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Ballad   Listen
verb
Ballad  v. i.  To make or sing ballads. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books



... seen any before, laughed till he cried at "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "The Ballad of the Oysterman." This last was performed with particularly fine effect by Carl and Louise, and everybody knows how funny it ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard

... was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that someone was ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... that audience at Birkenhead. But because in that Mersey town most of the crowd was sure to be English, wi' a sprinkling o' Irish, the management had suggested that I should leave out my Scottish favorites when I made up my list o' songs. So I began wi' a sentimental ballad, went on wi' an English comic song, and finished with "Calligan-Call-Again," the very successful Irish song I had just added ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... a copy of the ballad, which was about a recent double suicide: "The sorrowful ditty of Tamayone and Takejiro,— composed by Tabenaka Yone of Number Fourteen of the Fourth Ward of Nippon-bashi in the South District of the City of Osaka." It had evidently been printed ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... being called the King of Thule," said Mrs. Lorraine, turning with a smile to Sheila, "and of his daughter being styled a princess. Do you know the ballad of the King of Thule in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... The Book of Ancient Ballad Poetry of Great Britain, Historical, Traditional and Romantic; with Modern Imitations, Translations, Notes, and Glossary, &c. Edited by J.S. Moore. New and Improved Edition, 8vo. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... necessary. You need only take a sheet of paper and write at the top "A Ballad," then begin like this, "Heigho, alack, my destiny!" or "the Cossack Nalivaiko was sitting on a hill and then on the mountain, under the green tree the birds are singing, grae, voropae, gop, gop!" or something of that kind. And the thing's done. Print it and publish it. ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... Haydock, then just rising into notoriety—who professed to deliver his sermons in his sleep, and was afterwards discovered to be an imposter; the last benefaction in the parish church, for two poor Irish gentlewomen on their journey home, recommended by letters from the Council; the last new ballad. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... Curiosities of Literature will be the only one for the future in the American market. The most 'curious' part of our literary history is embraced in the revolution, with the short period preceding and following it. The British and Tories furnished endless themes to the pasquinader and ballad-maker, while the grave rights involved in the struggle called forth the efforts of more serious and thoughtful pens. The Puritans of New-England wrote most; and there is a union of the soundest sense with the most childish folly, the strongest character with the weakest prejudices ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... JIG, merry ballad or tune; a fanciful dialogue or light comic act introduced at the end or during an interlude ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... a single regret: they have never been able fully to compass the ablative. But the rough-and-tumble student was the rule, with nose deep into stein, exaggerating little things into great, making woful ballad to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... pool of hell, And shalt be there forever. For why? When thou on lofty seat Didst sit, and eat immortal meat With Jove, the bounteous Giver, The gods before thee loosed their tongue, And many a mirthful ballad sung, And all their secrets open ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... The ballad went on to tell how next day Robin saw this fine bird, whose name was Allan-a-dale, with his feathers all moultered; because his bonnie love had been snatched from him and was about to be wed to a wizened ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... her waist and mingled with the wild pink roses at her bosom. The fiddler sat quietly as if he heard nothing until she began to sing, when he turned to look at her. The elder announced, after the ballad, that he had brought with him a wonderful musician who would favour them with some sacred music. He used the word 'sacred' because he had observed, I suppose, that certain of the 'hardshells' were looking askance at the fiddle. There was an awkward moment in which the fiddler made no move or sign ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... friend Philinte for receiving the bow of a man he despises; and with his mistress for enjoying a little harmless ridicule of her friend, when her back is turned. He tells a conceited poet that he prefers the sense and simplicity of an old ballad to the false wit of a modern sonnet—he proves his judgment to be just—and receives a challenge from the poet in reward of his criticism. Such a character, placed in opposition to the false and fantastic affectations of the day, afforded a wide scope for the satire of Moliere. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... From what old ballad, or from what rich frame Did you descend to glorify the earth? Was it from Chaucer's singing book you came? Or did Watteau's ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer

... of design and hold the same relation to ornament printed on paper and silk that we find in the music of the Psalms, as compared with the tinkle of the ballad. ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... books were few, the means of education and mental improvement were limited, and thus in the rural districts the reminiscences of the past were handed down in the form of traditions, communicated orally from generation to generation, or assuming the less perishable shape of ballad literature. Young Ker's mind, which was ever ready to receive and retain impressions, became the conservatory of a vast selection of ancient lore, written and unwritten, which he has never forgotten. His memory is quite an encylopaedia of ballads and stories, which it would probably be difficult, ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... Haren og Raeven ("The Hare and the Fox"), are significant because of the masterly security with which they strike the national key and keep it. Not a word is there that rings false. And with what an exquisite tenderness the elegaic ballad strain is rendered in Venevil and "Hidden Love" (Dulgt Kaerlighed), and the playful in the deliciously girlish roguery of Vidste du bare ("If you only knew"), and the bold dash and young wantonness of ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... if she had not been laughing at us all, and whether the whole thing was not a practical joke. He took to twitting her about her visions, and proposed to write a ballad on "the two invisible men of Brandon Woods," on which I said, "And I will write a sequel, which shall be called 'The ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... Mother Nolan had to be content. She retired to her own room, mixed a powder in a cup of root-tea and gave it to the girl, who was quiet now, though wide-awake and bright-eyed. Kavanagh went home, invented a ballad about his fever in Port-o'-Spain, and wrote it upon his memory, verse by verse—for he did not possess the art of writing upon paper. After supper Cormick retired to the loft and his bed; but the skipper did not touch a blanket that night. He ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... whom memories were portentous, called for another song and Eustace sang a stave of that ballad which was made on the Pyrenees, and which is still unfinished (for the modern world has no need of these things), telling of how Lord Raymond drank in a ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... believe, Sturk was really not to blame; and Sturk called him 'that drunken little apothecary'—for Toole had a boy who compounded, under the rose, his draughts, pills, and powders in the back parlour—and sometimes, 'that smutty little ballad singer,' or 'that whiskeyfied dog-fancier, Toole.' There was no actual quarrel, however; they met freely—told one another the news—their mutual disagreeabilities were administered guardedly—and, on the whole, they hated one ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... little homily), for suddenly Laurie's ghost seemed to stand before her, a substantial, lifelike ghost, leaning over her with the very look he used to wear when he felt a good deal and didn't like to show it. But, like Jenny in the ballad... ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... The ballad of Grimhild's Vengeance (Grimhilds Hevn) is given in three versions by Abrahamson, Nyerup and Rahbek. Borrow has closely followed the editors of 1812 and has translated each of the versions. He added a number of notes, the MS. of which is mutilated, but ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous

... Years together, and taken his Stand in a Side Box, till he has grown wrinkled under their Eyes. He is now laying the same Snares for the present Generation of Beauties, which he practised on their Mothers. Cottilus, after having made his Applications to more than you meet with in Mr. Cowley's Ballad of Mistresses, was at last smitten with a City Lady of 20,000L. Sterling: but died of old Age before he could bring Matters to bear. Nor must I here omit my worthy Friend Mr. HONEYCOMB, who has often told us in the Club, that for twenty years successively, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... all in the humor, mamma," said she; nevertheless she rose. Nicolas sat down to the piano; and standing, as usual, in the middle of the room, where the voice sounded best, she sang her mother's favorite ballad. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... birth, cf. William Bellenden's translation (1553) of Livy (ii. 124) "than was in Rome ane nobill childe ... namit Caius Mucius." The spelling "childe" is frequent in modern usage to indicate its archaic meaning. Familiar instances are in the line of an old ballad quoted in King Lear, "childe Roland to the dark tower came," and in Byron's Childe Harold. With this use may be compared the Spanish and Portuguese Infante and Infanta, and the early French use of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... the rich flow of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his great full sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a narrative ballad. He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. That evening he talked of the present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and some sweet, homely stories he told of things ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... Cole has taken part in nearly all the great musical events in this country during the past four years. She has sung everywhere in London—with the Royal Choral Society at the Albert Hall, at the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace, at the Ballad Concerts, at the Monday Popular Concerts, at Sir Charles Halle's Concerts, and at Bristol, Chester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other leading towns. As seems to have been the case with most well-dowered musicians, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... this speech not without a species of vertigo or dizziness in my head, which would probably have struck me lifeless at his feet, had not a thought like that of the old ballad...