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More "Minstrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have ever had the extremest sympathy for Walter Scott, that it would delight me to see his place. When he was dying I was saying prayers (whatever they were worth) for him continually, thinking of Keble's words, 'Think on the minstrel as ye kneel.' (Dr. Newman to J. R. H. from Edgbaston, Birmingham, Oct. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... brushed it, she had tenderly stroked with her hands; often kissing the bronzed face ardent and friendly to the world and thinking to herself of the double blue in his eyes, the old Saxon blue of battle and the old Saxon blue of the minstrel, also. ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... a good practical joke; as the garland adorning The hair of a maiden it shines, as the balm that is shed On the brain of a wandering minstrel; it comes without warning, Transmuting to gold an existence that once was as lead. It glads, it rejoices the soul; recollecting it after One well-nigh explodes; but I say there are seasons for laughter, And, like other great men, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... disposed of it in the manner and for the purpose I have shown you. As I still believed you capable of remorse and confession, I twice allowed you to see I was on your track: once in the garb of an itinerant negro minstrel, and the second time as a workman looking in the window of the pawnshop where ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... actor in the scenes of fateful love and deathless grief which he has fixed for ever in the memory of men of his race and blood. There are passages in which, in the light and heat of battle, or in agony of terror or sorrow, we are made to see something of the minstrel as well as his theme. But by no research are we likely at this late date to recover any clew to the birthplace or to the lineaments of the life and face of the grand old poet who wrote the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens; nor do towns contend for the honour of having ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... and bending their way towards it, marched a party of falconers with their well-trained birds, whose skill they had been approving upon their fists, their jesses ringing as they moved along, while nearer still, and almost at the foot of the terrace wall, was a minstrel playing on a rebec, to which a keeper, in a dress of Lincoln green, with a bow over his shoulder, a quiver of arrows at his back, and a comely damsel ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and straight a tree sprang up on its root: It cast forth branches and throve and flourished with many a shoot. The birds, when the wood was green, sang o'er it, and when it was dry, Fair women sang to it in turn, for lo, 'twas a minstrel's lute! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William seem by ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... me, that for many years of my life Milton was to me incomparably the first of English poets; though at this time of my earliest acquaintance with him, Walter Scott had precedence over him, and was undoubtedly in my opinion greatest of mortal and immortal bards. His "Marmion" and "Lay of the Last Minstrel" were already familiar to me. Of Shakespeare at this time, and for many subsequent years, I knew not ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... wrapt in age's weeds, Whose blood, if time have touched it not and stilled, The sun's own fire must once have kindled,—thou Sing praise of soft-lipped women? doth not shame Sting thee, to sound this minstrel's note, and gild A girl's proud face with praises, though her brow Were bright as dawn's? And had her grace no name For men to worship ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a minstrel out in the crowd, and pretty soon he struck up his fiddle and his lay, and he did not exactly sing the virtues of Billy Bayhone. Evidently some partisan thought he ought, for he smote him on the ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... character of Fenella in his "Peveril of the Peak." Scott began his career as a writer with a translation of Buerger's "Ballads." His most successful metrical pieces, "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake," for the most part appeared during the opening years of the Nineteenth Century. Then came the great series of the "Waverley Novels," named after the romance of "Waverley," published anonymously in ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... he outlived reaction against his genius; he died in the fulness of a happy age and of renown. This full-orbed life, with not a few years of sorrow and stress, is what Nature seems to intend for the career of a divine minstrel. If Tennyson missed the "one crowded hour of glorious life," he had not to be content in "an age ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the Minstrel quell— He by the Minstrel is confounded; From Saul was cast the spirit fell, When David's harp ...
— The Tale of Brynild, and King Valdemar and his Sister - Two Ballads • Anonymous
... amusing specimens of the MISAPPLICATION of the style and meter of Mr. Scott's admirable romances."—Quarterly Review. "'A Tale of Drury.' by Walter Scott, is, upon the whole, admirably execuated; though the introduction is rather tame. The burning is described with the mighty minstrel's characteristic love of localitics. The catastrophe is described with a spirit not unworthy of the name so ventureously assumed by ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... The Minstrel-boy to the war is gone, By the Belfast road he's coming; His Party sword he has girded on And his wild harp loud he's thrumming. "Land of bulls!" said the warrior bard, "Though GLADSTONE'S gang betrays thee, One sword, at least, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... "'Bring me,' (said Elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said, [singing most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord, Make this ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... has become of this minstrel who sang the Minnelieder of the Car-barns? Like Homer, like Omar, like Sappho, like Shakespeare, he is a Voice singing out of the mists. He was but a Name to his employers; and his friends, if he has friends, remember him not. These Sonnets, written ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... Hastings the minstrel Taillefer, as we have elsewhere told, rode before the advancing Norman host, singing the "Song of Roland," till a British hand stilled his song and laid him low in death. This ancient song is attributed, though doubtfully, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... the great pianists of the second quarter of this century has been felicitously characterised by an anonymous contemporary: Thalberg, he said, is a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a sibyl, and Doehler ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... pleasure for his future damnation, and from himself lays all the fault upon his Maker; and from His decree fetcheth excuses of his wickedness. The inevitable necessity of God's counsel makes him desperately careless; so with good food he poisons himself. Goodness is his minstrel; neither is any mirth so cordial to him, as his sport with God's fools. Every virtue hath his slander, and his jest to laugh it out of fashion; every vice his colour. His usualest theme is the boast of his young sins, which he can still joy in, though he cannot commit; and (if it may be) ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... strolling Longfellow minstrel," he continued, ignoring or not hearing my remark, "with his dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap the climax. Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me. Not an original or cheerful note! 'Old Hundred' ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... one of the purest of names, encountered the rebels with a considerable force, composed entirely of his own men; these the rebels were the less able to withstand, as they knew that still more troops were on the march. As the ballad of a northern minstrel says, the gold-horned bull of the Nevilles, the silver crescent of the Percies, vanished from the field: the chiefs themselves fled over the Scotch border, their troops dispersed, their declared partisans underwent the severest punishments. Many who knew ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... half filled with old rubbish. I found rooms where an amateur minstrel entertainment had been given. Rude lettering upon the walls recorded the fact in lampblack, and a monster hand pointed with index finger to its temporary bar. Burnt-cork debris was scattered about, and there were "old soldiers" enough on ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... monotony of soiled tent houses, tumble-down huts and oblong, flat-roofed buildings stretching their disorderly array along the road. Coming closer he saw the name, "Pipesville," printed on the door, and knew that this must be the "summer home," as it was called, of San Francisco's beloved minstrel, Stephen Massett, otherwise "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville," singer, player, essayist and creator of those wondrous one-man concerts dear to all ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... such an accomplished poet as Raymond of Toulouse must be admitted to the contest. "But, at all events," she told her sisters, "that renowned minstrel shall bring no polished work of long study to match against the untutored outpourings of my favourite's heart. Already have I ordained, with my assistant judges, that since some one of the contestants may be tempted to present a poem not his own, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... seized and removed a tall, blonde young man with a mild, vacuous face. For the past few minutes this young man had been sitting bolt upright on a chair with his hands on his knees, so exactly in the manner of an end-man at a minstrel show that one would hardly have been surprised had he burst into song or asked ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Minimum minimumo. Minister (religious) pastro. Minister (polit.) ministro. Ministry ministraro. Minor (age) neplenagxa. Minor (mus.) molo, mola. Minority (age) neplenagxo. Minority malplimulto. Minstrel bardo, kantisto. Mint mento. Minute menueto. Minuet (time) minuto. Minute (note) noto. Minute malgrandega. Minuti detaleto. Miracle miraklo. Miraculous mirakla. Mire sxlimo, koto. Mirror spegulo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... writing; one is given a certain thing to say, and the power to say it; it does not come by effort, but by a pleasant felicity. After all, I reflect, the book is only a good story, well told. I do not feel like a benefactor of the human race, but at the best like a skilful minstrel, who has given some innocent pleasure. What, after all, does it amount to? I have touched to life, perhaps a few gracious, tender, romantic fancies—but, after all, the thoughts and emotions were there to start with, just as the harmonies which the ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who had attuned them gave way to musicians of loftier aspect and simpler garb; in whom might be recognized, not indeed the genuine Spartans, but their free, if subordinate, countrymen of Laconia; and a minstrel, who walked beside them, broke out into a song, partially adapted from the bold and lively strain of Alcaeus, the first two lines in each stanza ringing much to that chime, the two latter reduced into briefer compass, as, with allowance for the differing laws ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... often copious and energetic language: but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and often versification of great power and sweetness: but they have no metrical canons; and the minstrel whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are the delight of his audience, would himself be unable to say of how many dactyls and trochees each of his lines consists. As eloquence exists before syntax, and song before prosody, so government may exist in a high degree of excellence long before ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bare in bitter grudge The slights of Arthur and his Table, Mark The Cornish King, had heard a wandering voice, A minstrel of Caerlon by strong storm Blown into shelter at Tintagil, say That out of naked knightlike purity Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl But the great Queen herself, fought in her name, Sware by her—vows like theirs, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... for Bob and Abbott now just any minute." She added, eying the crowd—"I saw Fran on the street, long and merry ago!" Her accent was that of condemnation. Like a rock she sat, letting the fickle populace drift by to minstrel show and snake den. The severity of her double chin said they might all go thither—she would not; let them be swallowed up by that gigantic serpent whose tail, too long for bill-board illustration, must ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Froda, his eyes sparkling with happiness. "For well I know that she scorns not my service; she has even deigned sometimes to appear to me. Oh, I am in truth a happy knight and minstrel!" ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... o'er," said all; "Silent now the bugle's call. Love should be the warrior's dream,— Love alone the minstrel's theme. Sing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the sunlight, of the world he would live in when he grew up. He had planned so many lives for himself: a general, like Caesar, he was to conquer the world and die murdered in a great marble hall; a wandering minstrel, he would go through all countries singing and have intricate endless adventures; a great musician, he would sit at the piano playing, like Chopin in the engraving, while beautiful women wept and men with long, curly hair hid their faces in their hands. It was only slavery ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... breweries, and does a considerable trade in wine. It is immortalized in the Nibelungenlied in the person of "Volker von Alzeie,'' the warrior who in the last part of the epic plays a part second only to that of Hagen, and who "was called the minstrel (spilman) because he could fiddle.'' It became an imperial city in 1277. In 1620 it was sacked by the Spaniards and in 1689 burnt by the French. Annexed to France during the Napoleonic wars, it passed in 1815 to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 'The minstrel's song has charmed you: but I must remember what is right, for songs cannot alter justice; and I must be faithful to my name. Alcinous I am called, the man of sturdy sense; and Alcinous I will be.' But for all that Arete besought him, until she won ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... them came from American negro sources. The songs heard on Venetian gondolas must have had their effect, as many examples show. There are also distinct traces of folk-songs which the sailor would have learnt ashore in his native fishing village, and the more familiar Christy Minstrel song was frequently pressed into the service. As an old sailor once said to me: 'You can make ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... by the fire when feasters roared And minstrels waited turns, Of the might of the men that Troy adored, Of the valor in vain of the Trojan sword, With the love that slakeless burns, That caught and blazed in the minstrel mind Or ever the age of pen. So maids and a minstrel rebuilt Troy, Out of the ashes they rebuilt Troy To live in the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... still sung in the taverns of the Main. He gave a verse of it, a wild, sad thing, with tears in it and the joy of battle. After that we all sang, all but me, who have no voice. Bertrand had a lay of Normandy, about a lady who walked in the apple-orchards and fell in love with a wandering minstrel; and Donaldson sang a rough ballad of Virginia, in which a man weighs the worth of his wife against a tankard of apple-jack. Grey sang an English song about the north-country maid who came to London, and a bit of the chanty of the Devon men who sacked Santa Fe and stole the Almirante's daughter. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... had told them many such tales which Stevenson wove into stories. The "Beach of Falesa" and the "Isle of Voices" are probably the two most famous, while "the strange story of the loss of the brigantine Wandering Minstrel and what men and ships do in that wild and beautiful world beyond the American continent" formed a plot for the story called "The Wrecker," which he and Lloyd Osbourne ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... just take this pleasing minstrel by the scruff of his neck and say to him, 'Nice little ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Meistersingers, or minstrel tradesmen of Germany. An association of master tradesmen to revive the national minstrelsy, which had fallen into decay with the decline of the minnesingers, or love minstrels (1350-1523). Their subjects were chiefly moral or religious, and constructed according to rigid rules. The three ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the accustom'd place That minstrel ply'd his art, Though its soft symphony of words Convulsed with pain the broken chords Within a ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... life of extreme austerity St. Modan, finding his end approaching, retired to the solitude of Rosneath, where he died. Devotion to him was very popular in Scotland. Scott alludes to it in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel": ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... Oriental scholar, who was styled by his friend Ben Jonson 'a monarch in letters,' and 'vir omni eruditionis genere instructissimus' by Archbishop Laud, was born on the 16th of December 1584 at Salvington, near Worthing, in Sussex. His father was John Selden, a farmer, known as the 'Minstrel' on account of his proficiency in music. Aubrey describes him as 'a yeomanly man of about forty pounds a year, who played well on the violin, in which he took much delight.' Selden was first educated at the free grammar school ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Shall we pause in our strain, Now the months bring again The pipe and the minstrel to gladden the folk? Rather strike on the ear With a note strong and clear, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... older "Spielmannsdichtung", or minstrel poetry, in the terseness and vigor of its language and in the lack of poetic imagery, but it is free from the coarseness and vulgar and grotesque humor of the latter. It approaches the courtly epic in its ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... imaginative) of the time, so far from forming a barrier between the two sexes, were a bond of union. The song of the minstrel was devoted to the praise of beauty, and paid by her smile. The spirit of the age, as imbodied in these effusions, is the best proof of the beneficial influence exercised over that age by our sex. In them, the name of woman is not associated in the degrading catalogue ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... as a super in the sensational drama She, by H. Rider Haggard. Two Englishmen were penetrating the mysterious jungles of Africa, and I was their native guide and porter. They had me all blacked up like a negro minstrel, but this wasn't a funny show, it was a drama of mystery and terror. While I was guiding the English travelers through the jungle of the local stage, we penetrated into the ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... breathe the ozone that rises from the line of breakers, without the necessity of making detours to avoid fruit-stalls and bathing-saloons. Fortunately the fine sands around Newquay have not yet become a mart for sweetmeats and cocoanuts, nor are they the happy hunting ground of the negro minstrel and other ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... human element of the changed and modernised city. The twang of double-stringed lutes, the tinkle of metal tubes, and the elusive melody of silvery gongs, echo from the ages whence dance and song descend as an unchanged inheritance. An itinerant minstrel recites the history of Johar Mankain, the Una of Java, who shone like a jewel in the world which could not tarnish the purity and devotion of one whose heart entertained no evil thought. In the intricate ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... heath now moon-tide horrors hung, And night's dark pencil dimm'd the tints of spring; The boding minstrel now harsh omens sung, And the bat spread his ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Homilies in Verse. Prick of Conscience. Minot's Poems. Barbour's Bruce; with an extract. Great extent of the Old Northern dialect; from Aberdeen to the Humber. Lowland Scotch identical with the Yorkshire dialect of Hampole. Lowland Scotch called "Inglis" by Barbour, Henry the Minstrel, Dunbar, and Lyndesay; first called "Scottis" by G. Douglas. Dr Murray's account of the Dialect of the Southern ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... which opened with the line, "Is there a county to compare with Notts?" The county of Derby was jealous of its neighbour in other things besides sport, and considered itself to have scored when its own tame minstrel ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... that mouldering long hast hung On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, Till envious ivy did around thee cling, Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,— O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring, Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep, Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... a hearty assent; adding, at the same time, a hope that her want of practice since she left Edinburgh would be no obstacle to her success. To which Miss Devine replied, by asking him to name the window out of which she was to present her compliments to the English minstrel. "As to that, Betty," said he, "I leave you to select your own ground; but take care that you don't miss fire"—an observation which took the stable-boy, Bill Mack, by the greatest surprise, as, from ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... to herself, "Ah! if I only had a friend to love best!" She almost learned "Lalla Rookh" by heart; and she pictured herself as the Persian princess listening to a minstrel in Oriental costume, but with a very German face. It was not that the child was in love, but her heart was untenanted; and as memories walked through it, it ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... as a bird's, and no bird was fonder of green woods and waving branches. He had lived since his birth in the hut in the forest, and had never wished to leave it, until one winter night a wandering minstrel sought shelter there, and paid for his night's lodging with songs of love and battle. Ever since that night Fergus pined for another life. He no longer found joy in the music of the hounds or in the cries of the huntsmen in forest glades. He yearned for the chance of battle, and the ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Handel is almost a contemporary. Paintings and busts of this great minstrel are scattered everywhere throughout the land. He lies in Westminster Abbey among the great poets, warriors, and statesmen, a giant memory in his noble art. A few hours after death the sculptor Roubiliac took a cast of his face, which he wrought into imperishable ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the mountain-streams, Most tuneful minstrel of the forest-choirs, Bird of all grace and harmony of soul, Unseen, we hail thee ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... bluish grey—they laughed more than his lips did at a humorous story. His tower-like head and thin, white hair marked him out among a thousand, while any one might swear to his voice again who heard it once, for it had a touch of the lisp and the burr; yet, as the minstrel said, of Douglas, 'it became him wonder well,' and gave great softness to a sorrowful story: indeed, I imagined that he kept the burr part of the tone for matters of a facetious or humorous kind, and brought out the lisp part in those of tenderness or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low or incongruous terms in proverbs, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the universe more seriously than himself. To him wickedness was a matter of imps and monsters rather than of villains, and of imps and monsters that could be exorcized by music. He was the Orpheus of the world who might tame the beast in all of us if we would listen to him, the wandering minstrel whom the world left to play out in the street. And yet his ultimate seriousness and the last secret of his beauty is pity, not for himself and his own little troubles, but for the whole bitter earnestness of mortal children. And in this pity he seems not to weep ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... "Mr Wandering Minstrel," in such a tone, jarred upon him, and a peculiar trembling came over him as he felt that he had forgotten everything. The table, with its plate and glass, looked misty, too, and there was a singing in his ears as his fingers played nervously ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... but I don't care! I've put our names down for a mandoline and guitar duet, and said we'd be ready to help with any accompaniments they like. Meg Howell just jumped at that. It seems Patricia Marshall and Clarice Nixon are going to sing a Christy Minstrel song, and she thought our instruments would add to the effect no end. I tell you we shall score. Did ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... as it was important to know how numerous those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, King Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself as a gleeman or minstrel, and went, with his harp, to the Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of Guthrum, the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... him to Lausanne, where the Emperor Rudolph was then holding his court to discuss with Pope Gregory—the tenth of the name—arrangements for a new crusade. But nothing had yet been said about Biberli. On the evening before the young noble's departure, however, a travelling minstrel came to the castle, who sang of the deeds of former crusaders, and alluded very touchingly to the loneliness of the wounded knight, Herr Weisenthau, on his couch of pain. Then the Lady Wendula remembered her eldest son, and the fraternal tendance ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... window, erst, In hopeless mood, A minstrel stood. As, passionate, he smote my first, From his sad lips my second passed, And from my first ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... delight in odd numbers); and to this may be added seven bonnet-pieces of Scottish gold, and a broadsword and spear, which their ancestor had wielded with such strength and courage in the battle of Dryfe Sands, that the minstrel who sang of that deed of arms ranked him only second to ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... lovely, And a golden crown to crown him. While the empyrean minstrels rising, All in flowing garments vested, Some with harps and some with timbrels, Some with lutes and some with trumpets, All in goodly order mingled, In the skill of gay perfection; Far the minstrel band extendeth Like a wilderness of grandeur. As a sea of flowing white waves Mingled up with diamond ripples; As the moon on sparkling waters, Comes the light from glowing beacons, Dancing on their crowns of glory, Far and near redounding, flowing In a thousand dazzling colors, Like ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... the Spring? Or are the birds all wrong That play on flute and viol, A thousand strong, In minstrel galleries Of the long deep wood, Epiphanies ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... of literature. The greater part of his early life was an unconscious preparation for writing. He had been writing prose romances for several years with considerable success, when in January, 1805, he published "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." It at once became extremely popular. It sold more widely than any poem had ever sold before. This led him to decide that literature was to be the main business of his life. "Marmion," which appeared in 1808, and "The Lady of the Lake," in 1810, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... did not consider, as her cousin had hoped she would have done, what were the words set to the air, which he imagined she would remember, and which would have told her so much. For, only a few years before, Adam's opera of Richard le Roi had made the story of the minstrel Blondel and our English Coeur de Lion familiar to all the opera- going part of the Parisian public, and Clement had bethought him of establishing a communication with ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... offices and the stables were all represented by a row of penthouses and sheds behind the main building. Here lived Charles the page, Peter the old falconer, Red Swire who had followed Nigel's grandfather to the Scottish wars, Weathercote the broken minstrel, John the cook, and other survivors of more prosperous days, who still clung to the old house as the barnacles to some wrecked ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... such stories are very closely connected with the simple life of a simple people—there is much of their thought about Nature, much of their love of the land where they live. Next, notice that he got his knowledge of these songs from a "sweet singer," a minstrel. All simple tribes have had such singers, who went about from place to place telling in verse what the people wanted to hear. There were no books, both boys and girls learned their stories from older people, or from wandering ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... silent and gathered to hear, for Aladdin's fame as a maker of songs had spread over the whole army, and he was called the Minstrel Major. He felt his audience and sang louder. The very sick man turned a little so that he, too, could hear. Only the occasional striking of a match or the surreptitious drawing of a cork interrupted. The stately tune ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... moon-of-my-delight—the probables, the possibles, the highly unlikelies, and the impossibles. Never an echo to the minstrel's wooing song. No, my dear, we have got to take to the boats this time. Unless, of course, some one possessed at one and the same time of twenty thousand pounds and a very confiding nature happens to drop from ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... unsophisticated, free to find in all things matter for wonder, and to work out his mental processes unprejudiced by a restraining knowledge of other men's past achievements. In his eighteenth year he taught himself to read, choosing as his text-books Henry the Minstrel's Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace and the Gentle Shepherd of Allan Ramsay. Not until his twenty-sixth year did he acquire the art of penmanship, which he learned "upon the hillside by copying the Italian alphabet, using his knee as his desk, and having the ink-bottle ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... summit, merchant-vessels from the trunk, towns from the roots, rowing-boats from the branches, and children's boats from the chips. What remained was used to make shelters for weak old men, sick widows, and orphan children, and the last branches left were used to build a little room in which the minstrel could sing his songs. Strangers who came now and then across the bridge stopped before the minstrel's hut to ask the name of the city with the magnificent palace; and the minstrel replied that there was nothing there but his poor hut, and all the splendour they beheld was the light of his ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... dubious. In the English, and in all Scots versions, men "win their hay" at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much later. But if the English ballad be NORTHUMBRIAN, little can be made out of that proof of Scottish origin. If the English version be a southern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide for hay-making is borrowed ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... in the morning. Punch was too sweet, you see. Sweet punch is sure to make your headache. He! he! But I'm done with clubs and Delmonico's, you know. I'm going to settle down and be a steady family man." Walking to the door, he sang in capital minstrel style: ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... institution of feudalism that helped to make this common subject and spirit of mediaeval literature was the minstrel, who was attached to every well-appointed castle. This picturesque poet—gleeman, trouvere or troubadour sang heroic stories and romances of love in the halls of castles and in the market places of towns. He borrowed ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... not unworthy of note that Wrangham, whose French stanzas on "The Birth of Love" Wordsworth translated into English, was in the same year—1789—third Wrangler, second Smith's prizeman, and first Chancellor's medallist; while Robert Greenwood, "the Minstrel of the Troop," who "blew his flute, alone upon the rock" in Windermere,—also one of the characters referred to in the second book of 'The Prelude',—was sixteenth Wrangler in Wordsworth's year, viz. 1791. William Raincock was at St. John's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... in that island only one day and one night, and yet, when he came home to his kingdom, he found all changed, his friends dead, his family dethroned, and not a man who knew his face; until at last, driven hither and thither like a beggar, a poor minstrel had taken compassion of his sufferings and given him all he could give—a song, the song of the prowess of a hero dead for hundreds of years, the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... and slaved from morning till night, made him get his lessons and be careful of his clothes, and kept him out of bad company; and now I'm not allowed to say a word, but just stand by while you let him go to ruin. The next thing we'll have him in a nigger minstrel band, or playing ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Even as his song the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers, And day-break glory haunts his evening hours. Ah, such a life prefigures its own moral: That first "Last Leaf" is now a leaf of laurel, Which—smiling not, but trembling at the touch— Youth gives ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Thou soaring minstrel! winged bard! Whose path is the free air, Whose song makes sunshine seem more bright, And ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... whose visionary brain Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, Spring with her birds, or children with their play, Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart,— Turn to the record where his years are told,— Count his gray ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Any man, any husband, who, knowing it, dares to disregard it, has committed an outrage.... In the final combination of man and woman, the positive element, the husband, has the initiative and the responsibility for the conjugal life. He is the minstrel who will produce harmony or cacophony by his hand and his bow. The wife, from this point of view, is really the many-stringed instrument who will give out harmonious or discordant sounds, according as she is well or ill handled" (Guyot, Breviaire, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... be bare, Though snowflakes fledge the summer's nest, And in some far Ausonian air The thrush, your minstrel, warm his breast. Come, sunshine's treasurer, and bring To doubting flowers their faith in spring, To birds and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the minstrel, the treasure of time; [10] A rainbow of rapture, o'erarching, divine; The God-given mandate that speaks from above,— No place for earth's idols, but hope ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... minstrel heavenly gifted, 2125 To one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me; Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted, I was so calm and joyous.—I could see The platform where we stood, the statues three Which kept their marble ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... morning how best to track the outlaws, who had dared to commit this insolent deed, when Etienne appeared to announce that several of their people had not returned home from the fire, and amongst them his own fellow page, the minstrel of the previous night, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... We go to the theatres to see the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in the great man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs, he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was already as disreputable as when we find him later on with his ribauderie. Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors. We gamble with dice; so did they. We feast and drink together; so did they. We pass the time in talk; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his hand addressed; But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best: They would have thought, who heard the strain, They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids, Amidst the festal-sounding shades, To some unwearied minstrel dancing; While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round; Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound; And he, amidst his frolic play, As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odours ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... old Robert, with harp-stringing numbers, Raise a flame in the breast, for the war laurell'd wreath, Near Askalon's Towers John of Horiston[1] slumbers, Unnerv'd is the hand of his minstrel by death. ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... didn't he, and consented to being blacked up like a negro minstrel, in order to pose as a prince?" asked Ned. "I reckon, however, that the credit does not all belong to the lad. He seems to ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the Hobby Drive, the bracken was like elfin plumes; each stone, wrapped in moss, was a lump of silver coated with verdigris; distant cliffs seen between the trees were cut out of gray-green jade, against a sea of changing opal; and in the high minstrel-galleries of the latticed beeches a concert of birds ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... plan. If he could have made a fortune with his great inventions in 1876, what might he not accomplish by the same means in 1598! He pictured to himself the delight of the ancient worthies when they heard the rag-time airs and minstrel jokes produced ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... pretty fledgling," he said, half jesting, half in scorn. "But knowest thou, to fight in very earnest is something different than to read and chant it in a minstrel's lay? Better hie thee back to Florence, boy; the mail suit and crested helm are not for such as thee—better shun them now, than after ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... stuff, absolutely poetic, original, imaginative, passionate, and spiritual. Those who do not consider it crazy may well consider it inspired. Coming after the trite and decorous verse of most of our decorous poets, this poet seems like a minstrel of Provence at a suburban musical evening.... The unseizable magic of poetry is in the queer paper volume, and words are no ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... the other, for his teeth were rattling together in a way that reminded Hugh of the "Bones" at the end of a minstrel line; if he had ever seen a Spanish stage performance he would have said they made a sound like castanets in the hands of the senorita who gave the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... of the south of Scotland, blended with the graceful expression of those melancholy remembrances, we doubt not deeply felt, which must ever cast a dark shadow over the minds of the surviving associates of the Great Minstrel. Alas! where can we turn ourselves without being reminded of the transitory nature of this our low estate, of its dissevered ties, its buried hopes, and lost affections! How many bitter endurances, reflected from the bosom of the past, are ever mingling with all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... had left little except a burglar's tool or two here and there to mark its operations, and, with the aged and infirm General Scott at the head of a little army, and no encouragement except from the Abolitionists, many of whom had never seen a colored man outside of a minstrel performance, the President stole incog. into Washington, like a man who had agreed to ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... on the Saviour's dying head Her spikenard drops unblamed may pour, May mount His cross, and wrap Him dead In spices from the golden shore; Risen, may embalm His sacred name With all a Painter's art, and all a Minstrel's flame. ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... of George Clark, the celebrated negro minstrel, that, being examined as a witness, he was severely interrogated by the attorney, who wished to break down his evidence. "You are in the negro minstrel business, I believe?" inquired the lawyer. "Yes, sir," was the prompt reply. "Isn't that rather a low calling?" demanded ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... you," said Roy; "but you'd better trot down to the river now and wash your face. You look like the end man in a minstrel show. Then come on back and we'll reel ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... there are several second and third class theatres, many negro minstrel halls, concert rooms, and other places of amusement for all grades and classes. The majority advertise in the daily journals, and by consulting these monitors, one can always find the means of passing a pleasant evening in ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... instinct-urged To fly their native wastes sad winter's realm; So thronged on southern slopes when, far below, Shone out the plains of promise. Bright they came! No summer sea could wear a blithsomer sheen Though every dancing crest and milky plume Ran on with rainbows braided. Minstrel songs Wafted like winds those onward hosts, or swayed Or stayed them; while among them heralds passed Lifting white wands of office. Foremost rode Aileel, the younger brother of the prince: He ruled ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... fame, no less immortal than thy soul, Shall shine when yon proud sun is darkened. Thee, now, methinks, I see, O bard divine! Where ripen no fair joys that are not thine, And God's full love is pleased on thee to shine, Still by the heavenly Muses fired, And starred among the angelic minstrel band, The sacred lyre thou sway'st with sovereign hand, While seraphs, in awed rapture, round thee stand, As one by God ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... that are caught up with avidity, even by fastidious judges. But what a difference between their popularity and that of the Scotch Novels! It is true, the public read and admired the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and so on, and each individual was contented to read and admire because the public did so: but with regard to the prose-works of the same (supposed) author, it is quite another-guess sort of thing. Here every one stands forward to applaud on his own ground, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Nightingale (Vol. vii., p. 397.; Vol. viii., pp. 112. 475.).—One poet, not so well known as he deserves, has escaped the observation of those who have contributed to your valuable pages the one hundred and seventy-five epithets which others of his craft have applied to the "Midnight Minstrel." I allude to the Rev. F. W. Faber, in his poem of the Cherwell Water Lily. This poem his now become scarce, so I send you the lines to which I refer, as the "summary of epithets" which they contain, as {652} well as their intrinsic beauty, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... hills he often said to me: "Oh, my little brother,[28] if I only had had you in our troupe we could have got up a splendid performance." This would open up to me a tempting picture of wandering as a minstrel boy from place to place, reciting and singing. I learnt from him many of the songs in his repertoire and these were in even greater request than my talks about the photosphere of the Sun or the many ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... with unusual vigilance. Hitherto visitors have been allowed to pass hours in the ruin, at their leisure, and read the wizard scene of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' in the very locality where it is supposed to have occurred. At present, however, a sable widow, of the most unimpeachable respectability, casts a melancholy gloom over the place by the dejected yet resigned manner in which she unlocks the wooden gate and ushers strangers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... cuckoo must be a graceful minstrel in our green hedges in July, though I am ashamed to admit I never was lucky enough to meet him. The oriole, blue jay, officer-bird, summer red-bird, indigo-bird and golden-winged woodpecker form a group of striking beauty; a most excellent idea, I would say, to thus ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... ropes out of sand was a device by which Michael Scot baffled a devil for whom he had to find constant employment. (Cf. Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and notes.) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... BALLADS. Mignon The Minstrel Ballad of the banished and returning Count The Violet The Faithless Boy The Erl-King Johanna Sebus The Fisherman The King of Thule The Beauteous Flower.. Sir Curt's Wedding Journey Wedding Song The Treasure-digger The Rat-catcher The Spinner Before a Court ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... to her countrymen at home Wild din of spear and shield and ships of war, And bringing, as her dower, To Ilion doom of death, Passed very swiftly through the palace gates, Daring what none should dare; And many a wailing cry They raised, the minstrel prophets of the house, "Woe for that kingly home! Woe for that kingly home and for its chiefs! Woe for the marriage-bed and traces left Of wife who loved her lord!" There stands he silent; foully wronged and yet Uttering no word of scorn, In deepest woe ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... of battles and drums, just as he had said he would; and the youngest minstrel sang of ladies and their fair faces, which pleased the ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... any minstrel say, In his sweetest roundelay, What is sweeter, after all, Than black haws, in early Fall— Fruit so sweet the frost first sat, Dainty-toothed, and nibbled at! And will any poet sing Of a lusher, richer thing Than a ripe ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... attention was attracted to a small densely-grown swamp, hedged in with eglantine, brambles, and the everlasting smilax, from which proceeded loud cries of distress and alarm, indicating that some terrible calamity was threatening my sombre-colored minstrel. On effecting an entrance, which, however, was not accomplished till I had doffed coat and hat, so as to diminish the surface exposed to the thorns and brambles, and, looking around me from a square yard of terra firma, I found myself the spectator of a loathsome ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... depression. I say to you that the most buoyant, happy, hopeful, confident crowd of men in the wide world is the American army in France. If you could see them back of the lines, even within sound of the guns, playing a game of ball; if you could see them putting on a minstrel show in a Y. M. C. A. hotel in Paris; if you could see a team of white boys playing a team of negro boys; if you could see a whole regiment go in swimming; if you could see them in a track meet, you would know that, in spite ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... "and at the best they'd be soaked through and through. It's no fun to feel that way all night. You start to shivering, and then like as not your teeth rattle together like you've heard the minstrel end-man shake his bones when he sings. I've had a little experience, and I know ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... chapel tombs in Winchester Cathedral. Taken in connection with the fine ruins, and the finer natural scenery around, no spot can be supposed more suitable for the resting-place of the remains of the great minstrel and romancer, who so delighted in the natural, historic, and legendary charms of the neighborhood, and who added still ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... of the young people. The fact is, the Counsellor is young for his time of life; for he already betrays some signs of the change referred to in that once familiar street song, which my friend, the great American surgeon, inquired for at the music-shops under the title, as he got it from the Italian minstrel, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to this tiny recluse, whose whole life, we may say, is one long game of hide-and-seek. Altogether the song was repeated twenty times at least, and to my thinking I had never heard it given with greater brilliancy and fervor. The darling little minstrel! he will never know how grateful I felt. I even forgave him when he sang thrice from a living bush, albeit in so doing he spoiled a sentence which I had already committed to "the permanency of print." ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... in contact with the world, and get most of their views by talking with the women and children of their congregations. They are not permitted to mingle freely with society. They cannot attend plays nor hear operas. I believe some of them have ventured to minstrel shows and menageries, where they confine themselves strictly to the animal part of the entertainment. But, as a rule, they have very few opportunities of ascertaining what the real public opinion is. They read religious papers, edited ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... blessed calm,— Deep dying melodies of even,— Those Nyack Bells; like some sweet psalm, They float along the fields of heaven. Now laden with a nameless balm, Now musical with song thou art, I tune thee by an inward charm And make thee minstrel of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... moment that is the only kind of patriotic poem that could satisfy the emotions of a patriotic person. But it certainly is not the sort of poem that is expected from a Poet Laureate, either on the highest or the lowest theory of his office. He is either a great minstrel singing the victories of a great king, or he is a common Court official like the Groom of the Powder Closet. In the first case his praises should be true; in the second case they will nearly always be false; but ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and often versification of great power and sweetness: but they have no metrical canons; and the minstrel whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are the delight of his audience, would himself be unable to say of how many dactyls and trochees each of his lines consists. As eloquence exists before syntax, and song before prosody, so government ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the bright abode Yourselves were present; when this minstrel god (Well pleased to share the feast) amid the quire Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre ("Homer's ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... recognise the magnetic influence." Chopin's place among the great pianists of the second quarter of this century has been felicitously characterised by an anonymous contemporary: Thalberg, he said, is a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... people in those days. I doubt whether they had any more amusement than the swine or the cows had. Looking after the fowls or the geese, hunting for the hen's nest in the furze brake, and digging out a fox or a badger, gave them an hour's excitement or interest now and again. Now and then a wandering minstrel came by, playing upon his rude instrument, and now and then somebody would come out from Lynn, or Yarmouth, or Norwich, with some new batch of songs for the most part scurrilous and coarse, and listened to much less for the sake of the music than for the words. Nor were books so rare ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... the hand of a new-world minstrel, strayed from some proper habitat to that rude and dissonant America which, as Baudelaire saw, "was for Poe only a vast prison through which he ran, hither and thither, with the feverish agitation ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... fancy, and the flashing of his wit, seem to be as well understood in the new world as the old; and the support which his pen has given to civil and religious liberty throughout the world, entitled the Minstrel of Erin to this ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... street below her window,—nothing new in these piping times of love and minstrelsy; but so sensitive was the ear now become to exterior impressions, that she started, as though expecting a salutation from the midnight rambler. Her anticipations were in some measure realised, the minstrel pausing beneath her lattice. A wooden balcony projected from it, concealing the musician. Isabella threw a light mantle around her, and rousing one of her maidens, she opened the window. The rich melody came upon her senses ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Niebuhrian theory demands. [4] All they prove is that the Roman aristocracy, like that of all other warlike peoples, listened to the praises of their class recited by minstrels during their banquets or festive assemblies. But so far from the minstrel being held in honour as in Greece and among the Scandinavian tribes, we are expressly told that he was in bad repute, being regarded as little better than a vagabond. [5] Furthermore, if these lays had possessed any merit, they would ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... They proved their sympathy with the feelings of the bard, not by licentious shouts and wild huzzas, but by the composure of their spirits, the serenity of their countenances, and the deep and unutterable silence which universally prevailed. And now the hoary minstrel rose from the little eminence, beneath the aged oak, from whose branches depended the ivy and the honeysuckle, on which the veneration of the multitude had placed him. He came into the midst of the plain, and the sons and the daughters ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Flodden bent The Scottish foe has fired his tent.' And sudden, as he spoke, From the sharp ridges of the hill, All downward to the banks of Till Was wreathed in sable smoke. Volumed and fast, and rolling far, The cloud enveloped Scotland's war, As down the hill they broke; Nor martial shout nor minstrel tone Announced their march; their tread alone, At times one warning trumpet blown, At times a stifled hum, Told England, from his mountain-throne King James did rushing come. Scarce could they hear, or see their foes, Until at weapon-point they ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... dear moon-of-my-delight—the probables, the possibles, the highly unlikelies, and the impossibles. Never an echo to the minstrel's wooing song. No, my dear, we have got to take to the boats this time. Unless, of course, some one possessed at one and the same time of twenty thousand pounds and a very confiding nature happens to drop ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... general steadiness. Mr Constable, his former publisher, proved the most friendly; he consented to publish a collection of songs and ballads, which he had prepared, two-thirds being his own composition, and the remainder that of his ingenious friends. This publication, known as "The Forest Minstrel," had a slow sale, and conferred no benefit on the unfortunate author. What the booksellers would not do for him, Hogg resolved to do for himself; he originated a periodical, which he designated "The Spy," acting as his own publisher. The first number ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to Lausanne, where the Emperor Rudolph was then holding his court to discuss with Pope Gregory—the tenth of the name—arrangements for a new crusade. But nothing had yet been said about Biberli. On the evening before the young noble's departure, however, a travelling minstrel came to the castle, who sang of the deeds of former crusaders, and alluded very touchingly to the loneliness of the wounded knight, Herr Weisenthau, on his couch of pain. Then the Lady Wendula remembered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the minstrel's art, The pleasant gift of verse, Though his hopes decay, though his friends depart, Can ever be a curse;— Though sorrow reign within his heart, And ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... which I waited for him at the door of his canvas gallery. He evidently seeks to magnify his calling, does this raw youth of the camera, by affecting what he conceives to be the traditional garb of the artistic Bohemian, but which resembles more closely the costume of the minstrel stage—a battered silk hat, surmounting flowing locks glistening with hair-oil; a loose velveteen jacket, over a gay figured vest; and a great brass watch-chain, from which dangle silver coins. As this grotesque dandy, evidently not long from his native village, came ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... striking disproof of the old tradition that musicians must needs be long-haired, sallow and unathletic. Alert and young and vigorous they appealed to the eye as well as to the ear, and they played, as they fought, gloriously, these minstrel boys who had all gone to the War. Strings and woodwind, brass and percussion, all are up to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... pity-pleading strains. O I have listen'd, till my working soul, Waked by those strains to thousand phantasies, Absorb'd, hath ceas'd to listen! Therefore oft I hymn thy name; and with a proud delight Oft will I tell thee, minstrel of the moon, Most musical, most melancholy bird! That all thy soft diversities of tone, Though sweeter far than the delicious airs That vibrate from a white-arm'd lady's harp, What time the languishment of lonely love Melts in her eye, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... "This is my own, my native land!" Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concent'red all in self. Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... this strolling Longfellow minstrel," he continued, ignoring or not hearing my remark, "with his dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap the climax. Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me. Not an original or cheerful note! 'Old Hundred' ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... tempted to extract the framework of a dramatic work from his elaborate story. The point in this popular pamphlet which had so much weight with me was that it brought 'Tannhauser,' if only by a passing hint, into touch with 'The Minstrel's War on the Wartburg.' I had some knowledge of this also from Hoffmann's account in his Serapionsbrudern. But I felt that the writer had only grasped the old legend in a distorted form, and therefore endeavoured ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... distressing. It shocked the flesh and angered the nerves. Upon Lazenby it acted singularly. He cowered from it, but presently, with a look of madness in his eyes, rushed forward, arms outstretched, as though to seize this intolerable minstrel. There was a sudden pause in the playing; then the room quaked with noise, buffeting Lazenby into stillness. The sounds changed instantly again, and music of an engaging sweetness and delight fell about them as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... In Lancashire the spectre-hound is called Trash or Striker. In Cambridgeshire and on the Norfolk coast it is known as Shuck or Shock. In the Isle of Man it is styled Mauthe Doog. It is mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"— ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the Gift of Truth," she replied, "and I will add to that the Gift of Prophecy, and of writing wondrous verses; and here is a harp that was fashioned in Fairyland. With its music, set to thine own words, no minstrel on earth shall be to thee a rival. So shall all the world know for certain that thou learnedst the art from no earthly teacher; and some day, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... his hostess was already in his thoughts. The very birds of the air seemed to welcome her. The warm southern winds were full of their warbling—beccafico, loriot, merle, citronelle, woodlark, nightingale,—every tree, copse and tuft of grass held a tiny minstrel. When the great gate opened to a fanfare of trumpets, from the castle walls there came the murmur of innumerable doves. A castle had its dove-cote as it had its poultry-yard or rabbit-warren, but the birds were not always so fearless or ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... old boy. Marse Robert won't frown on your banjo. He'll just smile as he recalls what the cavalry did in our last battle. Minstrel ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please, Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys. Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim, As, floating from lip and ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... of Alfred Wigan at the New Olympic that Frederick Robson began to be heard of again. An old, and not a very clever farce, by one of the Brothers Mayhew, entitled "The Wandering Minstrel," had been revived. In this farce, Robson was engaged to play the part of Jem Baggs, an itinerant vocalist and flageolet-player, who, in tattered attire, roams about from town to town, making the air hideous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... songs which they rendered in regular negro minstrel style, and in a way that was irresistibly ludicrous. One of their favorites was "Billy Patterson." All standing up in a ring, the tenors ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... stately palaces, and massive bulwarks of Israel's capital. The daughter of Zion seemed in her pride to say, "I sit a queen, and shall see no sorrow;" as lovely then, and deeming herself as secure in Heaven's favor, as when, ages before, the royal minstrel sung, "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion, ... the city of the great King."(2) In full view were the magnificent buildings of the temple. The rays of the setting sun lighted up the snowy whiteness ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... occurrences in the neighboring Mazovian court. She had heard of Jurand, of the imprisonment of his daughter, of Zbyszko's marriage, and of his deadly fight with Rotgier. These things interested her greatly, so much so that it seemed to her one of those knight-errant stories or one of the minstrel songs in Germany, and the rybalt songs in Mazowsze. Indeed, the Knights of the Cross were not inimical to her, as they were to princess Anna Danuta, the wife of Prince Janusz, more especially because they wished to get her on their side, they strove to outvie each other in rendering her homage ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... governed by the question of the point of view—the question of the relation in which the narrator stands to the story. He tells it as he sees it, in the first place; the reader faces the story-teller and listens, and the story may be told so vivaciously that the presence of the minstrel is forgotten, and the scene becomes visible, peopled with the characters of the tale. It may be so, it very often is so for a time. But it is not so always, and the story-teller himself grows conscious of a misgiving. If the spell is weakened at any moment, the listener is recalled from the scene ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... that I might read no more of it unless I felt inclined. But I now did feel inclined very strongly, and read on with increasing astonishment and delight. I was intoxicated with the fiery narratives of the blind minstrel,—with his fierce breathings of hot, intolerant patriotism, and his stories of astonishing prowess; and, glorying in being a Scot, and the countryman of Wallace and the Graham, I longed for a war with the Southron, that the wrongs and sufferings of these noble heroes might yet be avenged. All ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... reduced to 9s., apparently because the office of Scavenger was again made a distinct office, to which James Shepherd was appointed at 6s. a week. Shortly after this the office became a thing of the past, and John Ward, Beadle, disappears from our view, to join the company of the last minstrel, the last fly wagon, the last stage coach, and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... flattery in this," replied Lucie; "but I will confess nothing,—except that I danced away my spirits last evening, and was most melodiously disturbed afterwards, by some strolling minstrel. Were you not annoyed by unseasonable music, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... every word came forth with the richest brogue of his native land. At first the people listened attentively as they sat forward. Then they by degrees crept up nearer and nearer, till at length Pat Doolan, a compatriot of the minstrel, seemingly unable any longer to contain himself, burst forth into the full chorus of one of the songs. To stop him would have been impossible. The poor fellow flung his whole soul into the melody. What a flood of recollections—of long pent-up feelings—it brought back! Sooner than hold ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... never shall while I am alive. Should n't mind being done in bronze after I was dead. On second thoughts not so clear about it, remembering how some of them look that we have got stuck up in public; think I had rather go down to posterity in an Ethiopian Minstrel portrait, like ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "I've got a minstrel company on the road, and wouldn't mind paying the traveling expenses of a smart boy who will distribute programmes and make himself ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... our eager feet the forest carpet springs, We march through gloomy valleys, where the vesper sparrow sings. The little minstrel heeds us not, nor stays his plaintive song, As with our brave coureurs de bois we ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... of the Hobby Drive, the bracken was like elfin plumes; each stone, wrapped in moss, was a lump of silver coated with verdigris; distant cliffs seen between the trees were cut out of gray-green jade, against a sea of changing opal; and in the high minstrel-galleries of the latticed beeches a concert of ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the others, would have been unheeded,—they thought only of their booty,—but to hear so famous a musician, that moved their rude hearts. "Suffer me," he added, "to arrange my dress. Apollo will not favor me unless I be clad in my minstrel garb." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of the ancient minstrel, we were shortly given a touch of the modern usurper of the name. A gentleman was present who in the many turns of Fortune's wheel had once found himself a follower of the burnt-cork persuasion. He gave us a negro melody ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... The end man of the negro minstrel troupe is a modern creation like the Greek phlyax, for he is a buffoon of the plantation-negro type, with every feature exaggerated to the utmost, so that he is unreal and a caricature; but the exaggerations direct attention to familiar facts and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... me; I am rich, you poor— What boon shall I confer and make secure? What gift? ask of me, poets, what you will And I will grant it—promise to fulfil." "A kiss," said Joss. "A kiss!" and anger fraught Amazed at minstrel having such a thought— While flush of indignation warmed her cheek. "You do forget to whom it is you speak," She cried. "Had I not known your high degree, Should I have asked this royal boon," said he, "Obtained or given, a kiss must ever be. ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... but nearer and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!— your "Braes of Balquidder," and "Yon Burnside," and "Gloomy Winter," and the "Minstrel's" wailing ditty, and the noble "Gleneiffer." Oh! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles! Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to loom, ministering to the low-hearted; and when the breast was filled with everything ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Dost thou not know it? The bird of Paradise, song's sacred swan! It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland's minstrel-harp glided the swan's red, sounding bill. It sat on Shakspeare's shoulder like Odin's raven, and whispered in his ear: "Immortality!" It flew at the minstrel competition, through Wartzburg's ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... the above entertainments two musicales were given under the auspices of Boellman Brothers; and the Pikers' Club, an organization composed of attaches of the State building, gave a minstrel performance at the Inside Inn on Monday evening, September nineteenth, for the benefit of the Model ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... returning with the baggage-checks, and he discovered both Eileen and Professor Hodgson examining him with the frank curiosity that one might bestow upon some wandering minstrel, a foreigner, an alien. He felt, as the odd member of any triangle is sure to feel, that he was a lone bird; that Eileen and her glowering professor were drawn together by some bond unknown to him, but whose ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers, And day-break glory haunts his evening hours. Ah, such a life prefigures its own moral: That first "Last Leaf" is now a leaf of laurel, Which—smiling not, but trembling at the touch— Youth gives back ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... event is described in the metrical history of Rouen, composed by a minstrel ycleped Poirier, the limper. This little tract is a chap-book at Rouen: most towns, in the north of France and Belgium, possess such chronicle ballads in doggerel rhyme, which are much read, and eke chaunted, by ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Homer, as it were, through a language he knew not, who shall say? He did divine him by a natural sympathy of excellence, and his chapters on the "Ulysse" of Ponsard are worth a wilderness of notes by learned and most un-Homeric men. For, indeed, who can be less like the heroic minstrel than the academic philologist? ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Our country's minstrel! in whose crystal verse With tranquil joy we trace Her native glories, and the tale rehearse Of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... as he struck the chords of his harp with a bold and vigorous hand. I learnt that they were uncle and niece. I shall not readily forget the effect of these figures, or of the songs which they sang; especially the sonorous notes of the mastersinger, or minstrel. He had a voice of most extraordinary compass. I quickly perceived that I was now in the land of music; but the guests seemed to be better pleased with their food than with the songs of this old bard, for he had scarcely received a half ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to you this second volume of "THE MODERN SCOTTISH MINSTREL," as a sincere token of my estimation of your long continued and most disinterested friendship, and of the anxiety you have so frequently evinced respecting the promotion of my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... above all Siegfried, the light-hero of the original myth, whose character lent itself to an idealization of knighthood. Ruediger holds a like place in the latter part of the poem. In the evident pleasure with which the minstrel-knight Volker of the sword-fiddlebow is depicted, as well doubtless as in occasional gleams of broader humor, the hand of the minstrels who wrought on the story in its earlier ballad stages may be seen. And the whole poem, in keeping with its form in an age strongly under church influence, ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... discovery, I had never been aware that there was anything of the nightingale about me; but I was now promoted to the place of court-minstrel, in which capacity I was afterwards ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... himself away up and out of Orchard Glen, vowing solemnly, like the Minstrel Boy, that he would tear the cords of his instrument asunder ere they should sound again within the hearing of that traitorous community, a vow that old Lauchie was to live to see broken, under ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... sacrificial origin.[20] The remarks of this writer on the Sword Dance in its dramatic aspect are so much to the point that I quote them here. "The Sword Dance makes its appearance, not like heroic poetry in general, as part of the minstrel repertory, but as a purely popular thing at the agricultural festivals. To these festivals we may therefore suppose it to have originally belonged." Mr Chambers goes on to remark that the dance of the Salii discussed above, was clearly agricultural, "and ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... stories of Scott. The thousands of pilgrims who come every year are attracted by this alone, since the abbey had no extraordinary history and no tomb of king or hero is to be found in its precincts. Were it not for the weird interest which the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" has thrown around Melrose, its fame would probably be no greater than that of the abbeys of Jedburgh and Kelso in the same neighborhood. Abbottsford House is only three miles from Melrose, but it is closed to visitors after five o'clock and we missed a second ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... former precinct of the Dominicans and outside the City. No theatre was allowed in the City. Thus early sprang up the prejudice against actors. Probably this was of old standing, and first belonged to the time when the minstrel and the tumbler, the musician and the dancing girl, the buffoon and the contortionist, wandered about the country free of rule and discipline, leading careless and ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... epoch of the wandering minstrel, when the bard sang his stirring lays of warlike scenes and heroic deeds in castle and court. But the mind of Greece was then awakening in other fields, and it is of great interest to find that Homer was quickly followed by an epic writer of markedly different ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the thirties the melody of these slave songs stirred the nation, but the songs were soon half forgotten. Some, like "Near the lake where drooped the willow," passed into current airs and their source was forgotten; others were caricatured on the "minstrel" stage and their memory died away. Then in war-time came the singular Port Royal experiment after the capture of Hilton Head, and perhaps for the first time the North met the Southern slave face to face and heart to heart with no third witness. The ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Ted was lifting a cup of chocolate to his mouth, a chunk of snow fell right into the cup, splashing the chocolate all over the lad. Luckily it was not hot, though after the splashing was over Ted looked as if he had colored himself to take part in a minstrel show. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... did not fit him. The sleeves escaped his wrists by several inches; his trousers had hitched up as he sat down, so that one half of his shanks was exposed to view, leaving his monstrous feet, like the slap-boots of a negro minstrel, for ludicrous inches over the floor. His neck was long and feminine, and stuck up grotesquely much above a sort of Byronic collar held together by a black stock tie. I had never ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... what is above stated. In the time of Henry VII., the Duttons claimed, by prescriptive right, that the Cheshire minstrels should deliver them, at the feast of St. John, four bottles of wine and a lance, and that each separate minstrel should pay fourpence ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pitiful-looking object after the young men had plastered his face and hands with lampblack and oil, and yet his appearance bore a certain queer relation to the humorous exhibitions one sees on the negro minstrel stage. Particularly was this the case when ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... Jew, finding voice through the very extremity of his danger; "heard man ever such a demand? Who ever heard, even in a minstrel's tale, of such a sum as a thousand pounds of silver? What human eyes were ever blessed with the sight of so great a mass of treasure? Not within the walls of York, ransack my house and that of all my tribe, wilt thou find the [v]tithe of that ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... ancestors, were alike the objects of popular attachment: the miserable destiny of the outlawed and ruined Westmorland, and the untimely end of Northumberland through the perfidy of the false friend in whom he had put his trust, were long remembered with pity and indignation, and many a minstrel "tuned his rude harp of border frame" to the fall of the Percy or the wanderings of the Nevil. There was also an ancient gentleman named Norton, of Norton in Yorkshire, who bore the banner of the cross and the five wounds before the rebel army, whose tragic ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... as a wandering minstrel and went into the camp of the Danes. He strolled here and there, playing on a harp and singing Saxon ballads. At last, Guth'rum, the commander of the Danes, ordered the minstrel to be brought to ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... of English poets; though at this time of my earliest acquaintance with him, Walter Scott had precedence over him, and was undoubtedly in my opinion greatest of mortal and immortal bards. His "Marmion" and "Lay of the Last Minstrel" were already familiar to me. Of Shakespeare at this time, and for many subsequent years, I knew ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... an emulous god, holding bow and quiver, and, at times, harp and flute, and prophesying to men for pay. Soothly he is needy: but one that is needy and emulous and a minstrel cannot be ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... varied loveliness? The fatal duel in the Dowie Dens of Yarrow and the lamented drowning of Willie there have given the stream its 'pastoral melancholy,' and engaged Wordsworth in the renown of the water. For the poetry of Tweed we have chiefly, after Scott, to thank Mr. Stoddart, its loyal minstrel. "Dearer than all these to me," he says about our other valleys, "is ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... trousers, fancy vest—all were black as ink. Hawkins' classic countenance had fared no better. His lips showed some slight resemblance of redness, and his eyes glared wonderfully white; but the rest of his face might have been made up for a minstrel show. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... stopping the dog was to spill blood upon the track, which destroyed the discriminating fineness of his scent. A captive was sometimes sacrificed on such occasions. Henry the Minstrel tells us a romantic story of Wallace, founded on this circumstance. The hero's little band had been joined by an Irishman named Fawdon, or Fadzean, a dark, savage, and suspicious character. After a sharp skirmish at Black Erneside, Wallace was forced ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... looked interested. "You don't say so," he ejaculated. "Give me a good minstrel show,—that's what I like. Haverly's or Barlow, Wilson, Primrose & West, or Billy Emerson's or—say, did you ever see Luke Schoolcraft? Well, sir, there was the funniest end man I ever see. There ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... George Clark, the celebrated negro minstrel, that, being examined as a witness, he was severely interrogated by the attorney, who wished to break down his evidence. "You are in the negro minstrel business, I believe?" inquired the lawyer. "Yes, sir," was the prompt reply. "Isn't that rather a low ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... was filled with people. A haze of blue smoke hung in the air. There was no loud noise except from the minstrel stage at the end. A low hum of talk, occasionally accented, buzzed continuously. Many of the people wandering about, leaning against the bar, or integers of the compact groups around the gambling ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... a super in the sensational drama She, by H. Rider Haggard. Two Englishmen were penetrating the mysterious jungles of Africa, and I was their native guide and porter. They had me all blacked up like a negro minstrel, but this wasn't a funny show, it was a drama of mystery and terror. While I was guiding the English travelers through the jungle of the local stage, we penetrated into the land of the ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... from out your cellar cask of wine and flask and can; The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant. man." "Most willingly, fair Elsie, I'll drink that mead of thine, And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to drain ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... believe that the nature of this American Poem was known to the proprietor of the Quarterly Review. So far as it was a burlesque on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, I know it was; yet was he as a publisher so anxious to get it, that he engaged Lord Byron to use his utmost influence with me to obtain it for him, and his Lordship wrote a most pressing letter upon the occasion. He asked me to let Mr. Murray, who was in despair about it, have the publication ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... walked on a little and came to a goodly cage, than which was no goodlier there, and in it a culver of the forest, that is to say, a wood-pigeon,[FN63] the bird renowned among birds as the minstrel of love-longing, with a collar of jewels about its neck marvellous fine and fair. He considered it awhile and, seeing it absently brooding in its cage, he shed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... enough to be aware that indecency never pays expenses in the United States,—as all will finally discover who try it. At Cincinnati there is also a Varieties Theatre, but such a theatre! A vast and dirty barn, with whitewashed walls and no ceiling, in which a minstrel band of five men and two beauteous nymphs exerted themselves slightly to entertain an audience of thirty men and boys. As the performers entered the building in view of the spectators, we are able to state that beauteous Terpsichorean ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... ladies' or gentlemen's dressing-rooms, and the stream began to slacken a little, so that they could distinguish individuals, Mr. Joy in turn received and passed a "puritan preacher," a "cavalier soldier," a "Highlander," a "knight," a "minstrel," the "vailed prophet," a "Switzer," a "Chinese mandarin," a "Russian serf," and black, white, and gray, red, yellow, and ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... railway will run down the romances of Nutrib; a cotton manufactory will send up its smokes to blot out the celestial blue by day, and shoot forth its sullen illumination by night, over the anointed soil; the minstrel will turn policeman, and the sheik be a justice of peace; political economy will have its itinerant lecturers, enlightening the Bedouins on the principles of rent and taxes; the city will have a lord ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... she scours along, She's bringing the field to trouble; She's tailing them off, she's running strong, She shakes her head and pulls double. Now Minstrel falters and Exile flags, The Barb finds the pace too hot, And Toryboy loiters, and Playboy lags, And the BOLT of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... disposed, that the detractor may not have it in his power to indulge his malignity. So long as the harp is in tune, how can it have its ear pulled (or suffer correction by being put in tune) by the minstrel?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... feel attracted to each other, and Bragi soon won this fair goddess for his wife. Together they hastened to Asgard, where both were warmly welcomed and where Odin, after tracing runes on Bragi's tongue, decreed that he should be the heavenly minstrel and composer of songs in honour of the gods and of the heroes whom he ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... discontinued, but half an hour before recess was given up to some secular choruses, patriotic or topical, in which the little ones under Twing's really wonderful practical tuition exhibited such quick and pleasing proficiency, that a certain negro minstrel camp-meeting song attained sufficient popularity to be lifted by general accord to promotion to the devotional exercises, where it eventually ousted the objectionable "Hebrew children" on the question of melody alone. Grammar was still taught at Pine Clearing School ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... disguised as feeble men-folk, with all man's weaknesses and all his passions. Sometimes Odin, as a beggar, wandered from one country to another, craving charity; sometimes, as a warrior clad in coat of mail, he rode forth to battle for the cause of right; or as a minstrel he sang from door to door, and played sweet music in the halls of the great; or as a huntsman he dashed through brakes and fens, and into dark forests, and climbed steep mountains in search of game; or as a ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... set down as a plain, unvarnished, Teutonic lie that fuel has become so scarce in the States that minstrel shows will soon be abolished by Federal order because of ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... ardent soul to poesy. (By poesy we do not mean school-exercises, and prize heroics approved by a committee of literary gentlemen.) On this account, it may be, that a young poet is always anxious to walk upon the ground where he first felt his strength, considering that a minstrel without love were as powerless, to adopt the Rev. SIDNEY SMITH'S jocose but not altogether clerical illustration, as Sampson in a wig. Mr. LOWELL evinces the firmest faith in his passion, which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... observation of the actors of the period, collected into one focus, and pointed and irradiated by the power of genius. As Scott, while carelessly galloping in his youth through Liddesdale, and listening to ballads and old-world stories, was "making himself" into the mighty minstrel of the border—so this big, clumsy, overgrown student, seated in the pit of Drury Lane, or exalted to the one-shilling gallery of Covent Garden, was silently growing into the greatest poet of the stage ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... liberty" announces the ending of the feasts, and the month of fasting which should follow; carn-ival means, literally, "farewell to flesh!" It is a forty days' farewell to the "blessed pullets and fat hams," so celebrated by Pantagruel's minstrel. Man prepares for privation by satiety, and finishes his sin thoroughly before ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... certain pretended Illyrian compositions—prose translations, the reader was to understand, of more or less ancient popular ballads; La Guzla, he called the volume, The Lyre, as we might say; only that the instrument of the Illyrian minstrel had but one string. Artistic deception, a trick of which there is something in the historic romance as such, in a book like his own Chronicle of Charles the Ninth, was always welcome to Merimee; it was part of the machinery ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... fortunes of all books! Benign Ceruleans of the second sex! Who advertise new poems by your looks, Your "Imprimatur" will ye not annex? What! must I go to the oblivious cooks,[eo] Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks? Ah! must I then the only minstrel be, Proscribed from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that his silence was eloquent of the inherent generosity of the man, even as his poetic outburst of a few minutes before had been eloquent of the minstrel in him. She rode in silence, regarding him critically from time to time, and when they came to the tree where the panther hung he gave her the calf to hold while he deftly skinned the dead marauder, tied the pelt behind his saddle, relieved her of ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... goat's fleece on chin, sir? Needs Must she be fair: thou, wrapt in age's weeds, Whose blood, if time have touched it not and stilled, The sun's own fire must once have kindled,—thou Sing praise of soft-lipped women? doth not shame Sting thee, to sound this minstrel's note, and gild A girl's proud face with praises, though her brow Were bright as dawn's? And had her grace no name For men ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... A palace here, a broken arch or cross-crowned chapel there; narrow and untidy streets thronged with a curious crowd drawn from every land and race—Syrian and Saxon, Norman and Nubian, knight and squire, monk and minstrel,—such was Jerusalem, "city of ruins," when, seven hundred years ago, the Red-Cross banner floated from its towered walls and the Holy City stood as the capital of the short-lived and unfortunate realm of the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... act in that manner. They are not taught at the schools or by the books of the honoured places in the libraries, to examine and see the simplicity of these mysteries, which it would be here and there a saving grace for them to see; as the minstrel, dutifully inclining to the prosy in their behalf and morality's, should exhibit; he should arrest all the characters of his drama to spring it to vision and strike perchance the chord primarily if not continually moving them, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... returned calmly. "'Just as the minstrel's sounds were stayed, a stranger climbed the steepy glade.' But hadn't we better stick tergether, Cap?" "No," I answered firmly. "You go on, and one of us must get through to Lee. Don't mind me at all; get down from the roof as ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... with a great gold crown upon his head, or else charging at the head of his troops like Charlemagne in the romaunts, or like Robert Bruce or William Wallace in our own true histories, such as Barbour and the Minstrel. Hark in thine ear, man—it is all moonshine in the water. Policy—policy does it all. But what is policy, you will say? It is an art this French King of ours has found out, to fight with other men's swords, and to wage his soldiers out of other men's purses. ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... lark in a cage, and heard him trilling out his music as he sprang upwards to the roof of his prison, but we felt sickened with the sight and sound, as contrasting, in our thought, the free minstrel of the morning, bounding as it were into the blue caverns of the heavens, with the bird to whom the world was circumscribed. May the time soon arrive, when every prison shall be a palace of the mind—when we shall seek to instruct and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and secular, hung up alongside the stands where they were selling lottery tickets—tragedy. Fountains, with groups of peasantry drinking, or watering horses and donkeys—pantomime. Priests, in crow-black raiment, and canal-boat or shovel hats—mystery. Strangers from Rome, in the negro-minstrel style of costume, if young men; or in the rotund-paunch and black-raiment dress, if elderly men; or in the chiffonee style, if Roman women attempting the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... can grin as well as other monkeys in cap and jerkin. You're a minstrel or a mountebank, I'll be sworn; you look for all the world as silly as a tumbler when he's been upside down and has got on his heels again. And what fool's tricks hast thou been after, Tessa?" she added, turning to her daughter, whose frightened face was more inviting to ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... pleases them, they will pack the hall whatever the price. The music that pleases them is not always the best, for the simple reason they do not know what is best. As fast as they learn better, they drop whatever is before them and at once take up something else. The sudden disappearance of negro minstrel music is an evidence of this. The people outgrew it, and it passed away, as it were, ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... are gone," he said, "love was more fortunate. Grief was our minstrel of things that endure. Now, ashes and dust and this world grow importunate. Time has no sorrow that time cannot cure. Once, we could lose, and the loss was worth cherishing. Now, we may win, but, O, where is the worth? Memory and true love," he whispered, "are perishing, With Marian, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... have been pent up in cities," it ran. "The stuffy synagogue has been field and forest to them. But then there is more beauty in a heaven visioned by a congregation of worshipers than in the bluest heaven sung by the minstrel of landscapes. They are not worshipers. They are poets. It is not God they are speaking to. It is a sublime image. It is not their Creator. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... at least, we go not into the dale; but knowest thou any tales of these wild places? Many have I heard, said he, but I am an ill minstrel and should spoil them in the telling. Ask them of Sir Leonard our priest, he knoweth of them better than others, and hath a tongue ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... knew what he thought of the whole performance; but the housekeeper of the lean man, who sat just in front of him, tells me what seemed to startle him the most. The first thing was when two of the officers came out with blackened faces like Christy minstrel boys and began to dance. Arick was sure that they were really black and his own people, and he was wonderfully surprised to see them dance this new European style of dance. But the great affair was the magic-lantern. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Georgic, is among the most exquisite passages in all Latin poetry. Pope made it the subject of his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; but if Pluto and Proserpine really relented at the doggerel that the English poet puts into the mouth of the half-divine minstrel, they cannot deserve the title of illacrymabiles which Horace gives them. Some of the pedantic scientists (to borrow a new word) have discovered in this tale of true love an allegory about the alternations of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... receive answers to questions which they had no business to put, and these, if not quite to their liking, are what they justly deserve. The following story of George Clarke, a celebrated negro minstrel, is a case in point. On one occasion, when being examined as a witness, he was severely interrogated by a lawyer. "You are in the minstrel business, I believe?" inquired the lawyer. "Yes, sir," was the reply. "Is not that rather a low calling?"—"I don't know but what it is, sir," replied ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... still moonlit hour there steals along, And falls upon her roused and listening ear The notes of some night-wandering minstrel's song, And oh! so sweet and sad it was to hear. You might have deemed it came from teylin sweet, Touched by some gentle fairy's cunning hand, To tell us of those joys that we shall meet In some far distant and far happier land; And oft at night, as time ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... appeal, that is to say, the element of strangeness. But we must not criticise criticism here, and must only add that another great appeal, that of variety, is amply given, as well as that of unfamiliarity. The graceful and touching, if a little conventional, overture of the Minstrel introduces with the truest art the vigorous sketch of Branksome Tower. The spirits of flood and fell are allowed to impress and not allowed to bore us; for the quickest of changes is made to Deloraine's ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... crown to crown him. While the empyrean minstrels rising, All in flowing garments vested, Some with harps and some with timbrels, Some with lutes and some with trumpets, All in goodly order mingled, In the skill of gay perfection; Far the minstrel band extendeth Like a wilderness of grandeur. As a sea of flowing white waves Mingled up with diamond ripples; As the moon on sparkling waters, Comes the light from glowing beacons, Dancing on their crowns of glory, Far and near redounding, flowing In a thousand ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... to humor one who might become either a powerful enemy or an influential friend, Redburn accordingly struck up a lively air, a la banjo, and in exact imitation of a minstrel, rendered "Gwine to Get a Home, Bymeby." And the thunders of encore that came from the outside listeners, showed how surely he had touched upon a pleasant chord. He followed that with several modern serio-comic songs, ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... is found in the later chroniclers which relates that at this crisis of his fortunes Alfred, not daring to rely on any evidence but that of his own senses as to the numbers, disposition, and discipline of the pagan army, assumed the garb of a minstrel and with one attendant visited the camp of Guthrum. Here he stayed, "showing tricks and making sport," until he had penetrated to the King's tents, and learned all that he wished to know. After satisfying himself as to the chances of a sudden attack, he returns to Athelney, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... it, maybe, just as they did the tambourine. You don't suppose a quiet New York lawyer kept a stock of musical instruments large enough to fit out a strolling minstrel troupe just on the chance of a pair of ghosts coming to give him a surprise party, do you? Every spook has its own instrument of torture. Angels play on harps, I'm informed, and spirits delight in banjos and tambourines. These spooks of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the four favoured inmates to be also seated, he looked critically at the two sisters, and observed, 'So, maidens! one favours the mother, the other the father! Poor Joan, it is two-and-twenty years since we bade her good-speed, she and her young king—who behoved to be a minstrel—on her way to her kingdom, as if it were the land of Cockayne, for picking up gold and silver. Little of that she found, I trow, poor wench. Alack! it was a sore life we sent her to. And you ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was Elf the minstrel, With womanish hair and ring, Yet heavy was his hand on sword, Though light upon ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... Brennan, of Pottsville, Penna., were candidates for the divisional foot ball team that played at Souilly with a number of other divisional elevens. Philip J. Cusick, of Parsons, Penna., the battery's favorite pianist, was selected to make a tour with the regimental minstrel show that was put on to tour the circuit of A. E. F. playhouses. Cusick was recalled to the battery the latter part of February when he received notice of his early discharge from the army on account of the death of ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... you think, my minstrel boy. It's very, much needed. It's symbolic, that picture is. It's a symbolic antidote. Shall I tell you what put me on ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... is more than I can guess," he vociferated. "Look at my table there, all burned with matches and covered with burnt cork. What's he been doing with burnt cork? Running a minstrel show?" ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... with all the strain and exertion it had so recently undergone. Slowly he moved off towards his own sleeping apartment, in case the Queen, when she awoke, should send to inquire after him. And on his way, as a short cut, he crossed the minstrel gallery, which divided one from the other the two state drawing-rooms,—a broad half-story colonnade, with central opening and ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... cousins of each other, if we reckon in the primitive manner by female descent. Of these Border ancestors, Louis inherited the courage; he was a fearless person, but one would not trace his genius to "The Bard of Rule," an Elliot named "Sweet Milk" who was slain in a duel by another minstrel, about 1627. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said that the whole town was seething with indignation. The members of the North Side set, to be sure, were seething furiously, but a flippant element of the baser sort was quite openly rejoicing. As at the time of that most slanderous minstrel performance, it was said that the Bohemian set had again, if I have caught the phrase, "put a thing over upon" the North Side set. Many persons of low taste seemed quite to enjoy the dreadful affair, and the members of the Bohemian set, naturally, throughout ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... not grudge old Rome her "pictures of the world"; she has pictures of her own, "pictures of England"; and is it a new thing to toss up caps and shout—England against the world? Yes, against the world in all, in all; in science and in arms, in minstrel strain, and not less in the art "which enables the hand to deceive the intoxicated soul by means of pictures". {137} Seek'st models? to Gainsborough and Hogarth turn, not names of the world, maybe, but English names—and England against the world! ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... privately, that Woodstock would not stand the test. In that case my fate would have been that of the unfortunate minstrel trumpeter Maclean at ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... stilled the multitude, And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, I saw the minstrel where he stood At ease against a Doric pillar: One hand a droning organ played, The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made The reeds give ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Brother Pratt to me, "go in front of the curtain and make a rip-staving speech—I know you can do it. Say that at the urgent solicitation of the manager, you have consented to appear to-morrow night as Jem Baggs, in the Wandering Minstrel." ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... over the ancient walls, snapdragons yawned through the crevices of the stones, amid the grass there was a charming beginning of daisies, and buttercups, the white butterflies of the year were making their first appearance, the wind, that minstrel of the eternal wedding, was trying in the trees the first notes of that grand, auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,—Marius said to Cosette:—"We said that we would go back to take a look at our garden in the Rue Plumet. Let us go ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... The world ne'er censured thee for frigid rigor; The fervent prayer of love can touch thy heart. Thou mad'st the minstrel Rizzio blest, and gavest Thyself a willing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... by various authors, amongst whom Quevedo holds a distinguished place. We, on the contrary, have scarcely any slang songs of merit. With a race of depredators so melodious and convivial as our highwaymen, this is the more to be wondered at. Had they no bards amongst their bands? Was there no minstrel at hand to record their exploits? I can only call to mind one robber who was a poet,—Delany, and he was an Irishman. This barrenness, I have shown, is not attributable to the poverty of the soil, but to the want of due cultivation. Materials are at hand ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Rev. Thomas Percy, fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of Dromore. "The reviver of minstrel poetry in Scotland was the venerable Bishop of Dromore, who, in 1765, published his elegant collection of heroic ballads, songs, and pieces of early poetry under the title of 'Reliques Of Ancient English Poetry.' The plan of the work was adjusted in concert with Mr. Shenstone, but we own we ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... little except a burglar's tool or two here and there to mark its operations, and, with the aged and infirm General Scott at the head of a little army, and no encouragement except from the Abolitionists, many of whom had never seen a colored man outside of a minstrel performance, the President stole incog. into Washington, like a man who had agreed to ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... were painted standing on the edge of a pillar that revolved without pause. There was a woman with flaming red cheeks, a gold dress and dead white dusty arms, a man with a golden crown and a purple robe, but a broken nose, and a minstrel with a harp. The woman and the king moved stiffly their arms up and down, that they might strike instruments, one a cymbal and the other a drum. But it was finally the horses that caught Jeremy's heart. Half of them at least were without ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... street singers are practising songs, sacred and secular, and our friend the street minstrel produces an old flute and plays an obbligato, whilst the quivering voice of his poor old wife again wants to know the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... uncomplaining to my fate." This prayer, like the others, would have been unheeded,—they thought only of their booty,—but to hear so famous a musician, that moved their rude hearts. "Suffer me," he added, "to arrange my dress. Apollo will not favor me unless I be clad in my minstrel garb." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and except among antiquarians and professional scholars, there was no remembrance of the whole corpus poetarum of the English Middle Age: none of the metrical romances, rhymed chronicles, saints' legends, miracle plays, minstrel ballads, verse homilies, manuals of devotion, animal fables, courtly or popular allegories and love songs of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Nor was there any knowledge or care about the masterpieces ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... has caught this sentiment and plays upon it skillfully. His setting is in keeping with his story. The wandering minstrel, the turreted castle, the festive board, the high-vaulted hall with its oaken rafters, the chase, the wide reaches of the forests of Franconia, the beetling ramparts of old feudal castles by the Rhine or the lovely shores of the Lake of Constance, the vineyards on the slopes of sunny hills, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... found in the later chroniclers which relates that at this crisis of his fortunes Alfred, not daring to rely on any evidence but that of his own senses as to the numbers, disposition, and discipline of the pagan army, assumed the garb of a minstrel and with one attendant visited the camp of Guthrum. Here he stayed, "showing tricks and making sport," until he had penetrated to the King's tents, and learned all that he wished to know. After satisfying himself as to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Innocent III. ordered a Crusade, and John de Montfort not only opened up the Mediterranean ports for Philip, but brought Toulouse, the greatest of the remaining feudal states, into subjection to the King of France; at the same time forever silencing the voice of the heretic, of the minstrel, and of the harp; even the speech, with its delicate inflections and musical intonations, disappeared, to be heard nevermore. Such, in brief, is the story of the "Albigensian War," so called on account of the heresy having ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... chunk of snow fell right into the cup, splashing the chocolate all over the lad. Luckily it was not hot, though after the splashing was over Ted looked as if he had colored himself to take part in a minstrel show. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... Muse, once more, Come with me to the days of yore, And let us wake, with friendly hand The memories of that distant land, The past; and while thy minstrel weaves A chaplet from the Sybil leaves Of recollection—let the light Of truth upon his lines be bright. May he with reverential tread Approach the dwellings of the dead, Seeking for some sweet flower of good Within their solemn solitude: ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... hall Shields gleamed upon the wall, Loud sang the minstrels all, Chanting his glory: When of old Hildebrand I asked his daughter's hand, Mute did the minstrel stand To hear ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... there leaped into his mind an improved revival of his original plan. If he could have made a fortune with his great inventions in 1876, what might he not accomplish by the same means in 1598! He pictured to himself the delight of the ancient worthies when they heard the rag-time airs and minstrel jokes ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... and farther delighted to recognize a well-known face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second thought! ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... in a circus, he would make fun for old and young; again, as a wandering minstrel, he twanged the strings of his banjo and sung a merry song, and so on through all his travels, he would lighten the cares of others, and make them forget their sorrows, and fill ...
— Denslow's Humpty Dumpty • William Wallace Denslow
... was able to see clearly once more, I perceived that Gussie was now seated. He had his hands on his knees, with his elbows out at right angles, like a nigger minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr. Bones why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody could have guessed that there sat ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the harmonious sound, Sylvans and Fauns the Cot surround, And curious crowd the Minstrel to behold: The Wood-nymphs haste the spell to prove; Eager They run; They list, they love, And while They hear the strain, forget the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... themselves with their beauty and talent. And then out in the audience Judge Luttrell had Tony's mother, dressed in lovely black silk and also full of pride, while Mr. Chadwell kept nodding to Pink's mother at everything that Pink did, like there never had been a negro minstrel before. I thought of Father being the only lonely one up on the platform and with only me to be a credit to him—and me not doing it. I prayed for an immediate plan and as I prayed, as is my custom, I acted. I asked Mr. Douglass Byrd quick, if there was time for me to do ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... character. Not only was he a perfect knight on horseback, but in wrestling and running, throwing the hammer, and "putting the stane," he had scarcely a rival, and he was skilled in all the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry, composed music both sacred and profane, and was a complete minstrel, able to sing beautifully and to play on the harp and organ. His queen, the beautiful Joan Beaufort, had been the lady of his minstrelsy in the days of his captivity, ever since he had watched her walking on the slopes of Windsor Park, and wooed her in verses that are still preserved. They had ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and the fleet, and then, leaving for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these, was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of, but which most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been published long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anything national in that, though Phillips swore ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... your honour be a north-country gentleman," said the persevering minstrel, "whilk I wad judge from your tongue, I can play 'Liggeram Cosh,' and 'Mullin Dhu,' and ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... reading we had; my father, the Bishop, and Mr. Jephson reading it aloud alternately. It is a charming poem: a most interesting story, generous, finely-drawn characters, and in many parts the finest poetry. But for an old prepossession—an unconquerable prepossession—in favour of the old minstrel, I think I should prefer this to either the Lay or Marmion. Our pleasure in reading it was increased by the sympathy and ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... been on what, as he ruefully reflected, were very kind terms—rather more than kind, he had hoped, or feared, now and then. Merton saw that he had annoyed her, and thrown her, metaphorically speaking, into the arms of the Irish minstrel. All the better, perhaps, he thought, ruefully. The poet was handsome enough to be one that 'limners loved to paint, and ladies to look upon.' He generally took chaff well, and could give it, as well as take it, and there were hours ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... of the strife with the world shall be dealing. There song was and sound all gather'd together Of that Healfdene's warrior and wielder of battle, The wood of glee greeted, the lay wreaked often, Whenas the hall-game the minstrel of Hrothgar All down by the mead-bench tale must be making: By Finn's sons aforetime, when the fear gat them, The hero of Half-Danes, Hnaef of the Scyldings, On the slaughter-field Frisian needs must ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... the immense advantage over dull authors of being almost always interesting, and the equally great advantage over many exciting authors that he never leaves an unhealthy feeling in the mind. I began with "The Lady of the Lake," then read "Marmion," and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and the Ballads, and finally "Rokeby." These were in separate small volumes, which gave me a desire to possess other authors in the same convenient form, so I added Goldsmith, Crabbe, Kirke White, and Moore's "Irish Melodies." ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... door-keeper, Fr. huis, door, Lat. ostium. I conjecture that Lusher is the French name Lhuissier, and that Lush is local, for Old Fr. le huis; cf. Laporte. Wait, corruptly Weight, now used only of a Christmas minstrel, was once a watchman. It is a dialect form of Old Fr. gaite, cognate with watch. The older sense survives in the expression "to lie in wait." Gate is the same name, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... I find it more distinguished to be the simple commoner. Dull at the Chateau! Good Lord! don't I know it!" He paused, lifting his head with a quick, bird-like motion: a cunning smile wrinkled his face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are they? There, my hedge-minstrel from Valmy, is your welcome ready made. Bring your lute and make pretty Ursula's grey eyes dance to a love song, prude ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... all books! Benign Ceruleans of the second sex! Who advertise new poems by your looks, Your 'imprimatur' will ye not annex? What! must I go to the oblivious cooks, Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks? Ah! must I then the only minstrel be, Proscribed ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... placed under the protection of St. Julian the Martyr. The chapel was consecrated on the last Sunday in September, 1335, and on the front of it there were three figures, one representing a troubadour, one a minstrel, and one a juggler, each ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... with "gabs," i.e. boastful and exaggerated accounts of their achievements. But soon a greater amount of leisure and luxury led them to pay for amusement; professed musicians and story-tellers were introduced, and were classed with the ministri or servants, whence came the name minstrel, which was soon confined to them alone. We find Talliefer going before William the Conqueror at the battle of Hastings chanting the brave deeds of Charlemagne and making a display of skill in tossing and catching his sword and spear. This union of tricks and music ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... not what I think of,' said Eleanor. 'It is to see our own Margaret, and to see and hear the minstrel knights, instead of the rude savages here, scarce one of whom ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Or are the birds all wrong That play on flute and viol, A thousand strong, In minstrel galleries Of the long deep wood, Epiphanies ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... expected to respond, though this by no means was the rule. The host might wish first to call out more of his own intellectual treasures. This he would do by having other occupants of the castle speak further words of welcome, or would call upon a minstrel to sing a song or relate ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... depicted as a baldheaded, elderly gentleman, with upturned eyes, apparently regarding with reverence a hole in an Indian-ink cloud through which slanted a gamboge sunbeam, and having a white beard, which streamed like a (horse-hair) "meteor on the troubled air." This venerable minstrel was seated on a cairn of rude stones, his white robe clasped at his throat and round his waist by golden brooches, and with a harp, shaped like that of David in old Bible illustrations, resting on the sward before him. In the background ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Mary—but then Mary was one of those inconvenient people to whom it mattered not a jot what a fool you made of yourself, as long as you did what was asked of you. And so, from memory and unaccompanied, he played them the old familiar air of THE MINSTREL BOY. The theme, in his rendering, was overlaid by florid variations and cumbered with senseless repetitions; but, none the less, the wild, wistful melody went home, touching even those who were not musical to thoughtfulness and retrospect. The most obstinate chatterers, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... yawned through the crevices of the stones, amid the grass there was a charming beginning of daisies, and buttercups, the white butterflies of the year were making their first appearance, the wind, that minstrel of the eternal wedding, was trying in the trees the first notes of that grand, auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,—Marius said to Cosette:—"We said that we would go back to take a look at our garden in the Rue Plumet. Let us go ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... an Irish saying of one who tells wonderful stories. Perhaps Banaghan was a minstrel famous for ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... shadowy halls of the Danish king a minstrel sings of the famous deeds of men, and his song is given as an interlude in the main action. It is a poem on that same tragedy of Finnesburh, which is the theme of a separate poem in the Old English heroic cycle; so Demodocus took his subjects from the heroic cycle of Achaea. The leisure of the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... that are gone," he said, "love was more fortunate. Grief was our minstrel of things that endure. Now, ashes and dust and this world grow importunate. Time has no sorrow that time cannot cure. Once, we could lose, and the loss was worth cherishing. Now, we may win, but, O, where ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... angrily to know what "that infernal noise" meant. The Count instantly got up from the piano. "Ah! if Percival is coming," he said, "harmony and melody are both at an end. The Muse of Music, Miss Halcombe, deserts us in dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale the rest of my enthusiasm in the open air!" He stalked out into the verandah, put his hands in his pockets, and resumed the Recitativo of Moses, sotto voce, in ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... English poets the perfect minstrel. He takes love as a theme rather than is burned by it. His most charming, if not his most beautiful poem begins: "Hark, all you ladies." He sings of love-making rather than of love. His poetry, like Moore's—though it is infinitely better poetry than Moore's—is the poetry of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... "It's the Minstrel. His boy threw him fair across Lucretia, and knocked her to her knees." He lowered his glasses listlessly. "It's Lauzanne all the way, if he lasts out. He's dying fast though, and Westley's gone to ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... in our strain, Now the months bring again The pipe and the minstrel to gladden the folk? Rather strike on the ear With a note strong and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... the tale, and it would not have needed Harry Hotspur to rouse his namesake from his folly. There was, alas! no such noble rival to excite David of Scotland to emulation, and no such happy turning-point before him. No one, not even a minstrel or romancer, has remembered it in his favour that he once defied the English host for the love of his country and the old never-abandoned cause of Scottish independence. Already it would seem a prodigal who was a Stewart had less chance than ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... cathedral aisles the coolness and freshness seems perennial, the silence was suddenly broken by a strain so rapid and gushing, and touched with such a wild, sylvan plaintiveness, that I listened in amazement. And so shy and coy was the little minstrel, that I came twice to the woods before I was sure to whom I was listening. In summer he is one of those birds of the deep northern forests, that, like the speckled Canada warbler and the hermit thrush, only ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... celebrated minstrel, led away by an exaggeration of healthy human desires, has left his friends and gone to live with Venus in the Hoerselberg. He soon tires of her; she tries to keep him; he calls on the Virgin; the hallucinatory dream is shattered, and he is in the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... thought of Alfred, by there being many more stories told of him than of almost any other of the old Kings. One story is that Alfred, wishing to know what the Danes were about and how strong they were, set out one day from Athelney in the disguise of a minstrel or juggler, and went into the Danish camp, and stayed there several days, amusing the Danes with his playing, till he had seen all that he wanted, and then went back without any one finding him out. This is what you may call a soldier's story, while some of the others are rather ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that succeeds the death of God's dumb creatures, are crowded halls, are slaughtered cattle festivals?—are maddening songs, and giddy dances, and hireling praises from parti-coloured coats? Can the voice of a minstrel tell us better things of ourselves than our own internal one might tell us; or can his breath make our breath softer in sleep? O my beloved! let everything be a joyance to us: it will, if we will. Sad is the day, and worse must follow, when we hear the blackbird in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... "Little minstrel-bard of Coneri The son of the King has come with two or three— Nay, with a whole bright flock of paroquets, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Munro replied, "You surely must have been fortunate, as your name imports, and I am sure that you have been more so than I have been this day; but it's fit to take your advice, MacRath." This was a play on the minstrel's name - MacRath literally meaning "Son of Fortune" - and the harper being, like most of his kind, smart and sagacious, made the following impromptu ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... was proud to be The state's fast friend, and venal bribes would flee; When manhood wrote upon each lofty brow That glorious seal which makes the meaner bow; When Industry, Art, Science, Learning cast That light o'er Rome which gilds her to the last; The Roman minstrel caught the sacred flame, And made that age the chosen child of fame: The Golden Age recalled the happy hour, When man walked sinless in the first, sweet bower. Such was the glorious golden Age of yore,— That golden Age of virtue is no more. The ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... most of their views by talking with the women and children of their congregations. They are not permitted to mingle freely with society. They cannot attend plays nor hear operas. I believe some of them have ventured to minstrel shows and menageries, where they confine themselves strictly to the animal part of the entertainment. But, as a rule, they have very few opportunities of ascertaining what the real public opinion is. They read religious papers, edited by gentlemen who know as little ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... historian, and Oriental scholar, who was styled by his friend Ben Jonson 'a monarch in letters,' and 'vir omni eruditionis genere instructissimus' by Archbishop Laud, was born on the 16th of December 1584 at Salvington, near Worthing, in Sussex. His father was John Selden, a farmer, known as the 'Minstrel' on account of his proficiency in music. Aubrey describes him as 'a yeomanly man of about forty pounds a year, who played well on the violin, in which he took much delight.' Selden was first educated at the free grammar school at Chichester, and ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... how soon Aldebaran began to taste the sweets of great achievement. His name was on the tongue of every troubador, his deeds in every minstrel's song. And though he travelled far to alien lands, scarce known by hearsay even to the folk at home, his fame was carried back, far over seas again, and in his father's court his name was spoken daily in proud tones, as they recounted ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the 'Antiquary,' under the eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself once in love but has come to see that he was a fool for his pains. Certainly, somehow or other, they are apt to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Graeme in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or Wilton in 'Marmion,' are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, and Lovel in the 'Antiquary,' and Vanbeest Brown in 'Guy Mannering,' and Harry Morton in 'Old Mortality,' and, in short, the whole series of Scott's pattern young men, are all chips ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Harold being shot through the eye at the Battle of Hastings may have arisen from a reporter's using the figurative expression that William the Conqueror "put his eye out." Nor, after reading the account of the landing of the Austrian children, can I believe the tale of the minstrel Taillifer who sprang into the water to lead the Normans in landing. And as for the time-honoured phrases, "Take away that bauble!" and "England expects every man to do his duty," I don't believe ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... university; but in neither school nor college, was he distinguished for scholarship. In 1797 he was admitted to the practice of law,—a profession which he soon forsook for literature. His first poems appeared in 1802. The "Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in 1805, "Marmion" in 1808, and "The Lady of the Lake" in 1810. Several poems of less power followed. In 1814 "Waverley," his first novel, made its appearance, but the author was unknown for some time. Numerous other novels followed with great rapidity, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... had already disposed of it in the manner and for the purpose I have shown you. As I still believed you capable of remorse and confession, I twice allowed you to see I was on your track: once in the garb of an itinerant negro minstrel, and the second time as a workman looking in the window of the pawnshop where you ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... election in Arkansas in 1872 was that Brooks got the votes and Baxter the office, whereupon a contest was inaugurated, terminating in civil war. The Baxter, or Minstrel, wing of the party, with the view of spiking the guns of the Brindles, had, in their overtures to the Democrats during the campaign and in their platform at the nominating convention declared in favor of enfranchising the Confederates that took part in the war against the Union. Baxter's movement ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... luck, to have been introduced to this dandy in one's capacity of teacher of the mixed primary that very morning, when he had been given permission by Mr. Garvan to make an announcement at the school concerning special privileges granted school-children at the "high-class minstrel performance" given at Lally's Opera House. To be unhampered now by the timidities of office, and ready to pick up the gage of coquetry his saucy glance threw down. And so, after the smallest second's hesitation,—the woman in one stifling ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... shapely female balanced upon one delicate toe on the bristling back of a fiery, untamed palfrey that whoops round and round to the music of the band, the plaudits of the public, and the still, small voice of the dyspeptic gent announcing a minstrel show "under this canvas after the performance, which is ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... sailor's ship there was a minstrel bound for the king's court to sing on May Day; and the minstrel learned ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... sustaining a cross-piece, against which the preacher might lean his back. The services commenced with the singing of a psalm by the whole vast assemblage. Clement Marot's verses, recently translated by Dathenus, were then new and popular. The strains of the monarch minstrel, chanted thus in their homely but nervous mother tongue by a multitude who had but recently learned that all the poetry and rapture of devotion were not irrevocably coffined with a buried language, or immured in the precincts of a church, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to love can be desert, I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale As these you see, and trembling knees that fail To bear the burden of a heavy heart,— This weary minstrel-life that once was girt To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail To pipe now 'gainst the valley nightingale A melancholy music,—why advert To these things? O Beloved, it is plain I am not of thy worth nor for thy place! And ...
— Sonnets from the Portuguese • Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
... was tremendously urging himself to play the mouth-organ there, to skip and be nimble, and gain a minstrel's meed. Meaning lunch. ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... of the North! that mouldering long hast hung On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, Till envious ivy did around thee cling, Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,— O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring, Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep, Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... little Norman chapel; for he was a puny, ailing child, apt to scandalize his father and brother, and their warlike retainers, by being scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest, and preferring the seat at this mother's feet, the fairy tale of the old nurse, the song of the minstrel, or the book of the Priest, to horse and hound, or even to the sight of the martial sports ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... orbs sparkled and gleamed like fairy lamps of fire; and the bowers, in which the "Sultana of the Nightingale" inspired a song from her minstrel lover, assumed the dream-like repose which pervaded the surrounding scenes, and extended its influence to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... world, no more? Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face; Ah, only on the Minstrel's magic shore, Can we the footstep of sweet Fable trace! The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life; Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft; Where once the warm and living shapes were rife, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... world, no more? Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face! Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore Can we the footsteps of sweet Fable trace! The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life; Vainly we search the earth, of gods bereft; Where once the warm and living shapes were rife Shadows alone ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... The minstrel of the classic lay Of love and wine who sings Still found the fingers run astray That touched ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... later; at least the awfulness was well covered. The program of entertainment was awful enough, if deadly mediocrity is awful. A big darkey, dressed in a suit which reminded me of the "end man" at an old-time minstrel show, sang "My Alabama Coon," accompanying himself, more or less intimately, on the banjo. I could have heard the same thing, better done, at a ten cent theater in the States, where this chap had doubtless served an apprenticeship. However, the audience, which was growing larger every minute, seemed ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ball, with rich gowns and flashing jewels, and the grounds ablaze with lights, and a full orchestra, and special trains from the city. Or a whole theatrical company would be brought down to give an entertainment in the theatre; or a minstrel show, or a troupe of acrobats, or a menagerie of trained animals. Or perhaps there would be a great pianist, or a palmist, or a trance medium. Anyone at all would be welcome who could bring a new thrill—it mattered nothing at ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... household minstrel, who always loved to please, Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys. Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim, As, floating from lip and ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... A minstrel's fire within me burn'd, I'd sing, as one whose heart must break, Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd To shake. All day I sang; of love, of fame, Of fights our fathers fought of yore, Until the thing almost became ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... with some soap and water, Herb," he said. "Just now you look like the lead for a minstrel show." ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... Materialized it, maybe, just as they did the tambourine. You don't suppose a quiet New York lawyer kept a stock of musical instruments large enough to fit out a strolling minstrel troupe just on the chance of a pair of ghosts coming to give him a surprise party, do you? Every spook has its own instrument of torture. Angels play on harps, I'm informed, and spirits delight in banjos and tambourines. These spooks of Eliphalet Duncan's were ghosts with all the modern improvements, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... as red as her mother's, though the old Countess paints hers every day. Her foot is as light as a sparrow's, and her voice as sweet as a minstrel's dulcimer; but give me nathless the Lady Anne," cried Philibert; "give me the peerless Lady Anne! As soon as ever I have won spurs, I will ride all Christendom through, and proclaim her the Queen of Beauty. Ho, Lady Anne! Lady Anne!" ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... days. I doubt whether they had any more amusement than the swine or the cows had. Looking after the fowls or the geese, hunting for the hen's nest in the furze brake, and digging out a fox or a badger, gave them an hour's excitement or interest now and again. Now and then a wandering minstrel came by, playing upon his rude instrument, and now and then somebody would come out from Lynn, or Yarmouth, or Norwich, with some new batch of songs for the most part scurrilous and coarse, and listened ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... gloom or depression. I say to you that the most buoyant, happy, hopeful, confident crowd of men in the wide world is the American army in France. If you could see them back of the lines, even within sound of the guns, playing a game of ball; if you could see them putting on a minstrel show in a Y. M. C. A. hotel in Paris; if you could see a team of white boys playing a team of negro boys; if you could see a whole regiment go in swimming; if you could see them in a track meet, you would know that, in spite of war, they are ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... reinforces itself,—a real John Brown power that is always marching on, and we must march beside it with patient, cheery hearts. Is it strange that even the moss-covered Carlisle town, of which the Last Minstrel sang, and where the Scottish Mary tarried in her flight from the cousin queen, is now chiefly remarkable for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... which it acquired from the poems and stories of Scott. The thousands of pilgrims who come every year are attracted by this alone, since the abbey had no extraordinary history and no tomb of king or hero is to be found in its precincts. Were it not for the weird interest which the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" has thrown around Melrose, its fame would probably be no greater than that of the abbeys of Jedburgh and Kelso in the same neighborhood. Abbottsford House is only three miles from Melrose, but it is closed to visitors after five o'clock and we missed a second ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... Rome her "pictures of the world"; she has pictures of her own, "pictures of England"; and is it a new thing to toss up caps and shout—England against the world? Yes, against the world in all, in all; in science and in arms, in minstrel strain, and not less in the art "which enables the hand to deceive the intoxicated soul by means of pictures". {137} Seek'st models? to Gainsborough and Hogarth turn, not names of the world, maybe, but English names—and England against the world! A living master? why, there he ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... for something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low or incongruous ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... arose within the hall the din of voices and the sound of song; the instruments also were brought out and Hrothgar's minstrel sang a ballad for the delight of the warriors. Waltheow too came forth, bearing in her train presents for Beowulf—a cup, two armlets, raiment and rings, and the largest and richest collar that could be found ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... modern Englishman Handel is almost a contemporary. Paintings and busts of this great minstrel are scattered everywhere throughout the land. He lies in Westminster Abbey among the great poets, warriors, and statesmen, a giant memory in his noble art. A few hours after death the sculptor Roubiliac took a cast of his face, which he wrought into imperishable ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... melody; and very few, indeed, can gather from the silent notes the full effect of its splendid combinations. Yet even here the great master has analogous compensations. The idle amateur, the boarding-school girl, the street minstrel, and the barrel-organ, reflect his more palpable beauties; and, subjecting them to the severe test of incessant reiteration, make us wonder that "custom cannot stale" the infinite variety that is shut up even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... marble minstrel's voiceless stone, In deathless song shall tell, When many a vanished age hath flown The story how ye fell; Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, Nor Time's remorseless doom, Shall dim one ray of glory's light That gilds your ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... was a land which was so much a woodland, that a minstrel thereof said it that a squirrel might go from end to end, and all about, from tree to tree, and never touch the earth: therefore was that land ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... called for blood; at another he declared that he would be satisfied with governing in Egypt. He recalled the prediction which promised him lordship in Jerusalem, and he was moved by the thought that as a wandering minstrel he would earn his daily bread,—that cities and countries would honor in him, not Caesar, the lord of the earth, but a poet whose like the world had not produced before. And so he struggled, raged, played, sang, changed his plan, changed his quotations, changed his life and the world into a dream ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... more dear, to her fine-tuned ear, On the midnight breezes float; Than the sounds that ring From the minstrel's string, When the mighty deeds of some warrior king Inspire each ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... to her that his silence was eloquent of the inherent generosity of the man, even as his poetic outburst of a few minutes before had been eloquent of the minstrel in him. She rode in silence, regarding him critically from time to time, and when they came to the tree where the panther hung he gave her the calf to hold while he deftly skinned the dead marauder, tied the pelt behind his saddle, relieved her ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... moon could sing, On a marvellous, mystical night in spring, I wonder what the song would be That the minstrel moon would sing to me. And as I think, I seem to know How the music of the moon would go. It would be a mystic, murmuring strain Like the falling of far-away fairy rain. Just a soft and silvery song That would swing and swirl along; ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... no flattery in this," replied Lucie; "but I will confess nothing,—except that I danced away my spirits last evening, and was most melodiously disturbed afterwards, by some strolling minstrel. Were you not annoyed ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... memories must die, yet as there sometimes clings to a prisoner's feet some dust of the fields wherein he was captured, so sometimes fragments of remembrance cling to a man's soul after it hath been taken to earth. Then a great minstrel arises, and, weaving together the shreds of his memories, maketh some melody such as the hand of Shimono Kani smites out of his harp; and they that pass by say: 'Hath there not been some such melody before?' and pass on sad at heart ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... the countryside, both gentle and common. In some booths there was dancing to merry music, in others flowed ale and beer, and in others yet again sweet cakes and barley sugar were sold; and sport was going outside the booths also, where some minstrel sang ballads of the olden time, playing a second upon the harp, or where the wrestlers struggled with one another within the sawdust ring, but the people gathered most of all around a raised platform where stout ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... of the gallant Froissart, although he flourished at a period so much more remote from the date of my history. If, therefore, my dear friend, you have generosity enough to pardon the presumptuous attempt, to frame for myself a minstrel coronet, partly out of the pearls of pure antiquity, and partly from the Bristol stones and paste, with which I have endeavoured to imitate them, I am convinced your opinion of the difficulty of the task will reconcile you to the imperfect ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... birds of the air seemed to welcome her. The warm southern winds were full of their warbling—beccafico, loriot, merle, citronelle, woodlark, nightingale,—every tree, copse and tuft of grass held a tiny minstrel. When the great gate opened to a fanfare of trumpets, from the castle walls there came the murmur of innumerable doves. A castle had its dove-cote as it had its poultry-yard or rabbit-warren, but the birds were not always so fearless ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Rusafah on the Eastern side and villages like Baturanjah, dear to the votaries of pleasure; and with the roar of a gigantic capital mingled the hum of prayer, the trilling of birds, the thrilling of harp and lute, the shrilling of pipes, the witching strains of the professional Almah, and the minstrel's lay. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... hears the voice of a roving minstrel who is approaching. She conceals herself. He comes near, and not venturing to enter the hotel, lies down to sleep on a bench. He is soon asleep; and Silvia comes near to see him. She recognizes in him her ideal; and at once loves him. ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... exquisite bird-song from an adjacent maple. Webb took off his hat in respectful greeting to the minstrel. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... and Magdalena, welcoming them to their ancestral home. The girls almost shuddered, as they gazed upon the the huge hall, with its lofty carved ceiling, and its dark oak panelling. In ancient times, when it was crowded by armed retainers, or echoed to the joyful chorus of the feast and the minstrel's song, it must have been admirably suited to its purpose; but now it looked solitary and desolate, like a fit abode for the owl and the raven. At one end, a wide, substantial stone staircase led to the ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... incidents and remarks which, like atrophied organs in an animal body, reveal its gradual formation. Art and a deliberate pursuit of unction or beauty would have thrown over this baggage. The automatic and pious minstrel carries it with him ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... with any spirit in this measure has, other things not being quite equal, yet almost a certainty of becoming more popular than one written in any other measure. Most of Barry Cornwall's and Mrs. Heman's songs are written in it. Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," Coleridge's "Christabel," Byron's "Siege of Corinth," Shelley's "Sensitive Plant," are examples of the rhythm. Spenser is the first who has made good use of it. One of the months in the "Shepherd's Calendar" is composed in it. We quote ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... relative merits of sitting and standing to wait until called by the bell. Of course no one could afford to be absent, for entertainments were entirely infrequent at Backley; the populace was too small to support a course of lectures, and too moral to give any encouragement to circuses and minstrel troupes, but a temperance meeting was both moral and cheap, and the children might all be ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... with varnished pumps and expanses of ankle in grey silk. One, inspecting him through an eyeglass on a woven hair guard, expressed a pointed surprise at Jasper Penny's informal garb. "Christoval!" he ejaculated. "It approaches an insult to the da-da-darlings." Another commenced to sing a popular minstrel air: ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in an attitude which I am half inclined to suspect was studied, began the little French air of the Troubadour. The Squire, however, exclaimed against having anything on Christmas eve but good old English; upon which the young minstrel, casting up his eye for a moment, as if in an effort of memory, struck into another strain, and, with a charming air of gallantry, gave Herrick's ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... first in ancient time, from Jubal's tongue, The tuneful anthem filled the morning air, To sacred hymnings and Elysian song His music-breathing shell the minstrel woke— Devotion breathed aloud from every chord, The voice of praise was heard in every tone, And prayer and thanks to Him the Eternal One, To Him, that, with bright inspiration touched The high and gifted lyre of everlasting song, And warmed ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... company with their songs and music. Lady Clifford never went down to the great hall when her lord was away, but confined herself to her own private apartments with her female attendants and her children, but she readily gave permission for the domestics to admit the minstrel for their own amusement, and right glad they were of this indulgence, as they had spent ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... hearts' bond began, in due time signed. And long years thence, when Age had scared Romance, At some old attitude of his or glance That gallery-scene would break upon her mind, With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim, Bowing "New ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... emulate The Minstrel Boy, and we shall find you Storming its barred and bolted gate With reams of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... falconers with their well-trained birds, whose skill they had been approving upon their fists, their jesses ringing as they moved along, while nearer still, and almost at the foot of the terrace wall, was a minstrel playing on a rebec, to which a keeper, in a dress of Lincoln green, with a bow over his shoulder, a quiver of arrows at his back, and a comely damsel ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... recovery, with which Virgil closes the fourth Georgic, is among the most exquisite passages in all Latin poetry. Pope made it the subject of his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; but if Pluto and Proserpine really relented at the doggerel that the English poet puts into the mouth of the half-divine minstrel, they cannot deserve the title of illacrymabiles which Horace gives them. Some of the pedantic scientists (to borrow a new word) have discovered in this tale of true love an allegory about the alternations of Day and Night, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... heard all that went on. 'Since your minds are made up,' says Arion, 'at least let me get my mantle on, and sing my own dirge; and then I will throw myself into the sea of my own accord.'—The sailors agreed. He threw his minstrel's cloak about him, and sang a most sweet melody; and then he let himself drop into the water, never doubting but that his last moment had come. But I caught him up on my back, and swam to shore ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... warbling dare approach the thrush Or blackbird's accents in the hawthorn bush? Or with the lark dost thou poor mimic, vie, Or nightingale's unequal'd melody? These other birds possessing twice thy fire Have been content in silence to admire." "With candor judge," the minstrel bird replied, "Nor deem my efforts arrogance or pride; Think not ambition makes me act this part, I only sing because I love the art: I envy not, indeed, but much revere Those birds whose fame the test of skill will bear; I feel no hope arising to surpass, Nor with their charming ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... on the scenery of that now noted district of the south of Scotland, blended with the graceful expression of those melancholy remembrances, we doubt not deeply felt, which must ever cast a dark shadow over the minds of the surviving associates of the Great Minstrel. Alas! where can we turn ourselves without being reminded of the transitory nature of this our low estate, of its dissevered ties, its buried hopes, and lost affections! How many bitter endurances, reflected from the bosom of the past, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... unheeded by him, Arsenio prattled at his elbow. He bethought him of the old minstrel's gallery at the end of the hall in which the Condillacs were dining and whither the courier would be conducted. He knew the way to that gallery, for he had made a very close study of the chateau against the time when he might find himself in need ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... were followed by a lunch and that by an entertainment of mixed character. Billy Emerson, Ben Cotton, Billy Rice, Ernest Linden, F. Oberist, W. F. Baker, J. G. Russell and Billy Arlington of Maguire's Minstrel Troupe, and W. S. Lawton, Capt. Martin and L. P. Ward, and the Buisley family being ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... his body ached with all the strain and exertion it had so recently undergone. Slowly he moved off towards his own sleeping apartment, in case the Queen, when she awoke, should send to inquire after him. And on his way, as a short cut, he crossed the minstrel gallery, which divided one from the other the two state drawing-rooms,—a broad half-story colonnade, with central opening and corners draped ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... live in London and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police—yes, you knew what a policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why you did not get your wages or leave if you weren't paid, that you "didn't know ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... See in Notes on the Months, p.418, the Song "Bryng us in good ale," copied from the MS. song-book of an Ipswich Minstrel of the 15th century, read by Mr Thomas Wright before the British Archological Association, August, 1864, and afterwards published in The Gentleman's Magazine. P.S.—The song was first printed complete in Mr Wright's edition of Songs & Carols for the Percy Society, 1847, p.63. He gives ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... view of the Falls of Niagara the misunderstandings between the two countries would be reduced. Peter Irving, who was then in Edinburgh, was impressed with the brilliant talent of the editor of the "Review," disguised as it was by affectation, but he said he "would not give the Minstrel for ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... over sunny seas, until they came to the shore where the royal lover awaited his bride, impatiently scanning the horizon for the gilded dragon's head of the ship that bore her. The minstrel sings of the great wedding that was held in the old city of Ribe.[2] The gray old cathedral in which they knelt together still stands; but of Valdemar's strong castle only a grass-grown hill is left. It was the privilege of a bride in those ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the fair form of May MacLeod appeared at the casement overhead, she waved a fond farewell to her mountain minstrel and closed the window; but the light deprived of her fair face had no charm for him—he gazed once more at the pane through which it beamed like a solitary star, amid the masses of foliage, and was turning away when he found a heavy hand laid on ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... evening charmingly; I read the Lay of the Last Minstrel aloud to him, and he seemed to enjoy it very ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... not care to defend himself. He had drifted up toward the northern barbarians with the idea that they would well reward a minstrel who could offer them something more than their own crude chants. It had been a mistake; they didn't care for roundels or sestinas, they yawned at the thought of roses white and red under the moon of Caronne, a moon less fair than my ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... I want to dance as I had never yet danced: beyond all heavens did I want to dance. Then did ye seduce my favourite minstrel. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the stage today are built upon music and dancing. We find these two essential elements in opera, revue, musical comedy, pantomime and vaudeville, while the place of the dance in moving pictures may well be recognized. Should the old-time minstrel show come back, as it is certain to do, there will be added another name to the list of active entertainments that call for a union of music and dancing to insure ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Never to wandering minstrel or pondering Poet her castle gate closes: Ever her kindly cheer—ever her praise sincere Falls like the dew on faint roses. And when her Pennillions rhyming She mates to her triple harp's chiming, In her green Gorsedd gown— ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... and Coleridge spoke with awe of his genius; Keats dedicated one of his poems to his memory; and Coleridge copied some of his rhythms. One of his best poems is the Minstrel's Roundelay— ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... seated himself, and producing the ready little volume and the iron-rimmed spectacles, he prepared to discharge a duty, which nothing but the unexpected assault he had received in his orthodoxy could have so long suspended. He was, in truth, a minstrel of the western continent—of a much later day, certainly, than those gifted bards, who formerly sang the profane renown of baron and prince, but after the spirit of his own age and country; and he was now prepared to exercise the cunning of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... What honest prose might best rehearse; How much we forest-dwellers grieve Our valued friends our cot should leave, Unseen each beauty that we boast, The little wonders of our coast, That still the pile of Melrose gray, For you must rise in minstrel's lay, And Yarrow's birk immortal long For yon but bloom in rural song. Yet Hope, who still in present sorrow Whispers the promise of to-morrow, Tells us of future days to come, When you shall glad our rustic home; When this wild whirlwind ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!— your "Braes of Balquidder," and "Yon Burnside," and "Gloomy Winter," and the "Minstrel's" wailing ditty, and the noble "Gleneiffer." Oh! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles! Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to loom, ministering to the low-hearted; and when the breast was filled with ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... nuptials from the bright abode Yourselves were present; when this minstrel god (Well pleased to share the feast) amid the quire Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... He moveth his cunning hand. He opes his lips, and he poureth forth Such a sweet stream of sound, That the Soldan's heart leaps up in his breast, And his eye he casts around. 'Was never a voice,' the Soldan said, 'So sweet—nor so blest a song;— Sing on, kind minstrel,' the Soldan said, 'I have been sad too long.' The minstrel sang, and soft and sweet The Soldan's tears fell free; 'Oh, tell me, thou minstrel dear,' he said, 'What boon shall I give to thee? Oh, stay with me but a year and a day, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... pleasure. His new-found friend was making a favorable impression. He at once urged Oliver to sing one of his own Southern songs as the darkies sung them at home, and not as they were caricatured by the end men in the minstrel shows. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... find an increasing admixture of buffoonery, without which no Interlude could be regarded as complete. Herein we see the influence of certain farcical entertainments brought over by the Norman jongleurs (or travelling minstrel-comedians). Just as the French fabliaux inspired Chaucer's coarser tales, so the French farce stimulated the natural inclination of the English taste to broad humour and rough-and-tumble buffoonery on the stage. Held in some ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... turned the home town topsy-turvy. This led to an organization of a boys' department in the local Y. M. C. A. When the lads realized what was being done for them, they joined in the movement with vigor and did all they could to help the good cause. To raise funds they gave a minstrel show and other entertainments, and a number of them did their best to win a gold medal offered by a local minister who was greatly interested in the work of ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... an apparent agony of grief. Three children are present, the two elder crying for sympathy, the youngest sitting in a crib or cradle and amusing himself with some toy, in apparent unconsciousness of his father's approaching departure. Soft blue light from left. Music, "The Minstrel Boy." ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... will be observed, is wholly different from that of the Hon. Pompey Smash and his literary descendants, and different also from the intolerable misrepresentations of the minstrel stage, but it is at least phonetically genuine. Nevertheless, if the language of Uncle Remus fails to give vivid hints of the really poetic imagination of the negro; if it fails to embody the quaint and homely humor which was his most prominent characteristic; ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... world?" An echo came — "Ails the world?" The minstrel bands, With famous or forgotten hands, Lift up their lyres in all the lands, And chant alike, and ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... said Tucket, starting for the rendezvous, and striking into another quotation from his favorite minstrel, parodied for the occasion. "'Speed, Manly, speed! the cow's tough hide on fleeter foot was ne'er tied. Speed, Manly, speed! such cause of haste a drummer's sinews never braced. For turkey's doom and rebel deed are in ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... found in Dr. Russell's pictorial neutrality, in the dashing effects of popular Mr. Trollope, nor even—making all allowance for the sanative influence of counter-irritation—in the weekly malignity of that ex-Moral Minstrel whom the London "Times" has sent to the aid of our insurgent slave-masters. For, instead of gloating over objections and picking out what petty enigmas may not be readily soluble, Mr. Dicey has a manly, English way of accepting the preponderant evidence concerning the crisis he came to study. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... if he may dare to hazard the remark, that the stanza in which he has attempted to write, has advantages over even the Spenserean stanzas. He understands the latter to be that in which the Fairy Queen, from whose author it takes its name—Beattie's Minstrel, Thompson's Castle of Indolence, Byron's Childe Harold, &c. &c., are written. The following is a stanza of it, from ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
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