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More "Fiddler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mentioned before. "The Prince riding on the Fox," "Hans in Luck," "The Fiddler and his Goose," "Heads off," are all drawings which, albeit not before us now, nor seen for ten years, remain indelibly fixed on the memory. "Heisst du etwa Rumpelstilzchen?" There sits the Queen on her throne, surrounded by grinning beef-eaters, and little Rumpelstiltskin stamps his foot through ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and they seemed to be looking about them with ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... in the world. A fortnight since I happened to be sitting in the stocks, in the absurd but accursed town of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire. My companion—for the machine discommodated two—was a fiddler, convicted (like myself) of vagrancy; a bottle-nosed man, who took the situation with such phlegm as only experience can breed, and munched a sausage under the commonalty's gaze. 'Good Lord,' said I to myself, eyeing him, 'and to think that he with my chances, or I with his taste for music, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of story-books! What kind of a business in life, what manner of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... good white man. He was a grand fiddler and he used to call us to de big house at night to dance for him. I couldn't do nothin' 'cept jump up and down and I sho' did git tired. Marse Jabe warn't married. He raised his brother's chillun, but dey was all grown ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... a typical conflict, the conflict between the individual and that which, in Ireland, has much authority, the family group. This particular conflict was shown again in "The Fiddler's House." where the life, not of the actual peasants, but of rural people with artistic and aristocratic traditions, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... said Mrs. Lusk. "That's my game! And you done your share," she cried to the fiddler. "Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... ambergrise, a stink it lies, But well dispersed, is incense to the skies. P. Who starves by nobles, or with nobles eats? The wretch that trusts them, and the rogue that cheats. Is there a lord who knows a cheerful noon Without a fiddler, flatterer, or buffoon? Whose table, wit or modest merit share, Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or play'r? Who copies yours or Oxford's better part, To ease the oppressed, and raise the sinking heart? Where'er he shines, O Fortune, gild the scene, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... not by any means stop with performing or composing music or with the fine arts. It goes on to embrace more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the fiddler's or in any other artist's philosophy. Perhaps it is not too much to say that no great passion or action has ever had itself adequately expressed without the cooeperation of this social resonance, without the help of at least one of those modest, unrecognized partners of genius, the social resonators, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Fiddler, play a little longer! Why this hurry, say? I'm but half-way through a measure— Yet a little play! Smiling in her wreath of flowers Is my love not fair? See us in the charmed circle, Flitting light as air! Haste thee, loved one, for the music Shall be hushed anon... (O sweet years ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... Seagrove. He is slightly made, with marked features full of intelligence. He has been brought up to the bar; and has every qualification but application. He has never had a brief, nor has he a chance of one. He is the fiddler of the company, and he has locked up his chambers, and come, by invitation of his lordship, to play on ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... home again, and if I put two dollars a head freight in them, they won't bring a cent more on that account. With the cattle it's different; they are all under contract, but the horses must be charged as general expense, and if nothing is realized out of them, the herd must pay the fiddler. My largest delivery is a sub-contract for Fort Buford, calling for five million pounds of beef on foot. It will take three herds or ten thousand cattle to fill it. I was anxious to give those Buford beeves an early start, and that was the main reason in my consenting to this conference. ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... sawed away on "Honest John," "The Devil's Dream," "Haste to the Wedding," and "The Fisher's Hornpipe." He lost all sense of being a millionnaire, and returned to his simple, unsophisticated self. The others cheered him because he had gold. I cheered him because he was a good old "corduroy fiddler." ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... lonely old maid looking after geniuses. Geniuses are perfectly horrible persons! I've had experience with them. Why, I tried to bring out a violinist once—such a dirty young man, and he smelt terribly of garlic—he came from the Pyrenees—but he was quite a marvellous fiddler—and he turned out most ungratefully, and married my manicurist. Simply shocking! And as for singers!—my dear Maryllia, you never seem to realise what an utter little fright that Cicely Bourne of yours is! ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... age, who shall, between ten and twelve o'clock of the forenoon of that day, dance for a quarter of an hour at least, on the ground adjoining the mausoleum, and after the dance sing the 100th Psalm of the old version, to the fine old tune to which the same was then sung in St. Ives Church; L1 to a fiddler who shall play to the girls while dancing and singing at the mausoleum, and also before them on their return home therefrom; L2 to two widows of seamen, fishermen or tinners of the borough, being sixty-four ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... they're going to have the best performance. Miss Van Alstine from New York is going to sing, and some long-haired fellow at one of the hotels is going to play the piano—they say he's great; and, oh! say, Arch, did you ever hear of a great fiddler named Ventnor?" ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... blind fiddler, in Islay, who told the story of Conall, as it had been handed down by tradition from generation to generation; just as thousands of years before the story of Odysseus and Polyphemos was told by Greek ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... the first dance with Henrietta Blaisdell. He tossed her one of his pleasant smiles as he whirled breathlessly past, and her eyes followed him with a look which poor Barker would have given worlds to interpret as he stood sad and humble in all his unwonted magnificence by her side. The fiddler, who was a tin-peddler and a poet and the teacher of a "cipherin'-school," as well as a musician, played with great gusto, and was continually calling upon the dancers to "warm up 'n' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... pole as tall as the mainmast of a ship had been erected, and from its summit hung wreaths and fluttering ribbons: this was called a maypole. Men and maids danced round the tree, and sang as loudly as they could, to the violin of the fiddler. There were merry doings at sundown and in the moonlight, but I took no part in them—what has a little mouse to do with a May dance? I sat in the soft moss and held my sausage-peg fast. The moon threw its beams especially upon one spot, where a tree stood, covered with moss so exceedingly ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... twelve o'clock of the forenoon of that day, dance for a quarter of an hour at least, on the ground adjoining the mausoleum, and after the dance sing the 100th Psalm of the old version, to the fine old tune to which the same was then sung in St. Ives Church; one pound to a fiddler who shall play to the girls while dancing and singing at the mausoleum, and also before them on their return home therefrom; two pounds to two widows of seamen, fishers, or tinners of the borough, being sixty-four years ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... bands of music that seem to itinerate everywhere about the country. It consisted of a young woman who played the harp, a bass-viol player, a fiddler, a flutist, and a bugler, besides a little child, of whom, I suppose, the woman was the mother. They sat down on a bench by the roadside, opposite the house, and played several tunes, and by and by the waiter ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... American fiction, the French Canadian. The plot is simple and not too improbable, and the characters well individualized. Here, also, Mr. Trowbridge is most successful in his treatment of the less ambitiously designed figures. The relation between the dwarf Hercules fiddler and the heroine Marie seems to be a suggestion from Victor Hugo's Quasimodo and Esmeralda, though the treatment is original and touching. Indeed, there is a good deal of pathos in the book, marred here and there with the sentimental extract of Dickens-flowers, unpleasant as patchouli. Generally, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... when the frolic was at its height, an unexpected visitor announced himself. It was Uncle Jake Norris, who lived on the far side of the mountain. The fiddler waved his bow at Uncle Jake, and the boys and girls cried "Howdy," as the visitor stood beaming and smiling in the doorway. To these demonstrations Uncle Jake, "a chunk of a white man with a whole heart," as he described himself, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... told of the fiddler of Brandenberg. The children were led to the Marienberg, which opened upon them ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... draws ribbons—long, twisted, streaming ribbons—of tune out of a fiddle. They stand, unsmiling, but not serious, in the broad sunlight opposite the fruit-shop; the pink spider of a hand beats the guitar, the little squat hand, with a brass-and-turquoise ring, forces the reluctant flute, and the fiddler's arm tries to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... long—the cruel hardship, war, sickness, hunger, and then, besides, the faith, the kindliness, the light-heartedness that had saved them through it all. There were tunes that every man and woman in Ireland knows—tunes that you know—old airs that every Irish fiddler or piper or singer learns from the older ones, that the oldest ones of all learned, they say, from the fairies. And under all the music, whether grave or gay, there went a strain of grief, sometimes almost harsh and sometimes scarcely heard, and as the fairies listened to it they ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... There's no get out of it. Here's Jim Mason with me, and we've got orders to stun you and pack you if you show fight. The blessed fiddler from Mudgee didn't turn up. Dave Regan burst his concertina, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... Cap'n Abe for more'n twenty year, and in all that endurin' time he's stuck as close to shore as a fiddler. With all his bold talk about ships and sailin', I tell you he warn't ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... virtue and wisdom themselves into ridicule, for the diversion of their master and feeder. The gentlemen of curlike disposition who were now at his house, and whom he had brought with him from London, were, an old half-pay officer, a player, a dull poet, a quack-doctor, a scraping fiddler, and ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... of the Bottom lands. He was a very quiet, dignified, and unobtrusive gentleman, and in point of common sense and intelligence much above the average of the race to which he belonged; but, like all the rest of the French stock, woefully wanting in energy and never in a hurry. He was a splendid fiddler, and consequently a favorite with all, especially the young folks, who easily pressed him into service on all occasions to play for their numerous dances. He died at Prairie du Pont, in 1863, at the age of eighty-one years. His mother, Manette Le Compt, ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... me she will hide her light under a bushel," he continued; "I being the bushel! Now I know you like me—you have certainly proved it. But you think I am frivolous and penniless and shabby! Granted—granted—a thousand times granted. I have been a loose fish—a fiddler, a painter, an actor. But there is this to be said: In the first place, I fancy you exaggerate; you lend me qualities I have n't had. I have been a Bohemian—yes; but in Bohemia I always passed for a gentleman. I wish you could see some of my old camarades—they ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... An old fiddler and more peasants appear. The men sit down on one side of the room, the women on the other, and the former lover, Mikko, thinking himself the bridegroom-elect, cheerfully invites every one to dance. The old fiddler strikes up a merry air, and they dance the jenka, a sort of schottische, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... in the dress of Queen Anne's time, whose ill-painted flesh-tints showed livid, in the candle-light, against her dark drapery and background. "This is Mrs. Margaret Searle—a sort of Beatrix Esmond—qui se passait ses fantaisies. She married a paltry Frenchman, a penniless fiddler, in the teeth of her whole family. Pretty Mrs. Margaret, you must have been a woman of courage! Upon my word, she looks like Miss Searle! But pray go on. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... up for dancing, her steps were so complete, The music nearly killed itself to listen to her feet; The fiddler moaned his blindness, he heard her so much praised, But blessed his luck he wasn't deaf when ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... afford to despise pedantry: did he meet a traveller who amused his fancy he would give him the pass-word ('the fiddler's paid,' or what not), as though the highway had not its code of morals; nor did he scruple, when it served his purpose, to rob the bunglers of his own profession. By this means, indeed, he raised the standard of the Road and warned the incompetent to embrace an easier trade. While ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... having robbed him of all his cash and valuable effects, had eloped from his house with one of his own customers, who appeared in the character of a French count, but was in reality no other than an Italian fiddler; that, in consequence of this retreat, he, the husband, was disabled from paying a considerable sum which he had set apart for his wine merchant, who being disappointed in his expectation, took out an execution ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... The third fiddler is a full-blooded Chipewyan. In some dancing academy in the woods he has learnt a "call-off" all his own, and proud indeed is he of his stunt. We manage to copy it down in its entirety, fighting mosquitoes the while and dodging out into the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... day before, from ile to ile,—for these descendants of a maritime race call their homestead groves islands,—to tell where the ball was to be, he would assert, if there was even a hope of it, that 'Thanase was to be the fiddler. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... in these old wives' tales, and those who did not; and numbered among the scoffers was one Simon Some-body-or-other, whom the village folk called Simple Simon, partly because of his foolish appearance, and partly because of his great love for pies. Simon was the village fiddler—in fact, he had never been known to do anything else—and was in great demand at all the feasts and dances about the countryside. His awkward, angular form was a familiar sight at all such festivities, where ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... could, that had any bearing on his now absorbing pursuit, and in collecting materials that might promote it. With this view, when on his way from Taymouth to Blair, he had turned aside to visit the famous fiddler and composer of Scotch tunes, Neil Gow, at his house, which is still pointed out, at Inver, on the Braan water, opposite the grounds of Dunkeld. This is the entry about him in Burns's diary:—"Neil Gow plays—a short, stout-built, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... not more disappointed than you, sir—witness your thrasonical speeches on your first landing, provided you had but elbow room—and Mr. Caper too, to bring over Monsieur Rigadoon, the dancing-master, and Signor Rosin, the fiddler forsooth; he thought, no doubt, to have country danc'd the rebels out of their liberty with some of his new cuts—with his soft music to have fascinated their wives and daughters, and with some of 'em, no doubt, to have taken the tour of America, with his reg'ment of fine, sleek, prancing ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... from now? Why, you're as fine as a fiddler!" cried Mr. Joel Ferris, who was fast becoming familiar, on the strength of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... her experiences abroad. She had not liked Europe—being quite frankly a provincial person. To Castleman County a foreigner was a strange, dark person who mixed up his consonants, and was under suspicion of being a fiddler or an opera-singer. The people she had met under her husband's charge had been socially indubitable, but still, they were foreigners, and Sylvia could never really be ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... morning, we were prevented from reaching Constantinople in time to witness these festivities. [Sidenote: SESTOS.—TURKISH COLONEL.] The breeze, however, suddenly veering round to the south, swiftly went round the capstan, and merrily did our band, the solitary fiddler, rosin away to the tune of "drops of brandy," while, with every stretch of canvass set, we joyfully proceeded in our course, saluting the Pasha, according to custom, as we came abreast of the village of the Dardanelles, which occupies a low situation, and its mean-looking ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... every change of public passion whispered itself into rhyme or quaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the admitted rector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver, Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M'Bride from heaven knows where, and that M'Grane, who in after days, when the true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather in borrowed rags, and gave out ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... party, although they had not such grand people as Mrs Tagliabue, or the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Babbleton. I thought so too; every one was happy, and every one at their ease; and I do believe they would have stayed much longer, but the musicians took so much punch that one fiddler broke his fiddle, the other broke his head in going down the steps into the garden, and the fifer swore he could blow no longer; so, as there was an end to the music, clogs, pattens, and lanterns were called for, the shawls were brought out of the kitchen, and every one went away. Nothing could ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... work of wood. We ascended the rough stone steps through a winding stair to the turrets, where we had such a view of the surrounding country, as can be obtained from no other place. On the top of the centre and highest turret, is a grotesque figure of a fiddler; rather a strange looking object, we thought, to occupy the most elevated pinnacle on the house of God. All dwellings in the neighbourhood appear like so many dwarfs couching at the feet of the Minster; while its ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... a farmer, who was standing by, "he's gone to get drunk; he is the biggest old drunkard in the countryside, and yet they do say he was gentleman once, and the best fiddler in London; but he can't be depended on, so no ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... peace by Fielding, and knew Cagliostro. The friend of popes and kings and noblemen, and of all the male and female ruffians and vagabonds of Europe, abbe, soldier, charlatan, gamester, financier, diplomatist, viveur, philosopher, virtuoso, "chemist, fiddler, and buffoon," each of these, and all of these was Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to flight the dilettante (Who hadn't finished half the andante), But feared the servants' mockings Should they see him in his stockings, Racing along the corridor:— Not that he thought it horrid, or Harsh to transfix him with a dagger, (He could not bear the fiddler's swagger), But felt quite sure so droll a figure Would make his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... a fiddler fiddle? I have. I heard a fiddler fiddle, and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... it up again, but it's not so sure about my getting back my strength. I tell you again, lad, that the grape bit deep. It hurts me all the time to think I was lured under those guns by a silly old fiddler and a couple of silly sailors dancing to his silly tune. You're a good lad, Peter, I give you credit for it, and since, beside myself, only one on board the schooner was saved, I'm glad it was you and not ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... they accept the invitation) generally form part of the procession to church, and are preceded by a harper or fiddler. After the nuptial knot is tied, they veer their course to the public-house mentioned in the bills, where they partake, not of a sumptuous banquet, but of the simple, though not the worst, fare of bread and cheese and kisses, at the expense of the new married folks. After this, a large plate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... stopped to look into the middle of a small crowd that had gathered about the corner of the Bridge Lane. A blind fiddler sat on a stool there and played sprightly airs. His hearers consisted chiefly of men and boys. But among them was one young girl in bright ribbons, who was clearly an outcast of the streets. Despite her gay costume, she had a wistful look ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... tell her friends she had met Heinrich Heine. He was much amused when she said: 'And who is Heinrich Heine?' The poet and the child used to lounge on the pier together; she sang him old English ballads, and he told her stories in which fish, mermaids, water-sprites, and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodle, who was diligently taking three sea-baths a day, were mixed up in a fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, often very pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetings from the North Sea. He afterwards told her that one ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... farm had a fiddler. Ever so often he had a big dance in their parlor. I'd try to dance by myself. He had his own music by the hands on his place. He let them have dances at the quarters every now and then. Dancing was a piece ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... them awhile she started up, spread her skirts in a sweeping courtesy, and began to dance a gavotte. The fiddler changed his tune, and the girls rested and watched her. Alternately swift and languid, with the changes of the movement, she saluted backward to the floor, or spun on the tips of rapid feet. I had seen her dance many times, but never with such ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... not? where was your sight, OEdipus? you walk with hare's eyes, do you? I'll have them glazed, rogue; an you say the word, they shall be glazed for you: come we must have you turn fiddler again, slave, get a base viol at your back, and march in a tawny coat, with one sleeve, to Goose-fair; then you'll know us, you'll see us then, you will, gulch, you will. Then, Will't please your worship to ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... pipers, and various performers of instrumental music; and he assigned two chairs for the victors in the competitions; and these he enriched with vast gifts. A young man of his own court, son to Cibon the fiddler, obtained the victory in instrumental music, and the men of Gwynedd obtained the victory in vocal song; and all the other minstrels obtained from the lord Rhys as much as they asked for, so that there was no one excluded." An Eisteddfod ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... speech, Princess Altamira bade the king, her father, good-bye, and was on the point of leaving the royal presence, when the handsome figure of Felisberto, the blind fiddler, was seen ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... me," said Tom. "Kneel down, Mas'r Harry, same as I do. The house is as drunk as a fiddler, and the floor's going just like the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... talk the way they do now; what they now call a "lackey" used to be called a "boy;" what they now call a "mysterious" used to be called a "whore;" a "mademoiselle," a "house-maid;" a "musician," a "fiddler;" and a "secretary," a "clerk." So I suppose Latin may have changed, too, since you were in Copenhagen. Will you please explain that? (Pointing to a line in the letter.} I can read the letters, but I don't get ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... candle-makers send their agents to collect fat and grease. Every individual brings his own food, for the proprietor of the house finds lodging only, and not board. The atmosphere reeks with the smell of herrings and fried sausages. After supper is finished, a fiddler—one of their number, paid for his services by contributions of tobacco and beer—strikes up some merry music; dancing commences, and goes on till midnight, and often far into the morning. Save in such houses, such dancing and such dancers were never seen. The lame cast aside their crutches, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... there was heard a sound resembling the yells of an exceedingly young pig in its dying agonies. This was a violin. It was accompanied by a noise somewhat like to the beating of a flour-mill, which was found to proceed from the heel of the fiddler, who had placed a wooden board under his left foot. Thus he beat time, and a drum, as it were, at once. He also beat Paganini and all other fiddlers hollow. Round this manufacturer of sweet sounds did the lads and lasses flock and soon gave ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... midsummer bonfire, and the clergy marched at the head of the procession to kindle it. Failure to light the fires would, in the popular belief, have exposed the fields to the greatest danger. At Revin the young folk, besides dancing round the fire to the strains of the village fiddler, threw garlands of flowers across the flames to each other.[468] In the Vosges it is still customary to kindle bonfires upon the hill-tops on Midsummer Eve; the people believe that the fires help to preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure good crops.[469] In the Jura Mountains ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... The fiddler played upon his fiddle All through that leafy June, He always played hey-diddle-diddle, And played it out ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... a writ for committing you to the custody of Mother Blakes, my old housekeeper, for the evening, and we will send for my neighbour Mrs. Musgrave, and the Miss Dawkins, and your cousins, and have old Cobs the fiddler, and be as merry as the maids; and Frank Osbaldistone and I will have a carouse that will make us fit company for you ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... get leave of your dads, And away to the Maypole hie, For ev'ry fair has a sweetheart there, And the fiddler's standing by; ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... awhile; but she had too many gewgaws and playthings, and I found, after not many days, that my popularity was on the wane, and that I could not hope to maintain it against the attractions of a French waiting-maid, a monkey, a parrot, a poodle, and a little Dwarfish boy-attendant that was half fiddler and half buffoon. So my consequence faded and faded, and I was sneered at and flouted as a young Savage and a young Irish by the English lacqueys about the House, and I sank from my Lady's keeping-room to the antechamber, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis, leaned over and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I will hire the negro barber to play the violin for us. He is a good fiddler, as I heard him playing only a little while ago." The result was that we soon organized a good string band and had a splendid dance, keeping it up as long as ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... Every fiddler, flute-player, drummer, and curlecued horn-man in Europe has been brought over here to thunder-out and roll-off billows of sound for people to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... resolved to be still on the floor when the other had abandoned it in defeat—that being the test of victory. At last, the girl from Dryhill reeled, and was caught by half-a-dozen arms. Her adversary, holding the floor undisputed, slowed down, and someone stopped the fiddler. Sally turned from the crowded wall, and began looking about for Samson. He was not there. Lescott had seen him leave the house a few moments before, and started over to intercept the girl, as she came out ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... I regret that time did not allow us to see the caves on the sea-shore. There is one of which the depth is said to be unknown. There is a tradition in the country, that an adventurous fiddler once resolved to explore it; that he entered, and never returned; but that the subterranean sound of a fiddle was heard at a farm-house seven miles inland. It is, therefore, concluded that he lost his way in the labyrinth of caverns, supposed to exist under the rocky soil ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... on by a bow." "The word Cruth is pronounced in English Crowth, and corruptly Crowd." "Lueth is the Saxon appellation given by Leland, for the instrument (Collectanea: vol. v.)" "A player on the cruth was called a Crowther or Crowder, and so also is a common fiddler to this day; and hence, undoubtedly, Crowther, or Crowder, a common surname. Butler, with his usual humour, has characterised a common fiddler, and given him ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... been Italians at all, so Old Bernique told Steering, just plain, everyday Americans, from up "at that St. Louis," quite poor and always on the move. The father had been known throughout the country-side as a "blame' good fiddler" and the mother had been, oh a vair' wonderful woman, if one could believe Old Bernique. But there was no Italian blood in Piney. His feeling for Italy had to be explained in another way. It was the great sweet note of poetry, music and beauty, of that far country, vibrating across the years ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... songs that he knew were simple ballads; but his memory was very retentive, and his singing was in great demand when company was present. At husking-parties and apple-bees, when supper was over and the young people wished to dance, if no fiddler was present, father would be petitioned to sing. I have often known him to sing country dances for hours, and he sung so heartily, and marked the time so well, that the young people enjoyed the dancing as much as if the music had been furnished ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... would, hey? All I got t' say is that yer nerve gits me. An' ye stand a pretty good show of bein' rounded up for more'n thirty days, too. Well, ye've had yer joke; mebbe ye have th' price t' pay th' fiddler. Turn here." ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... Virtue's cause; And aiming at the self-same end, Satire is always Virtue's friend. Nor shall that Muse, whose honest rage, In a corrupt degenerate age, (When, dead to every nicer sense, Deep sunk in vice and indolence, 950 The spirit of old Rome was broke Beneath the tyrant fiddler's yoke) Banish'd the rose from Nero's cheek, Under a Brunswick fear to speak. Drawn by Conceit from Reason's plan, How vain is that poor creature, Man! How pleased is every paltry elf To prate about ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... lovers! The very phrase evokes and parades a pageant of amours! The thousand heartaches; the fingers clutching hungrily at keys that might be other fingers; the fiddler with his eyelids clenched while he dreams that the violin, against his cheek is the satin cheek of "the inexpressive She;" the singer with a cry in every note; the moonlit youth with the mandolin tinkling his serenade to an ivied window; the dead-marches; the nocturnes; ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... said the watchman who was looking upon them, "it is of no use for you to attempt to go through with your vain toys; you must leave your pots, and your dishes, and your harlots, and all your other ware behind you, and then make haste." "How should we live then?" said the fiddler, who would have been through long ago, but for fear of breaking his instrument. "O," said the watchman, "you must take the word of the king, for sending you whatsover things may be for your advantage." "Hey, hey," said one, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush;" and ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... left by the tide we may find a crab or two, perhaps, some jelly-fish, star-fish, and those wonderful living flowers, the sea-anemones. And then we will watch the great gulls sweeping about in the air, and if we are lucky, we may see an army of little fiddler-crabs marching along, each one with one claw in the air. We may gather sea-side diamonds; we may, perhaps, go in and bathe, and who can tell everything that we may do on the shores of the ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... form of modern Ger. Wacht, watch. Modern French still has the verb guetter, to lie in wait for, and guet, the watch. Minstrel comes from an Old French derivative of Lat. minister, servant. Modern Fr. menetrier is only used of a country fiddler who attends ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... hour the house was making a sweet smoke of peats which came to me over the bay, and the bare-legged daughters of the cotter were wading by the pier. The same day we visited the shores of the isle in the ship's boats; rowed deep into Fiddler's Hole, sounding as we went; and having taken stock of all possible accommodation, pitched on the northern inlet as the scene of operations. For it was no accident that had brought the lighthouse steamer to anchor ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said "His Majesty," "is anything wanting? Tell us. Yer wish shall be gratified. Does ye wish for music? A piper an' a fiddler too are both convaynient, an', begorra, thim fellers can bate out-an'-out all the pipers an' fiddlers this side av the Bay av Biscay. They're both Irishmen, so they are, an' they're our sworn body-gyard, an' there ye have it. But, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... money, let Ma know, and she will send it. She and Pamela are always fussing about change, so I sent them a hundred and twenty quarters yesterday—fiddler's change enough to last till I get back, I ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a sitting of the Norwegian legislature at Christiana, a petition was presented from the world-known fiddler, Ole Bull, in which he solicited the creation of a national theatre in that town, to receive a subvention from the government, and to which a dramatic school was to be attached. The Assembly voted that the petition should be taken into consideration, and appointed a committee to draw ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... delicacy and skill of the miniaturist. On one page, a little archer, after having pulled his bow-string, stands at the foot of the border, gazing upwards after the arrow, which has been caught in the bill of a stork at the top of the page. The attitude of a little fiddler who is exhibiting his trick monkeys can hardly be surpassed by caricaturists of any time. A quaint bit of cloister scandal is indicated in an initial from the Harleian Manuscript, in which a monk who has been entrusted with the cellar keys is seen availing himself of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... In came a fiddler with a music book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six 10 ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... mine was alleged to exist, and in the ineffectual efforts made to determine its whereabouts our government has become quite familiar with the location of all the worked mines of this state. The mines upon the mountains of Cuatorce are said to have been discovered in 1778 by a negro fiddler, who, being compelled to camp out on his way home from a dance, built a fire upon what proved to be an outcrop of a vein, and, in consequence, found in the morning, among the embers, a piece of virgin silver. It is a doubtful question among those ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... however,[86] has told us that in his youth the Duke learnt to play the violin, and that he only abandoned it, when he was about thirty years old, "because he judged it unseemly or perhaps ill-sounding for a General to be a fiddler." The Duke is not the only great soldier who has been a musical performer. Marshal St. Cyr used to play the violin "in the quiet moments of a campaign," and Sir Hope Grant was a very fair ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... fiddler watched her with delight. "You shall hear all my stories," he said; "everything you shall hear, little Melody; but here we are at the house now, and I must make ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... wilderness to all the dancers. Those old-time country fiddlers—all of them, black or white—how wonderful they were! They have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... ragged of the beggar-maids. "Mistress Mary," in her pretty blue dress, tripped along with "Simple Simon" staring about him like a blockhead. The fine lady left her horse to dance with "Bobby Shafto" till every bell on her slippers tinkled its tongue out. "Bo-Peep" and a jolly fiddler skipped gayly up and down. "Miss Muffet" took the big spider for her partner, and made his many legs fly about in the wildest way. The little wife got out of the wheelbarrow to help "Boy Blue" along, and Molly, with the frying-pan over her shoulder, led off splendidly ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... of the choir were managed tolerably well, the vocal parts generally lagging a little behind the instrumental, and some loitering fiddler now and then making up for lost time by travelling over a passage with prodigious celerity, and clearing more bars than the keenest fox-hunter, to be in at the death. But the great trial was an anthem ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... There was an old fiddler, a kind of Orpheus of the slums, who would sometimes creep in there and take his post in a corner and begin to play, happy if the mad lads threw him halfpence, or thrust a half-drained tankard under his tearful old nose: happy, too, if they did not—as they often did—toss ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Every fiddler he had a fine fiddle, And a very fine fiddle had he; "Twee tweedle dee, tweedle dee," went the fiddlers. Oh, there's none so rare, As can compare With King Cole and ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... I am sure you must have pretty nigh all the books in the world already. But I never can desire—I may be wrong—but I never can desire, that my son, and the grandson of the Marquis of Esmond, should be a fiddler." ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the fact that magnetism is by no means confined to those who have finely trained intellects or who have achieved great reputations. Some vaudeville buffoon or some gypsy fiddler may have more attractive power than the virtuoso who had spent years in developing his mind and his technic. The average virtuoso thinks far more of his "geist," his "talent" (or as Emerson would have it, "the shadow of the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... hinder legs, and there was one a year or two since of George the Fourth in a Highland dress—a powerful representation of Lady Charlotte Bury, dressed for Norval. Look at that gem of art, his Blind Fiddler, now in the National Gallery, or at his Waterloo Gazette, or at the Rent Day, and compare any one of them with the senseless stuff he now produces, and grieve. His John Knox—ill placed for effect, as relates to its height from the ground, I admit; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon: Then all for women, rhyming, dancing, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman! who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy! Railing and praising were his usual themes; And both, to show his judgement, in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... woman, I took occasion to kiss several times, and she to carve, drink, and show me great respect. After dinner to talk and laugh. I drank no wine, but sent for some water; the beer not being good. A fiddler was sent for, and there one Mrs. Lurkin, a neighbour, a good, and merry poor woman, but a very tall woman, did dance and show such tricks that made us all merry, but above all a daughter of Mr. Brumfield's, black, but well-shaped ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... more remote settlements of which I have any knowledge. Mrs. Micawber's singing has been described as the table-beer of acoustics. Eskimo singing is something more. The beer has become flat by the addition of ice. One of our engineers, who is quite a fiddler, experimented on his instrument with a view to seeing what effect music would have on the "savage breast," but his best efforts at rendering "Madame Angot" and the "Grande Duchesse" were wasted before an unsympathetic audience, who showed as little appreciation of his performance as ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... went our ways, the harp and violin sounds growing fainter as we receded, till they were like the buzzing of bees in drying clover, and the twilight grew rosier brown. I never met Mat Woods again, though I often heard of his fame as a fiddler. Whether my Anglo-Indian friend found the fortune so vaguely predicted is to me as yet unknown. But I believe that the prediction encouraged him. That there are evils in palmistry, and sin in card-drawing, and iniquity in coffee-grounding, and vice in all the planets, is established by statute, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... expression. Gregory Hawtrey was a little casual in speech, but so far most of the young women he bestowed an epithet of that kind upon had attached no significance to it. They had wisely decided that he did not mean anything. In another moment or two the Scottish fiddler's voice broke in. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... worse places than Fiddler's Green," said Andy, "as some people may find out one o' ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... great guns, but here goes," and the eager boy jumped from the car into the snow, and shook hands with Tom, his Aunt Lucy's coachman, and the baggage-master, and the boy from the market where his aunt bought her meat, and Saul Sullivan, the fiddler, the most shiftless, easy-going fellow in Allington, who wore one of Grey's discarded hats given to ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... feet, the banging of doors, and the ringing of bells. Music and dancing enlivened the inmates when their day's toil was over and time had to be killed. Thus, within, one could find anxious deliberation and warm debate; without, noisy revel and vulgar brawl. "Fate's a fiddler; life's ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... members each have a different and an indispensable function. You would spy out the instruments, and listen for their respective sounds. You would know the gulf that separates a French horn from an English horn, and you would perceive why a player of the hautboy gets higher wages than a fiddler, though the fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You would live at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed there in a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... have an end; even the stanchest mountain fiddler will reach at last his limit of endurance and must needs be refreshed and fed. There was a sudden significant flourish of frisky bowing, now up and again down, enlisting every resonant capacity of horsehair and catgut; the violins quavered to a final long-drawn scrape ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... your friends that you have seen Heinrich Heine." I replied, "And who is Heinrich Heine?" He laughed heartily and took no offence at my ignorance; and we used to lounge on the end of the pier together, where he told me stories in which fish, mermaids, water-sprites and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodle were mixed up in the most fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, and very often pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetings from the "Nord See." He was . . . so kind to me and so sarcastic ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... believe that the Fairies took back their child, and that the old blind fiddler lives now in the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge, and makes music for their dances in that enchanted country where the old grow young and the blind see. Some say that he still haunts the Cross-roads, and only ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... spires beneath the paly moon, And through the cloister peace and silence reign, Save where some fiddler scrapes a drowsy tune, Or copious bowls inspire a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... men passed a house at which Admiral Montague was spending the evening. The officer raised the window and cried out, "Well, boys, you've had a fine night for your Indian caper. But, mind, you've got to pay the fiddler yet." "Oh, never mind," replied one of the leaders, "never mind, squire! Just come out here, if you please, and we'll settle the bill in two minutes." The admiral thought it best to let the bill stand, and ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... and Uncle Dan'l and Uncle Summer uster been fiddler. Gone all round when the white people gone to Prospect to ball and sich as that. Dem white people didn't treat you so brutish! Dem obersheer!" (Aside) "Wonder Christ sake why Lula stay out that creek ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... sword-dancing at Christmas is kept up in Northumberland exclusively by these people. They may be constantly seen at that festive season with their fiddler, bands of swordsmen, Tommy and Bessy, most grotesquely dressed, performing their annual routine ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... acquainted. No music at all in his head; but in his feet—say, he just naturally has to let his toes follow the tune, and if ragtime hadn't been invented he'd have walked slow all his life. And me? Well, I ought to dance, with Father a born fiddler, and Mother brought up with castanets in her hands. We danced twelve of the fourteen numbers together that night, and I never even noticed he had red hair. I'd been dying to dance for months. Some partner, Tim was too. That began it. We joined ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... knocking on the table with his knuckles, as if there was a room full of people asking him to sing. In short, my father was drunk as a fiddler; the last brew finished him; and he began roaring away all kinds of droll songs, and telling all manner of stories as if he was ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... then; but coom, coom! let's be gawin. They ha' broached a barrel of aaele i' the long barn, and the fiddler be theer, and the lads and ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him;[1] he is released; and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... debauchery. "Oh, ye must not attempt to take your baubles with you," said the watchman, observing them; "ye must leave behind your pots and dishes, your minions, and all other things, and then hasten on." "How shall we live?" asked the fiddler, who would have been through long since but that he feared to smash his fiddle. "Ye must trust the king's promise to send after you as many of these things as will do you good," said the watchman. This made them all prick their ears, "Oh, oh!" said one, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... do it?' cried Lady Eveleen, springing up. 'We will begin this moment. Come out on the lawn. Here, Charles,' wheeling him along, 'No, thank you, I like it,' as Guy was going to help her. 'There, Charles, be fiddler go on, tum-tum, tee! that'll do. Amy, Laura, be ladies. I'm the other gentleman,' and she stuck on her hat in military style, giving it a cock. She actually set them quadrilling in spite of adverse circumstances, dancing better, in her habit, than ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that if she could not have ballrooms of gray and rose and crystal, she wanted to be swinging across a puncheon-floor with a dancing fiddler. This smug in-between town, which had exchanged "Money Musk" for phonographs grinding out ragtime, it was neither the heroic old nor the sophisticated new. Couldn't she somehow, some yet unimagined how, turn it ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... were astonished to see a man seated in a sulky in the middle of the river and playing for his life on a fiddle. The horse was up to his middle in water, and it seemed as if the flimsy vehicle was ready to be swept away by the current. Still the fiddler fiddled on composedly as if his life had been insured. We thought he was mad, and shouted to him. He heard us and stopped ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to me in a pleased voice, 'to-morrow is my birthday; and we are to have a fiddler, and there's a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be sociable ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... Scotch fiddler, born at Inver, near Dunkeld, of lowly origin; during his long life he enjoyed a wide popularity amongst the Scotch nobility, his especial patron being the Duke of Atholl; Raeburn painted his portrait ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Betsy generously offered "to pay the fiddler," as she termed it, "provided 'Tilda would never let it get to Silverton that Betsy Barlow was seen inside a playhouse!" To Mrs. Tubbs it seemed impossible that Aunt Betsy could be in earnest, but when she was, she put no impediments in her way; and so, conspicuous among ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... to the broken shutter and looked in. Around the blackened walls of the room stood a bleared mob, applausively watching, through a fog of smoke, the contortions of an old woman in a red calico wrapper, who was dancing in the centre of the floor. The fiddler—a rubicund person evidently not suffering from any great depression of spirit through the circumstance of being "out on bail," as he was, to Joe's intimate knowledge—sat astride a barrel, resting his instrument upon the foamy tap thereof, and playing ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... and with morbid sensitiveness referred everything he saw and heard to his own disgrace, while the inhabitants of the little town made him feel that he had been ill-advised, when he ventured to make a fiddler's daughter a citizen. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Merry-Thought as well as the author of the dedication, but the dedication was itself signed with the name "Hurlo Thrumbo." Similarly, the title-page listed Hurlo Thrumbo as the publisher of the work. In 1729 Hurlothrumbo: or, The Super-Natural, a play by a half-mad dancer and fiddler, Samuel Johnson of Cheshire (1691-1773), had set all of London talking. The irrational, amusing speeches and actions of Hurlothrumbo, the play's title-character, gained instant fame, and two years later Roberts, ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... either a half-forgotten picture or a dream; a carriage was drawn up by the wayside and four beautiful people, two men and two women graciously dressed, were dancing a formal ceremonious dance full of bows and curtseys, to the music of a wandering fiddler they had encountered. They had been driving one way and he walking another—a happy encounter with this obvious result. They might have come straight out of happy Theleme, whose motto is: "Do what ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... nightset for the occasion, the company met in the assembly-room, in the New-inns, where we had bespoke a light genteel supper, and had M'Lachlan, the fiddler, over from Ayr, for the purpose. Nothing could be better while the dancing lasted; the whole concern wore an appearance of the greatest genteelity. But when supper was announced, and the company adjourned to partake of it, judge of the universal consternation that was visible ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... Polity,' (such as his) Nero, was of the same temper. He could not be contented with the Roman empire, unless he were too his own precentor; and lamented only the detriment that mankind must sustain at his death, in losing so considerable a fiddler." ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... nor a Scotch, but a full-blooded American, and "just as good as her employers," with whom she always ate and sat. It was not Mrs. Markham's custom to keep a girl the year round, but when she did it was Eunice Plympton, the daughter of the drunken fiddler who earned his livelihood by playing for the dances the young people of Olney sometimes got up. He was anticipating quite a windfall from the infair it was confidently expected would be given by Mrs. Markham in honor of her son's marriage; ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... were dancing on the floor. Each man had an Indian woman. One was middle-aged; the other, a comely young girl with heavy silver earrings, was laughing noisily as her companion dragged her to a standstill in front of the fiddler. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... train just left. It contained two thieves; one named Oliver Martin, who is dressed in black, crape on his hat; the other named Fiddler Dick, in black trousers and light blouse. Both in the third compartment of ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... has paid the fiddler, then, for nothing of mine would have bought off the hair, much less the skin. I didn't think men as keen set as them vagabonds would let a fellow up so easy, when they had him fairly at a close hug, and floored. But money is money, and somehow it's unnat'ral ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a bunch of men and supplies to show them the way to our claim. Twenty jacks, a cook and a fiddler will be here late this afternoon, together with a knock-down bunk-house, sufficient food supplies for two weeks, tools, and I've got a supply of cash to pay the hands. Now what have you to say ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... some street Orpheus, forgetful, not merely of all the troubles of existence, but of existence itself, until the strain had ceased, and silence aroused us to the matter-of-fact world of business. One blind fiddler, we know him well, with face upturned towards the sky, has stood a public benefactor any day these twenty years, and we know not how much longer, to receive the substantial homage of the music-loving million. But that he is scarcely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... first volume, appeared in 1836 and 1837. The value of these stories was not at first perceived, and they sold slowly. Andersen was more successful for the time being with a novel, O.T., and a volume of sketches, In Sweden; in 1837 he produced the best of his romances, Only a Fiddler. He now turned his attention, with but ephemeral success, to the theatre, but was recalled to his true genius in the charming miscellanies of 1840 and 1842, the Picture-Book without Pictures, and A Poet's Bazaar. Meanwhile the fame of his Fairy Tales had been steadily ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... will get better," said Billy Mustard, who was a great favourite with the men from the fact that he was famous as a fiddler, and could rattle off anything from "Money Musk" up to "The Triumph;" and as to hornpipes, the somethingth said there wasn't a man in the service who could touch him. Billy Mustard had won the hearts of the sailors, too, during the voyage, from the way in ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... amusement will play with another dog—the pair pretending to fight, and so on, but when there is work to be done, the dog is lost in the artist. How crestfallen he looks if by any chance he blunders on to a bird without pointing it! A fiddler who has played a wrong note in a solo is the only creature who can look quite so discomfited. Humanity, instead of going to the ant for wisdom, should certainly ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... not grasp the meaning which I attach to the word fellow. I do not allude to the ordinary mortal, who might be a lawyer, or a parson, or a painter, or fiddler, or anything, and who might get any number of marks in an examination. I mean by fellows, the higher order of beings, who are only worth consideration; I do not define them, because that is impossible; you must know, or you mustn't know, according to your belonging to them or not. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... will not be taken. You pass one detachment to come upon another lurking in ambush at a corner. There are men with small cannons who will wake the echoes for a consideration; there are men with key bugles who will wake the echoes more musically for a consideration; there is the blind fiddler of the gap who fiddles away in hopes of intercepting some stray pennies from the shower. One impudent woman followed us for quite a way to sell us her photograph, as the photograph of Eily O'Connor, murdered here by ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... that," said Mr. Oelrichs. "That is the Mayor's own signature and he has proved himself every inch a man. Lots of people thought the Mayor was just a fiddler, but they ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... been popular, since it contained a dancing-hall, admission to which was free, any man being privileged to invite to it any woman whom he fancied and for whose diversion he was willing to disburse a penny to the fiddler. He was accompanied on this occasion by his dog, who insisted on following him into the hall and persisted in keeping at his heels while he danced,—a proof of its fidelity which created considerable amusement, and which its master turned to his personal account by saying ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... High Court of Parliament, as ye would in a booth at the fulsome fair, or amidst the trappings and tracings of a profane dancing-school, where the scoundrel minstrels make their ungodly weapons to squeak, 'Kiss and be kind, the fiddler's blind?'—But here," he said, dealing a perilous thump upon the volume—"Here is the King and high priest of those vices and follies!—Here is he, whom men of folly profanely call nature's miracle!—Here ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... upon a drama in the bourgeois sphere, but it was not until July, 1782,—just after he had finished reading Wagner's 'Infanticide',—that the plan of 'Louise Miller' began to take shape in his mind. Gemmingen's poor artist, Wehrmann, became the poor fiddler, Miller, and the daughter Lotte was rechristened Louise. The aristocratic lover, Gemmingen's Karl, was named Ferdinand von Walter, and Amaldi was converted into Lady Milford. One of Gemmingen's subordinate characters, the foppish nobleman, Dromer, who goes about making compliments ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... washed down (at least by those who chose so to do) with whiskey. Great hilarity prevailed—particularly after the introduction of the bottle. Immediately dinner was over, the tables were removed, the fiddler was called for, and the dance commenced, which was to last till the following morning. The dance was opened by Isaac and the bridesmaid, with another couple—beginning with a square four, and ending with what was termed a jig. From this time ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... Ashbjoern stared at the fiddler in amazement when he heard him name so large a sum. He thought that Clement believed the midget had some mysterious power and might be of service for him. He was by no means certain that the doctor would think him such a great ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... was collected, nothing in the shape of an assembly could surpass it in the originality of its appearance. In the glen were constructed a number of tents, where whiskey and refreshments might be had in abundance. Every tent had a fiddler or a piper; many two of them. From the top of the pole that ran up from the roof of each tent, was suspended the symbol by which the owner of it was known by his friends and acquaintances. Here swung a salt herring or ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... through the noonday glow, That crazy fiddler of the hot mid-year, The dry cicada plies his wiry bow In long-spun cadence, thin and dusty sere: From the green grass the small grasshoppers' din Spreads soft and silvery thin: And ever and anon a murmur ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... Why, you're as fine as a fiddler!" cried Mr. Joel Ferris, who was fast becoming familiar, on ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... summer, in that latitude, day scarcely withdraws; but even at that hour the house was making a sweet smoke of peats which came to me over the bay, and the bare-legged daughters of the cotter were wading by the pier. The same day we visited the shores of the isle in the ship's boats; rowed deep into Fiddler's Hole, sounding as we went; and having taken stock of all possible accommodation, pitched on the northern inlet as the scene of operations. For it was no accident that had brought the lighthouse steamer to anchor in the Bay of Earraid. Fifteen miles away to seaward, a ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forth the horses one after the other—Kingmaker, the Fiddler, Pittapat, and the others. We spent a delightful two hours. The sun dropped; the shadows lengthened. From the fields the men began to come in. They drove the wagons and hay ricks into the spacious enclosure, and set leisurely about the task of caring for their animals. Chinese ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... mention any of his friends, sir, but I daresay it wouldn't be much use if she did. Beyond the man's former name and business as a fiddler she told me nothing. I suppose, sir, she didn't tell you anything ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... manager of the Crystal Palace, and some of the leading wind-instrument players of the day, including Lazarus (a famous clarinetist), should attend at the factory to settle the question of the pitch of the organ. "They also brought a violinist," said Mr. Willis; "but I couldn't see what a fiddler, who is a very useful man in his way, had to do with settling the pitch. (I should tell you," added Mr. Willis, sotto voce, "that I had formulated some idea of the proper pitch before these gentlemen arrived.) However, we duly proceeded, Costa presiding over the conclave. When they ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... everybody there with great admiration; for the people of Paris are so sottish, so badot, so foolish and fond by nature, that a juggler, a carrier of indulgences, a sumpter-horse, or mule with cymbals or tinkling bells, a blind fiddler in the middle of a cross lane, shall draw a greater confluence of people together than an evangelical preacher. And they pressed so hard upon him that he was constrained to rest himself upon the towers of Our Lady's Church. At which place, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... course, when she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... for trial on the day of judgment, one of the parties would be sure to lodge an appeal. Be that as it may, the Millses engaged Peter special, and brought him down with a great retainer, in a chaise and four, flags flying, and favors in the postillions' hats, and a fiddler on the roof playing the 'hare in the corn.' The inn was illuminated the same evening, and Peter made a speech from the windows upon the liberty of the press and religious freedom all over the globe, and there wasn't ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... What kind of a business in life, what manner of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... by previous experiences not to wear perishable finery at the barn dance, and the girls all come in pretty wash-dresses that will stand a good romp. Music is furnished by an old darkey fiddler, not violinist, who plays "Money Musk," "Fisher's Hornpipe," "Ole Dan Tucker" and any number ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... prior to Christmas Eve, and they were six long, trying weeks for the two Bingles. The old man was sick two- thirds of the time and had to have a physician. He insisted on having the now famous Dr. Fiddler, one of the most expensive practitioners in New York, obstinately refusing to listen to reason. Fiddler had been the Hooper family physician years ago and that was all there was to be said. He WOULD have him. So poor Tom Bingle sent for the great man, who ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the polite world, introduced cotillions and gave "the calls" with vigorous precision, yet his efforts were not thoroughly successful. Snarls arose, and knots and confusion, which he did his best to undo. But it was evident that the hearts of the dancers were not in it. No sooner was the fiddler heard lowering his strings for the time-honoured "Jig" than eyes brightened, and feet began to beat the floor, including, of course, those of the fiddler himself, who put his whole soul into that weird and wonderful melody, whose fantastic glee ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... asked the fiddler 'Won't you play the rest for me?' 'Don't know it,' says the fiddler, 'Play it ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... men had brought a fiddler from the village, and it was not long before most of the company were treading the measures of reels or cotillons on the grass. How merry and happy they all were! How freely and unembarrassedly they moved and talked! By and by all ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that of a blind fiddler who has but one sense left (if we except the sense of snuff-taking(1)) and who has that stunned or deafened by his own villainous ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... him, and mebbe he'll worry through. He was counting on having you to fiddle for him, though. Jimmy's crazy about music, and he don't never hear much of it. Speaking of fiddling, there's a great fiddler stopping at the hotel now. His name is Blair Milford, and he makes his living fiddling at concerts. I knew him well when he was a child—I was nurse in his father's family. He was a taking little chap, and I was real fond of him. Well, I must be getting. Jimmy'll feel bad at staying ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... style was formed to a great extent before he went abroad, his ideas of pictorial effect were broadened and his technical resources enriched by his sojourn in Italy. Some of the work executed immediately after his return, such as the portraits of Lord President Dundas, Neil Gow, the famous fiddler, and the earlier of two portraits of his friend John Clerk of Eldin, shows, with much unity, a greater care and precision in the handling of detail, a more searched kind of modelling and a fuller sense of tone, and thicker impasto and ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine stump. Most wonderful, most interesting of all was the little gray hut on the shore, almost under their feet, where little Noel and the Indian children played with the tide like fiddler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet the fishermen in a bobbing nutshell. For wolf cubs are like collies in this, that they seem to have a natural interest, perhaps a natural kinship with man, and next to their own kind nothing arouses their ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... of coarse homespun—the product of their own labour. The sources of amusement were limited. The day of the harmonium or piano had not come. Music, except in its simplest vocal form, was not cultivated; only the occasional presence of some fiddler afforded rare seasons of merriment to the delight both of old ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... these cosmopolitan productions. A famous Italian opera star has rhymed in her native lingo; a popular French acrobat—possibly one of a company of strolling equestrians—has immortalised himself in Parisian heroics. M. Pianatowsky, the Polish fiddler, has scrawled something incomprehensible in Russian or Arabic—no matter which; while Mein Herr Van Trinkenfeld comes out strong in double Dutch. Need I add that the immortal Smith of London is in great force in the book, or that his Queen's English is ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... regular skulks. I wouldn't give the twist of a fiddler's elbow for all the lot of 'em as ever pretended to handle a swab, or ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the Next." The Emperor Julian is depicted in it, recounting in Elysium the adventures he had passed through, living successively in the character of a slave, a Jew, a general, an heir, a carpenter, a beau, a monk, a fiddler, a wise man, a king, a fool, a beggar, a prince, a statesman, a soldier, a tailor, an alderman, a poet, a knight, a dancing master, and a bishop. Whoever would see how vividly, with what an honest and vigorous verisimilitude, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... in front de cabins, and have wild turkey or chicken and plenty good things to eat. When dey all through eatin', dey has a li'l fire front de main cabins where de dancin' gwine be. Dey moves everything out de cabin 'cept a few chairs. Next come de fiddler and banjo-er and when dey starts, de caller call, 'Heads lead off,' and de first couple gits in middle de floor, and all de couples follow till de cabin full. Next he calls, 'Sashay to de right, and do-si-do.' Round to de right dey go, den he calls, 'Swing ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... how it served me," said Tom. "Kneel down, Mas'r Harry, same as I do. The house is as drunk as a fiddler, and the floor's going just like the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... tales, and those who did not; and numbered among the scoffers was one Simon Some-body-or-other, whom the village folk called Simple Simon, partly because of his foolish appearance, and partly because of his great love for pies. Simon was the village fiddler—in fact, he had never been known to do anything else—and was in great demand at all the feasts and dances about the countryside. His awkward, angular form was a familiar sight at all such festivities, where he could be found ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... seat sits the bride in the full dress of the country, and wearing her bridal crown; by her side the bridegroom, also well adorned for the occasion; and, on the step of the cart, that most important person, the fiddler, working his bow with astounding energy. If the pony can bear the weight, perhaps a couple of the bride's relations will sit up behind, otherwise they will walk in the procession which follows; and there may be seen all the available peasants ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... Kitty, O Kitty, O Kitty Adare, Till the music was beaten you danced to it there; And the fiddler, poor fellow, the way that he was in, Him sweating for six and his bow wanting rosin, He was put past the fiddling a month—all because in A pair of green shoes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... Lester Morris was a popular dance orchestra leader in and around Shopton. He was also much in demand as a square-dance caller and fiddler. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... the "fiddler crab" is unusually numerous in the marshes of Long Island, this summer. It differs from impecunious persons inasmuch as it is a burrowing, not a borrowing, creature. It differs from ordinary fiddlers by two letters, in that it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came all the young men and women ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... a popular old air That every fiddler loves to scrape. 'T is wrung from organs everywhere, To barking dog with ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... other had abandoned it in defeat—that being the test of victory. At last, the girl from Dryhill reeled, and was caught by half-a-dozen arms. Her adversary, holding the floor undisputed, slowed down, and someone stopped the fiddler. Sally turned from the crowded wall, and began looking about for Samson. He was not there. Lescott had seen him leave the house a few moments before, and started over to intercept the girl, as she ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... I'm used to it, and the money more than compensates me. But I hated the man when I first saw him in the Paradise. There was a fiddler-woman he talked to, and he could scarcely make himself understood. He had money, and he gave her champagne and flowers. And I was starving, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... been considered about as contemptuously as playing the fiddle, though admitted to be less dangerous than family card-playing. It was estimated that a novel-reader was confirming his indolence, and in danger of coming to the poor-house; a fiddler was prophesied to get into jail for vagrancy or larceny; while a card-player had entered a path that might lead as far as the gallows and comprehend all the crimes. This opinion still largely exists in ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... masculinity of the manager. For, according to Sully, the term when applied to the feminine division of mankind has precisely an opposite meaning. The woman manager (he says) economizes, saves, oppresses her household with bargains and contrivances, and looks sourly upon any pence that are cast to the fiddler for even a single jig-step on life's arid march. Wherefore her men-folk call her blessed, and praise her; and then sneak out the backdoor to see the Gilhooly Sisters do a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Colonel Wheeler's tiny upright piano graced the platform in the "tie up." Miss Susie Bennett, the church organist, was to play it, aided now and then by Mrs. Carey or Julia. Osh Popham was to take turns on the violin with a cousin from Warren's Mills, who was reported to be the master fiddler ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... you mean by sadly," said Charlie, huffed. "I think you ladies had better go home soon. Things are likely to be a bit lively later on. They have got a door off its hinges and laid on the ground, and a fiddler playing jigs, and the men and women are dancing each other down; it won't be long till there'll be a fight, and somebody will get ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes, by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo's, for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... garden for? Be so good as to confess to me: you were not unwell! You did not go only into the garden! you went into the wood, and you remained a long time there! I saw it! You made a little visit to the handsome woman while the fiddler was here, did you not? I do not trust you ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... ye and keep ye from all harm.' ... We went into three other cottages—to Mrs. Symons's (daughter-in-law to the old widow living next door) who had an 'unwell boy,' then across a little burn to another old woman's, and afterwards peeped into Blair's, the fiddler. We drove back and got out again to visit old Mrs. Grant (Grant's mother), who is so tidy and clean, and to whom I gave a dress and a handkerchief; and she said, 'You're too kind to me, you're over kind to ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... All Egypt is mad on the subject of dreams. Everybody, from Pharaoh to the fiddler's wife, is telling about his latest dream, or listening to some ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... Old Tom has paid the fiddler, then, for nothing of mine would have bought off the hair, much less the skin. I didn't think men as keen set as them vagabonds would let a fellow up so easy, when they had him fairly at a close hug, and floored. But money is money, and somehow it's unnat'ral hard to withstand. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the bell rang for music between the acts, the tears ran from the bassoon player's eyes in such plentiful showers, that they choked the finger-stops, and, making a spout of the instrument, poured in such torrents on the first fiddler's book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band actually played in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience, and the noise of corks drawn from the smelling-bottles, prevented the mistakes ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... King Cole Was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he; He called for his pipe, And he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three. Every fiddler, he had a fiddle, And a very fine fiddle had he; Twee tweedle dee, tweedle dee, went the fiddlers. Oh, there's none so rare, As can compare With old King Cole ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... upon a time, ever so many thowsand years ago, before there was not no Lord Mares, nor no Shirryffs, nor not ewen no Aldermen, a Gent of the name of Horfay lived in Grease. He was the werry grandest Fiddler of his time, a regler JOEY KIM. Well, he married a werry bewtiful wife, of the name of Yourridisee, and they was both werry appy, till one day, as she was a having a run in a field, a norrid serpent bit her in her heel; so she died. Well, while poor Mr. Horfay is a telling us all ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... usually gave a ball to the voters on the night he was chosen. Some of the miscellaneous election expenses noted in his ledger are, "54 gallons of Strong Beer," "52 Do. of Ale," "L1.0.0. to Mr. John Muir for his fiddler," and "For cakes at ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... door. Two disguised friars (Marten and Nils) are seated at this table drinking beer. The other tables are surrounded by German mercenaries, peasants, and sailors. The door to the street is at the right. A fiddler is seated on top of a barrel. The soldiers are throwing dice. All are drunk and noisy. Hans Windrank, a man from Smaland, a German tradesman, and a Dane are seated together at ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... On his return to town, our hero made the acquaintance of the queer young Scotchman, and was soon admitted to his friendship and intimacy. Wilkie's 'Village Politicians' was the sensation of the Exhibition of 1806, and brought him two important commissions—one from Lord Mulgrave for the 'Blind Fiddler,' and the other from Sir George Beaumont for the 'Rent-Day.' It was now considered that Wilkie's fortune was made, his fame secure, and if his two chief friends—Haydon and Jackson—could not help regarding him with some natural feelings of envy, it is evident that his early success ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... who had come off the sea, a substantial dinner, and a variety of wines. Then we had coffee and tea. I observed in the room several elegantly bound books and other marks of improved life. Soon afterwards a fiddler appeared, and a little ball began. Rasay himself danced with as much spirit as any man, and Malcolm bounded like a roe. Sandie Macleod, who has at times an excessive flow of spirits, and had it now, was, in his days ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and they seemed to be looking about them with an ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... In the morning he was ashamed and angry and determined to punish himself. Making haste to the house of a friend, a gamekeeper, he called him out, and requested the loan of a gun. The alarmed gamekeeper, not liking the fiddler's looks and voice, anxiously inquired what he was going to do with it. "Surely," said he, "you're no gan to shoot yoursel." "No-o," with characteristic candor replied the penitent fiddler, "I dinna think that I'll juist exactly ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... considerably higher place in musical records than such works as Meyerbeer's "Dinorah," or Verdi's "Rigoletto." The thread on which the pearls of poesy and harmony were strung, was the story of a wandering fiddler, who, accompanied by his only child (the part played by Pequita), travels from city to city earning a scant livelihood by his own playing and his daughter's dancing. Chance or fate leads them to throw in their fortunes with a band of enthusiastic adventurers, who, headed by a ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... you want money, let Ma know, and she will send it. She and Pamela are always fussing about change, so I sent them a hundred and twenty quarters yesterday—fiddler's change enough to last till I ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... A poor ragged fiddler had spent the whole of one bitter winter morning playing through the dreary streets without any taking pity upon his plight. As he came to the cathedral he felt an overmastering desire to enter and pour out his distress in ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... symphony—not the noise of big drum, cymbals and so on; but the continuous slight discords caused by some of the players being various degrees in front and others various degrees behind; the scratching produced by uncertain bowing, or by an unfortunate fiddler finding himself a little behind the general body (as he does sometimes) and making a savage rush to catch it up; the hissing of panting flautists; and the barnyard noises produced by exhausted oboe-players. Even with Richter, stolid and trustworthy though he is, these ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... pleased at this act of politeness in a young lady shown to a stranger. The colored musician began to put his fiddle in the best order. Jasper here asked the fiddler to hold a minute, and, addressing the company, said: "Friends, for several years I have not undertaken any matter of importance without first asking the blessing of God upon it, and I desire now to ask God's blessing upon this beautiful young ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... aristocrat that it takes up all its time at that and has no time to be useful. I know now that it never really intended to hold matches, but simply lives to mock the honest seeker who really needs a match. I have been a real sinner myself," she went on after a pause; "I have been a fiddler, all right. I may as well make a clean breast of it,—I made that match-safe and nearly bored my eyes out doing it, and was so nervous and cross that I was ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... speak of technique with a certain supercilious contempt, as though it were a mere negligible and inferior element in an artist's equipment and not the art itself, the mere virtuosity of an accomplished fiddler who seems to say anything with his fiddle, and has never really said anything in his whole life. To the artist technique is another matter. It is the little secret by which he reveals his soul, by which he reveals the soul of the world. Through technique the stuff of the artist's work becomes ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... good are always the merry," says William Butler Yeats, Ireland's foremost living poet, in "The Fiddler of Dorney." This is an old truth, too often ignored or forgotten. There are, unhappily, many persons who have conceived the strange notion that goodness means a gloomy outlook toward the world and those who ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... for the extraordinary expense I've been to in saving your son. If Joey's end of the bet doesn't cover I'll nick you, Joseph, although I figure Joey's end of it will pay the fiddler. He won't miss it out of his two millions. Besides, I've noticed that the only experience worth while is the kind you pay real money for—and Joey has to buy his experience the same as the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... impersonal, and one by one they all dropped off—all except 'Pollo. When the rest had gone, he and Lily found seats on the cane carrier, and they talked a while, and when a little later supper was announced, it was the proud fiddler who took her in, while Pierre and Peters stood off and politely glared at each other; and after a while Pierre must have said something, for Peters suddenly sprang at him and tumbled him out the door and rolled him over in the dirt, and they had to be separated. But presently they laughed and ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... heavy toil at log-rolling, the young men and boys bantered one another into foot races, wrestling matches, shooting contests, and other feats of strength or skill. And if a fiddler could be found, the day was sure to end with a "hoe-down"—a dance that "made even the log-walled house tremble." No corn-husking or wedding was complete without dancing, although members of certain of the more straitlaced religious sects ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Abe for more'n twenty year, and in all that endurin' time he's stuck as close to shore as a fiddler. With all his bold talk about ships and sailin', I tell you he warn't a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... fun," said Alice to Ruth, the evening on which it was to take place. "There's going to be a country fiddler. Come on out and let's look at the decorations. Sandy has hung up long strings of unshelled ears of corn. It looks just like a real country barn now, for he's moved some of his machinery into it, and there's going to be a real ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... not see the same man under all. It is an unjust fact that if a man can play the fiddle, give legal opinions, and black boots just tolerably, he is called an Admirable Crichton, but if he does all three thoroughly well, he is apt to be regarded, in the several departments, as a common fiddler, a common lawyer, and a common boot-black. This is what has happened in the case of Stevenson. If "Dr. Jekyll," "The Master of Ballantrae," "The Child's Garden of Verses," and "Across the Plains" had been each of them one shade less perfectly done than they were, everyone would have seen that ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... by a vile faction. The rank, wealth, and independence of Ballinafad are all ranged under the banner of Figsby and freedom. A party of Griggles' voters have just marched into the town, preceded by a piper and a blind fiddler, playing the most obnoxious tunes. A barrel of beer has been broached at Griggles' committee-rooms. We are all in a state of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... o'clock of the forenoon of that day, dance for a quarter of an hour at least, on the ground adjoining the mausoleum, and after the dance sing the 100th Psalm of the old version, to the fine old tune to which the same was then sung in St. Ives Church; one pound to a fiddler who shall play to the girls while dancing and singing at the mausoleum, and also before them on their return home therefrom; two pounds to two widows of seamen, fishers, or tinners of the borough, being sixty-four ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... new-comer to me; "you see Mendelssohn so fills the stage everywhere, that even David gets overlooked sometimes, don't you, my inspired fiddler?" he added, slapping the ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... miss, that's nothin'. By the cut of his jib I'd rate him as a fiddler, an' I remember once, at Brindisi, I was pointed out two counts an' ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to come, Johnny. There's no get out of it. Here's Jim Mason with me, and we've got orders to stun you and pack you if you show fight. The blessed fiddler from Mudgee didn't turn up. Dave Regan burst his concertina, and they're in ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... of the country through which Telford's Carlisle and Glasgow road passes, the bridges are unusually numerous and of large dimensions. Thus, the Fiddler's Burn Bridge is of three arches, one of 150 and two of 105 feet span each. There are fourteen other bridges, presenting from one to three arches, of from 20 to 90 feet span. But the most picturesque and remarkable bridge constructed by Telford in that district was upon another line of road ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... her hand cordially to her young and interesting conqueress, after which they all repaired to a supper of new milk and flummery, than which there is nothing more delicious within the wide range of luxury. This agreeable meal being over, they repaired to the large barn where Mickey M'Grory the fiddler, was installed in his own peculiar orchestra, consisting of an arm-chair of old Irish oak, brought out ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... expression of glee, animated at present, when he was exercising for his own pleasure the arts which he usually practised for bread,—all announced one of those peripatetic followers of Orpheus whom the vulgar call a strolling fiddler. Gazing more attentively, I easily discovered that though the poor musician's eyes were open, their sense was shut, and that the ecstasy with which he turned them up to heaven only derived its apparent expression from his own internal emotions, but received no assistance from the visible ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the book is the Irish fiddler, with a shock of red hair, a hat that had lost part of its crown and all its rim, and a game leg. This Irishman in the early part of the book and the Irishwoman at the end are characters that Borrow could put ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... for this object of their ambition. The want of a regular education, and early habits, and some lurking remains of their dignity, will never permit them to become a match for an Italian eunuch, a mountebank, a fiddler, a player, or any regular practitioner of that tribe. The Roman emperors, almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands; and the mischief increased every day till the decline and final ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... very general among the poor people, almost universal in every cabin. Dancing-masters of their own rank travel through the country from cabin to cabin, with a piper or blind fiddler, and the pay is sixpence a quarter. It is an absolute system of education. Weddings are always celebrated with much dancing, and a Sunday rarely passes without a dance. There are very few among them who will not, after a hard day's work, gladly walk seven miles to have a dance. John ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... always been either a boot-black or fiddler. In his youthful days he had been a house-servant, and had prided himself on his many accomplishments—his dexterity at dinners, his grace at evening parties, the ease and unconcern with which he could meet embarrassing emergencies at either. But times had changed for him: his old ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... a black fiddler on board, who went by the name of Jumbo; and while he played the sailors danced, greatly to the amusement of the passengers. Jack Ivyleaf, who was up to all sorts of fun, used to join them, and soon learned to dance the hornpipe as well as ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... all, so Old Bernique told Steering, just plain, everyday Americans, from up "at that St. Louis," quite poor and always on the move. The father had been known throughout the country-side as a "blame' good fiddler" and the mother had been, oh a vair' wonderful woman, if one could believe Old Bernique. But there was no Italian blood in Piney. His feeling for Italy had to be explained in another way. It was the great sweet note of poetry, music and beauty, of that far ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... perhaps, some jelly-fish, star-fish, and those wonderful living flowers, the sea-anemones. And then we will watch the great gulls sweeping about in the air, and if we are lucky, we may see an army of little fiddler-crabs marching along, each one with one claw in the air. We may gather sea-side diamonds; we may, perhaps, go in and bathe, and who can tell everything that we may do on the shores of the ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... to the present moment, dear mamma, I find marriage a delightful affair, I can spend all my tenderness on the noblest of men whom a foolish woman disdained for a fiddler,—for that woman evidently was a fool, and a cold fool, the worst kind! I, in my legitimate love, am charitable; I am curing his wounds while I lay my heart open to incurable ones. Yes, the more I love Calyste, the more ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... entertain them, one of the midshipmen played upon the violin, and some of my people danced; at this they were so much delighted, and so impatient to show their gratitude, that one of them went over the ship's side into the canoe, and fetched up a seal-skin bag of red paint, and immediately smeared the fiddler's face all over with it: He was very desirous to pay me the same compliment, which, however, I thought fit to decline; but he made many very vigorous efforts to get the better of my modesty, and it was not without ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Then man the capstan—off we go, As the fiddler swings us round, With a yeo heave ho, And a rum below, Hurrah for the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... promise was a promise. He had enjoyed the consideration for his promise; his notes were secure and the hypothecated bonds had been redeemed. He was on his feet and Governor, thanks to Elton's interposition, and now he was called on to do his part—to pay the fiddler. He must sign ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... himself had shouldered a fiddle (he always carried one about with him wherever he went), and was dashing off one friss-magyar after another with all the grace and dexterity of a professional gipsy fiddler, at the same time making the two little peasant girls dance in front of him with ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... pulled up at old Collins', Quite a bunch was there before, You could hear the fiddler calling, And the scraping on the floor. Through the dingy sodhouse window Gleamed a sickly yellow light, Where I helped you from the wagon, Holding you so loving tight. Then they called out, "Choose your pardners, Numbers five, six, seven, and eight," ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... by his wife, who, having robbed him of all his cash and valuable effects, had eloped from his house with one of his own customers, who appeared in the character of a French count, but was in reality no other than an Italian fiddler; that, in consequence of this retreat, he, the husband, was disabled from paying a considerable sum which he had set apart for his wine merchant, who being disappointed in his expectation, took out an execution against his effects; and the rest of his creditors following his example, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... smoking a meditative cigar alone, while pacing the old Cantonal high road before the Faucon. "I think I will remain on picket here," he mused. "This fiddler fellow, Wieniawski, must not meet her. She must be led on to leave here at once. Constitution, nerve, aplomb; she has them all. She should have been born a man. What a soldier! One of nature's mistakes—man's mental ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... was a very quiet, dignified, and unobtrusive gentleman, and in point of common sense and intelligence much above the average of the race to which he belonged; but, like all the rest of the French stock, woefully wanting in energy and never in a hurry. He was a splendid fiddler, and consequently a favorite with all, especially the young folks, who easily pressed him into service on all occasions to play for their numerous dances. He died at Prairie du Pont, in 1863, at the age of eighty-one years. His mother, Manette ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in need of amusement will play with another dog—the pair pretending to fight, and so on, but when there is work to be done, the dog is lost in the artist. How crestfallen he looks if by any chance he blunders on to a bird without pointing it! A fiddler who has played a wrong note in a solo is the only creature who can look quite so discomfited. Humanity, instead of going to the ant for wisdom, should ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the ball-room floor, and were standing directly in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis, leaned over and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he's out a tune thus. What music will be in him when Hector has knock'd out his brains I know not; but, I am sure, none; unless the fiddler Apollo get his ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... Mr. Benjermun Ram, w'ich he done come up inter my min', wuz one er dezeyer ole-timers. Dey tells me dat he 'uz a fiddler fum away back yander—one er dem ar kinder fiddlers w'at can't git de chune down fine 'less dey pats der foot. He stay all by he own-alone se'f way out in de middle un a big new-groun', en he sech a handy man fer ter have at a frolic dat de yuther creeturs like 'im ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... capital the real dances of the country are disfigured not only by the influx of foreigners, but especially also by the unfortunate employment of barrel- organs....It is this instrument which crushes among the people the practice of music, and takes the means of subsistence from the village fiddler, who becomes more and more rare since every tavern-keeper, in buying a barrel-organ, easily puts an end to all competition. We see already more and more disappear from our country sides these sweet songs and improvised refrains which the rustic minstrels remembered and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and I made a speech with airy bacchanalianism, glass in hand, But poor Jim must leave the wine untasted. "Don't touch it," I had found the opportunity to whisper; "in your state it will make you as drunk as a fiddler." And Jim had wrung my hand with a "God ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not so! We are always having a treat! Why, think now: at Christmas, the holidays, the gifts, the carols and the games, with fiddler and spiced wine and all manner of cakes; at harvest, the great dance, the prizes, the ale; at Easter, the church trimming, the gold-pieces sent home and the pick of the lambs for the one that does best at Catechism (but that is the little ones); at ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... what honor, what profit can accrue to you from such conduct as yours? One moment you tell me you are going to become the greatest musician in the world, and straight you fill my house with fiddlers. Tri. I am clear out of that scrape now, sir. Old F. Then from a fiddler you are metamorphosed into a philosopher; and for the noise of drums, trumpets, and hautboys, you substitute a vile jargon, more unintelligible than was ever heard at the tower of Babel. Tri. You are right, sir, I have found out that philosophy is folly; so, I have cut ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was a good white man. He was a grand fiddler and he used to call us to de big house at night to dance for him. I couldn't do nothin' 'cept jump up and down and I sho' did git tired. Marse Jabe warn't married. He raised his brother's chillun, but dey was all grown ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... besides, the faith, the kindliness, the light-heartedness that had saved them through it all. There were tunes that every man and woman in Ireland knows—tunes that you know—old airs that every Irish fiddler or piper or singer learns from the older ones, that the oldest ones of all learned, they say, from the fairies. And under all the music, whether grave or gay, there went a strain of grief, sometimes almost harsh and sometimes scarcely heard, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... sharpened like a knife in one hand, he held another piece in the other, split in two, with the convex part uppermost, in which he had cut a small notch. He began passing the sharp piece slowly over the other, as a fiddler does his bow over his fiddle—strings, increasing in rapidity, till, in a very short time, the powder produced by the friction ignited, and fell down upon the ashes. This he quickly blew up, and even more rapidly than I could have done with my burning-glass, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the coach at Fiddler's Cross, and trudged down across the fields. We were soaked enough on the coach, though, and couldn't get ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... named—a transparent, subtle, vaporous tint of golden pink or purple, which is the gift of this warm and wonderful light. A cricket that has climbed up one of the tender shoots strikes a low note, which is like the drowsy chirrup of a roosting bird. It is the first touch of a fiddler in the night's orchestra, and will soon be taken up by thousands of other crickets, bell-tinkling toads, croaking frogs in the valley, and the solitary owl that hoots from the hills. Below, how the river seems to sleep under the dusky wings of gathering dreams where the white bridge ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... man so various, that he seem'd to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... intelligence that there was to be a beggar's wedding in the neighborhood. He was resolved not to miss the opportunity of seeing so curious a ceremony; and that he might enjoy the whole completely, proposed to Dr. Sheridan that he should go thither disguised as a blind fiddler, with a bandage over his eyes, and he would attend him as his man to lead him. Thus accoutred, they reached the scene of action, where the blind fiddler was received with joyful shouts. They had ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... getting acorns. That was about the time of my hearing the first music I ever heard—unless you call the singing of the birds music (we had plenty of that), and the bells on the breeze from a distance, when the wind was south. The first music (so to call it) that I heard was from a blind fiddler that came to us. What brought him, I don't know—whether he lost his way, or what; but he lost his way after he left us. His dog seems to have been in fault: but he got into a pool in the middle of the wood, and there he lay drowned, with ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... plagues, and put down riots by magic; and how much Ninus surpassed in abilities any of his successors on the throne of Assyria. The moderns, Sir William owns, have found out the circulation of blood; but, on the other hand, they have quite lost the art of conjuring; nor can any modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents by his performance. He tells us that "Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater progresses in the several empires of science than any of their successors have since been able to reach"; which is just as absurd ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it proved. A certain Guetem, a fiddler of the Elector of Bavaria, had entered the service of Holland, had taken part in her war against France, and had become a colonel. Chatting one evening with his comrades, he laid a wager that he would carry off some one of mark between Paris and Versailles. He obtained a passport, and thirty chosen ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... there spy me, They will all come up to me, With, 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!' And dance like ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... of gingerbreads and gimcracks. The grass under it was trodden flat, and in patches the earth was bare and wet beneath the trapesing feet of the people. They were a mixed and curious company. In a ring that was cleared by an athletic plowman the fiddler-postman of Newlands, Tom o' Dint, was seated on a tub turned bottom up. He was a little man with bowed legs and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Fr. gaite, from the Old High German form of modern Ger. Wacht, watch. Modern French still has the verb guetter, to lie in wait for, and guet, the watch. Minstrel comes from an Old French derivative of Lat. minister, servant. Modern Fr. menetrier is only used of a country fiddler who attends village weddings. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... me, Miss Trent, but I knew your father well enough, and I knew you when you was a little 'un. In those days I had the "Green Man" in the Cut; your father often enough gave us a toon on his fiddle. A rare good fiddler he was, too! Give us a song ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and her numerous votaries for their own. As the reverend brother thundered out his denunciations of the ungodly goddess he cast his eyes often in the direction of the leading dancer, and from her they would wander to the small fiddler who sat beside the tall hat in a back pew. But somehow neither Lily nor Apollo seemed in the least conscious of any personal appeal in his glance, and when finally the question of the Christmas ball was ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... fools of fate, and slaves of circumstance, Life is a fiddler, and we all must dance. From gloom where mocks that will-o'-wisp, Freewill, I heard a voice cry: "Say, ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... hears from the baleful Aengus the false report that the other is dead. Each lover unhesitatingly seeks death in order to meet the other at once beyond these mortal shores. Yeats has also told simple stories in simple verse, as may be seen in The Ballad of Father Gilligan or The Fiddler of Dooney. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... fresh grief to him. After his return from Rome (1835) he published his "Improvisatore," which slowly won its way. It was the reputation this novel gained abroad which changed public opinion in Denmark in its favor. A second novel, "Only a Fiddler" (1837), is a fresh variation of his autobiography, and the lachrymose and a trifle chaotic story, "O. T." (being the brand of the Odense penitentiary) scarcely deserved any better reception than was ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... get better," said Billy Mustard, who was a great favourite with the men from the fact that he was famous as a fiddler, and could rattle off anything from "Money Musk" up to "The Triumph;" and as to hornpipes, the somethingth said there wasn't a man in the service who could touch him. Billy Mustard had won the hearts of the sailors, too, during the voyage, from ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... public passion whispered itself into rhyme or quaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the admitted rector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver, Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M'Bride from heaven knows where, and that M'Grane, who in after days, when the true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather in borrowed rags, and ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... however, equally plain that an alliance with a foreign fiddler was certain to shock British respectability. It is the old story of the quarrel between Philistia and Bohemia. Nor was respectability without much to say for itself. Piozzi was a Catholic as well as a foreigner; to marry him was in all probability to break with daughters just growing into womanhood, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... their dance music and known throughout the wilderness to all the dancers. Those old-time country fiddlers—all of them, black or white—how wonderful they were! They have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! The very way that ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... singing the lauds of the immortal God. Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness, I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet: and yet is it sung but by some blind crouder [Footnote: fiddler.], with no rougher voice than rude style: which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar? In Hungary I have seen it the manner at all feasts and other such meetings, to have songs ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... guests are here, To eat the cheer, And dinner's served, my Lord." The butler bowed; And then the crowd Rushed in with one accord. The fiddler-crab Came in a cab, And played a piece in C; While on his horn, The Unicorn ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... a seaman true means one true in heart as well as in knowledge; but, like a blind fiddler, he'll be led ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... upon a typical conflict, the conflict between the individual and that which, in Ireland, has much authority, the family group. This particular conflict was shown again in "The Fiddler's House." where the life, not of the actual peasants, but of rural people with artistic and aristocratic ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
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