"Northumbrian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the rolling smoke from Norham, curled not the Tweed alone. Far upon Northumbrian waters, it blew fresh and strong, bearing on its wings a barque from the Abbey of Whitby on the coast of Yorkshire, sailing to St. Cuthbert's at Lindisfarne, ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... man in black; 'horseflesh and bitter ale—the favourite delicacies of their Saxon ancestors, who were always ready to do our bidding after a liberal allowance of such cheer. There is a tradition in our Church, that before the Northumbrian rabble, at the instigation of Austin, attacked and massacred the presbyterian monks of Bangor, they had been allowed a good gorge of horseflesh and bitter ale. He! he! he!' continued the man in black, 'what a fine spectacle to see such a mob, headed by a fellow like our ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... In the five Northumbrian counties you will scarcely find so bleak, ugly, and yet, in a savage way, so picturesque a moor as Dardale Moss. The moor itself spreads north, south, east, and west, a great undulating sea of black peat ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... lad called Barnes, a steerage passenger of about my own age, a raw, red-headed Northumbrian yokel, going out as a recruit to one of the West Indian regiments. He was a serious, strenuous youth, and I had talked a little with him at odd moments. In my great loneliness I went to say good-by to him after I ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... mate, was a bull-headed, sandy-haired Northumbrian; as we before stated, a relation of the owner's, or he never would have been permitted to remain in the ship. The reader has already had some insight into his diabolical character. It will be sufficient to add, that he was coarse and blustering in his manners; that ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... of that famous institution I know nothing, nor do I wish to utter a word of disparagement of those who were responsible for its management fifty years ago; but to me, a timid boy who, in spite of his Northumbrian burr, was turned to ridicule as a Cockney by the Fifeshire lads and lasses, it wore the aspect of a veritable place of torment. That classic instrument of discipline, the tawse, was in use at every hour of the day, girls as well as boys receiving barbarous punishment ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... manner, and the learned Mr. Wright very justly observes that nearly all the descriptions of Purgatory come from Irishmen, or from Anglo-Saxons who have resided in Ireland, such as St. Fursey, Tundale, the Northumbrian Dryhthelm, and Knight Owen. It is likewise a remarkable thing that only the Irish were able to behold the marvels of their Purgatory. A canon from Hemstede in Holland, who descended in 1494, saw nothing at all. Evidently this ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... which but late Had shook to death Northumbrian realm new-raised By Edwin, dear to God. The agony At last was over; but the tear flowed on: The Faith of Christ had fallen once more to dust, That Faith which spoused with golden marriage ring The land to God, when ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... now in the time of my death comes to me rede unearthly, as I think. There must be a strong hand who shall weld England into one—who shall bid our land forget that difference has ever been betwixt Angle and Saxon, Jute and Northumbrian, Mercian and Wessexman, Saxon and English and Dane. And when that wonder is wrought, then shall come peace and a new life to the land, under one who will give them the laws that they need to bind them into one English race, strong and honest, and ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... squirrels more engaging, for these are wild squirrels in a wood in Northumberland, who quickly find out when he is at home and make their way to the house, scale the walls, and invade the library; then, jumping upon his writing-table, are rewarded with nuts, which they take from his hand. Another Northumbrian friend of the writer keeps, or kept, a pet cormorant, and finds him no less greedy in the domestic than in the wild state. After catching and swallowing fish all the morning in a neighbouring river, he wings his way ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... in real life, and the Universities have profited by his emergence; but he is, and always must be, exceptional. What can be done for the mass of intelligent, but not exceptional, boys, who, to quote my Northumbrian friend, "must be drilled into a calling of some kind, so as to be able to provide for themselves when they grow up to manhood"? When once their schooling, in the narrow sense, is over, must their minds be left to lie fallow or run wild? Can ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... narrator is speaking of the voyage of Constance, after her escape from the massacre in which, at a feast, all her fellow-Christians had been killed, and of how she was borne by the "wild wave" from "Surrey" (Syria) to the Northumbrian shore:— ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... reverence and lordship," answered the Northumbrian knight, "I do partly, that is, in some sort, subscribe to what your wisdom hath delivered—Nevertheless, under reverence of the Sub-Prior, we do not look for gallant leaders and national deliverers ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... old mother, who has done good work in her day—among the rest, that heaviest work of all, the bringing you into the world and keeping you in it till now—honest, kindly, cheerful folk enough, and not inefficient in their own calling; though an average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish Easterling, beside carrying a brain of five times the intellectual force, could drive five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not a sad sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon those seaside benches, looking out listlessly at the water, and ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... our city named after this Northumbrian Bretwalda, "Edwin's-burgh?" Or was the Eiddyn of which Aneurin speaks before the time of Edwin, and the Dinas Eiddyn that was one of the chief seats of Llewddyn Lueddog (Lew or Loth), the grandfather of St. Kentigern ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... expounder of the word, with a wig like a snow-wreath, and a stipend like—like—like a hundred pounds a year, I suppose. I can spend thrice as much as that, though, being such as I am. Here he sang a scrap of an old Northumbrian ditty, mimicking the burr of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... north to south, and eight miles from east to west. To the westward of the Percy Isles a still larger group has received the collective name of Northumberland, the several islands being distinguished by familiar Northumbrian names. Advancing northwards, at a distance of some sixty miles from the Percy group, the Cumberland, Sir James Smith, and Whitsunday groups form a continuous archipelago on the eastern side of the passage. The highest peaks attain an elevation little short of 1,000 ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... away the smoke, Round Norham Castle rolled, When all the loud artillery spoke, With lightning-flash, and thunder-stroke, As Marmion left the hold. It curled not Tweed alone, that breeze, For, far upon Northumbrian seas, It freshly blew, and strong, Where, from high Whitby's cloistered pile, Bound to St. Cuthbert's holy isle, It bore a barque along. Upon the gale she stooped her side, And bounded o'er the swelling tide, As she were ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... temples where the Romans worshipped with the Britons, whom they had enslaved and converted. But it was not till 627 that the little wooden chapel was built on the site of the Minster, to house the rite of the Northumbrian King Eadwine's baptism. He felt so happy in his new faith that he replaced the wooden structure with stone. In the next century it was burned, but rebuilt by another pious prince, and probably repaired by yet another after ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... question was asked when the troops were marching over undulating but rather bare ground where the tufted grass was little over knee high. It happened the officer had been detached on other duty, and was anxious to rejoin his command. "I think, sir," said the Northumbrian, saluting respectfully, "that they have got lost in the long grass." The subaltern looked unutterable things, but the "Tommy" held a stoical face and said not a word more till the officer went off to hunt anew ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... chase by William the Conqueror, who in the year 1069 was thus diverting himself when he received information that the Danes had invaded Yorkshire and taken its chief city. Roused to fury by these tidings, he swore "by the splendour of the Almighty" that "not one Northumbrian should escape his revenge;" an oath which he put into prompt and terrible execution. It seems not improbable that upon one of these royal visits the miners of the Forest applied for and obtained their ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... through all the imitative arts. Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all caricature. He could take off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, are yet too slight to be described. Foote, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the outer gate of the Castle of Ploermel and encamped in the broad Bailey yard. Ploermel was at that time the center of British power in Mid-Brittany, as Hennebon was in the West, and it was held by a garrison of five hundred men under an old soldier, Richard of Bambro', a rugged Northumbrian, trained in that great school of warriors, the border wars. He who had ridden the marches of the most troubled frontier in Europe, and served his time against the Liddlesdale and Nithsdale raiders was hardened for a life ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at Whitby, in another Northumbrian village named Jarrow a boy was born. This boy we know as Bede, and when he was seven years old his friends gave him into the keeping of the Abbot of Wearmouth. Under this Abbot there were two monasteries, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... woman and able writer, according to the Illustrated News, is of Irish descent. Her father was an officer of dragoons in the British service; he married a Miss Blenkinsopp, of the Northumbrian house of Blenkinsopp, which Camden styles "a right ancient and generous family." Miss Porter's father died in the prime of life, and left his widow with five almost infant children, in slender circumstances. The great talents of this orphan family raised them to affluence and distinction. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... whole country, among the more educated classes, English. Gaelic is a Celtic language, belonging to an entirely different linguistic group from English, and having close affinities to Irish and Welsh. This tongue Burns did not know. Lowland Scots is a dialect of English, descended from the Northumbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon. It has had a history of considerable interest. Down to the time of Chaucer, whose influence had much to do with making the Midland dialect the literary standard for the Southern kingdom, it is difficult to distinguish the written language of Edinburgh ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Cocklesmuir, or Johnny Brad. The name of the hunting-ground varies also, though not so widely; and, as usual, the several editors of the ballad have carefully noted that its topography (though the nomenclature is corrupted) connects it with this district or that—Percy's ballad is Northumbrian, Scott's is ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... ancient woodlands; where, Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides, And his banks open, and his lawns extend, Stops short the pleased traveller to view Presiding o'er the scene some rustic tower Founded by Norman or by Saxon hands: O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook The rocky pavement and the mossy falls Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream; 40 How gladly I recall your well-known seats Beloved of old, and that delightful time When all alone, for many a summer's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... night I directed the Cavalry Corps and the Northumbrian Division, which was then in general reserve, to move to the west of Ypres, and placed these troops at the disposal of the General Officer Commanding the Second Army. I also directed other reserve troops from the 3d Corps and the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Dilke in 1862 was David Fenwick Steavenson, a dalesman from Northumberland, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. The two had seemingly little in common. Dilke to all appearance was "very serious," and in disposition of mind ten years older than his fellows, while the young Northumbrian's whole preoccupation was to maintain and enlarge the fame of his college on the river. If the friendship was to develop, Steavenson must undoubtedly become interested in intellectual matters, but not less certainly Dilke must learn to row. It was a very useful discipleship ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... attendants, ordered that during the journey he should stop seven times in the day, for the purpose of being washed, fed, and put to sleep. The nurse, and all the servants who attended, had been selected with great care, and performed their charge with fidelity; and the Northumbrian lady assured her sister, by a letter which they brought back, that she accepted the charge with pleasure. This being settled, Milun left his castle for a short time on some military business, and during his absence the young lady's father ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... had been left behind aged ten in an English suburban boarding school, is collected from there when he was fifteen, and brought out to Australia on the Northumbrian, an East Indiaman. After an "uneventful" voyage, they arrive in Sydney. The main part of the book concerns the doings of Nic and the farm workers on The Bluff, along with some upsetting interventions from the man farming a nearby ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Martyr in the Rebellion of 1715. To which is added, a visit to Bamburgh Castle; with an Account of Lord Crewe's Charities, and a Memoir of the Noble Founder. Forming the Second Series of Descriptive and Historical Notices of Northumbrian Churches and Castles. By WILLIAM SIDNEY ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, a number of pious and wise men flourished in the country, among whom was Kentigern, commonly called Mungo, some of these persons were employed by Oswald a Northumbrian king, to instruct his people; they are represented by Bede, as eminent for their love to God and knowledge of the holy scriptures: the light of the gospel by their means broke into other parts of the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... nine or ten miles an hour, and that a cow were to stray upon the line, and get in the way of the engine, would not that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance?" "Yaw," replied Stephenson, in his broad Northumbrian dialect, "ay, awkward—for the coo." On account of his speech Stephenson was denounced as a "foreigner," and the bill was thrown out by the committee, by a vote of 37 against 36. After a second Parliamentary battle, the bill was passed ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... civilisation. At the northeastern extremity has sprung up a great watering place, to which strangers are attracted from the most remote parts of our island by the Italian softness of the air; for in that climate the myrtle flourishes unsheltered; and even the winter is milder than the Northumbrian April. The inhabitants are about ten thousand in number. The newly built churches and chapels, the baths and libraries, the hotels and public gardens, the infirmary and the museum, the white streets, rising terrace above terrace, the gay villas peeping from the midst of shrubberies and flower beds, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and Winchester, York and Lancaster, Holy Island and Melrose; the latter instead of Iona, because, as we have seen, the influence of St. Columba expires with the advance of Christianity, while that of Cuthbert of Melrose connects itself with the most sacred feelings of the entire Northumbrian kingdom, and Scottish border, down to the days of Scott—wreathing also into its circle many of the legends of Arthur. Will you forgive my connecting the personal memory of having once had a wild rose gathered for me, in the glen of Thomas ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... voices from the crowd assembled in front of the Provost's house in Hawick, 'mak him "kiss the woodie"; let the prood Northumbrian thief cool his heels i' ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... was deep and sonorous, he spoke with a Scottish accent, and with somewhat of the Northumbrian "burr," which, to my mind, gave a Doric strength and simplicity to his elocution. His recitation of ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... There was a sense of relief every where, from the Royal Exchange to the most secluded hamlets among the mountains of Wales and the fens of Lincolnshire. The ploughmen, the shepherds, the miners of the Northumbrian coalpits, the artisans who toiled at the looms of Norwich and the anvils of Birmingham, felt the change, without understanding it; and the cheerful bustle in every seaport and every market town indicated, not obscurely, the commencement ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conscious aim; his style has all the delicate charm of chance. We have already pointed out his affinity to Blake, but with Burns also he may be said to have a spiritual kinship, and in the songs of the Northumbrian miner we meet with something of the Ayrshire peasant's wild gaiety and mad humour. He gives himself up freely to his impressions, and there is a fine, careless rapture in his laughter. The whole book deserves to be read, and much of it deserves ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... dark surface of the canal, dusky wharves crowded with barrels, and bales, and cattle, and timber, and all the various freightage that the good ships come and go with all the year round, to and from the Zuyder Zee, and the Baltic water, and the wild Northumbrian shores, and the iron-bound Scottish headlands, and the pretty grey Norman seaports, and the white sandy dunes of Holland, with the toy towns and the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... in the rear of those three insurrections lay Gospatrick, Waltheof, and Marlesweyn, with the Northumbrian host. Durham was lost, and Comyn burnt therein. But York, so boasted William Malet, could hold out for a year. He should not need to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... tracks which wind in the red earth across the lonely plains, the passes of the rivers, springs, natural fastnesses, and having the varied knowledge of a country which of old made Border horsemen and Northumbrian prickers formidable upon the Scottish marches — into ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... consequence of his peculiarities; so he preached wherever he could collect a congregation. Itinerancy and popularity gave him notoriety, and flattered ambition, of which he was not wholly divested. He and his brethren wandered into every section of England, from the Northumbrian moorlands to the innermost depths of the Cornish mines, in the most tumultuous cities and in the most ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... to Cuba, including the rather singular proposal of Senor Montijo to which he had consented, as to the apparent ownership of the new yacht; and listened patiently but unconvinced to all Murdock's arguments against what the canny Northumbrian unhesitatingly denounced as an utterly hare-brained scheme. The next two days he devoted to the task of putting all his affairs in order, lest anything serious should happen to him during the progress of his adventure; and on the third day Nisbett presented himself, with his consulting ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood |
