"Basque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rights now equalised, the inhabitants of the remaining provinces of Spain differ as widely from one another as they do from the sister kingdom, while the folklore of Asturias and of the Basque Provinces is very closely allied with that of Portugal. To judge the Biscayan by the same standard as the Andaluz, is as sensible as it would be to compare the Irish squatter with Cornish fisher-folk, or the peasants of Wilts and Surrey with the Celtic races of the West Highlands of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... cutting. The family moved to a two story house "out Meriwether Road" but didn't get along so well. Minnie was hungry lots and came to town to get scraps of food. When she was a "good big girl" she came to town one day with her hair full of cukle-burrs, dressed in her mother's basque looking for food, when she saw a man standing in front of a store eating an orange. She wanted that peeling. No one kept their cows and pigs up and when the man threw the peeling on the ground a sow grabbed it. Minnie chased ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... acquisitions, about two leagues from the city, he built himself a castle which he called Cervatos, because "he was lord of the solar of Cervatos in the Montana," as the mountain region extending from the Basque Provinces to Leon was always called. At his death in battle in 1143, the castle passed by his will to his son Alfonso Munio, who, as territorial or local surnames were then coming into vogue in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... commanders, and they have turned him out of the navy lest he should infect the psalm-singers. Look out a-head there, shipmate; d'ye see that fine frigate, the Peranga, now lying oft' Spithead, and can you ever forget Basque Roads and the gallant Cochrane? I just got a glimpse of his figure head t'other morning, coming up Point here; so I hauled to and threw my shattered hulk slap across his headway, lowering my top-gallants as I passed round under his bows. 'Officer,' said he, 'you and I should ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the blue brocade was too conspicuous. She must not wear it in South America. And her honey-coloured hair, piled high, with a fantastic Spanish comb flaring above the topmost curls, struck him as needlessly theatrical. He blamed Martigues for that. His humour was not improved by the Basque painter's voluble compliments on the success of a coiffure he felt to be his own creation. The fellow was too familiar, thought Oliver, with increasing irritation. He darkened, grew glum and silent; and when, after dinner, Martigues approached him ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... abstraction of her husband as to a few insignificant things; thus it sometimes happened that he did not answer to his name of Martin, also that he mistook the road to a hermitage, formerly well known to them both, and again that he could not answer when addressed in Basque, although he him self had taught her the little she knew of this language. Besides, since his return, he would never write in her presence, did he fear that she would notice some difference? She had paid little or no attention to these trifles; now, pieced together, they ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of soft, rich lace. This, after it was completed, was tried on at least half a dozen times, and the effect carefully studied before the long mirror. Anna, who cared much less for dress than her sister, decided upon a black flounced skirt and velvet basque. This was Mr. Everett's taste, and whatever suited ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the peculiarities of various races. Thus the settled Osmanli Turk exhibits Caucasian characters, while other so-called Tartaric Turks exemplify the Mongol type. On the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque, and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different. Apart from their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can hardly yield a scientifically natural system. Languages, on the other hand, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... lived very modestly until the end, and appeared to spend nothing; and he only kept one old servant, who spoke to him in the Basque dialect. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the French had in the year 1809 fitted out 9 line-of-battle ships, in addition to the squadrons already at sea, which, under the command of M. Allemand, had arrived in Basque Roads. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish) ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... children brought up as Christians. This was the very year of the storming of Carthage.[3] It is not to be wondered at that the Jews gave every help they could to the infidels who, before long, attacked the kingdom of the Wisigoths. Within twenty years Spain, up to the very mountains of the {78} Basque land and of the Asturias, was conquered by the followers of Muhammad, and silence fell upon the country which had appeared to be the home ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... look of vacant imbecility when one after another of a set of plates with which he juggled, disappeared, being fastened to an elastic contrivance to his back, and his expression of reproach when, turning Elodie round, he discovered her wearing the plates as a sort of basque, which once excited, on no matter what stage, rolling guffaws of mirth, now ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... so as to assure the throne to his new wife, raised up a party of absolutists against him. His brothers, Don Carlos and Francisco, became the heads of this movement and rallied their supporters around them, in the Basque provinces. In Portugal kindred dissensions rent the land in twain. Dom Miguel's claims to the crown were disputed on behalf of the constitutional government by the Duke of Palermo. Across the seas, Dom Pedro of Brazil proclaimed ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... general remark that age and official perplexities were evidently leaving their traces on his features, but he had lost none of his determined, defiant looks. During the more ceremonious part of the reception his two daughters stood near him. Mrs. Stover wore a rich black silk dress, with a basque of the same material, both being embroidered with violet-colored wreaths and trimmed with bugles. Mrs. Patterson wore a similar dress and basque, embroidered in white. Both ladies wore lace collars and had natural flowers ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... her personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious then of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange merchant, a Basque peasant, to whom her other uncle, the great man of the family, the priest of some parish in the hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at the age of thirteen or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasant stock, you know. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Castilho and his brother Diogo were really natives of one of the Basque provinces, they might rightly be included among the foreign artists who played such an important part in Portugal towards the end of Dom Manoel's reign and the beginning of that of his son, Dom Joao III. Yet the earlier work of Joao de Castilho ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... call it 'berretta.' The women tie a gaudy handkerchief round their heads, and compel one corner to stand forward from behind the ear in a triangle, in proportion to the size and stiffness whereof the lady seems to think herself well dressed. But the pretty Basque handkerchief will soon give place to the Parisian bonnet. For every cove among the rocks is now filled with smart bathing-houses, from which, in summer, the gay folk of Paris issue in 'costume de bain,' to float about all day on calabashes—having ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... while I hesitated at our carriage door whether I should summon him as Mozo or Usted, was master of that lingua franca and recovered us from the customs without question on our part, and understood everything we could not, say. I like to think he was a Basque, because I like the Basques so much for no reason that I can think of. Their being always Carlists would certainly be no reason with me, for I was never a Carlist; and perhaps my liking is only a prejudice in their favor from the air of thrift and work which pervades ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... not mistaken," said I, "that's not a Spanish air you have just been singing. It's like the zorzicos I've heard in the Provinces,* and the words must be in the Basque language." ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... with any other known race. All sorts of dialects have been examined with a view to discover affinity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple interrogation, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in vain. The geographical position of the Basque nation would naturally suggest it for comparison; but even in the Basque language no analogies of a decisive character have been brought forward. As little do the scanty remains of the Ligurian language which have ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... excluding females from the succession. Her daughter Isabella was born a few months later. After the death of the king (1833), the Carlists resisted the exclusion of their favorite from the throne. Don Carlos was proclaimed in the Basque provinces, and a civil war arose. The queen, Maria Christina, as regent, was supported by the moderados (moderates) and the liberals, and was allowed to recruit for her army in England and France. The leading constitutionalist ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... renowned pilot Juan de la Cosa of Santona, who sailed with Columbus on both his first and second voyages, and was the best draughtsman in Spain. Mr. Harrisse, and even earlier writers, such as Vianello, call him a Basque pilot, apparently because he came from the north of Spain; but Santona, his birthplace, although on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, is not in the Basque provinces; and if Juan de la Cosa was a native of Santona he was not a Basque. While the crews of the two caravels ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... afterwards, were always encroaching on the French wherever a seaway gave them an opening. In 1578 they were reported to be lording it off Newfoundland, though they had only fifty vessels there, as against thirty Basque, fifty Portuguese, a hundred Spanish, and a hundred and fifty French. Their numbers and influence increased year by year, till, in 1600, they had two hundred sail manned by eight thousand men. They were still more preponderant ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... the young people; the greater part of the Madrilenian Carlists capable of bearing arms departed long ago to join the ranks of the factious in the Basque provinces. Those who remain are for the most part grey-beards and priests, good for nothing but to assemble in private coffee-houses, and to prate treason together. Let them prate, Don Jorge; let them prate; the destinies of Spain do not depend on the wishes of ojalateros and pasteleros, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... NEW LANGUAGE.—Much interest has been excited by the report that Mr. GLADSTONE, during his stay at Biarritz, used up his spare moments by studying the Basque tongue. AUTOLYCUS hears that, contrary to his usual habit, the Right Hon. Gentleman has in this matter an ulterior purpose. Occasionally, in the heat of debate in the House of Commons, Mr. ABRAHAM ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... sufficient proof of the accuracy of this narrative. The mummy case is not the ordinary coffin of Egyptian commerce. The hieroglyphics have baffled Dr. Isaac Taylor, and have been variously construed as Chinese, Etruscan, and Basque, by the various professors of ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... big bunch of feathers fastened to a stick, advanced to the fire and made a few impressive gestures. She was garbed in the wide, gathered calico skirt, the velvet basque trimmed with silver buttons, and the high brown moccasins so dear to feminine Navajos. The orchestra was vocal, the bucks again furnishing the music. After circling around the spectators a few times the squaw ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... I never had seen before and never expect to see again. It was fastened with huge black buttons all the way down the breathlessly tight front, and the upper part was composed of that pre-historic garment known as a basque. She curved in where she should have curved out, and she bulged where she should have had "lines." About her neck was suspended a string of cannon-ball beads that clanked as she walked. On her forehead rested ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the heart of every Basque You will find a rooted hate Of the Cagots. 'Tis a foul Relic of the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... found several visitors of the better class in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium; her eyes a soft, expressive ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... of basque to feet just before we see them, in the seventeenth century, parting down the front and separating to show a petticoat. In Queen Elizabeth's time the acme of this style was reached by Spanish women as we see in Velasquez's portraits. Gradually the overskirt is looped ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... new bonnet," she promised, and trotted off to her room, smoothing the tails of her basque with ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... education, proportioned to their present condition and their birth. She had charged herself with the maintenance of two former nuns, noble and well educated, who, at the fall of their community, had been recommended, or had procured a recommendation, to her. Mesdames de Brinon and du Basque were these two vagrant nuns. Madame de Maintenon, instinctively attracted to this sort of persons, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Strabo, and Ptolemy. As in the case of Scandinavia, several countries have endeavoured to establish a claim for the priority of discovery in America. Some sailors of that Biscayan coast, which has given so many bold pilots and mariners to the world of adventure and exploration—that Basque country to which belonged Juan de la Cosa, the pilot who accompanied Columbus in his voyages—may have found their way to the North Atlantic coast in search of cod or whales at a very early time; and it is ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... took her guitar to the sands and sang one or two Basque hymns. Unlike us, the Basques do not take their pleasures sadly. One of ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... reading-room opened the billiard-room, a handsome apartment. Its walls were covered with beautiful frescoes, betraying the French school of art in the delicate colours, and in the Norman, Basque, Breton, and Kabyle scenes and types represented. Of Hungary I could see nothing. The Hortobagy herdsman's hovel, of which my host had spoken, was ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... much resemble ap and apah, Sanscrit words for water? Why does the Sanscrit kalya mean to-morrow as well as yesterday, and the Gypsy merripen life as well as death? How is it that ur, a Gaelic word for fire, is so like ura the Basque word for water, and Ure the name of an English stream? Why does neron, the Modern Greek word for water, so little resemble the ancient Greek [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] and so much resemble the Sanscrit nira? and how is it that nara, which like nira signifies water, so ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... If her hips are too prominent, she should avoid having any tight-fitting garments that bring the fact into relief. She should not wear the long coat, but she can effectively modify it to suit her needs, by only having a skirt, or tabs, or finishing straps in the back. If her jacket or basque is finished off with a skirt effect, it is best to have the little skirt swerve away just at the hip-line, half revealing and half ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... We kings should become better acquainted, don't you think? I will ask him what he considers the proper price for telling fortunes, and find out what his ideas are on the subject of horse-trading. And no doubt he will ask me what I think about his coming marriage with the Princess of Basque. She is to arrive to-night, I believe, and be married tomorrow, to this King whom she has ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... people of the provinces, who, because of distinguished names, had the right to appear at court, yet who looked as though they were wearing evening dress for the first time in their lives. Near by, for instance, was a lady whose rotund person was buttoned into a tight-fitting red velvet basque of ancient cut, above a skirt of pink satin. A court train, evidently constructed out of curtain material, was suspended from her shoulders. Broad gold bracelets clasped her plump wrists at the point where her gloves terminated, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... cannon from the direction of St. Roch; and in the quiet I saw a little soldier alight at the Rue de Rivoli gate—a little man whom you might mistake for a corporal of the guard—with a wild, coarse-featured Corsican (say, rather, Basque) face, his disordered chestnut hair darkened to black locks by the use of pomatum—a face selfish and false, but determined as fate. So this was the beginning of the Napoleon "legend"; and by-and-by this coarse ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in 1833, and the infant Isabella was proclaimed queen, with her mother as regent. The liberals supported her, the absolutists gathered around Don Carlos, and for years there was a bitter struggle in Spain, the strength of the Carlists being in the Basque provinces and Spanish Navarre,—a land of mountaineers, loyal in nature ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... of Tadoussac early in June. Here he found Basque fishermen engaged in the peltry {45} traffic with Indians from Labrador. When Pontgrave read his commission interdicting all ships but those of De Monts from trade, the Basques poured a fusillade of musketry across his decks, killed one man, wounded two, then boarded his vessel and trundled his cannon ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Strange. I—I must have been hurt. Son, am I bleeding?" And looked down, clasping her hand to the bosom of her decent black-silk basque. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... destruction of the country, man and beast, buildings, crops, and even trees, there are cantons and even provinces where the entire rural and working population is arrested or put to flight. In the Pyrenees, the old Basque populations "torn from their natal soil, crowded into the churches with no means of subsistence but that of charity," in the middle of winter, so that sixteen hundred of those incarcerated die "mostly of cold and hunger;"[41105] at Bedouin, a town of two thousand souls, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... forces stood an almost unguessed figure. Not the lovely white-haired lady of the Parish House; not big Westmoreland; not handsome Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Ruth with a suffrage button on her black basque; but a limping man in gray tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a butterfly net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand the naturalist caught and classified us, put each ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... were of Latin origin, some as in the Germanies and Scandinavia, mixed original Teutonic and Latin; some, as in Brittany, were Celtic; some, as in the eastern Pyrenees, Basque; in North Africa, we may presume, the indigenous tongue of the Berbers resumed its sway; Punic also may have survived in certain towns and villages there. [Footnote: We have evidence that it survived in the fifth century.] But men paid ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... one home, and study it closely at your leisure, by the fireside. It is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor the arrow-headed character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but destined to be copied in sculpture one day, if they ever get to whittling stone here. What a wild and pleasing outline, a combination of graceful curves and angles! The eye rests with ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... years of probation, Ignatius Loyola was ready to start on the conquest of a very different world. Devoted to the sick and to the poor, he attached himself to the Theatiner Order, and in the wards of the hospital and the quadrangle, the fiery, dark-eyed, little Basque must frequently have come into contact with the sturdy young Belgian, busy with his clinical studies and his anatomy. Both were to achieve phenomenal success—the one in a few years to revolutionize ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its hiss, the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth their note.... Have the Basque mountains and the snowy haunts of the Pyrenees taken away thy urbanity?... May he, who advises thee to keep silence, never enjoy the singing of sweet songs nor the voices of Nature ... sad and in need may he live in desolate ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... flap, but started back with instant perception of something wrong, for there, on his pile of ragged quilts, lay the Basque herder, with flushed face and rolling eyes, crazed with fever and entirely helpless. "You'd better not come in here, Wetherford," Ross warned. "Joe is here, horribly sick, and I'm afraid it's something contagious. It ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... see them greatly worn during the winter season. Some of these have a yoke, and some have a straight band on the shoulders, into which they are fulled. They are made in flannel, linen, and twilled silk, in all colours, striped, spotted, and plain, and with them the becoming fashion of the full basque has come in. Yoked bodices will be a ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... includes Sanskrit and its descendants in the East, Greek, Latin, all modern Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.), all Germanic languages (English, German, Scandinavian, etc.), all Slav languages (Russian, Polish, etc.)—in fact, all the principal languages of Europe, except Hungarian, Basque, and Finnish. The main tendency of this group of languages has been, technically speaking, to become analytic instead of synthetic—that is, to abandon complex systems of inflection by means of case and verbal ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... is only by means of the Basque language that the problem can be attempted. The physical conformation of the still extant Iberians, has nothing definitely characteristic about it. The ancient mythology has died away. The tribes most immediately allied have ceased to be other than unmixed. So the language alone ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Baccalaos. The name Norumbega is an Indian word, and was used by early explorers as a general term for the territory that is now Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Baccalaos is the name often given by the French to Newfoundland, the word itself being of Basque origin and meaning 'codfish,' while Carpunt will be remembered as a harbour beside Belle Isle, where Cartier had been stormbound on his ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... language. Roughly, four distinct languages are at present spoken in Spain: Castilian, the language of Madrid and the central uplands, the official language, spoken in the south in its Andalusian form; Gallego-Portuguese, spoken on the west coast; Basque, which does not even share the Latin descent of the others; and Catalan, a form of Provencal which, with its dialect, Valencian, is spoken on the upper Mediterranean coast and in the Balearic Isles. Of course, under the influence of rail communication ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... lime-kilns he had started even before he left, and the general store he intended to open when he returned to St. Saviour's. Not even his modesty was recognized; and, in his grand tour, no one was impressed by all that he was, except once. An ancestor, a grandmother of his, had come from the Basque country; and so down to St. Jean Pied de Port he went; for he came of a race who set great store by mothers and grandmothers. At St. Jean Pied de Port he was more at home. He was, in a sense, a foreigner among foreigners there, and the people were not quizzical, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cruised along the coast of France from Ushant to the mouth of the Gironde, saw some active service in the Mediterranean, and, after a return to the ocean, was finally engaged in the Basque Roads. A page of his private log contains a lively resume ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... plain flannel skirt, the material for which should not cost you more than two dollars and a half. Harper's Bazar has published two or three patterns, following which any dressmaker can make a skirt quite good enough for the ring. A jersey, a Norfolk jacket, a simple street jacket or even an ordinary basque waist; any small, close-fitting hat, securely pinned to your hair, and very loose gloves will complete a dress quite suitable for private lessons, and not so expensive that you need grudge the swift destruction certain to come to all equestrian costumes. Nothing is more ludicrous than to see ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... finished writing his letters and was standing, with his wife and the potato baron, in front of the hacienda when Pablo and his prisoner rode into the yard. Thin rivulets of blood were trickling from the Basque's nose and lips; his face was ashen ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... There is a Basque legend told of the giant Tartaro, who caught a young man in his snares, and confined him in his cave for dessert. When, however, Tartaro fell asleep, the young man made the giant's spit red hot, bored out his one ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... (1992) Total fertility rate: 1.8 children born/woman (1992) Nationality: noun - Frenchman(men), Frenchwoman(women); adjective - French Ethnic divisions: Celtic and Latin with Teutonic, Slavic, North African, Indochinese, and Basque minorities Religions: Roman Catholic 90%, Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim (North African workers) 1%, unaffiliated 6% Languages: French (100% of population); rapidly declining regional dialects (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that compound, like the diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of purple grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting with their untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... to undress Miranda. Off came the green silk dress with its tight "basque" and overskirt. Off came the ruffled petticoat and little chemise edged with fine lace. And Miranda stood in shapeless, kid-bodied ugliness, which stage of evolution the doll of ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... runes that I rehearse Understands the universe; The least breath my boughs which tossed Brings again the Pentecost; To every soul resounding clear In a voice of solemn cheer,— "Am I not thine? Are not these thine?" And they reply, "Forever mine!" My branches speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, Mountain speech to Highlanders, Ocean tongues to islanders, To Fin and Lap and swart Malay, To ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for the man who could tell us! What is a Basque?—what is an Etruscan?—what is a Magyar?—above all, what is a Cagot? Miss Caroline, my dear, there are deep questions in all arts and sciences; and, without knowing it, you have lighted on one of the deepest ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... capital (pop. 30,167). Few parts of Spain are poorer; education makes little progress, and least of all in the thinly peopled rural districts, with their widely scattered hamlets. The peasantry have thus every inducement to migrate to the Basque Provinces, Catalonia and other relatively prosperous regions; and consequently the population does not increase, despite the excess of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... held him as well. The roadway had become a flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated past wary and curious in their regard for him and his nervous horse. Two Basque herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad, swarthy men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked their heads to him. Forrest lifted his right ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... seated on my left, told me that in her youth she could perform the 'saut de basque' and even the 'gargouillade', and that nobody had ever seen her thighs, although she always ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... return of Melbourne and Palmerston to power, Zumalacarregui won a victory in the valley of Amascoas on April 21 and 22, 1835, which opened to him the road to Madrid. The Madrid government now appealed to France to send 12,000 men to occupy the Basque provinces. By the terms of the quadruple alliance the assent of Great Britain and Portugal was necessary in order to determine the manner in which France was to render assistance. Thiers, on behalf of Louis Philippe, suggested a separate French expedition on the lines of that ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... horizon, and its gorjus light pores in a golden meller flud through the winders, and makes the young lady twict as beautiful nor what she was before, which is onnecessary. She is magnificently dressed up in a Berage basque, with poplin trimmins, More Antique, Ball Morals and 3 ply carpeting. Also, considerable gauze. Her dress contains 16 flounders and her shoes is red morocker, with gold spangles onto them. Presently she jumps up with a wild snort, and pressin her hands to her brow, she exclaims: "Methinks ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... clothing to last me until I could get some things from the East, and gave me a grey and white percale dress with a basque, and a border, and although it was all very much too large for me, it sufficed to ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... delirium the sweet, fresh voice of the child of the regiment would soothe them, singing above their wretched beds some carol or chant of their own native province, which it always seemed she must know by magic; for, were it Basque or Breton, were it a sea-lay of Vendee or a mountain-song of the Orientales, were it a mere, ringing rhyme for the mules of Alsace, or a wild, bold romanesque from the country of Berri—Cigarette knew each and all, and never erred by any chance, but ever sung to every soldier the rhythm ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... for making bread, called, as we have said in our first book, yucca, ages, and maize; they likewise use the fruit of the palm-trees. The Germans, Flemings and English, as well as the Spanish mountaineers in the Basque provinces and the Asturias, and the Austrians, Swabians, and Swiss in the Alps make beer from barley, wheat, and fruits in the same manner. The Spaniards report that at Comogra they drank white and red wines of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... vaguely down at herself. She had no belt to stick her violets in. She wore no belt. She wore a basque. A basque is a beltless something that you can't remember, but that females did, once upon a time, cover the upper half of their forms with. Basques buttoned down the front with ten to thirty buttons, and may be studied ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... different, closely resembled Don Miguel de Unamuno. It is not my purpose to enter into the wasp-nest of racial disquisitions. If there is a race in the world over which more sense and more nonsense can be freely said for lack of definite information than the Welsh, it is surely this ancient Basque people, whose greatest contemporary figure is perhaps Don Miguel de Unamuno. I am merely setting down that intuitional fact for what it may be worth, though I do not hide my opinion that such promptings of ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... rascals—were standing round the door, and amid them facing the dais was a young fellow in the uniform of the light infantry. As he turned his head I recognised him. It was Captain Auret, of the 7th, a young Basque with whom I had drunk many a ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... peasantry to supply the English with provisions or forage, on pain of death; it stated that we were savages, and, as a proof of this, our horses were born with short tails. I saw this absurd proclamation, which was published in French and in the Basque languages, and distributed all over the country. Before we left the neighbourhood of Bayonne for Bordeaux, a soldier was hanged for robbery, on the sands of the Adour. This sort of punishment astonished the French almost ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... grizzled hair and eyebrows to match, which were all fastened on with a certain liquid so firmly to the skin that it was necessary to apply vinegar in which the ashes of vine-twigs had been steeped, when they instantly fell off. My Basque was at length dressed in a torn, threadbare cassock, masked by his false beard, with an old hat upon his head, a breviary under his arm, and a tolerably thick stick in his hand, and received an order to post himself near the little ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... turned to the candles, and now and again, when she moved her head, a bright light caught her brow, the gold rings sparkled in her ears, the tip of her nose shone, and the wings of her cap stood out in the shadow like the wings of a bird. She wore a coarse woollen skirt, over which hung the full basque of her flowered jacket, but as Tobias' arm was round her waist the stiff pleats were not in such ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... He left us when we reached Madrid, for the purpose of entering France through the Basque countries; but this month the General received another letter from him—he is staying in Italy. The General, it seems, had written that he had obtained my consent to become his wife, and the answer is—'Whatever will conduce to your happiness, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... of the Don de Dieu at Tadousac, Champlain found that Pont-Grave had been attacked by Captain Darache, a Basque, who continued to trade furs with the Indians in spite of the king's commands. Darache had brought all his guns to bear upon the Levrier, and Pont-Grave being unable to defend himself, had offered no resistance, whereupon Darache's crew had boarded the vessel and carried off the cannon and arms, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... battle. The Nervian cohorts, either from panic or treachery, left our flanks exposed; thus the legions had to bear the brunt. They had already lost their standards and were being cut down in the trenches, when a fresh reinforcement suddenly changed the fortune of the fight. Some Basque auxiliaries,[322] originally levied by Galba, who had now been summoned to the rescue, on nearing the camp heard the sound of fighting, and while the enemy were occupied, came charging in on their rear. This caused more consternation than their numbers warranted, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... same calling, make such fusions. In this fraternity of vagabonds, those of the Mediterranean seaboard represented the East, those of the Atlantic seaboard the West. Many Basques conversed with many Irishmen. The Basque and the Irishman understand each other—they speak the old Punic jargon; add to this the intimate relations of Catholic Ireland with Catholic Spain—relations such that they terminated by bringing to the gallows in London one almost ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... His long black hair scattered over the straw bolster contrasted with the olive pallor of his face. It occurred to me he might be a Basque. It didn't necessarily follow that he should understand Spanish; but I tried him with the few words I know, and also with some French. The whispered sounds I caught by bending my ear to his lips puzzled me utterly. That afternoon ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... of spoken languages to a small number of "stocks." We must still operate with a quite considerable number of these stocks. Some of them, like Indo-European or Indo-Chinese, are spoken over tremendous reaches; others, like Basque,[128] have a curiously restricted range and are in all likelihood but dwindling remnants of groups that were at one time more widely distributed. As for the single or multiple origin of speech, it is likely enough that language as ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... was marked by a decided advance in both the development and the application of sea-power. Previously its operation had been confined to the Mediterranean or to coast waters outside it. Spanish or Basque seamen—by their proceedings in the English Channel—had proved the practicability of, rather than been engaged in, ocean warfare. The English, who withstood them, were accustomed to seas so rough, to seasons so uncertain, and to weather so boisterous, that the ocean ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... from the Occident have been Spain and Portugal, the possibility of the introduction of French, Italian, and even Belgian stories through the medium of priests of those nationalities must not be overlooked. Furthermore, there is a no inconsiderable number of Basque sailors to be found on the small inter-island steamers that connect one end of the archipelago with the other. Even a very cursory glance at the tales in this collection reveals the fact that many of them are more or less close variants ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... very moment the confused murmur of voices and music stops all regular proceedings: old women and children tattling; apes, bears, and show-boxes under the windows; French rattling, English swearing, outrageous Italians, frisking minstrels; tambours de basque at every corner; myself distracted; a confounded squabble of cooks and haranguing German couriers just arrived, their masters following open-mouthed; nothing to eat, the steam of ham and flesh-pots all the while provoking their appetite; Mynheers very busy with the realities, and smoking as deliberately ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... comparatively a sober race. The origin of the drink called whisky in modern parlance, is involved in considerable obscurity. Some authorities consider that the word is derived from the first part of the term usquebaugh; others suppose it to be derived from the name of a place, the Basque provinces, where some such compound was concocted in the fourteenth century. In Morewood's History of Inebriating Liquors, he gives a list of the ingredients used in the composition of usquebaugh, and none of these are ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... who was by no means so much afraid as he seemed to be, saw that the secretary was trying to cozen him, and promised to give him a pasty of the best Basque ham (3) that he had ever eaten. The secretary was well pleased at this, and begged that he might have the pasty on the following Sunday after dinner, which was ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... and learned Celtic Polyglott Grammar, giving a Comparative View of the Breton, Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and Basque Languages. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... ruefully. "No, not ezackly a fortune! There was a place I 'eard of, right up in the Basque country—'twas an old deserted garden, where zey 'ad buried treasure, centuries ago—I 'ad it quite certainly from a friend. We came up there for a time but we found nothing." He sighed and then was instantly cheered ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the reply. "They speak a language which seems to be about one-third Basque, mixed oddly with Greek. It merely proves another hypothesis of mine, namely, that the Atlantean influence reached eastward to the Pyrenees mountains and the Hellenic peninsula, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Picard, Bourguignon, Cascaret, Basque, La Verdure, Lorrain, Provencal, La Violette. I wish the deuce took all these footmen! I do not think there is a gentleman in France worse served than I am! These rascals are always ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... instincts which in after years led me away from these paths of peace already existed within me; but they were dormant. From the accident of my birth I was torn by conflicting forces. There was some Basque and Bordeaux blood in my mother's family, and unknown to me the Gascon half of myself played all sorts of tricks with the Breton half. Even my family was divided, my father, my grandfather, and my uncles being, as I have already said, the reverse of clerical, while my ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... loose basque, which, because of the budding beauty of her form rather than because of any merit of its own, had seemed to him most charming and attractive. Close examination did not show this to be the case. It was a crude garment, certainly, of crude material, crude cut, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... The Basque, Breton, and Norman, fishermen are believed to have made their voyages as early as the year 1504, just 100 years before Champlain entered the mouth of the St. John river. But these early navigators were too intent upon their own immediate gain ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... of ancient Basque family, he was the son of a distinguished member of the household of Louis XIII., the King himself being the child's godfather. Frontenac's youthful passion was to be a soldier, and at the early age of fifteen he went to the war in Holland to serve under the Prince of Orange. Within the next ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... her blue cotton dress, a band of embroidery in the neck of its close-fitting basque, and around her waist a long, white apron which reached beyond her ample hips to the middle of her back, lingered this morning, dust-cloth in hand, at the door of my sitting-room. There was something else ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... Bas-Quercy bird-carol of this kind is printed by Mr. H. J. L. J. Masse in his delightful "Book of Old Carols,"{26} a collection of the words and music of Christmas songs in many languages—English, Latin, German, Flemish, Basque, Swedish, Catalan, Provencal, and French of various ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... population, or series of populations, whose fate it has been to be driven by the great races out of the fruitful lands to take refuge in mountains and deserts. The retainers of the couvade in Asia are the Miau-tsze of China and the savage Tibareni of Pontus. In Europe they are the Basque race of the Pyrenees, whose peculiar manners, appearance, and language, coupled with their geographical position, favour the view that they are the remains of a people driven westward and westward, by the pressure of more powerful tribes, till they came to these ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... of marital happiness. Occasionally, in more serious moods, she might talk largely about Archie's "going into business" when they "got their money," but as time went on and Archie displayed little aptitude for managing money, she talked less about this. Adelle would have been content to buy the Basque villa they had rented and establish herself and Archie there in complete idleness and luxury, provided he would always be "good" to her, by which she meant faithful to those unconsidered marriage vows made in the Paris consulate, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... of the aboriginal languages, numbering over four hundred, some philologists are inclined to attribute them all to a common origin, the Basque tongue being one of the two or three in Europe which have a like peculiarity. In the languages of the American Indians one syllable is piled upon another, each with a distinct root-significance, so that a single ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... own responsibility not to take the ground; and it shows the total ignorance under which labored all who were charged with an undertaking that could only succeed as a surprise, executed with unhesitating rapidity. Hawke himself was astounded at finding in Basque Roads, before Rochefort, "a safe spacious road in which all the navy of England, merchant ships included, may ride without the least annoyance. Before I came here, the place was represented as very difficult of access, and so narrow that ships could not lie ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... was chosen. He was a Biscayan, a member of that ancient race which neither Romans nor Moors were ever able to subdue. Nothing is known about his antecedents. Not improbably he was a son of one of the innumerable small gentlemen with whom the Basque provinces used to swarm. Almost every house in the little towns even to-day has its coat of arms over the door. Every inhabitant claimed to be a nobleman, and in the reign of Charles V. they furnished many soldiers of repute in the wars ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... frame of carved wood; and, finally, a suit of clothes hung against the wall in the position of a human figure, consisting of a jaunty scarlet cap, with a little flag of the United States fastened to the front by an army-badge; a basque, skirt, and trousers of blue cloth, with a worn and clumsy pair of boots below. From a belt fastened across the waist hung a little barrel, a flask, and by a wide ribbon of red, white and blue, a boatswain's ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin |
