"Minstrelsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Christian, "I blame not the love of minstrelsy and of the GAI SCIENCE; albeit, we yield unto it even too much room in our thoughts when they should be bent on better things. But prayers and holy psalms are better fitting than LAIS of love, or of wine-cups, when men walk in this Valley of the Shadow of Death, full of fiends and demons, whom ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... true, then, Sir,' exclaimed Lilias. 'He doth verily add minstrelsy to his other graces? Know you the lines, Sir? Can you sing them to us? Oh, I ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ethiopian minstrelsy can amuse, if it does not charm, a weary soul, and such a vacant hour there was on this same Friday evening. The "opera-house" was spacious and admirably ventilated. As I was listening to the merriment of the sooty buffoons, I happened to ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... intimate with Mr. Marriott, of Rokeby; with Mr. Surtees, the beauty of whose forged ballads almost makes us forgive him for having palmed them off as genuine; and with Walter Scott, then chiefly known as "the compiler of the 'Border Minstrelsy,'" but who a few years later immortalized his friendship for Richard Heber by the sixth of his introductions to "Marmion,"—the best known, as it contains the description of the Christmas of the olden time. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... navigation, and very young men who, for the price of a ticket, a cigar, and a glass of beer, purchase the flattering delusion that they are "seeing life," and "going it with a perfect looseness." The performances consist of Ethiopian minstrelsy, comic songs, farces, and the dancing of "beauteous Terpsichorean nymphs"; and these succeed one another with not a minute's intermission for three or four hours. At St. Louis, where gentlemen connected with navigation are numerous, the Varieties Theatre is large, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... fell across my sunny path;— A hectic flush burned on my mother's cheeks; She daily failed and nearer drew to death. Pauline would often come with sun-lit face, Cheating the day of half its languid hours With cheering chapters from the holy book, And border tales and wizard minstrelsy: And mother loved her all the better for it. With feeble hands upon our sad-bowed heads, And in a voice all tremulous with tears, She said to us: 'Dear children, love each other— Bear and forbear, and come to me in heaven;' And praying for us daily—drooped ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... soldiery. He kept them constantly to the exercise of arms, making them adroit in the use of their weapons and management of their steeds, and prompt for the field at a moment's notice. He permitted no sound of lute or harp or song or other loose minstrelsy to be heard in his fortress, debauching the ear and softening the valor of the soldier; no other music was allowed but the wholesome rolling of the drum and braying of the trumpet, and such like spirit-stirring instruments as fill the mind with thoughts of iron war. All wandering minstrels, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... possibly accounted for the contrary character of the names, for there was little euphony in the minstrelsy of the one or a monopoly of brindle appearance in the other, for each faction's contingent, were about equally spotted with the sons of Ham. My friends, Benjamin & Barnes, were prominent as Brindles, and I, being to an extent a novice in the politics of the State, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... bond made between two persons was made between Geraint and the maiden, and the choicest of all Gwenhwyvar's apparel was given to the maiden; and thus arrayed, she appeared comely and graceful to all who beheld her. And that day and that night were spent in abundance of minstrelsy, and ample gifts of liquor, and a multitude of games. And when it was time for them to go to sleep, they went. And in the chamber where the couch of Arthur and Gwenhwyvar was, the couch of Geraint and Enid was prepared. And from that time she became ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... Sounds, moreover, of mirth and revelry approached his ear. He would instantly have proceeded to ascertain the cause of this inauspicious merry-making had not Kate's injunction kept him aloof. The noise of minstrelsy was now heard—symptoms of the marriage-feast and the banquet. More than once he suspected some witchery, some delusion of the enemy to beguile him by enchantments. However, he resolved to be quiet; ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Sweet Orpheus, lord of minstrelsy, For this with flute and pipe came nigh The danger of the dog's heads three That ravening at hell's door doth lie; Fain was Narcissus, fair and shy, For love's love lightly lost and won, In a deep well to drown and die; Good luck has he that ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the last pilaff— Forbidden draughts, 'tis said, he dared to quaff, Though to the rest the sober berry's juice[208] The slaves bear round for rigid Moslems' use; 640 The long chibouque's[209] dissolving cloud supply, While dance the Almas[210] to wild minstrelsy. The rising morn will view the chiefs embark; But waves are somewhat treacherous in the dark: And revellers may more securely sleep On silken couch than o'er the rugged deep: Feast there who can—nor combat till they must, And less to conquest than to Korans ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of the Baronessa di Carini, and the so-called Caso di Sciacca, may still be heard upon the lips of the people. But these exceptions are insignificant in comparison with the vast mass of songs which deal with love; and I cannot find that Tuscany, where the language of this minstrelsy is purest, and where the artistic instincts of the race are strongest, has anything at all approaching to our ballads.[21] Though the Tuscan contadini are always singing, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... into brief stanzas, and easily might be mistaken for the grating buzz of an insect, especially if heard at a distance of a few rods. It possesses little or no musical quality, and is perhaps the most curious style of bird minstrelsy with which I am acquainted. In comparison the chippie's trill sounds loud and clear and bell-like, with a distinctly melodious quality of tone. The song of the little clay-colored sparrow is also marked by a kind of drawl, giving one the impression that the bird is just a little ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the rill's blithe minstrelsy; In willow bough or alder bush Birds sing, o'er golden filigree Of pebbles 'neath the flood's ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... portrait of Charles the Martyr-King, by Vandyck, in Windsor. He was a convinced and earnest supporter of the claims of Carlos Septimo, whom he regarded as a cousin, and a sort of modern counterpart of the young Chevalier, the "darling Charlie" of Jacobite minstrelsy. He received us with the hospitality of his nation, and we had a long chat as we paced the deck briskly, the Count discussing the prospects of the rising, and then verging off into gay anecdotes of his military ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... rustic walk, which zigzags round the property, following to the southwest the many windings of the Belle Borne streamlet. This sylvan region most congenial to the tastes of a naturalist, echoes in spring and summer with the ever-varying and wild minstrelsy of the robin, the veery, the songsparrow, the red-start, the hermit-thrush, the red-eyed flycatcher and other feathered choristers, while the golden-winged woodpecker or rain fowl, heralds at dawn the coming ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... sunny land of Provence, where the guild flourished, but not a single line of it remains to us. Moreover, it is certain that the Eastern minstrels left their impress in Spain, and that the Crusaders brought back from the Orient, among many other novelties, the custom of encouraging minstrelsy. The Arabian bards sang chiefly of love, as they well might in a land where female loveliness received such excessive worship. At the Saracenic courts, the bards were ever ready to win gratitude, and even more substantial rewards, by praising the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... him as to the best knight or gentleman of the land. We may make good our lodging by a tune or a song; and it may remember you that I undertook (provided it pleased your ladyship) to temporize a little with the Scots, who, poor souls, love minstrelsy, and when they have but a silver penny, will willingly bestow it to encourage the gay science—I promised you, I say, that we should be as welcome to them as if we had been born amidst their own wild hills; and for the best that such a house as Dickson's affords, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... phrase "great admittance" is rendered clear by a decree of Edward II. published in the year 1315, and called forth by the dishonest practice of certain persons who procured entertainment under colour of minstrelsy. It was therefore ordered that "to the houses of prelates, earls, and barons none resort to meat and drink unless he be a minstrel, and that of these minstrels there come none except it be three or four Minstrels of Honour at the most in one day, unless he be desired of the lord ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... See the essay on the Fairy Superstition, in the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," of which many of the materials were contributed by Dr. Leyden, and the whole brought into its present form ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields. Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1945. Folk tales about Gib rather than minstrelsy. OP. ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... for all of this there's a price— 'Tis the price of minstrelsy— You will never have of the things you play, Sad singer of poetry, And throughout your life you will go for aye, Heart-hungry and silently!" I heard a voice from the far away Softly say ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... sometimes amused by the minuteness with which the expenditure of the smallest sum in so large an establishment as John of Gaunt's is detailed, these little incidents prepare us for the statement given of Henry's early youth by the chroniclers,—that he was fond both of minstrelsy and ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... celebrated composition was ever sung in the West was in the music store of Munger Bros, in the old concert hall building on Third street. "Dixie" at once became very popular, and was soon on the program of every minstrel troupe in the country. Dan Emmet devoted his whole life to minstrelsy and he organized the first traveling minstrel troupe in the United States, starting from some point in ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... our Teuton ancestors had for their scalds, or polishers of language, when poetry and music were linked together by the voice and harp of minstrelsy, and when the divine right to fill the office of bard meant the divine faculty to invent a few heroic stanzas ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... Giles- On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called-called-called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat instead, Vacantly brooding On home and bed, Till both together Stood up and said.- 'Us knows not, dreams not, Where you be, ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... Sir Walter was sincere, for he inserted the poem in the "English Minstrelsy." It may now be found in these volumes, Vol. I. p. 230, where, in consequence of the recollection of Sir Walter, and as illustrative of manners now obsolete, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... occhi a terra inchina." When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline, And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh Soft as his touch, and leads a minstrelsy Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine, He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine, And to my thoughts brings transformation high, So that I say, "My time has come to die, If fate so blest a death for me design." But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound Brings such a ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... music, and the sounds of dancing, floated out into the night. The little fellow clasped his hands in ecstasy and listened. He had never heard such melody, and it made his heart ache to think how poor and mean was his own minstrelsy compared with that with which his ears were now ravished. The wind blew fierce and keen down the grand street, whirling the snow about in blinding clouds, but the boy neither saw nor heard the strife of the elements. He heard only the exquisite melody that came floating out to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that day, with dancing-women and singing-women, and all the instruments of mirth and minstrelsy were smitten, whilst the queen and the Vizier and his son were exceeding assiduous in keeping up the festivities, so the Lady Bedrulbudour should rejoice and her chagrin be dispelled; nay, they left nought that day of that which exciteth unto liesse but they did it before her, so she should leave ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... there may be forthcoming, father," said Henry Smith, "though the blast of the bellows and the clatter of the anvil make but coarse company to lays of minstrelsy; but I can afford them no better, since I must mend my fortune, though I mar ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... himself. At a later period, when Miss Scott, Walter's aunt, removed from Smailholm to Kelso, the intercourse between the families was renewed. Scott was then an Edinburgh advocate, engaged in collecting materials for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, or, as his aunt described his pursuit, "running after the auld wives of the country gatherin' havers." He used frequently to read over by the fireside in the evening the results of his curious ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine, hearty enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena of nature—spring with its flowers, the green fields, and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground, without perspective. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of Ulster, returned hale and well from the land of Faylinn, and much did he entertain the King and all the court with tales of the smallness of the Wee Folk, and their marvel at his own size, and their bravery and beauty, and their marble palaces and matchless minstrelsy. ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... gentler fate?'— 'We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing, A-conquering! Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide, We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide:— Come hither, lady fair, and joined be To our wild minstrelsy!' ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... one could have revived the true heroic style, it would have been done by Walter Scott, with his delight in the border minstrelsy, and his martial ardour; but the romantic spirit was too strong upon him. He had laid hold of the right tradition, could give picturesque scenes and characters of a bygone time, and Bonnie Dundee ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... hush fell upon the vast audience as a sad-faced minstrel uttered in tear-compelling accents the most pathetic words in all the literature of minstrelsy: ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... far in the gloom, the furtive scamper of scrub fowl among leaves made tender by decay, the splash of startled fish in the shadows, commingled and blended to the accompaniment of that subdued aerial buzz by which Nature manifests the more secret of her functions and art—that ineffable minstrelsy to which her silent battalions keep step. Preoccupation, the whirl of my own temperate thoughts, scared silence, while as soon as the mental machine was stilled, the very trees became vocal. Thus have I caught fleet silences as they passed ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... far deeper and wider than that of minstrelsy wrought in the favorable influence of chivalry on the condition of women, causes psychological, physiological, and social. The exalting effect of love is well known; its inciting and glorifying power is seen even in ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... p. 54-5.) Ascham, while lamenting in 1545 (Toxophilus, p. 29) 'that the laudable custom of England to teach children their plain song and prick-song' is 'so decayed throughout all the realm as it is,' denounces the great practise of instrumental music by older students: "the minstrelsy of lutes, pipes, harps, and all other that standeth by such nice, fine, minikin fingering, (such as the most part of scholars whom I know use, if they use any,) is far more fit, for the womanishness of it, to dwell in the Court among ladies, than for any great thing in it which should help ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... this, for I had seen the first volumes of "The Minstrelsy of the Border," and had copied a number of old things from my mother's recital, and sent them to the editor preparatory for a third volume. I accordingly went towards home to put on my Sunday clothes, but before reaching it I met with THE SHIRRA and Mr. William ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... playing the organ? She touches it mightily true!" "She travels from Havenpool Town," the deacon would softly speak, "The stipend can hardly cover her fare hither twice in the week." (It fell far short of doing, indeed; but I never told, For I have craved minstrelsy more than ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... of the mead There swelled a sob of minstrelsy, Faint sackbuts and the dreamy reed, And plaintive lips of maids thereby, And songs blown out like ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... dearest: and yet you may; methinks it is the last night I shall ever listen to minstrelsy—not but that there is philosophy in music, for it teaches us to forget care; it is to the ear what perfume is to the smell. How exquisite is music! the only earthly joy of which we are assured we shall taste in ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... denationalizing his own name into Donizetti. The Scottish predilections of our composer show themselves in the music of "Don Pasquale," noticeably in "Com' e gentil;" and the score of "Lucia" is strongly flavored by Scottish sympathy and minstrelsy. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... drink among the burdock leaves, and then watch the quiet house, and lawn, and flowers, and fair human creatures, and shining water, all sleeping breathless in the glorious light beneath the glorious blue, till we doze off, lulled by the murmur of a thousand insects, and the rich minstrelsy of nightingale ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... pom'granate; But from the Mighty Warden fledst; and now, The fugitive of Fate, Thou farest in our life as in a dream, Still wandering with thy lute, Like that sweet paynim lady of old song, Who sang and wandered long, For love of her Aucassin, seeking him! So with thy minstrelsy Thou roamest, dreaming of the country dim, Below the ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... which first led Scott to test his own powers, his genius soon turned to more appropriate and natural subjects. Ever since his earliest college days he had been collecting, in those excursions of his into Liddesdale and elsewhere, materials for a book on The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; and the publication of this work, in January, 1802 (in two volumes at first), was his first great literary success. The whole edition of eight hundred copies was sold within the year, while ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... The minstrelsy of Ireland seems to have drifted into the hands of the most unpoetical people in the green isle. The poor old creature walked very, very slowly along the gutter, ever and anon giving herself a suggestive twitch, which plainly indicated some cutaneous titillation—the South is a grazing country. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... time, in a low tone, as if afraid of awakening the dawn, chaunted, now an old song of Normandy, and now a ballad upon the fate of some lost voyageur. The moon was yet shining, and he was in the mood to enjoy such minstrelsy; but when they neared the opposite shore, a feeling of sadness and apprehension stole over him, as he thought of meeting his father, to whom he knew he must either communicate distasteful tidings, or what was ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... upon us that in our holiest moments no less than when we are wayward and criminal, our trust for personal safety, and our only chance of blessing are from our exalted Daysman, who can lay his hand upon us both. Our praise would be unmeaning minstrelsy, our prayers a litany unheard and obsolete, all our devotional service a bootless trouble, but that "yonder the Intercessor stands and pours his all-prevailing prayer." It is "through Him we both," the Jews who crucified Him and the Gentiles, who by their ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... drinking deep, Are glad at heart straightway To feel once more the friendly heat of the sun Creative in you (as when in youth it shone), And pulsing brainward with the rhythmic wealth Of all the summer whose high minstrelsy Shall soon crown field and tree, To call back age to youth again, and pain to ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... went; 185 Thomas followed at her hand; Then ladies came, both fair and gent, With courtesy to her kneeland[46]. Harp and fithel both they fand[47], Gittern and also the sawtery[48], 190 Lute and ribib[49] both gangand[50], And all manner of minstrelsy. The most marvel that Thomas thought, When that he stood upon the floor, For fifty hartes in were brought, 195 That were bothe great and store[51]. Raches lay lapping in the blood; Cookes came with dressing-knife; They brittened[52] them as they were wood; Revel ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... form of the tale Tannhaeuser lived goodness knows how long with Venus; then he forsook her, and she vowed to take vengeance on him. He returned to his friends, and entered for a competition in minstrelsy. While in the middle of his song, which would have gained him the prize, Venus visited him with sudden madness, and throwing away all cant about pure platonic love, he chanted the praise of foul carnal lust and the joy of living with the Goddess of Love in the heart of ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... of a citerne was heard in the street below her window,—nothing new in these piping times of love and minstrelsy; but so sensitive was the ear now become to exterior impressions, that she started, as though expecting a salutation from the midnight rambler. Her anticipations were in some measure realised, the minstrel pausing beneath her lattice. A wooden balcony projected from it, concealing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... From minstrelsy's melee, Its foam and its surge, A Keats or a Shelley May haply emerge; Or there may be a Tupper To leaven the lot— Some bards are immortal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... his Knights, and told how they lay sleeping under the Eildon Hills, waiting to be awakened at the Crack of Doom. He sang of Gawaine, and Merlin, Tristrem and Isolde; and those who listened to the wondrous story felt somehow that they would never hear such minstrelsy again. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... of the year, When the sun apace must turn, The seven bright angels 'gan to hear Heaven's twin gates outward yearn: Forth with its light and minstrelsy A lordly troop came speeding by, And joyed to see each ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... and distempered child: Thou pourest on him thy soft influences. Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sheets, Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and a dissonant thing, Amid this general dance and minstrelsy; But, bursting into tears, wins back his way, His angry spirit healed and harmonized By the benignant touch ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... Nag's Head. On the following day he led his troops over the Rule water, famous for the warriors of old who dwelt near its banks; and over the Knot o' Gate into Liddiesdale, "noted in former times for its predatory hands, as in more recent times for its primitive yeomen and romantic minstrelsy."[73] After a march of twenty-five miles, the Prince arrived at Haggiehaugh, upon Liddel water; here he slept, the Highlanders finding their quarters for the night as well as they could in barns, or byres, or houses, as their fortune might be. On the eighth of November ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... by Jocelyn, so completely was he engrossed by the fair creature at his side. Even the noise of the May Games, which, temporarily interrupted by Hugh Calveley, had recommenced with greater vigour than ever—the ringing of the church bells, the shouts of the crowd, and the sounds of the merry minstrelsy, scarcely reached his ear. For the first time he experienced those delicious sensations which new-born love excites within the breast; and the enchantment operated upon him so rapidly and so strongly, that he was overpowered by its spell almost before aware of it. It seemed ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of conventions and speech-making in concert rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... in this anthology of traditional song are the "Cleveland Lyke-wake Dirge" and "A Dree Neet." The former has been well known to lovers of poetry since Sir Walter Scott included it in his Border Minstrelsy; the latter, I believe, was never published until the appearance of T' Hunt o' Yatton Brigg in 1896. The tragic power and suggestiveness of these two poems is very remarkable. It is, I think, fairly certain that they stand in intimate association with one another and point back to a time ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... one corner staring out of the window at the cab lights that wove in and out among the trees, all seeming to be bent upon joyous courses. Taxicabs were still new in New York, and the theme of popular minstrelsy. Landry had sung her a ditty he heard in some theater on Third ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Shirley resumed her ballad minstrelsy. Stopping short, she remarked ere long, "One could have loved Cowper, if it were only for the sake of having the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... heed the many eyes upon her beauty turned; One vision still oppressed her soul, one grief within her burned. The tones of holy minstrelsy, the solemn anthem strain, They were like voices in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... that thou would'st feel a pang for me, 'Twere sweet, methinks, to sleep beneath the wave; Its murmuring song, like sweetest minstrelsy, Would rest a wanderer in an early grave, Within thee, River, many a pale face sleeps— And many a redman's ghost his vigil keeps— And many a maid has watched the dark banks over— He comes not, yet, in truth, he was a ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... rather, as Samuel Johnson said of all versification, a "joining music with reason." Its blending of decorative with structural purpose is in truth "a dictate of nature," or, to quote E. C. Stedman, "In real, that is, spontaneous minstrelsy, the fittest assonance, consonance, time, even rime,... come of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes 35 The merry minstrelsy. ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Goetz von Berlichingen—the first of which was hastily made into a little book, daintily printed and bound, in order to help his suit with an early love, so easy, so little premeditated, was this beginning. With equal simplicity and absence of intention he slid into the Border Minstrelsy, which he intended not for the beginning of a long literary career, but in the first place for "a job" to Ballantyne the printer, whom he had persuaded to establish himself in Edinburgh—the best of printers and the most attached of faithful and humble friends—and for fun and the pleasure ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... all noble; I play at chess so free, At ravelling runes I'm ready, At books and smithery; I'm skill'd o'er ice at skimming On skates, I shoot and row, And few at harping match me, Or minstrelsy, I trow.' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... of modern minstrelsy shows how very dangerous it is to write even on the English poetry of the day. Eighteen is long odds against a single critic, and Major Bellenden, in "Old Mortality," tells us that three to one are odds as ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... courtier gay, Dipped down with a dalliant song, And twanged his wings through the roundelay Of love the whole day long: Yet my rose returned from his minstrelsy And hid in the leaves in ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... the street; no paces mind, Except my own, to walk the drawing-room, Or in the ball-room to come off with grace; No leap for me, to match the light coupe; No music like the violin and harp, To which the huntsman's dog and horn I find Are somewhat coarse and homely minstrelsy: Then fields of ill-dressed rustics, you'll confess, Are well exchanged for rooms of beaux and belles In short, I've ta'en another thought of ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... by the polite reception which you have given to the Border Minstrelsy and am particularly flattered that so very good a judge of poetical Antiquities finds any reason to be pleased with the work.—There is no portrait of the Flower of Yarrow in existence, nor do I think it very probable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... officer of high rank shelters his noble head with a great umbrella of crimson and gold, while others wave golden fans before him. On these occasions he is invariably preceded by musicians, who announce his approach with cheerful minstrelsy ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... mute amid the festal crowd, When lay of hopeless love, or glory won, Aroused the fearful or subdued the proud. At each according pause was heard aloud Thine ardent symphony sublime and high! Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed; For still the burden of thy minstrelsy Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... early love of song and minstrelsy was still alive, had entered the room at the sound of Edward's voice, in sufficient time to accompany the second stanza on the violin. He now, with the air of one who was entitled to judge in these matters, expressed his ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kilt, or ancient Highland dress, with the purse, pistol, and durk — a broad yellow ribbon, fixed to the chanter-pipe, is thrown over his shoulder, and trails along the ground, while he performs the function of his minstrelsy; and this, I suppose, is analogous to the pennon or flag which was formerly carried before every knight in battle. — He plays before the laird every Sunday in his way to the kirk, which he circles three times, performing the family march which implies defiance to all the enemies of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... rather dwell a hermit In some silent peaceful wood, Where no voice of human being Ever breaks the solitude; Where babbling brook, and minstrelsy Of winged friends are heard To join the sylvan choruses Of leaves when gently stirred, Than live in costly splendor With a heartless, greedy throng, Whose only thought is sordid pelf Obtained ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... man, and folk drank about and were merry, till the chieftain arose again and smote the board with the flat of his sword, and cried out in a loud and angry voice, so that all could hear: "Now let there be music and minstrelsy ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... rejoicing over the abundance which rewarded the labor of the closing year! And the listening, too, has many a time and oft filled my bosom with emotions, and opened my heart with charity and love toward this subject and dependent race, such as no oratory, no rhetoric or minstrelsy in all ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... inspired by her mother's voice—almost imbibed at her mother's breast—lived through all neglect, and survived all opposition. It found its nourishment in childish recollections, in snatches of street minstrelsy heard through her window, in the passage of the night winds of winter through the groves on the Pincian Mount, and received its rapturous gratification in the first audible sounds from the Roman senator's lute. How her possession ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... is this chilled bosom's only queen, But how would homage from its depths have burst In gushing minstrelsy at bright sixteen, If then these eyes had rested ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... on the Sabbath morn, and how carefully I combed my hair and brushed my clothes in order that I might do credit to the Sabbath day. I thought of the old church at pretty D—-, the dignified rector, and yet more dignified clerk. I thought of England's grand Liturgy, and Tate and Brady's sonorous minstrelsy. I thought of the Holy Book, portions of which I was in the habit of reading between service. I thought, too, of the evening walk which I sometimes took in fine weather like the present, with my mother and brother—a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... far off, upon the ground, A something shining in the dark, And knew the glow-worm by his spark; So, stooping down from hawthorn top, He thought to put him in his crop. The worm, aware of his intent, Harangued him thus, right eloquent: "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he, "As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song; For 'twas the self-same Power Divine Taught you to sing, and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night." The songster heard his short oration, And warbling out his approbation, Released ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... with his music. This noble bird, though so far from his native fields, and shut up in his narrow prison, pours forth his rapturous melody in an almost unbroken stream from dawn to sunset. He allows no change of season to abate his minstrelsy, to any observable degree, and seems equally happy and musical all the year round. I have had him nearly two years, and though of course he must moult his feathers yearly, I have not observed the change of plumage, nor ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... bumblebee follows closely in his wake, until the sounds of both are lost in the distance. The hum of this bumblebee is a frequent musical feature of the entertainment, and many is the dance that is set to its minstrelsy, as the burly insect darts in among the merrymakers and is off to his perch near by. It is only as we steal away and observe him closely that we learn the secret of his occasional sorties. There on a clover blossom he sits—sipping honey? Oh ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... snails be red. I lie not. The French buy minstrelsy, but breed jests, and make their own mirth. The Germans foster their set fools, with ear-caps, which move them to laughter by simulating madness; a calamity that asks pity, not laughter. In this particular I deem that lighter nation wiser than the graver German. What sayest thou? ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "Kinmont Willie" is from The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, together with The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1880). Sir Walter, in his introduction to the ballad, states that because the piece had been "much mangled by reciters," "some conjectural emendations ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... this little book is tasteful and appropriate. Praise is due to the typography, paper, and binding, and, above all, to Mr. Cole's highly dramatic and spirited designs, of which the best shows the bride, her groom, and the "merry minstrelsy" entering the hall.'—Athenaeum. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... when some greater billow struck the barrack, and its pillars quivered and sprang under the blow. It was then that the foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see before me still in his rock-habit of undecipherable rags, would get his fiddle down and strike up human minstrelsy amid the music of the storm. But it was in sunshine only that I saw Dhu Heartach; and it was in sunshine, or the yet lovelier summer afterglow, that the steamer would return to Earraid, ploughing an enchanted sea; the obedient lighters, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like the fox-sparrow, sojourned a few weeks, favoring all listeners with their sweet and simple melodies; but the chief musician of the American forests, the hermit thrush, passed silently, and would not deign to utter a note of his unrivalled minstrelsy until he had reached his remote haunts at the North. Dr. Marvin evidently had a grudge against this shy, distant bird, and often complained, "Why can't he give us a song or two as he lingers here in his journey? I often see him flitting about in ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... solitary walk, I sought a strain not all unworthy Thee, My heart, still ringing with wild worldly talk, Gave forth no note of holier minstrelsy. ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... complained that his life had been without an aim; now he determined that it should be so no longer. The dawning hope began to gladden him that he might take his place among the bards of Scotland, who, themselves mostly unknown, have created that atmosphere of minstrelsy which envelopes and glorifies their native country. This hope and aim is recorded in an entry of his commonplace book, of the probable date of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... finest work of Art he had ever seen, although at other times he held it in unspeakable contempt; then he sat down; then walked to and fro again; then went wandering up into the organ-loft, and touched the keys. But their minstrelsy was changed, their music gone; and sounding one long melancholy chord, Tom drooped his head upon his hands and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... stress and passion, When the sword is all the fashion, Only minstrelsy can keep the world in tune; For the poet is a healer, And both WILL and ELLA WHEELER Are a blessing and a comfort ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... is a ballad on an old theme popular in Scandinavia as well as in this country. There have been many versions of it. Dr. Rimbault published it from a broadside dated 1656. The version here given is Sir Walter Scott's, from his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," with a few touches from other versions given in Professor Francis James Child's noble edition of "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads," which, when complete, will be the chief ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... friends a moment halted in a space Where stood a flowering thorn. Adown it trailed In zigzag curves erratic here and there Long lines of milky bloom, like rills of foam Furrowing the green back of some huge sea wave Refluent from cliffs. Ecstatic minstrelsy Swelled from its branches. Birds as thick as leaves Thronged them; and whether joy was theirs that hour Because the May had come, or joy of love, Or tenderer gladness for their young new-fledged, So piercing was that harmony, the place Eden to Sebert looked, while brake and ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... to his own pure and original style; and, like the dying swan, he sings the sweeter as he is approaching the land where the voice of his minstrelsy shall no more be heard. There is a calm melancholy in the close of his present ode which is very pathetic, and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... theology," remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this sketch of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I have taken no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music with which it was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the meaning of the word "clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one," partly indicates the position of literature in the war between the golden crest and scarlet cap; but in the higher ranks, literature ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... early time for thee To hear the sounds of minstrelsy, That breathe around the rosy shrine Of honest old ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... green-wood side, at summer eve, Poetic visions charm my closing eye; And fairy-scenes, that Fancy loves to weave, Shift to wild notes of sweetest Minstrelsy; 'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey, Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight, Brush from my lids the hues of heav'n away, And all is Solitude, and all is Night! —Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly, Unsheaths its terrors ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... the Sun stroke forth a glorious strain; the worlds are shawns and cymbals for his minstrelsy. The Spirit of Creation pours ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... of 5302 verses, written about 1150 in a mixture of Middle Frankish and Bavarian. It belongs to the order of Spielmannspoesie, or secular minstrelsy; but the author makes frequent reference to what 'the books' say, and evidently meant his work to be read. (The earlier gleemen, so far as known, could not read or write, got their material from oral tradition and composed their poems to be sung or recited to musical accompaniment.) ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... and the cloud-robed sea Shall mourn him first; and then the mother land Weeping in silence by his empty hand And fallen sword that flashed for Liberty. Song-bringer of a glad new minstrelsy, He came and found joy sleeping and swift fanned Old pagan fires, then snatched an altar brand And wrote, "The fearless only shall be free!" Oh, by the flame that made thine heart a home, By the wild ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... out, and saith,—"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" "Hey!" crieth Phoebus, "here be something new; Thy song was wont to cheer me. What is this?" "By Jove!" quoth Corvus, "I sing not amiss. Phoebus," quoth he; "for all thy worthiness, For all thy beauty and all thy gentilesse, For all thy song and all thy minstrelsy, And all thy watching, bleared is thine eye; Yea, and by one no worthier than a gnat, Compared with him should ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... a concert saloon. FRITZ enters and goes through an entire programme of negro minstrelsy, to the wild delight of the gallery. At last the lazy curtain slowly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... Donald Gorm of Sleat and his allies, after laying waste Trouterness in Sky and Kenlochew in Ross, attempted to take the Castle of Eileandonan, but Donald being killed by an arrow shot from the wall, the attempt failed." [Gregory, pp. 145.146. Border Minstrelsy. Anderson, p. 283. Reg. Sec. Sig., vol. xv., fol. 46.] In 1541 King James V. granted a remission to Donald's accomplices - namely, Archibald Ilis, alias Archibald the Clerk, Alexander McConnell Gallich, John Dow Donaldsoun, and twenty-six others whose names are recorded ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... gate and hall there were, And folk went in and out in fear. When he heard the mouse run in the wall, "Hist!" he said, "what next shall befall? Draw not near, speak under your breath, For all new-comers tell of death. Bring me no song nor minstrelsy, Round death it babbleth still," said he. "And what is fame and the praise of men, When ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... anywhere, and collected pennies for the people in boats who had been singing or playing banjos or guitars or even upright pianos. For, it must be explained, there were many in that aquatic crowd who were there to be heard as well as seen, and this gave the affair its pathos. Not that negro minstrelsy as the English have interpreted the sole American contribution to histrionic art, is in itself pathetic, except as it is so lamentably far from the original; but that any obvious labor which adds to our gayety is sorrowful; and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... too, in league with Vice and Shame, And lending all her light to gild a lie; Crowning with laureate-wreaths an impious name, Or lulling us with Siren minstrelsy To false repose when peril most is nigh; Decking things vile or vain with colours rare, Till what is false and foul ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... of the mediaeval revival were the Warton brothers. "The school of Warton" was a term employed, not without disparaging implications, by critics who had no liking for antique minstrelsy. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of Thomas Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, who had been a fellow of Magdalen and Professor of Poetry at Oxford; which latter position was afterward filled by the younger of his two sons. It is interesting to note that a volume of verse by Thomas ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... be of no importance that Jubal invented rude instruments of music, calling them harp and organ; but they were the introduction of all the world's minstrelsy; and as you hear the vibration of a stringed instrument, even after the fingers have been taken away from it, so all music now of lute and drum and cornet is only the long-continued strains of Jubal's harp and Jubal's organ. ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... schoolfellows of Walter Scott at Kelso, and the acquaintance there formed was afterwards renewed. James Ballantyne established the Kelso Mail in 1796, but at the recommendation of Scott, for whom he had printed a collection of ballads, he removed to Edinburgh in 1802. There he printed the "Border Minstrelsy," for Scott, who assisted him with money. Ballantyne was in frequent and intimate correspondence with Murray from the year 1806, and had printed for him Hogg's "Ettrick Shepherd," ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... He moveth nigh: He holds the region: not with tone Of piping shepherd's rural minstrelsy, But belloweth his far cry, Stumbling perchance with mortal pain, Or else in wild amaze, As he our ship surveys ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... stars above, In all their bloom and brightness given, Are, like the attributes of love, The poetry of earth and heaven. Thus Nature's volume, read aright, Attunes the soul to minstrelsy, Tinging life's clouds with rosy light, And all the world ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Cousin Ann dated from Beulah and explaining the sad accident that had occurred. As she concocted these documents between her naps she could never remember in her whole life any such night of mirth and minstrelsy, and not one pang of conscience interfered, to cloud the present joy nor dim that anticipation ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... medicine, Nicias, against Love, neither unguent, methinks, nor salve to sprinkle,—none, save the Muses of Pieria! Now a delicate thing is their minstrelsy in man's life, and a sweet, but hard to procure. Methinks thou know'st this well, who art thyself a leech, and beyond all men art plainly ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... Edwin was no vulgar boy; Deep thought oft seemed to fix his infant eye. Dainties he heeded not, nor gaude, nor toy, Save one short pipe of rudest minstrelsy. Silent when glad; affectionate, though shy; And now his look was most demurely sad, And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why. The neighbours stared and sighed, yet blessed the lad: Some deemed him wondrous wise, and some ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... more," said the lark's sweet voice. "I see no cause to repent my choice; You build your nest in the lofty pine, But is your slumber more sweet than mine? You make more noise in the world than I, But whose is the sweeter minstrelsy?" ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... today by making verses, and the representative of the jongleur, who once sang from castle to castle to the accompaniment of the mediaeval fiddle, and who was so heartily welcomed at all the baronial feasts and merrymakings, is now a wandering beggar, who gathers crusts from the peasants by his rude minstrelsy, that changes from the pious to the obscene, or from the obscene to the pious, as the character and taste of the audience may decide. Many persons, however, contrive to prosper by hunting for truffles in the exhilarating company of pigs. It is not in this fertile ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Spanish Mohammedans were superior in refinement to their Christian adversaries. The latter learned much from their enemies, without losing the patriotic and religious ardor which was fostered by the popular minstrelsy, and by the romantic exploits and encounters with the "infidels." The result was the peculiar spirit of Castilian chivalry. The early development of popular government in Castile increased the feeling of personal independence. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... burly fellows in greatcoats and top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and, before they left, inimitably drunk. They stayed long in the kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of company. The night fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and blinked on the panelled wall. Our illuminated windows must have been visible not only from the back lane of which Fenn had spoken, but from the court where the farmer's gig awaited them. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devil-may-care sort of way, with their sweethearts and their wives. No factory smoke, dear no! There's the rivers, with tropical plants a-shading the banks, O my! There they goes up an' down in their boats, devil-may-care, a-strumming on the banjo,'—he imitated such action,—'and a-singing their nigger minstrelsy with light 'earts. Why? 'Cause they ain't got no work to get up to at 'arf-past five next morning. Their time's their own! That's the condition of an unexploited country, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy." ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... literary amusements as the writer quoted seems to find significant of a growing indifference to truth and sanity in fiction. Once more, I say, these amusements have their place, as the circus has, and the burlesque and negro minstrelsy, and the ballet, and prestidigitation. No one of these is to be despised in its place; but we had better understand that it is not the highest place, and that it is hardly an intellectual delight. The lapse of all the "literary elect" in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... The Grey Brother; and he pub. in 1799 a translation of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen. In 1797 he was m. to Miss Charlotte Margaret Charpentier, the dau. of a French gentleman of good position. The year 1802 saw the publication of Scott's first work of real importance, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, of which 2 vols. appeared, the third following in the next year. In 1804 he went to reside at Ashestiel on the Tweed, where he ed. the old romance, Sir Tristrem, and in ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... was a man whose political life has long since been forgotten, but whose name is well remembered because of his success in quite a different field—Winthrop Mackworth Praed, the charming author of delightful verses, the founder of that English school of minstrelsy which sings for the drawing-room and the club-room, the feasts and the fashions, the joys and the well-ordered troubles of the West-End. Sidney Herbert and Praed were made joint Secretaries to the Board of Control, the department established ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the rest of Mardi much delighted to list to such noble minstrelsy, they agreed not with Bello's poets in deeming the lagoon their ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... till he died in 1180. What life went on in France, went on principally in the south. The lands of Aquitaine and Provence had never dropped the old classical love of poetry and art. A softer form of broken Latin was then spoken, and the art of minstrelsy was frequent among all ranks. Poets were called troubadours and trouveres (finders). Courts of love were held, where there were competitions in poetry, the prize being a golden violet; and many of the bravest warriors were ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uproariously through the dome. Suddenly the character of the music changed, ... from an appealing murmurous complaint and persuasion, it rose to a martial and almost menacing fervor; the roll of drums and the shrill, reedy warbling of pipes and other fluty minstrelsy crossed the silvery thread of strung harps and viols, ... the light from the fiery globe shot forth a new effulgence, this time in two broad rays, one a dazzling, pale azure, the other a clear, pearly white. Nelida's graceful movements grew slower and slower, till she merely seemed to sway ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... spirits! now he slumbers! Ye have entranc'd him fairly with your numbers! This minstrelsy of yours I must repay,— Thou art not yet the man to hold the devil fast!— With fairest shapes your spells around him cast, And plunge him in a sea of dreams! But that this charm be rent, the threshold passed, Tooth of rat the way must clear. I need ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... being banished from Hettel's court, they had been forced to take up their present occupation to make a living. To prove the truth of their assertions, Wat exhibited his skill in athletic sports, while Horant delighted all the ladies by his proficiency in the art of minstrelsy. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... green solitudes Of the deep, shady woods Thy lot is kindly cast, and life to thee Is like a gust of rarest minstrelsy. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... especially, and in some other cases, without the kind and ungrudging aid, freely given to a stranger, of Mr. William Macmath, whose knowledge of ballad-lore, and especially of the ballad manuscripts at Abbotsford, is unrivalled. As to Auld Maitland, Mr. T. F. Henderson, in his edition of the Minstrelsy (Blackwood, 1892), also made due use of Hogg's MS., and his edition is most valuable to every student of Scott's method of editing, being based on the Abbotsford MSS. Mr. Henderson suspects, more than I do, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... waves are old companions, I shall see A well-remembered form in each old tree And hear a voice long-loved in thy wild minstrelsy. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... ballad introduced? It shows the character of Scottish minstrelsy, the belief in the world of fairies, and the lesson of hope that at the darkest moment the hour of happiness may be near. It furnishes another example of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... directing the vessel's course. But the decks of its companion were crowded with human shapes: the captain, and mate, and sailor, and cabin-boy, all seemed there; and from them the sound of mirth and minstrelsy echoed over land and water. The coast which they skirted along was one of extreme danger; and the reapers shouted to warn them to beware of sandbank and rock; but of this friendly counsel no notice was taken, except that a large and famished dog, which sat on the prow, answered ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Pillar was brought there by one of the Rajput princes who founded in the middle of the eleventh century the first city really known to history as Delhi. There Prithvi Raja reigned, who still lives in Indian minstrelsy as the embodiment of Hindu chivalry, equally gallant and daring in love and in war—the last to make a stand in northern India against the successive waves of Mahomedan conquest which Central Asia had begun to pour in upon India in 1001, with the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... mutiny: This child of fancy, that Armado hight, For interim to our studies shall relate, In high-born words, the worth of many a knight From tawny Spain lost in the world's debate. How you delight, my lords, I know not, I; But, I protest, I love to hear him lie, And I will use him for my minstrelsy. ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... natural anxiety of a civilized community to read, in preference to cheap rural poetry, verses paid for at the rate of 'a guinea a word,' or at the least 'five shillings a syllable,' there were many notable matters directing public attention away from village minstrelsy to other things. The book was brought out in the same month that the 'injured Queen of England' died; that the populace fought for the honour of participating in the funeral; and that royal lifeguardsmen killed the loyal people like rabbits in the streets of London. Political ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... wearied intellect escape from this wilderness of weeds and brambles, to rove through the paradise of poetry. The minstrelsy of genius, sporting with the fancy rouzing the passions and unfolding the secrets of the heart, could fascinate at all times; while nothing could sooner create lassitude and repugnance than the incongruous ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... stane," he had scarcely a rival, and he was skilled in all the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry, composed music both sacred and profane, and was a complete minstrel, able to sing beautifully and to play on the harp and organ. His queen, the beautiful Joan Beaufort, had been the lady of his minstrelsy in the days of his captivity, ever since he had watched her walking on the slopes of Windsor Park, and wooed her in verses that are still preserved. They had now been eleven years married, and their court was one bright spot of civilization, refinement, and grace, amid the savagery of Scotland. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... prize and yet am I not dead. Anon withal he saw an hundred ladies and many knights, that welcomed him with fair semblant, and made him passing good cheer unto his sight, and led him into the castle, and there was dancing and minstrelsy and all manner of joy. Then the chief lady of the castle said, Knight with the Two Swords, ye must have ado and joust with a knight hereby that keepeth an island, for there may no man pass this way but he must joust or he pass. That is an unhappy custom, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... pack of hounds in full cry, and when the crags caught the sound and tossed it from mountain to mountain, when more delicate echoes on a higher key rang out from the deep ravines, there was a wonderful exhilaration in this sylvan minstrelsy. The young fellow looked wistful as he heard it, then he ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the glen beneath the castle walls—something between humming and singing—listlessly unequal and intermittent, like the melody of a man whiling away the hours over his work. While she was wondering at this unwonted minstrelsy, there came a silence, and—could she believe her ears?—it certainly was Una's clear low contralto—softly singing a bar or two from the window. Then once more silence—and then again the strange manly voice, faintly ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the present critic, and perhaps they ceased to be very popular before he was breeched. Mr. Bayly, according to Mrs. Bayly, "ably penetrated the sources of the human heart," like Shakespeare and Mr. Howells. He also "gave to minstrelsy the attributes of intellect and wit," and "reclaimed even festive song from vulgarity," in which, since the age of Anacreon, festive song has notoriously wallowed. The poet who did all this was ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... spirit, the conscientious dread of being ignorantly happy when a broader culture would enable us to be intelligently miserable,—this has its place, unquestionably, in concert halls; but if we are to make the best use of out-door minstrelsy, we must learn to take things as we find them, throwing criticism to the winds. Having said which, I am bound to go further still, and to acknowledge that on looking back over the first part of this paper I feel more than half ashamed of the strictures therein passed upon the bluebird ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... in his notes to the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' says that the common people of the high parts of Liddlesdale and the country adjacent to this day hold the memory of Johnnie Armstrong in ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... then methought the Lord of Love went by To take possession of his flowery throne, Ringed round with maids, and youths, and minstrelsy; A little while I sighed to find him gone, A little while the dawning was alone, And the light gathered; then I held my breath, And shuddered at the sight of ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... calmer chimes came bringing, Telling praises every hour To His majesty and power, Telling prayers with punctual service, summers, centuries, how long? The beads upon our rosary of immemorial song." The Minstrelsy of Isis. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... funeral service of the Edeling was held. All night he lay beneath the silk of his funeral pall with tapers burning at his head and feet, and the low chant of prayer sounded till the dawn. All night had Otto stayed awake in sorrow and unrest. At last, with the rising of the sun he heard a burst of minstrelsy. Rouen was silent no longer; the songs of triumph and defiance burst from every parapet and tower, while the very birds (says the chronicler) seemed to join in the chorus of happiness all round the beaten camp. Then Otto rode moodily ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook |
