the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of color. What things in the scene should you like to see for yourself? Is the humor of the story one of situation or character? Was the old Arab vain or only stupid? Is his attitude toward the author a typically Eastern one? Do you know Kipling's ballad, "The East ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach below his calves. A little foraging cap, that had long since seen its best days, set off ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... edition of which has just been issued by the house of D. Lothrop & Co. These various volumes made their appearance in England at intervals, the first—which gave the series its name—having been compiled by Francis Turner Palgrave, an English author of exquisite taste and judgment. The Ballad Book, compiled and edited by the poet, William Allingham, followed. Later appeared The Book of Praise, edited by Roundell Palmer, made up of selections from the best English hymn writers, and about the same time a fourth volume, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... wrote to me about it. King Cophetua is the name, isn't it? I am very curious indeed, for I have set Tennyson's ballad to music myself. I sing it to the guitar, and if life were not so hurried I should have sent it to you. However—however, we are all going home to-morrow. I have promised to take charge of Cecilia, and Mrs. Scully is going ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... were as capons and turkeys," seems to menace the good town of Chesterfield with destruction. Here an incident occurred, on the opening of a vault, which it is needless to relate, but which supplied me with a hint for the commencement of my romance, as well as for the ballad entitled "The Coffin." Upon this hint I immediately acted; and the earlier chapters of the book, together with the description of the ancestral mansion of the Rookwoods, were completed before I ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mariners." Thus sprang up that respect for, even fondness for, severe bodily labour, which the educated class of no nation save our own has ever felt; and which has stood them in such good stead, whether at home or abroad. Thus, too, sprang up the system of society by which (as the ballad sets forth) the squire's son might be a "'prentice good," ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... to the yeomanry the most important was the "Pleasant Historic of Thomas of Reading; or, The Sixe Worthie Yeomen of the West," by Thomas Deloney, a famous ballad-maker of the 16th century. It is the narrative of the life and fortunes of a worthy clothier of Henry the First's time, telling how he rose to wealth and prosperity, and was finally murdered by an innkeeper. There is interwoven a relation of the unhappy ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... But who that knows you have been a single Hour in Wilding's Hands, wou'd not swear you have lost your Maidenhead? And back again I'm sure you dare not go unmarried; that wou'd be a fine History to be sung to your eternal Fame in a Ballad. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... saying that if you were to ask me candidly (taking the question in an all-round way) who was the best back you ever saw, I should have no hesitation in answering that it was Walter Arnott. In the words of the old English ballad, "he feared no foe," and never in the history of football of the present time has such a brilliant man arisen. He has so many remarkable points that I cannot tell them in a brief notice, but as he is still playing well, spectators are at one ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... 1296, when Edward I. began his first expedition against Scotland, the Scottish Minstrels ridiculed the attempt of the English monarch to capture the place in some lines which have been preserved. The ballad of "Gude Wallace" has been ascribed to this age; and if scarcely bearing the impress of such antiquity, it may have had its prototype in another of similar strain. Many songs, according to the elder Scottish historians, were composed ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... gallants and their mistresses, to sporting men and women of fashion, just as, in the mournful song of Rosabelle, Sir Walter Scott is able to address himself to the "ladies gay," or Coleridge in his sad "Ballad of the Dark Ladie" to ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... from the rough-handed folks of that place. Then he came back to Squaw Gulch, so named from that day, and discovered the Bully Boy. Jim humbly regarded this piece of luck as interposed for his reward, and I for one believed him. If it had been in mediaeval times you would have had a legend or a ballad. Bret Harte would have given you a tale. You see in me a mere recorder, for I know what is best for you; you shall blow out this bubble ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... like the figures in the Nibelungenlied, weird, remote, glorified. I once lived in the street "for which no rhyme our language yields," next door to a pastry shop that claimed to have furnished the mise en scene for the "Ballad of Bouillabaisse," and I often followed the trail of Louis Dominic Cartouche "down that lonely and crooked byway that, setting forth from a palace yard, led finally to the rear gate of a den of thieves." Ah, well-a-day! I have known my Paris ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... He chanted this ballad over and over again until he was tired, then sat still, smiling and stroking the fox skin. He had learned the song when he was a child from his mother, who had sung it all day long one spring while she was shearing ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Rose, laughing. "There wasn't any 'before last year.' I had never heard of Shelley before last year. I had never read a ballad, nor a 'Waverley,' nor the 'Newcomes,' nor anything. Let's not talk about the dark ages. You ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... said Miss Ellery, in a sharp tone; for her "Wind of the Summer Night" had not gone well, owing to a too copious supper. "Posing for Lorelei," she added, as Ruth began to sing, glad to oblige the kind old gentleman. They expected some queer ballad or droning hymn, and were surprised when a clear sweet voice gave them "The Three Fishers" and "Mary on the Sands of Dee" with a simple pathos that made real music-lovers thrill with pleasure, and filled several pairs of ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... doubted not, were the outlaws his tyranny had driven to the forests, the forerunners of the Robin Hoods and Little Johns of later days, whose exploits against the Norman race awoke the enthusiasm of so many minstrels and ballad makers {x}. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... circulated in manuscript, or in print, display no proofs of high scholarship, or of polished writing, but there is a truthful earnestness in some of them, and cogency of reasoning more effective than the skill of the mere rhetorician. Sometimes they appeared in ballad form, and sometimes as simple narrative. The rough poet of the period (the American Revolution can boast of many) was Rednap Howell, who taught the very children to sing, in doggerel verse, the infamy of the proud officials who were trampling on their rights. A short selection from the many ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... stiff curly hair with a sort of vicious vigor. "How can you tell? I'm not a spiritualist, nor any sort of a humbug at all, I hope, but I sometimes indulge in presentiments. Before we started on this cruise, I was haunted by that dismal old ballad of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli |
