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More "Minstrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for hidden treasures? Nay! We want the heartfelt straight. Minstrel, sing, in obvious measures— Sing that ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... lay claim to any distinguished relationship, even to that 'Nelly Bly' who, you remember, 'winked her eye when she went to sleep.'" He stopped in consternation. The terrible conviction flashed upon him that this quotation from a popular negro-minstrel song could not possibly be remembered by a lady as refined as his hostess, or even known to her superior son. The conviction was intensified by Mrs. Brooks rising with a smileless face, slightly shedding the possible vulgarity with a shake of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... nobles. A price was set upon their heads. But while the last scions of the royal and noble races, decimated or ruined in Ireland, departed to die out under a foreign sky, amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the bards, the minstrel, whom nothing could tear from his native soil, was pursued, tracked, and taken like a wild beast, or chained and slaughtered like ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... kind depends on memory when the sight of some object awakens a feeling: as in the Cyprians of Dicaeogenes, where the hero breaks into tears on seeing the picture; or again in the 'Lay of Alcinous,' where Odysseus, hearing the minstrel play the lyre, recalls the past and ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... 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, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... is a foreigner, speaking no known language, but a mixture of every European dialect—so that he may be an Italian brigand, or a Tyrolese minstrel, or a Spanish smuggler, for what we know. I have heard say that he is neither of these, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... go in disguise as a minstrel?" said Denham banteringly—"like King Alfred did when he went to see about the Danes? Have you got a harp, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... 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, thy rights shall ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... 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 but a ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... State 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 ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... charge of our division the most powerful plain-ranger in the service of the company, the one person of all others, who might control the natives in case of an outbreak—and that man was Cuthbert Grant. Pierre, the minstrel, and six clerks were also in the party; but what could a handful of moderate men do with a horde of Indians and Metis wrought up to a fury ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... unpromising details without a quiver of the extravagant lashes. These, indeed, and the eyes pertaining to them, seemed rather to sweep the fine roof, and a certain minstrel's gallery and staircase, than which nothing could have been much finer, with the look of an appreciative admirer of architectural features and old oak. She had not journeyed to Stornham Court with the intention of disturbing Rosy, or of being herself ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... supposed to ask an old German musician how many instruments of music he could play, and he acts out in pantomime all of the instruments he could blow or handle. We think it was this merriment that became known in America as the song of Johnnie Schmoker in the minstrel days. ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... 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
... continence, and rise the better and more chivalrous from the society of the other. Wine well used is a good familiar creature—kindles, soothes, and inspirits: the cup of wine warmed by the smile of woman gives courage to the soldier and genius to the minstrel. With Burns—and he was no ordinary seer—I hold that the sweetest hours that e'er we spend are spent among the lasses. I will go farther and say the most profitable hours. And some sweet and profitable hours 'twas mine to spend among the fawn-orbed ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... musical composition even for its 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
... the King, "that won't do! I do know better than that. It was Richard's minstrel who went ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... 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 glee-man 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 their tents, their ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... has given it as his opinion, that a disinclination to athletic sports and exercises will be, in general, found among the peculiarities which mark a youthful genius. In support of this notion he quotes Beattie, who thus describes his ideal minstrel:— ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... number on the same bill reads: "The African Wonder, Carlo Alberto, will sing several new and popular Negro melodies." Collectors of minstrel data ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... been passionately in love with her; but his extreme old age and his somewhat haughty bearing were obstacles in his path to success. Whenever he made love to her, she turned aside, and listened instead to the thrilling tales told by some wandering minstrel. The magician finally succumbed to the infirmities of old age, his life made more burdensome by his repeated disappointments. He left to the king three enchanted winged horses; to the princess, two magic necklaces of exactly the same ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... morn and evening listed to the minstrel's song, In their ear the loathsome jackal ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... 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' ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Hercules at once, Nursed in effeminate arts from youth to manhood, And rushes from the banquet to the battle, As though it were a bed of love, deserves That a Greek girl should be his paramour, And a Greek bard his minstrel—a Greek tomb His monument. How ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... then, the fate of that high-gifted man, The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall, The orator—dramatist—minstrel, who ran Through each mode of the lyre, and was master ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... this," Homer said. "The forming of El Hassan's basic government is beginning to take on aspects of a minstrel show. Then we've all declared ourselves ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 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 one in whom ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... out of fashion. There are no modern Scheherezades, and the Sultans nowadays have to be amused in a different fashion. But, for that matter, a hundred poetic pastimes of leisure have fled before the relentless Hurry Demon who governs this prosaic nineteenth century. The Wandering Minstrel is gone, and the Troubadour, and the Court of Love, and the King's Fool, and the Round Table, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... done put up now, Jud?" grinned a tall weaver with that blank look of expectancy which settles over the face of the middle man in a negro minstrel troupe when he passes the stale question to the end man, knowing the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... 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 Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... 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 nymphs go about the world disguised in dingy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the good people of Nuremberg sing when Hans Sachs, their favorite singer, as bounteous and gentle as the Eternal Father, steps out on the platform for the contest in poetry. It was the song that the poet-minstrel, the friend of Albrecht Duerer, wrote in honor of Luther when the great Reformation broke; and the prima donna, rising to her feet in the stern, and returning the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of his style, and humour? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon—save the harp on which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... jingling wires with which the mandolin is mounted. I have sometimes stood at the door of a cafe, or, to give it the real name [Greek: kapheneion], and listened in wonder to the strains of some minstrel holding forth within. The wonder was, not that the man should play egregiously ill, but that the effect of good music should be produced by his evil playing. The people were evidently excited to sorrow when the attempt was at a mournful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to read ... to steal God's book. He has punished ... but death pays my bond. Soon I shall read with His eyes and be at peace. Peace! (Gives a dying shudder) Nevermore!... (Rises, staggers to door and opens it wide) O, Night, with thy minstrel winds, blow gently on me dead ... for I have been thy lover! (Looks back at the men who are gazing at him intently, and speaks lowly, erect and godlike) In His own image created He man!... (Turns and steps ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... smiled. "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 ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... their great 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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 of his rooted habit ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... I but a minstrel, deft At weaving, with the trembling strings Of my glad harp, the warp and weft Of rondels such as rapture sings,— I'd loop my lyre across my breast, Nor stay me till my knee found rest In midnight banks of bud and ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... accident you discover him balancing on a swaying twig, never far from the ground, with his comical little tail erect, or more likely pointing towards his head, what a pert, saucy minstrel he is! You are lost in amazement that so much music could come from a throat ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... 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, A chant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... Redcliffe tow'rs, To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour, Shap'd his advent'rous course to London walls! Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! Take up, my Song, take up a merrier strain; For yet again, and lo! from Avon's vales, Another Minstrel[2] cometh. Youth endear'd, God and good Angels guide thee on thy road, And gentler fortunes 'wait ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the chicken is in our mouths where we sit by the fire; but if we were gnawing wretched bones, out in the cold of the streets, I doubt if we should feel in such a sublime mood. All the praises of poverty are sung by the minstrel who has got a golden harp to chant them on; and all the encomiums on renunciation come from your bon viveur who never denied himself aught in ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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 ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... voice, and the liquor loosening the muscles of his tongue, 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 ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... die away in the plaintive notes of Roslin Castle, the echoes of the old walls were, after a long slumber, awakened by that enthusiastic burst of applause, with which the Scots usually received and rewarded their country's gifted minstrel. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... again Her courtship with the flowers; She chants in groves her minstrel strain, She smiles, and frowns, and weeps in rain ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... leading scholars of the eighth century: "He was an excellent harper, a most eloquent Saxon and Latin poet, a most expert chanter, or a singer, a doctor egregius, and admirably versed in scriptures and liberal sciences." The minstrel was a regular and stated officer of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Poetry is always the earliest form of literature; song the earliest form of poetry. The Muse adapts her lessons to the nation's infancy and adds the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... was not the royal minstrel who composed the songs, but that they came from the hand of Ronald who was now as skilled with his sword as with his harp, and who had become a great favourite of the emperor. He was a powerful warrior, and had already overthrown ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... Yes, I trow, and with reason, for thy native land need 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.' {143} 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 comes! thou hast ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of the Spring prepares: On the four winds are sped my couriers, For thee the towered trees are hung with green; Once more for thee, O queen, The banquet hall with ancient tapestry Of woven vines grows fair and still more fair. And ah! how in the minstrel gallery Again there is the sudden string and stir Of music touching the old instruments, While on the ancient floor The rushes as of yore Nymphs of the house of spring plait for your feet— Ancestral ornaments. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... dreamed a dream at the midnight deep, When fancies come and go To vex a man in his soothing sleep With thoughts of awful woe— I dreamed that I was a corner-man Of a nigger minstrel show. ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... pass'd, where old and young Had no more heed of the glad vintaging, But all unpluck'd the purple clusters hung, Nor more of Linus did the minstrel sing, For he and all the folk were following, Wine-stain'd and garlanded, in merry bands, Like men when Dionysus came as king, And led his revel from the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... embracing both wood and water, mountain and rock scenery. The whole gives rise to sentiments of the most pleasing, devotional tranquillity. The place, however, at which I paused, was St. Mary's Aisle: "here," I said to myself, "will the mighty minstrel sleep, when his harp shall be silent!"—and here I offered the votive tribute in anticipation, which thousands will follow me in, now that he is, too truly, alas! no more. At the little iron palisading I stood, and said, "here Scott will sleep:" in this, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... in 1802, and Scott soon became a contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder. His chief work was now on "Sir Tristram," a romance ascribed to Thomas of Ercildoune; but "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was making progress in 1803, when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister, under circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal. In the following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an adjoining farm, on the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... 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, are ever mingling with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "seems they hitched a kind of nigger minstrel show right on to it—banjos and thingumajigs in front of the curtain while they was changin' scenes, and they hitched the second act right on to that. Nobody come out of the theatre at all. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The minstrel gallery dated from the year 1354, and many musical instruments used in the fourteenth century were represented by carvings on the front, as being played by twelve angels. The following were the names of the instruments: cittern, bagpipe, clarion, rebec, psaltery, syrinx, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... addressed to him. London itself was now empty. Lionel found a quiet lodging in the vicinity of Twickenham. And when his foot passed along the shady lane through yon wicket gate into that region of turf and flowers, he felt as might have felt that famous Minstrel of Ercildoun, when, blessed with the privilege to enter Fairyland at will, the Rhymer stole to the grassy hillside, and murmured the spell that unlocks ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he, "I took a chaise for Melrose; and on the way stopped at the gate of Abbotsford, and sent in my letter of introduction, with a request to know whether it would be agreeable for Mr. Scott to receive a visit from me in the course of the day. The glorious old minstrel himself came limping to the gate, and took me by the hand in a way that made me feel as if we were old friends; in a moment I was seated at his hospitable board among his charming little family, and here I have been ever since.... I cannot ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... 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 ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... afforded a peg from which much unprofitable speculation was suspended. The argument most plausible was that he went home, while one romantic youth suggested a girl. The accusation was never repeated. What? The "Lord" a ladies' man? Tut! One would as soon expect a statue to drill a minstrel show. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... 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 in either case he must praise. And what there is for him to ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 he ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Chopin is the minstrel, Neukomm the orator of music: we want them both,—the mysterious whispers and the resolute pleadings from the better world, which calls us not to slumber here, but press daily ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... country's fame, When wits and mountaineers deride, To me grows serious, for I name My native plains and streams with pride. No mountain charms have I to sing, No loftier minstrel's rights invade; From trifles oft my raptures spring; —Sweet Barnham Water wants ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... if God decrees he must be lord of Spain, Shall witness that the Leonese were not aroused in vain; He shall bear witness that we died, as lived our sires of old, Nor only of Numantium's pride shall minstrel ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... my Beloved! taken with those glances, Ah, my Beloved! dancing those rash dances, Ah, Minstrel! playing wrongful strains so well; Ah, Krishna! Krishna with the honeyed lip! Ah, Wanderer into foolish fellowship! My Dancer, my Delight!—I ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Father was tremendously urging himself to play the mouth-organ there, to skip and be nimble, and gain a minstrel's ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... 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
... 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 enthusiasm ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... which has heretofore been associated in the public mind with the Negro Minstrel business. Certain weird barbaric melodies, which defy all laws of musical composition, but which haunt one like a dream of a lonely night on some wild African river, are said to have been written by "OLD EMMET." Is there any such person? Has any one actually seen "OLD EMMET" in the flesh, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... 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 ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... like a sunset glow over the 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 byways of the crumbling Kraton, a professional story-teller ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... street, so denominated from the solemn procession that passed through it on Whitsun Monday, in its way from St. Mary's to St. Margaret's. In this procession the image of the Virgin was carried under a canopy, with an attendant minstrel and harp, accompanied by representatives of the twelve apostles, each denoted by the name of the sacred character he personated, written on parchment, fixed to his bonnet; these were followed by persons bearing banners, and the virgins ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... Unknown to mercy, tears the guiltless lamb; The towering eagle, darting from above, Unfeeling rends the inoffensive dove; 20 The lamb and dove on living nature feed, Crop the young herb, or crush the embryon seed. Nor spares the loud owl in her dusky flight, Smit with sweet notes, the minstrel of the night; Nor spares, enamour'd of his radiant form, The hungry nightingale the glowing worm; Who with bright lamp alarms the midnight hour, Climbs the green stem, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... programme, for it is a fine and inspiriting list, and a 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
... by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester's grave. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... handsome fellow, so glistening that he looked rather purple when he walked in the sunshine; and he had a voice so sweet and mellow that any minstrel might have been proud of it, though he seldom sang, and it is possible that no one but Corbie's grandmother heard it at its best. He was, moreover, a merry soul, fond of a joke, and always ready to dance a jig, with a chuckle, when anything very ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... kindly readiness to be pleased, and to find good in everything. He brought his wide knowledge of contemporary Scottish life "from the peer to the ploughman;" he brought his well-digested wealth of antiquarian lore, and the poetic skill which had just been busied with the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and was still to be occupied, ere he finished his interrupted novel, with "Marmion," "The Lady of the Lake," "Rokeby," and "The Lord of the Isles." The comparative failure of the last-named no doubt strengthened ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... dreaded fame That, when in Salamanca's cave Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame. Lay of the Lost Minstrel, Canto ii. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... always 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, that high in heaven ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and bright your wine, Sir King and brother mine! But I miss here what king and knight hold as the salt of the feast and the perfume to the wine: the lay of the minstrel. Beshrew me, but both Saxon and Norman are of kindred stock, and love to hear in hall and bower the deeds of their northern fathers. Crave I therefore from your gleemen, or harpers, some ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her aunt's chamber softly behind her, passed through the Fontenoy hall, and came out upon the wide porch. There, in the peace of the September afternoon, she found Unity alone with the Lay of the Last Minstrel. "Aunt Nancy is asleep," she said. "I left Mammy Chloe beside her. Unity, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... gold. His heart was as light 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 ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... 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 needs be left to coil in ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... 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 ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart has ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned 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, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... minstrel, if earth should unfold To thee all her treasures of silver and gold, Resign all thy riches, thy wealth, fame and power, To sing like the birds in the ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... was fostered and promoted by many of his royal successors. James III., a lover of the arts and sciences, delighted in the society of Roger, a musician; James IV. gave frequent grants to Henry the Minstrel, cherished the poet Dunbar, and himself wrote verses; James V. composed "The Gaberlunzie Man" and "The Jollie Beggar," ballads which are still sung; Queen Mary loved music, and wrote verses in French; and James VI., the last occupant of the Scottish throne, sought reputation as a writer both ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... period by Hoffmann, and I should certainly never have been 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 ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Queen's now manifest hostility, he presently conceived that he had found it in the influence exerted upon her by the Seigneur Davie—that Piedmontese, David Rizzio, who had come to the Scottish Court some four years ago as a starveling minstrel in the train of Monsieur de Morette, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... 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 ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Elf the minstrel, With womanish hair and ring, Yet heavy was his hand on sword, Though ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... wild, weird aspect that was almost startling, as it helped to impress Max with a feeling of awe which fixed him to his chair. For if he dared to rise he felt that he would be offering a deadly affront to the old minstrel, one which, hot-blooded Highlander as he was, he might resent with his dirk, or perhaps do him a mischief in a more simple manner, by spurning him with his foot as he retreated—in other words, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... it 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; if it does not suggest ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... noblest and most gallant of all these bards was Walter of the Vogelweid; his voice was the sweetest and his songs the most beautiful. We looked on each other and loved, but a foreign prince sought my hand and my stern father bade me wed him and forget the wandering minstrel. I refused to be the bride of any other than Walter. 'Either you obey me,' said my father, 'or you shall become a nun and die unwed.' That very night I secretly left the castle and stole away with my lover. We ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... 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. It is their ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... 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
... now scrambled, and I will show you something to the effect.' Which saying, he went to his bookcase, and brought forth an elegantly-bound volume, together with a silk-tied note. 'This letter,' Mr. Gilchrist exclaimed, 'and this book, called the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," the author of the "Lady of the Lake" sent me more than ten years ago. He was then simple Mr. Walter Scott: a very humble man as you will see from his letter, in which he gives profuse thanks for a little review of his work which I ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... lives within my breast, There mem'ry has her form imprest:— Thus, when some minstrel's strain is done, Sounds seem to breathe, for ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned As home his footsteps he hath turned, 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 concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... desolateness of the world, all the exiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. The Aeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music, and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me and played unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lost family, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought came to me: "We are all the children of kings; on our spiritual bodies are royal seals. Sometime or other we were abandoned on this beautiful garden, the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Michael Angelo spoke his mind to Cardiere and bade him set off at once to see Piero, who was at Careggi, and give him his father's warning. Cardiere, half-way to Careggi, met Piero and some friends riding in toward Florence. The minstrel stopped their way and besought Piero to hear his story. The young Medici bade him speak, but when he had heard the warning he laughed, and his friends laughed ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... afraid, 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 man, make yourself ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... dwells where pine and hemlock grow, A merry minstrel seldom seen; The voice of Joy is his I know— ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... there from all corners 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 far the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... himself in sackcloth with a girdle of rope about his loins. Thus apparelled he climbed on foot to the holy mountain of La Verna, above the Val d'Arno, which mountain the Count Rolando of Montefeltro had given, many years before, to St. Francis the minstrel of God and his poor little disciples of the cross, for a refuge and a sanctuary near the sky. At the door of the Friary built upon the land of his forefathers the Count Angelo ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... out 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
... youth not ended;— 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 ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... just take this pleasing minstrel by the scruff of his neck and say to him, 'Nice ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... can call their free steps to our side. Him whom He loves, the Sire of men and gods, (Selected from the marvelling multitude,) Bears on his eagle to his bright abodes; And showers, with partial hand and lavish, down The minstrel's laurel or the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... poems from the United States Gazette seem to be cemeteries of departed reputations, the fate of the singers need not be deplored as if Fame had forgotten them. Fame never knew them. Fame does not retain the name of every minstrel who passes singing. But to say that Fame does not know them is not dispraise. They sang for the hearers of their day, as the players played. Is it nothing to please those who listen, because those who are out ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... manage I don't know. It isn't living at all. And when I see a fellow like that, who ought to be worried to death all the time—and who would be if he looked the facts squarely in the face—grinning and telling stories like a minstrel, it makes me so d——d mad that I can't ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... Wallack's Theater, was a succession of more or less historic playhouses. At Eighth Street was the Old New York Theater; a few doors away was Lina Edwins's; almost flanking the cigar-store and ranging toward the south were the Olympic, Niblo's Garden, and the San Francisco Minstrel Hall. Farther down was the Broadway Theater, while over on the Bowery Tony Pastor ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... himself as a minstrel, and travelled to Durham, where King Edward held his court, and where young Bruce, taken captive, was now confined. By making himself known to the Earl of Gloucester, Wallace was able to gain access to Bruce, whose father was now dead, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... elements we know of are no mean comforters; the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown—the air is our robe of state, the Earth is our throne, and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... woods, my 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 ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... 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! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a viscount's rank ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... is 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 ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... a minstrel went roaming here and there, apparently aimlessly, throughout Germany. Everywhere the lovely music that breathed from his harp-strings made him welcome at the towering castles that surmounted the cliffs along the winding Rhine. ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... said, minstrel Momus: I must put you in, must I? when will you be in good fooling of ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good-bye! Good-bye!—Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... home. But you amuse 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," ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Tudors), restricted to the amusements of knight and noble, no doubt presented more of pomp and splendour than the motley and mixed assembly of all ranks that now grouped around the competitors for the silver arrow, or listened to the itinerant jongleur, dissour, or minstrel, or, seated under the stunted shade of the old trees, indulged, with eager looks and hands often wandering to their dagger-hilts, in the absorbing passion of the dice; but no later and earlier scenes of revelry ever, perhaps, exhibited ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instance, to 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 ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... The native minstrel stopped in the middle of his chant; the whole shuffling, grunting crowd was petrified in as many different poses. Birnier leaped to his feet ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... eyes in 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
... And all that echoes to the song of even; All that the mountain's shelt'ring bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven; O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven! ..... These charms shall work thy soul's eternal health, And love, and gentleness, and joy, impart. THE MINSTREL ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... of dual personality; there is one phase of him which is disclosed only in the freemasonry of his own race. I have often watched with interest and sometimes with amazement even ignorant colored men under cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintain this dualism in the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... literary critic we should not pass by, as he does not often take that part. Alcinous, praising the tale of Ulysses, says: "Form of words is thine, and a noble meaning, and a mythus, as when a minstrel sings." Three important qualities of poetry are therein set forth: beauty of language, nobleness of content, and the fable in its totality—all of which belong to the preceding narrative. Moreover, Alcinous draws a sharp contrast with ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Cunard liner, and had ridden on the Strand in a hansom with William Ewart Gladstone. But the one thing of which he was proud, the one picture of his life he most delighted to recall, was himself as manager of a negro minstrel troupe, in a hired drum-major's uniform, marching down the streets of Sacramento at the head of the brass band ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... 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, had never produced ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the long evenings have set in, and our ancestors in hall or cottage assemble round the blazing hearth, and listen to the minstrel's lays, and recite their oft-told tales of adventure and romance. Sometimes they indulge in asking each other riddles, and there exists at the present time an old collection of these early efforts of wit and humour which are not ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... company was always sure of drawing Lincoln. A Mrs. Hillis, a member of the "Newhall Family," and a good singer, was the only woman who ever seemed to exhibit any liking for him—so Lincoln said. He attended a negro-minstrel show in Chicago, once, where he heard Dixie sung. It was entirely new, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... in earth's lifetime, Hath any cunningest minstrel Told the one seventh of wisdom, Ravishment, ecstasy, transport, Hid in the hue of the hyacinth's 5 Purple ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... This account of what occurred was given by Mr. Walter Hamilton, but Mr. Sala furnished another version. The 'authorship of the ballad,' Mr. Sala justly observed, 'is involved in mystery.' Cruikshank picked it up from the recitation of a minstrel outside a pot-house. In Mr. Sala's opinion, Mr. Thackeray 'revised and settled the words, and made them fit for publication.' Nor did he confine himself to the mere critical work; he added, in Mr. Sala's opinion, that admired passage about 'The young bride's mother, who ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... its inconsistencies and leaves in the transfigured chronicle many tell-tale 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 ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... 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 under ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tell you why my kite is like Buddy, the guinea pig boy?" repeated Tommie, like a man in a minstrel show. "No, Uncle Wiggily, I can not. Why is my kite like Buddy, ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... Mineral mineralo. Mineralogy mineralogio. Mingle miksi. Miniature miniaturo. 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 ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to shield from harm the beloved child for whom she died; we read it in the story of the friendship and enmity between the Baron and Sir Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine; we read it in the vision seen in the forest by the minstrel Bard, of the bright green snake coiled around the wings and neck of a fluttering dove; and, finally, we read it in its most startling form, in the conclusion of the poem, "A little child, a limber elf, singing, dancing to itself," etc., wherein is exhibited ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and his wife were always among the most welcome visitors at Lord Ulswater's. In his extreme old age, the ex-king took a journey to Scotland, to see the Author of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Nor should we do justice to the chief's critical discernment if we neglected to record that, from the earliest dawn of that great luminary of our age, he predicted its meridian splendour. The eldest son of the gypsy-monarch inherited ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Minstrel, as were all those in the island who sang original verses at dances and serenades. He was a tall young man, slender, and narrow shouldered, a youth not yet eighteen. As he sang he coughed, his slender neck swelled, and ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... scantily-clad but stalwart Kafirs with their awkward hoes, it was not a bit like a trim English garden. It was like a garden in which Lalla Rookh might have wandered by moonlight talking sentimental philosophy with her minstrel prince under old Fadladeen's chaperonage, or a garden that Boccaccio might have peopled with his Arcadian fine ladies and gentlemen. It was emphatically a poet's or a painter's garden, not a gardener's garden. Then, as though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... that, oft at summer midnight, there, When all is hushed and voiceless, and the air, Sweet, soothing minstrel of the viewless hand, Swells rippling through the aged trees, that stand With their broad boughs above the wave depending, With the low gurgle of the waters blending The rustle of their foliage, a light boat, Bearing two ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... becoming strangely confused. And then men of more thought or intelligence, looking more deeply into it, began to consider that the phrase did in very truth express far more serious facts. As in an old Norman tale, he who had entered as a jester or minstrel in comic garb, laid aside his disguise, and appeared as a wise counsellor or brave champion who had come to ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... 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
... Nature and Art combined is so sad as the effect of a Street Minstrel playing something with flourishes on a clarinet under the windows of your study during a yellow London ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... that if all the copies of Milton's Paradise Lost were to be destroyed, he could reproduce the book complete, from memory. In early life he was a great admirer of Walter Scott's poetry, and especially the "Lay of the Last Minstrel", and could repeat the whole of that long poem, more than six hundred lines, from memory. And at the age of fifty-seven he records—"I walked in the portico, and learned by heart the noble fourth act of the Merchant of Venice. There are four hundred ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... 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 ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... recognised school of music, but his concert pieces were his own compositions, of no great merit, and he still more delighted his audiences by playing national airs as no one had ever played them before. He was a minstrel rather than a musician in the broad sense of the word, but he held the hearts of the people as few, if any, minstrels ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... gave 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 Betty's ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... '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 ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... freshness seemed 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Jennie Bruce told her, "after the holidays we have entertainments at the Hall, and Dr. Dudley lets his boys give a minstrel show. We each have a dance during the winter—one at the Academy and one at the Hall; and if you know some of the boys beforehand it's lots easier to get partners ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... of toil and old clothes and smiling, blue-eyed indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up for a modern minstrel show. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... 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
... The minstrel bird of evening Comes back on joyous wings, And, like the harp's soft murmur, Is heard the gush ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Bible both for their writing and their understanding. There is a long list of them, but no one without a knowledge of the Bible would have known what he meant by his poem, "The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept." "Jephtha's Daughter" presumes upon a knowledge of the Old Testament story which would not come to one in a passing study of the Bible. "The Song of Saul Before his Last Battle" and the poem headed "Saul" could not have been written, nor can they be read intelligently by any one who ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... strictly deserved the name, having been written not to be read but to be sung or recited. To a certain extent, of course, this was the case with all the lighter literature of mediaeval times. Far later than our present period the English metrical romances almost invariably begin with the minstrel's invocation, "Listen, lordings," varied according to his taste, fancy, and metre; and what was then partly a tradition, was two or three hundred years earlier the simple record of a universal practice. Since the early days of the Romantic revival, even to the present time, the minutest ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... 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
... and pass'd. Thus oft are seen, with ever-changeful glance, Straight or athwart, now rapid and now slow, The atomies of bodies, long or short, To move along the sunbeam, whose slant line Checkers the shadow, interpos'd by art Against the noontide heat. And as the chime Of minstrel music, dulcimer, and help With many strings, a pleasant dining makes To him, who heareth not distinct the note; So from the lights, which there appear'd to me, Gather'd along the cross a melody, That, indistinctly ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... such beings should 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
... them, and to suggest palliative thoughts about Diocletian. Finally, there were the romances of Arthur and his knights, which later, by means of allegory, contrived to be both entertaining and edifying; every one who listened to them paying the minstrel his money, and having his choice whether he would take them as song or sermon. In the heroes of some of these certain Christian virtues were typified, and around a few of them, as the Holy Grail, a perfume ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 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 ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... thirteenth century had, through the 'Trovatori,' its share in the poetry of the courts and of chivalry. To them is mainly due the 'Canzone,' whose construction is as difficult and artificial as that of the songs of any northern minstrel. Their subject and mode of thought represents simply the conventional tone of the courts, be the poet a ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... 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 they ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... of fairy music was so great that St. Patrick himself was put to sleep by a minstrel who appeared to him on the day before Samhain. The Tuatha De Danann, angered at the renegade people who no longer did them honor, sent another minstrel, who after laying the ancient religious seat Tara under ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the woods, my 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 ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... said: Here men praise me, perchance men may love me If I live long enough for my justice and mercy To make them just and merciful—one who is master Of many poor folk, a man pity moveth Love hath dealt with in this wise, no minstrel nor dreamer. The deeds that my hand might find for the doing Did desire undo them these four years of fight? And now time and fair peace in my heart have begotten More desire and more pain, is the day of deeds done with? Lo here ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," in 1805, Cunningham contrived to save twenty-four shillings of his wages to purchase it, and forthwith committed the poem to memory. On perusing the poem of "Marmion," his enthusiasm was boundless; he undertook ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... same weapon had caused. They pretended, that if they stroked the sword upwards with their fingers, the wounded person would feel immediate relief; but if they stroked it downwards, he would feel intolerable pain.[Reginald Scott, quoted by Sir Walter Scott, in the notes to the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," c. iii. v. xxiii.] ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of thing, when the chicken is in our mouths where we sit by the fire; but if we were gnawing wretched bones, out in the cold of the streets, I doubt if we should feel in such a sublime mood. All the praises of poverty are sung by the minstrel who has got a golden harp to chant them on; and all the encomiums on renunciation come from your bon viveur who never denied himself ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... "Minstrel show in town," remarked Mr. Wing with another laugh of amusement. His amusement turned to surprise when the picturesque pair preceded him up the street and turned in at his own yard. The house was lighted from one end to the other; groups of young people ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... 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 ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... and the chances are that the first note you hear will be his. Rain or shine, before noon or after, in the deep forest or in the village grove,—when it is too hot for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the warblers,—it is never out of time or place for this little minstrel to indulge his cheerful strain. In the deep wilds of the Adirondac, where few birds are seen and fewer heard, his note was almost constantly in my ear. Always busy, making it a point never to suspend for one moment his occupation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... 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 ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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
... 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, Guthrum (Guth'-rum), the commander of the Danes, ordered the minstrel to be brought to ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... unprofitable speculation was suspended. The argument most plausible was that he went home, while one romantic youth suggested a girl. The accusation was never repeated. What? The "Lord" a ladies' man? Tut! One would as soon expect a statue to drill a minstrel show. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... as already intimated, were less fiery than those of the Troubadours. While the Provencal minstrel allowed his homage to his chosen lady to proceed to extreme lengths, his German brother paid a less excessive but far purer tribute to the object of his affections. Very often, too, the German poets rose to a still higher level, and sang praises of the ideal qualities of ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... 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 taken ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... 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
... nor of any regularly recognised school of music, but his concert pieces were his own compositions, of no great merit, and he still more delighted his audiences by playing national airs as no one had ever played them before. He was a minstrel rather than a musician in the broad sense of the word, but he held the hearts of the people as few, if any, ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Sid. "I just happened to wander down there this morning, never thinking to run across a surprise, when what did I see but a long crate, and inside that a splendid eight-oar shell, just what we ordered with that money we earned in the winter, giving minstrel shows and gymnastic performances. It's a great day for Riverport school, fellows; and well have a dandy time this summer, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... 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
... giant's club withheld the blow; A milky cloud went all to flame. And there were groups where silvery springs The ethereal forest showed begirt By companies in choric rings, Whom but to see made ear alert. For music did each movement rouse, And motion was a minstrel's rage To have our spirits out of house, And bathe them on the open page. This was a day that knew not age. Since flew the vapoury twos and threes From western pile to eastern rack; As on from peaks of Pyrenees To Graians; youngness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... five glass bowls each with a gold fish in it, ready to bring out. It seems that sometimes the artist turns a somersault just as he brings out the big bowl of water, but we didn't get that. None of the tricks were complicated, but they were the neatest I ever saw. There is a home-made minstrel show to-night, but it rained, and as the show (and dance later) are in the open, we aren't ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... 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 ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... I had seen my Doppelganger," said Searle. "He reminds me of myself. What am I but a mere figure in the landscape, a wandering minstrel or picker of daisies?" ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... Chapu indeed, absolutely and integrally a romanticist, completely enamoured of the Renaissance. The two are so distinct as to be contradictory. The moment M. Dubois gives us the type in a "Florentine Minstrel," to the exclusion of the personal and the particular, he fails in imaginativeness and falls back on the conventional. The type of a "Florentine Minstrel" is infallibly a convention. M. Dubois, not being occupied directly with the ideal, is bound to carry his subject and ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... 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. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... performance. However long our weary strollers might delay it, in the empty hope of our going home content, there we waited until the curtain went up. It was a dreary piece of business, varied by horse-play considered "kind o' rough" by even the more boisterous among us. Sometimes it was given, minstrel-wise, in the time-honored panoply of burnt cork; again, poor weary souls! they lacked even the spirit to blacken themselves, and clinging to the same dialogue, played boldly in Caucasian fairness, with the pathetically ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... her from the persecutions of the clergy, who have been trying for reasons of their own to give the beautiful maiden to the King. Casilda confesses to her brother that she is in love with an unknown cavalier, who entertains a like passion for her, but Carlo, a poor minstrel, considers that his sister, a milliner, does not stand high enough in the social scale to permit a lawful union with ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... down, as we know, to a fixed form at political meetings, where the audience beguile the waiting time with demanding "What is the matter?" with this or that favorite demagogue. In the sixties, it patly answered any problem. At the presidential election-time of Lincoln's success, a negro minstrel, Unsworth, was a "star" at "444" Broadway, dressing up the daily news drolly under this title—that is, ending ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned, 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, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... fresh and verdant diaper. Thaw'd are the snows, and now the lusty spring Gives to each mead a neat enamelling. The palms put forth their gems, and every tree Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry. The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings, With warbling notes, her Terean sufferings. What gentle winds perspire! As if here Never had been the northern plunderer To strip the trees and fields, to their distress, Leaving them to a pitied nakedness. And look how when a frantic ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... minion that sails with all winds, Sweet Money, the minstrel that makes merry all minds, Sweet Money, that gables of bondage unbinds, Sweet Money, that maintains all sports of all kinds, This is that sweet Money, that rules like a king, And makes me all praises of Money ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... long table at one end of the room is the crowd of American students singing in a chorus. The table is full now, for many have come from dinners at other cafes to join them. At one end, and acting as interlocutor for this impromptu minstrel show, presides one of the best fellows in the world. He rises solemnly, his genial round face wreathed in a subtle smile, and announces that he will sing, by earnest request, that popular ballad, "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds were Singing in ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... with lightly tripping feet, swift as the potter's wheel, holding each other by the wrist; and then they ran, in lines, to meet each other. A crowd of friends stood round and joyfully watched the dance, and a divine minstrel made sweet music with his harp, while a pair ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... Poetical literature is akin to music. Poetry was originally sung by the minstrel, and the thought and feeling were communicated to the audience solely by the ear. The study of poetry by the eye is artificial, modern, and contrary to our hereditary instincts. We should not argue that the best way to appreciate music is found in following the symbols on the music sheet. It is ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of view, she was beautiful. And yet she was totally different from everything I had before conceived of beauty. She was not the serene, meditative maid that I had pictured the nymph of the fountain; nor the tall, soft, languishing, blue-eyed, dignified being that I had fancied the minstrel of the harp. There was nothing of dignity about her: she was girlish in her appearance, and scarcely of the middle size; but then there was the tenderness of budding youth; the sweetness of the half-blown rose, when not a tint of perfume has been ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... distinguished in rank, fashion, and letters of the Scottish metropolis. He writes to his daughter 12th February, 1809: "Among the literary men of Edinburgh I have met M'Kenzie, author of the Man of Feeling, and Scott, author of the Minstrel. I met both frequently, and from both received civilities and hospitality. M'Kenzie has twelve children—six daughters, all very interesting and handsome. He is remarkably sprightly in company, amiable, witty—might pass for forty-two, though ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... sooner had Mrs Radcliffe touched the old monasteries with her glorious pencil, than a generation of monk-describers and ruined-castle-builders sprang up, until the very name of convent or castle became an abhorrence. Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," rich and romantic as it was, was nearly buried under an overflow of heavy imitations, which drove his genius to other pursuits, and which filled the public ear with such enormities of octo-syllabic ennui, that it hates poetry ever since. The Helicon of which he drank ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... 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
... receive a share of the minstrel's attention, and "Adam's Wail" before the gates of Paradise is often very touching. In a ballad from White Russia, Adam begs the Lord to permit him to revisit Paradise. The Lord accordingly gives orders to "St. Peter-Paul" to admit Adam to ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... apparel were given. The king found many willing. Hagen of Trony bade Dankwart, his brother, lead eighty of their knights to the Rhine. They came in proud array, bringing harness and vesture with them. Bold Folker, a noble minstrel, arrived with thirty of his men for the journey. He told Gunther that these would also visit ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... 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 ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... looking sadly broken down by infirmities; and my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, partly embraced and supported by, if I mistake not, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-name, since he has a week-day one for his personal occasions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... get rid of it is to whistle or sing myself. For instance, I may be mentally reciting for my solace and delectation some beloved lyric like "The Waterfowl," or "Tears, Idle Tears," or "Break, Break, Break"; and all the while, between the lines, this fiend of a subcerebral vocalist, like a wandering minstrel in a distant square, insists on singing, "Cheer, Boys, Cheer," or, "Tommy, make room for your uncle" (tunes I cannot abide), with words, accompaniment, and all, complete, and not quite so refined an accent as I could wish; so ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... 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 to retreat with only sixteen ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... which it has given to these "days of 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 ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... excusingly, for the Serenade was long, like the lay of the Last Minstrel. "Mother won't mind, dear—just say you played it very well, and I was ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two that are linked in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing, and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till they die! One hour of a passion so sacred is worth Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss; And oh! if there be an Elysium on earth, It is this, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Columbian Museum is nine feet six inches high and twelve feet in longitudinal measurement. The lips of a Bowhead whale are from fifteen to twenty feet in length and yield from one to two tons of pure oil each,—lips that turn a nigger-minstrel green with envy! The eyes placed in the posterior part of the head are each as big as an orange. The tongue of the whale is twenty feet long, and this member, by means of which he pushes to the top of his palate the animalculae on which he feeds (as you would a gooseberry), ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the King's court, and whenever Saul gave way to an attack of anger or depression, the young minstrel would hasten to him, and play melodies grave and gay, sweet and brilliant, playing with such skill that before he knew it, Saul would be in good humour again, or drop into a deep, refreshing sleep, and little did he dream that the lad who had such power to soothe ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... in the Ouverture of Tannhaeuser the power which contended for the young knight and minstrel's soul: the appeal of good is symbolised by the solemn chant of the pilgrims; of evil, by the voice of Venus, the song of the Sirens, the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... swells; Where hate sits musing to betray, And murder meditates his prey. To dens of guilt and shades of care, Ye sons of melody repair, Nor deign the festive dome to cloy With superfluities of joy. Ah! little needs the minstrel's power To speed the light convivial hour. The board, with varied plenty crown'd, May spare the luxuries ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... And why, sweet Minstrel, from the harp of fame Withhold so long that once resounding name? The chief who, steering by the boreal star, O'er wild Canadia led our infant war, In desperate straits superior powers display'd, Burgoyne's dread scourge, Montgomery's ablest aid; Ridgefield and Compo saw his valorous might With ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... 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
... of Delos fringed delicately, The young sweet laurel and the olive-tree Grey-leaved and glimmering; O Isle of Leto, Isle of pain and love; The Orbed Water and the spell thereof; Where still the Swan, minstrel of things to be, Doth ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... 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, that high ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... 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 ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... melody comes wafted on the gale— Oh! 'tis "Fenella's" sighing lute, in notes of woe and wail: "Claud Halero" catches at the strain, and mourns the minstrel gone, "His spirit rest in peace where sleeps the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... 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 sibyl, and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... army the Hutchinson family. It is mean and petty. Songs are the soul and life of the camp, and McClellan's heroic deeds have not yet found their minstrel. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... 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, whom neither sham battles ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the spot, all my senses strained, alert. And then suddenly I heard Princep whine. A series of low, stertorous growls followed, growls that made my blood run cold! With swift, noiseless steps, I stole along to the minstrel's gallery which overlooked that portion of the hall that communicated with the library. As I did so, there arose from immediately below me a succession of sharp snarls, such as a dog gives when he is in deadly ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... 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 ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... 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
... William's minstrel, Taillefer, sang a song before the Battle of Hastings: but the Normans loved the purely martial strain, and this was a ballad of French composition, perhaps a fragment of the older "Roland's Song." The "Roman de Rou," composed by Master Wace, or Gasse, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... tintinnabulant, His bosom aped the true Parnassian pant, As may a housemaid's leathern bellows mock The rock—whelmed Titan's breathings. He no shock Of bard-like shagginess shook to the breeze. A modern Cambrian Minstrel hopes to please By undishevelled dandy-daintiness, Whether of lays or locks, of rhymes or dress. Some bards pipe from Parnassus, some from Hermon; Room for the singer of the Sunday Sermon! His stimulant tepid tea, his theme ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... time came when minstrels wandered from town to town, from castle to castle, singing their lays. And the minstrel who had a good tale to tell was ever sure of a welcome, and for his pains he was rewarded with money, jewels, and even land. That was the true listening time ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... 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
... bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two, that are linked in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing, and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... that once when Meadow Green got too small for you, years ago, you started out with a minstrel show—'The Darktown Merrymakers,' they ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... memory of what it has been, and trades upon relics of its former fame. What it would have been without Albrecht Durer, and Adam Kraft the stone-mason, and Peter Vischer the bronze-worker, and Viet Stoss who carved in wood, and Hans Sachs the shoemaker and poet-minstrel, it is difficult to say. Their statues are set up in the streets; their works still live in the churches and city buildings,—pictures, and groups in stone and wood; and their statues, in all sorts of carving, are reproduced, big and little, in all the shop-windows, for sale. So, literally, the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... He was a minstrel. Offspring of a race, and not the inheritor of a formula, he narrated to his contemporaries, bewildered by the lyrical deformities of romanticism, stories of human beings, simple and logical, like those ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... then re-sell it to the proprietor. Sometimes they cart off the furniture. Pianos they are very fond of. When they see one, they first sit down and play a few sentimental ditties, then they go away, requisition a cart, and minstrel and instrument disappear together. They are a singular mixture of bravery and meanness. No one can deny that they possess the former quality, but they are courageous without one spark of heroism. After fighting all day, they will rifle the corpses of their fallen foes of every article they can ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... analogies. 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 display characteristic ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the 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
... legends about the Frankish hero.[28] Purely Germanic legends like those of Ortnit-Wolfdietrich and King Rother were orientalized in much the same manner.[29] As might be expected, it is in the court-epic and minstrel-poetry (Spielmannsdichtung) where this Oriental tendency manifests itself most markedly. A typical poem of this kind is "Herzog Ernst." The hero, a purely German character, is made to go through a series ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... turn of misfortune's wheel would land him. Interesting people visited the booth continually. Now it was a party of royal guardsmen to buy weapons,—splendid mail-clad giants who ate at King Olaf's board, slept a his hall, and fought to the death at his side. Again it was a minstrel, with a harp at his back, who stopped to rest and exchange a song for a horn of mead. Once the Queen herself, riding in a shining gilded wagon, came in and bought some of the graceful spiral bracelets. She said that Alwin's eyes were as bright as a young serpent's; ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... too shall be gone, but my name shall be spoken, When Erin awakes and her fetters are broken Some minstrel shall come in the summer's eve gleaming, When Freedom's young light on his spirit is beaming, And bend o'er my grave with a tear of emotion, Where calm Avonbui seeks the kisses of ocean, Or plant a wild wreath from the banks of ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... glad love! With an ambrosial rush of tune, like the lark descending, the dancing bow cast forth the final chord from the violin as though it were a diamond flung from the hand of a king, a flawless jewel of pure sound,—and the Minstrel monarch of Andalusia, serenely saluting the now wildly enthusiastic audience, left the platform. But he was not allowed to escape so soon,—again and again, and yet again, the enormous crowd summoned him before them, for the mere satisfaction of looking at ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... coracle, to a shoal at some distance from the coast of Caernarvonshire—a most perilous voyage, supposed to be emblematic both of the trials of Noah and of the troubles of life. Afterward the Bard wore sky-blue robes, and was universally honored, serving as the counsellor, the herald, and the minstrel of his patron. The domestic Bard and the chief of song had their office at the King's court, with many curious perquisites, among which was a chessboard from the King. The fine for insulting the Bard was 6 cows and 120 pence; for slaying him, 126 cows. With so much ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... be paid. When we open our new and wonderful gym, containing all sorts of up-to-date appliances for physical development, there will be no debt hanging over our heads. We figured on having to give all sorts of entertainments the coming winter, from basket-ball matches to minstrel performances, in order to raise funds to help out; but now we can devote our time to having all the fun going. You also remember the big promise several of the mill- owners made, led by ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... distance, in another village, that other great peasant, Mistral, the singer of Provence, the poet of love and joy, the minstrel of rustic labour and antique faiths, was pursuing, amid the homage of his apotheosis, the incredible ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... been noised about this mighty realm for so great a space that the truth has turned to fable and an idle song. Such rhymes are neither sheer bare lies, nor gospel truths. They should not be considered either an idiot's tale, or given by inspiration. The minstrel has sung his ballad, the storyteller told over his story so frequently, little by little he has decked and painted, till by reason of his embellishment the truth stands hid in the trappings of a tale. Thus to make a delectable tune to your ear, history ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... looks she 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 ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... the battle of Hastings in 1066, Taillefer, his minstrel, rode ahead of the army and sang of Roland and Oliver, and of the rear guard which ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... same bill reads: "The African Wonder, Carlo Alberto, will sing several new and popular Negro melodies." Collectors of minstrel data ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... and now the fields appear Reclothed in fresh and verdant diaper; Thaw'd are the snows; and now the lusty Spring Gives to each mead a neat enamelling; The palms put forth their gems, and every tree Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry. The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings With warbling notes her Terean sufferings. —What gentle winds perspire! as if here Never had been the northern plunderer To strip the trees and fields, to their distress, Leaving them ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... Friar and the Boy), whom Austin, de civ. Dei, lib. 17. cap. 14. so much commends for it. Who hath not heard how David's harmony drove away the evil spirits from king Saul, 1 Sam. xvi. and Elisha when he was much troubled by importunate kings, called for a minstrel, "and when he played, the hand of the Lord came upon him," 2 Kings iii. Censorinus de natali, cap. 12. reports how Asclepiades the physician helped many frantic persons by this means, phreneticorum mentes ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... many of their bardic homilies. Taking into account the nature and circumstances of the ancient Caledonians, we must conclude that from position and influence none were more suitable to become their ethical and aesthetical advisers than these minstrel ministers of ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... at the midnight deep, When fancies come and go To vex a man in his soothing sleep With thoughts of awful woe— I dreamed that I was a corner-man Of a nigger minstrel show. ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... For from all the joyous throng, Burst forth a rapturous shout which drowned Singer's voice and trumpet's sound. Thrice that stormy clamour fell, Thrice rose again with mightier swell. The last and loudest roar of all Had died along the painted wall. The crowd was hushed; the minstrel train Prepared to strike the chords again; When on each ear distinctly smote A low and wild and wailing note. It moans again. In mute amaze Menials, and guests, and harpers gaze. They look above, beneath, around, No shape doth own that mournful sound. It comes ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... 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 enthusiasm ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... A MINSTREL SINGS: The day hath shed its gauzy veil of light, As evening's sable gown usurps its place. Hear the night bird sweetly singing While through space her way she's winging, Melody she's gaily flinging Peace and joy with twilight bringing If Care's dull day, while beck'ning ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... taken his place, Sweyn called out: "Let us have a song. Odoacre the minstrel, do you sing to us the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... incidents in a career of growing importance was a position in the orchestra with which Offenbach toured this country. At the age of twenty-six, after having played, with face blacked, as a negro minstrel, after travelling with the late Matt Morgan's Living Picture Company, and working his way through and above other such experiences in the struggle for life, Sousa became the leader of the United States Marine Band. In the twelve years of his leadership he developed this ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... of intellect vanquished before the truth of nature, when instead of coming to a logical decision we are led to bow in profound reverence before the mysteries of life, when we are led back to childhood, or up to God, by some powerful revelation of the sage or minstrel, it is then our natures grow. To this end is all art. Exquisite vocalism, beautiful statuary, and painting, and all true literature, have not for their great object to employ the ingenuity of prying critics, or furnish ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... insult to any lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the stage-clown and the negro-minstrel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... leave the sky, I looked out at the strange beauty of the white night and felt all the desolateness of the world, all the exiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. The Aeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music, and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me and played unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lost family, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought came to me: "We are all the children of kings; on our spiritual bodies are royal seals. Sometime or other we were abandoned on this beautiful ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... the 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 ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... of the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire In mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... 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 blue ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... 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 ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... gave a cantata, sometimes a nigger-minstrel show. The year the interior of the town hall was changed, they took advantage of the time before either the first or second floor was laid, and attempted and achieved an indoor circus. And the year that an orchestra conductor from Albany had ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Nature now begins again Her courtship with the flowers; She chants in groves her minstrel strain, She smiles, and frowns, and weeps in ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... back-pedaling. Lucy D. Lammermore may have been a lovely person, but to hear a lot of foreigners singing about her for three hours on a stretch does not appeal to me. I have a better use for my little two dollars. For that amount I can go to a good minstrel show ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... tablet marks a Father’s bier; And those he loved in life, in death are near. For him, for them, a daughter bade it rise, Memorial of domestic charities. Still would you know why o’er the marble spread, In female grace the willow droops her head; Why on her branches, silent and unstrung, The minstrel harp, is emblematic hung; What Poet’s voice is smother’d here in dust, Till waked to join the chorus of the just; Lo! one brief line an answer sad supplies— Honour’d, belov’d, and mourn’d, here Seward lies: Her worth, her warmth of heart, our sorrows say: ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... 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
... woman and the children in the pantomime of the "New Circus" laugh most, was the incessant quarrel between an enormous Danish hound and a poor old supernumerary, who was blackened like a negro minstrel, and dressed like a Mulatto woman. The dog was always annoying him, followed him, snapped at his legs, and at his old wig, with his sharp teeth, and tore his coat and his silk pocket-handkerchief, whenever he could get hold of it, to pieces. And the man ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... fair 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 Kangaroo heard the Bush Wagtail, she and Dot hurried away to find him. No Christy Minstrel rattling his bones ever made a merrier sound. "Click-i-ti-clack, click-i-ti-clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, click-i-ti-clack," he rattled away as fast as he could, just as if he hadn't a moment to waste for taking ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... a voice, And sing a strain to me; I know where I would place my choice, Which my delight should be. I would not choose the lily tall, The rose from musky grot; But I would still my minstrel ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... in the belief that you 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 pledged ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... 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
... 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 in ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... 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 some deed ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... 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 ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer^, trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral waits. vocalist, melodist; singer, warbler; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lilies on biers— Let them say! For we are swift to enchant and tire Time's will! Our feet are wiser than all desire, Our song is better than faith or fame; To whom it is given no ill e'er came, Who has it not grows chill! Who has it not grows laggard and lame, Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre, Smitten and never still!... Last night on ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... been buried in the gardens. Sometimes they confiscate a house, and then re-sell it to the proprietor. Sometimes they cart off the furniture. Pianos they are very fond of. When they see one, they first sit down and play a few sentimental ditties, then they go away, requisition a cart, and minstrel and instrument disappear together. They are a singular mixture of bravery and meanness. No one can deny that they possess the former quality, but they are courageous without one spark of heroism. After fighting ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... with stern regard Upon the gentle minstrel bard, And said in tones abrupt, austere— "Why, Bracy? dost thou loiter here? "I bade thee hence!" The bard obey'd, And turning from his own sweet maid, The aged knight, Sir Leoline Led forth ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... adventures. Cherubina determines to live in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals. These include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the time-honoured apology: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking." The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... action as well as in this, and has left behind him 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 themselves guilty passed over to the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... grown cold and 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 ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... 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, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Missouri the cook's duties began with building a fire in the morning. Thurston waked reluctantly, shivered in anticipation under the blankets, gathered together his fortitude and crept out of his bunk. While he was dressing his teeth chattered like castanets in a minstrel show. He lighted the fire hurriedly and stood backed close before it, listening to the rage of the wind. He was growing very tired of the monotony of winter; he could no longer see any beauty in the high-turreted, snow-clad hills, nor the bare, ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... on their last legs, plied their trades. One artist, giving out under the physical labor of mining, built up a remarkably profitable trade in sketching portraits. Incidentally he had to pay two dollars and a half for every piece of paper! John Kelly, a wandering minstrel with a violin, became celebrated among the camps, and was greeted with enthusiasm wherever he appeared. He probably made more with his fiddle than he could have made with his shovel. The influence of the "forty-two caliber whiskey" was dire, and ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... "We must listen to this." Suddenly he chuckled to himself: "And do you think he really imagines he is doing any good to his form by giving that nigger minstrel entertainment ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... most valiant of these he was taking counsel the following 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 ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... paper. Everybody laughed at the rumour; but everybody remembered it. The land was infinitely remote; and then, as now, romance increases as the square of the distance. There might well be gold there; but more authentic were the reports of fleas, rawhides, and a dried-up coast. Minstrel shows made a good deal of fun of it all, I remember. Then, when we were of a broad grin, came the publication of the letter written by Governor Mason to the War Department. That was a sober official document, and had to be believed, but it ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... upon the 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
... conditions of life becoming strangely confused. And then men of more thought or intelligence, looking more deeply into it, began to consider that the phrase did in very truth express far more serious facts. As in an old Norman tale, he who had entered as a jester or minstrel in comic garb, laid aside his disguise, and appeared as a wise counsellor or brave champion who had come to free the ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... so, Pope 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 been brought into Provence ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... all the copies of Milton's Paradise Lost were to be destroyed, he could reproduce the book complete, from memory. In early life he was a great admirer of Walter Scott's poetry, and especially the "Lay of the Last Minstrel", and could repeat the whole of that long poem, more than six hundred lines, from memory. And at the age of fifty-seven he records—"I walked in the portico, and learned by heart the noble fourth act of the Merchant of Venice. There are four hundred lines. I made ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... 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
... ascended the ducal throne. In 1615, not long after his accession, as the chronicles relate, in passing through a chamber of the palace he saw a young girl playing upon a cithern, and being himself young, and of the ardent temper of the Gonzagas, he fell in love with the fair minstrel. She was the daughter of a noble servant of the Duke, who had once been his ambassador to the court of the Duke of Savoy, and was called Count Ardizzo Faa Monferrino di Casale; but his Grace did not on that account hesitate to attempt corrupting her; indeed, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... happened to wander down there this morning, never thinking to run across a surprise, when what did I see but a long crate, and inside that a splendid eight-oar shell, just what we ordered with that money we earned in the winter, giving minstrel shows and gymnastic performances. It's a great day for Riverport school, fellows; and well have a dandy time this ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the Church councils had sometimes even to rebuke abbots and abbesses for listening to their songs. And the worst of it was that the great emperor himself, the good Charlemagne, loved them too. He would always listen to a minstrel, and his biographer, Einhard, tells us that 'He wrote out the barbarous and ancient songs, in which the acts of the kings and their wars were sung, and committed them to memory';[17] and one at least ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... of enjoyment that did one good to look at. And there was a friend to share his pleasure: a Turk dressed in scarlet, and covered all over with daggers and pistols, sat leaning forward on his little stool, rocking about, and grinning quite as eagerly as the black minstrel. As he sang and we listened, figures of women bearing pitchers went passing over the Roman bridge, which we saw between the large trunks of the planes; or grey forms of camels were seen stalking across it, the string ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... 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 troupes of ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... 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
... and village of Ellaville were located on the river-bank opposite Columbus, and this lumber establishment is the only place of importance between it and Cedar Keys. This far-famed river, to which the heart of the minstrel's darky "is turning eber," is, in fact, almost without the "one little hut among de bushes," for it is a wild and lonely stream. Even in the most prosperous times there were but few plantations upon its shores. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... you long, Although for bread the Minstrel sings, Ah, still for you he pipes the song, And thrums upon ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... (1) Aminstrel flees from plague-stricken Heorot, sails to the Geatish land, and sings the terror wrought by Grendel, urging Beowulf to come and save ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... There was 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 thigh with the toe of his boot and raised such a stir as a rude stranger might had he smitten ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... the State 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 ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... display. There dwells the chief we all extol In timber house on lightsome knoll; Upon four wooden columns proud Mounteth his mansion to the cloud; Each column's thick and firmly bas'd, And upon each a loft is plac'd; In these four lofts, which coupled stand, Repose at night the minstrel band; Four lofts they were in pristine state, But now partitioned form they eight. Tiled is the roof, on each house-top Rise smoke-ejecting chimneys up. All of one form there are nine halls Each with nine wardrobes in its walls ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... deemed of heavenly birth, Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still; ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... me in the clear air of that declining day. I stood a while at the end of the "Bull" gateway. There was a comical-looking little knock-kneed fellow in the middle of the street —a wandering minstrel, well known in Preston by the name of "Whistling Jack." There he stood, warbling and waving his band, and looking from side to side,—in vain. At last I got him to whistle the "Flowers of Edinburgh." He did it, vigorously; and earned his penny well. But even "Whistling Jack" complained ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... 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 ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... admiration. She is not faultless in her method, but she differs from other great American prime donne in the important particular of possessing voice enough to fill an auditorium larger than the average minstrel hall. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... remember, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the song of Albert Graeme, which has something about Carlisle's wall ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... around, and saw the world he left When to that visionary realm of song His spirit fled from bonds of flesh bereft; And on the vision he lay musing long, As o'er his soul rude minstrel-echoes throng, Old measures half-disused; and grasp'd his pen, And drew his cottage-Christ for ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... out the coach, sharply. "This is training work. You'll find the minstrel show, if that's what you want, at the ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... the Boy), whom Austin, de civ. Dei, lib. 17. cap. 14. so much commends for it. Who hath not heard how David's harmony drove away the evil spirits from king Saul, 1 Sam. xvi. and Elisha when he was much troubled by importunate kings, called for a minstrel, "and when he played, the hand of the Lord came upon him," 2 Kings iii. Censorinus de natali, cap. 12. reports how Asclepiades the physician helped many frantic persons by this means, phreneticorum mentes morbo turbatas—Jason ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dip the taper wing— The pilgrim there his thirst assuage, The wandering minstrel sit and sing, Or muse ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... 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 ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... notes the Mantuan minstrel owns Long lur'd her Trojan from the main: And bleeding Arria, in such tones, Assur'd her ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... photographed as a prattling, bald-headed baby, absolutely destitute of eyes, but making up for this deficiency by a wealth of mouth that would make a negro minstrel olive green with envy. We often wonder what has given the average photographer that wild, hunted look about the eyes and that joyless sag about the knees. The chemicals and the indoor life alone have not done all this. It is ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... encounter, hand to hand, with his formidable battle-axe. The ground around Cuzco became a battle-field, like the vega of Granada, in which Christian and Pagan displayed the characteristics of their peculiar warfare; and many a deed of heroism was performed, which wanted only the song of the minstrel to shed around it a glory like that which rested on the last days of the Moslem ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Feb. 10. Hans von Buelow's symphonic poem, "The Minstrel's Curse," given by the Symphony Society, in ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... is going to be paid. When we open our new and wonderful gym, containing all sorts of up-to-date appliances for physical development, there will be no debt hanging over our heads. We figured on having to give all sorts of entertainments the coming winter, from basket-ball matches to minstrel performances, in order to raise funds to help out; but now we can devote our time to having all the fun going. You also remember the big promise several of the mill- owners made, led ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... as close as we can," said Bunny. "Maybe if it's Fred we can tell, no matter if he is blacked up like a minstrel." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... the summer-time when days are long, I will come hither with my paramour, And with the dancers, and the minstrel's song, We will make merry ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... the legislature was a minstrel show. It was worse than a minstrel show; it was profoundly corrupt. Lobbyists openly paid legislators, black and white, for their votes. And what is more, the money was parceled out to each one on the very floor of the Senate and House. This ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... come home, the wife is set at the upper end of the table, and the husband next unto her. They fall then to drinking, till they be all drunk; they perchance have a minstrel or two. And two naked men, who led her from the church, dance naked a long time before all the company. When they are weary of drinking, the bride and the bridegroom get them to bed (for it is in the evening always when any of them are married); and when they are going to bed, the bridegroom ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... we 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 restraint by the dominant religious element, it grew stronger ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... old English and German carols, which seem to grow only sweeter, more mellow, more perfectly expressive of the love and good-will that inspired them, as the years go by. Yet always at Christmas time there is with me the memory of one carol sweeter than all, which was sung to me alone by a little minstrel from the far north, with the wind in the pines humming ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... 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 from and copied others and helped to make the common method ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... lay long by me, till the applause of some friends whose judgement I valued induced me to resume the poem; so on I wrote, knowing no more than the man in the moon how I was to end. At length the story appeared so uncouth, that I was fain to put it into the mouth of my old minstrel—lest the nature of it should be misunderstood, and I should be suspected of setting up a new school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to imitate the old. In the process of romance the page, intended to be a principal person in the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... city dwelling. The furniture was scant but neat, and so daintily arranged. The bright cooking-stove, the bird-cage, the little round work-stand, above all, the handsome, cheerful woman, with her household love and genial benevolence, Isabel Chester's mother—how vividly the sight of that young minstrel brought all this to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... have caused to flow, come from other eyes than his own. And so, with gratulation void of all regrets, let us drink to the continued years, service, happiness of our strong and tender-hearted elder comrade, our white-haired minstrel, Richard Henry Stoddard. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... 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 ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... and the Comet, The. Magic Mirror, The. Meeting of the Ships, The. Meeting of the Waters, The. Melologue. Memorabilia of Last Week. Merrily Every Bosom boundeth. Millennium, The. Mind Not Tho' Daylight. Minstrel-Boy, The. Missing. Morality. Moral Positions. Mountain Sprite, The. Mr. Roger Dodsworth. Musical Box, The. Musings of an Unreformed Peer. Musings, suggested by the Late Promotion of Mrs. Nethercoat. My Birth-Day. My Gentle ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... influences of his age—left him 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
... and when I walked along behind dad, and got a rear view of his silk hat, it seemed as though I would sink through the asphalt pavement, for he had on an old silk hat that he wore before the war, the darnedest looking hat I ever saw, the brim curled like a minstrel show hat, the fur rubbed off in some places, and he looked like one of these actors that you see pictures of walking on the railroad track, when the show busts up at the last town. I think a man ought to dress so his young son won't have a fit. I tried to get dad to go and buy a new hat, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... 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 out that ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... time that George Washington told the truth, a word must be said, of course. It is the principal jewel in the crown of America, and it is but natural that we should work it for all it is worth, as Milton says in his 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' It was a timely and judicious truth, and I should have told it myself in the circumstances. But I should have stopped there. It was a stately truth, a lofty truth —a Tower; and I think it was a mistake to go on and distract attention from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... together: the man holding down his head 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... love," he said, in, answer to her inquiry. "I should deem him minstrel by his garb, or seer, or both perchance, as is sometimes the case, conjoined. I will speak with him when my present ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... accustom'd place That minstrel ply'd his art, Though its soft symphony of words Convulsed with pain the broken chords ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... victory won by her ancestor over the Duke of Mayenne. A little later, Madame is conducted to the foot of an ancient tower, whence there is a view of immense extent. Here she is arrested by the songs of an ancient minstrel, whose voice is accompanied by mysterious music hidden in the hollows ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... hear any more about them—seems to be a secretary. Think of having the run of a house where a social secretary is required! I'm sure she sends out the invitations and keeps the engagement- book. Besides all that, she writes poetry—she is the minstrel of the court. She does verses about her chatelaine—is quite the mistress of self- respecting adulation. She would know the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... 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, plagiarism shall be counted the one unpardonable ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... after many adventures by the way, we arrived at the Moon, and not only got into the middle of it, but made acquaintance with the inhabitants, none of whom appeared to be over two feet high, or to have anything to speak of between their chins and their toes. After that experience, minstrel shows and concerts, and persons who told your fortunes with snakes, or ate glass, were rather an anticlimax; still, I enjoyed them all so much that I was incapable of extreme annoyance when we discovered that The Evening Bat had an "impressionist ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... clothes and smiling, blue-eyed indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up for a modern minstrel show. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... same piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James—no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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
... drawbridges, and so narrow is every street of the town that no wagon is allowed to cross, for if it made the passage of the bridge it would be caught hard and fast between the houses. As the traveller put foot on the drawbridge he felt as though he were a petty trader or wandering minstrel, or some other figure of the Middle Ages, entering for a few hours' traffic or a noon-day's rest, and when he paused under the low arch of the portcullis-gate, people stared at him as they do at a stranger in little far-off towns. Once inside, he turned into a street, and was immediately obliged ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... they now? Earth yields them naught: the imprisoned worm is safe Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs Lie covered close, and berry-bearing thorns That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose), Afford the smaller minstrel no supply. The long-protracted rigour of the year Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes Ten thousand seek an unmolested end, As instinct prompts, self-buried ere they die. The very rooks and daws forsake the fields, Where neither grub nor root nor earth-nut now Repays their ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... 'That's mere minstrel leasing, Malcolm,' said Patrick. 'I have both seen and heard the bird in France—Rossignol, as we call it there; and were I a lady, I should deem it small compliment to be likened to a little russet-backed, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a 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 he smiled ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... said 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
... * *, on my first visit, I have a habit, in passing my time a good deal alone, of—I won't call it singing, for that I never attempt except to myself—but of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh breathe not,' 'When the last glimpse,' and 'When he who adores thee,' with others of the same minstrel;—they are my matins and vespers. I assuredly did not intend them to be overheard, but, one morning, in comes, not La Donna, but Il Marito, with a very grave face, saying, 'Byron, I must request you won't sing any more, at least ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... effect of a blizzard. They were in the smaller compartment of the main hut completing a set of pendulum observations, while Royds was in the larger compartment—the hut was used for many and various purposes—rehearsing his nigger minstrel troupe. Either because nigger minstrelsy and scientific work did not go hand in hand, or because their work was finished, Bernacchi and Skelton, soon after the rehearsal began, left the hut to return to the ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the baron bold, the minstrel tender, Not with the ringing sound of shield and lance, Not with the Field of Gold in all its splendor, Died out the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... up a guitar, and lolling against the old marble fireplace, 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 ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... with them, but Nicolette assures them she will never be happy until she rejoins Aucassin. Meantime she learns to play on the viol, and, when she has attained proficiency on this instrument, sets out in the guise of a wandering minstrel to seek her beloved. Conveyed by her brothers to the land of Biaucaire, Nicolette, soon after landing, hears that Aucassin, who has recently returned, is sorely bewailing the loss of his beloved. Presenting herself before ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... night and felt all the desolateness of the world, all the exiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. The Aeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music, and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me and played unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lost family, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought came to me: "We are all the children of kings; on our spiritual bodies are royal seals. Sometime or other ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... your hands kind of poised halfway, and your lips sort of parted, and your eyes just gazing away somewhere off in the distance for fifteen minutes at a stretch. And out there in the shipping-room Henry's singing like a whole minstrel troupe all day long, when he isn't whistlin' so loud you can hear him over 's far as Eighth Avenue." Then, as the red surged up through the girl's fair skin, "Well?" drawled old Pop Henderson, and the dry chuckle ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... in a servile position. Pottery was manufactured of excellent but simple patterns. Metal work was, of course, thoroughly understood, and the Anglo-Saxon swords and knives discovered in barrows are of good construction. Every chief had also his minstrel, who sang the short and jerky Anglo-Saxon songs to the accompaniment of a harp. The dead were burnt and their ashes placed in tumuli in the north: the southern tribes buried their warriors in full military dress, and from their tombs much of the little knowledge which we ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... 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
... Maryland," was another travesty, of about the same literary merit, or rather demerit, as "The Bonnie Blue Flag." Its air was that of the well-known and popular negro minstrel song, "Billy Patterson." For all that, it sounded very martial and stirring when played ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... and tears, in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
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