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... skeins on a reel. A machine called a clock-reel counted the exact number of strands in a knot, usually forty, and ticked when the requisite number had been wound. Then the spinner would stop and tie the knot. A quaint old ballad ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... with delight, and he joined in with me on Dixie, singing in a light and somewhat throaty baritone. Then we swung on to There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea, which must always be sung to a church-tune, and still later to that dolorous ballad, Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prair-hee! Then we tried a whistling duet with banjo accompaniment, pretty well murdering the Tinker's Song from Robin Hood until Whinstane Sandy, who was taking his Sabbath bath in the bunk-house, loudly opened the window and stared out with a dourly ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... has suffered from flood. A disastrous inundation overwhelmed her on the evening of All Saints' Day in 1825, when the dykes were broken and the water rushed in to the height of five feet. Such must be great times of triumph for the floating population, who, like the sailor in the old ballad of the sea, may well pity the unfortunate and insecure dwellers in houses. What the number of Friesland's floating population is I do not know; but it must be very large. Many barges and tjalcks are both the birthplace and deathplace of their owners, who know no other home. The cabins ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... past now—Francis Levison had lost his heart—or whatever the thing might be that, with him, did duty for one—to Blanche Challoner. He had despised her once to Lady Isabel—as Lord Thomas says in the old ballad; but that was done to suit his own purpose, for he had never, at any period, cared for Lady Isabel as he had cared for Blanche. He gained her affection in secret—they engaged themselves to each other. Blanche's sister, Lydia Challoner, two years older than herself suspected it, and taxed ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... north wind are as zephyrs against the din of eulogy when Marius Reybas of the Bobino lifts a mighty larynx in "Mahi Mahi." Great talent? Well, maybe not. But show me a group of vaudevillians and acrobats who, like this group at the Gaite, can amuse one night with risque ballad and somersault and the next with Moliere—and not be ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... are but as one band, united for ever by a common faith and mutual love. And so much is this the feeling of them all, that if you should chance to meet one of those Campbells, and to ask of their number, I think, like the child in the ballad, he would answer, 'We ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... "Guardian" is wonderful. The Gladstonian tee-to-tum cannot have many more revolutions to make. The only thing left for him now, is to turn Agnostic, declare Homer to be an old bloke of a ballad-monger, and agitate for the prohibition of the study of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... which I began to surmise that I was myself something out of the common run. My father, however, was of a very different opinion, for when my mother, in the pride of her heart, showed him my copy of verses, he threw them out of the window, asking her "if she meant to make a ballad monger of the boy." But he was a careless, common-thinking man, and I cannot say that I ever loved him much; my mother absorbed all ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... leader of the anvil chorus. She just put everybody in town on the pan and roasted them to a whisper. She could build the best battleship Dewey ever saw with her little hammer. Estelle's friend, after much urging, then sang a pathetic ballad entitled, "She Should Be Scolded, but Not Turned Adrift," and I sat there with one eye shut, so that I could see single, and kept ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.

... "I am partly with you," he said. "And yet it were a great bourde to play off on the English, and most like to take them and to be told of in ballad and chronicle, like one of Wallace's onfalls. For, seeing the Pucelle, as they will deem, in our hands, they will think all safe, and welcome us open armed. O Norman, can we do nothing? Stop, will you ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... proposal, together with much whooping and cheering as never was. Ipsie Frost, who of course was present, no village revel being considered complete without her, was dancing recklessly all by herself on the grass, chirping in her baby voice a ballad of her own contriving which ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... and Ariadne Bacci, Orazio Baglione family Balbuenas, Bernardo de Baldi, Bernardino Baldini, Vittorio Baldinucci, Filippo Baldovini, Francesco Ballad Society Bandello, Matteo Bang, W. Barclay, Alexander Barclay, John Bariola, Felice Barksted, William Barnes, Barnabe Barnfield, Richard Baron, Robert Bartoli, Adolfo Bartoli, Clementi Basse, William Bastiano di Francesco (linaiuolo) Bathurst, Theodore Baylie, Richard Beaumont, Francis Beautiful ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... like hard-baked gilt gingerbread. But what faces these young folks make up at my good advice! They get tipsy on their rhymes. Nothing intoxicates one like his—or her—own verses, and they hold on to their metre-ballad-mongering as the fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... died away, and before anyone could speak the banjo broke out into a gay jingle, succeeded in turn by an old familiar ballad in which they all joined. Then Clavering cleared his throat and in his deep ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... clings To the turrets and the walls; 'T is a morning pure and sweet, And the light and shadow fleet: She is walking in the meadow, And the woodland echo rings. In a moment we shall meet; She is singing in the meadow, And the rivulet at her feet Ripples on in light and shadow To the ballad that she sings. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... of coasting are here portrayed with wonderfully graphic pen, whilst the metre is, so far as technical correctness is concerned, all that might be desired. However, we wish that Miss Ronning were less fond of unusual rhyming arrangements. The lines here given are of regular ballad length. Were they disposed in couplets, we should have a tuneful lay of the "Chevy Chase" order; but as it is, our ear misses the steady couplet effect to which the standard models have accustomed us. "With the Assistance of Carmen" is a clever short story by Gladys Bagg, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... passion, which was for drawing-room ballads. The number of ballads which were sung in this part of the world passed all belief. All the old sentimental songs, yellowing in ancient cardboard boxes, could be found in Tarascon alive and flourishing. Each family had its own ballad and in the town this was well understood. One knew, for example, that for Bezuquet the chemist it was:-"Thou pale ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... superiority of Wasson's poetry. Many of his sonnets are gems, unsurpassed in any language, and the one called "Pride" seems to me in its grand simplicity to be without a rival. If there is any American poem which sings itself like "All's well," it is Longfellow's ballad of "Mary Garvin." "The Plover" has a pensive grace which is as rare as its subtile and elevated thought. They are however few in number and he did not think there was enough of them to publish in a volume. They were finally ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... a complicated stanza of which specimens have occurred. Mr. Payne calls it a "ballad," which would ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... SHENSTONE'S unhappiness. In early life he had been captivated by a young lady adapted to be both the muse and the wife of the poet, and their mutual sensibility lasted for some years. It lasted until she died. It was in parting from her that he first sketched his "Pastoral Ballad." SHENSTONE had the fortitude to refuse marriage. His spirit could not endure that she should participate in that life of self-privations to which he was doomed; but his heart was not locked up in the ice of celibacy, and his plaintive ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... There were Essex and Audley, Stanley, Pelham, Russell, both the Sidneys, all the Norrises, men whose valour had been. proved on many a hard-fought battle-field. There, too, was the famous hero of British ballad whose name was so often to ring on ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... sing a little ballad which she used to sing years before, when she was nursing him wrapped up in swaddling-clothes in this same little upholstered chair. But a shiver ran all over his frame, just as when a wave is agitated by the wind. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... of the falling snow outside came fluttering down into the blaze, the lumberers lay on their bunks, or sat on blocks, talking, sleeping, singing, as the mood moved. French Canadians are native-born songsters; and their simple ballad melodies, full of refrain and repetition, sounded very pleasing ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... A BALLAD, made by a Gentleman in Ireland, who could not have Access to a Lady whom he went to visit, because the Maid the Night before had over-laid her pretty Bitch. To the Tune of, O ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... midst of my shame, I could hardly help admiring the clever way in which he had remembered all the details, and twisted them into a comic ballad, which he had composed overnight, and which he now recited with a mock heroic air and voice, which made every point tell, and kept the boys in convulsions of laughter. Not a smile crossed his long, lantern-jawed face; but ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... he gave, And slightly kissed the hand to which he gave, The diamond, and all wearied of the quest Leapt on his horse, and carolling as he went A true-love ballad, lightly ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... spirit—change surprising to all, but as natural as any other of the thousand changes which are produced in the progress of moments by the arch-magician, Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the ordinary topics of the youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to the eagle, soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming thunder-storm; to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness, which no foot travelled but her ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... his reflections on being invited to a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" by reading funny verses. He submits it to the judgment and common sense of the importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad- making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... gloomy reverie, sits apart gazing at a mysterious picture on the wall, the portrait of a pale man clad in black, the hero of the mysterious legend of the Flying Dutchman. The girls rally Senta upon her abstraction, and as a reply to their idle prattle she sings them the ballad of the doomed mariner. Throughout the song her enthusiasm has been waxing, and at its close, like one inspired, she cries aloud that she will be the woman to save him, that through her the accursed wretch shall find eternal peace. Erik, her betrothed lover, who enters to announce ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... received—I need not say how joyfully—two letters from you; one addressed to Hammerfest. I had begun to think that some Norwegian warlock had bewitched the post-bags, in the approved old ballad fashion, to prevent their rendering up my dues; for when the packet of letters addressed to the "Foam" was brought on board, immediately after our arrival, I alone got nothing. From Sigurdr and the Doctor to the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... Ballad.—In the Manchester Guardian of Jan. 7, the author of a stanza, written on the execution of Thos. Syddale, is desired; as also the remainder of the ballad. From what quarter is either of these more likely to be obtained than ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... was vigorously encored, and Tom at once responded with a second—and I have no doubt, genuine—barrack-room ballad. The hero of this ditty is a "Lancer bold." He is duly wetted with tears before his departure for the wars; but is cheered up at the last moment by the lady's assurance that she will meet him on his return in "a carriage gay." ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... that can be expected, after making allowance for that escape of etherial spirit which is inevitable in the transfer of poetic thoughts from one language to another. The word popular is also to be taken in a limited meaning regarding all translations. Cowper's ballad of John Gilpin is twenty times more popular than his Homer; yet the latter work is deservedly popular in comparison with the bulk of translations from antiquity. The same thing may be said of Cary's Dante; it is, like Cowper's ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... children. There sprang a leak; all thought of death. Then rose a cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the Sea Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... to speak my piece," answered Miss Celia, obeying a sudden impulse; and, stepping forward with her hat in her hand, she made a pretty courtesy before she recited Mary Howitt's sweet little ballad, "Mabel ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica. One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain

... was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since: but, I think, now 'tis not to be found; or, if it were, it would neither serve for the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... unpaged. Wanting C 4 (? blank). The date cannot be earlier than about 1660, when Thackeray started as bookseller. The first edition of the ballad was probably that printed by Byddell in 1536, known only from a fragment of ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg

... of course, the tradition commemorated by Southey in his ballad of "The Inchcape Bell." Whether true or not, it points to the fact that from the infancy of Scottish navigation, the seafaring mind had been fully alive to the perils of this reef. Repeated attempts had been made to mark the place with beacons, but all efforts were unavailing (one such beacon having ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... by lot, God wot,] There was an old ballad entitled the song of Jephthah, from which these lines are probably quotations. The story of Jephthah was also one of the favourite subjects of ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... like a dull, quaint, gres de Flandre jug, that has precious stones set inside its rim. It is a burgher ledger of bales and barrels, of sale and barter, of loss and gain; but in the heart of it there are illuminated leaves of missal vellum, all gold and colour, and monkish story and heroic ballad, that could only have been executed in the days ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... or faults were similarly recorded. Several of the Intermediates had entered for the competition. Rose Butler trilled forth a sentimental little ditty in a rather quavering mezzo; Annie Turner, whose compass was contralto, poured out a sea ballad—a trifle flat; Nora Cleary raised a storm of applause by a funny Irish song, and received marks for style, though her voice was poor in quality; and Elsie Bartlett scored for St. Elgiva's by reaching high B with the utmost clearness and ease. The Intermediates ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... experienced young women) in whom there was no feare of daunger to their persons, or of any outcry at all, at the time of those terrible approches. Thus much touching the vsage of Epithalamie or bedding ballad of the ancient times, in which if there were any wanton or lasciuious matter more then ordinarie which they called Ficenina licentia it was borne withal for that time because of the matter no lesse ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... blackguard brother, hold thy tongue. Rem. Romulus, may I be spared to see thee hung. Maidens. Alas! to see two brothers bicker thus is sad, Let's laugh and sport and turn to something glad. Mary Ann (blushing). I'll sing you a simple ballad if you like. (All shuddering). Good gracious! (Aside) Certainly, by all means. Mary Ann. How doth each naughty little lad Delight to snarl and bite, And kick and scratch, It's very bad, It isn't at all right. Oh, don't do this; oh, don't do that, Don't tear ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... "I never sing ballad music," she said, loftily. "Indeed I could not do myself justice in anything this evening. I make it a matter of conscience not to attempt a note unless I am in perfect tune throughout—mentally, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... confirmed by the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, says that he retired from worldly life when he was twenty-nine years old. The event is also commemorated in a poem of the Sutta-Nipata[312] which reads like a very ancient ballad. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... disputes the fact of being the hero of that romantic affair. "Sir Urian Legh was knighted by the Earl of Essex at the siege of Cadiz, and during that expedition is traditionally said to have been engaged in an adventure which gave rise to the well-known ballad of 'The Spanish Lady's Love.' A fine original portrait of Sir Urian, in a Spanish dress, is preserved at Bramall, which has been copied for the family at Adlington." So that between these two chivalrous knights it is difficult to decide which is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... foretaste of the famous leit-motif. We find it in Robert in the theme of the ballad, which the orchestra plays again while Bertram goes towards the back of the stage. This should indicate to the listener his satanic character. We find it in the Luther chant in Les Huguenots and also in the dream of Le Prophete during Jean's ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... difference. Bonnets and hats, at five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad. All the useless and unnessary things which she had ordered, because she thought them pretty or because she was told they were fashionable, rose up against her in the figures of the bill, like the record of forgotten sins ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... his fingers, stiffened though they were with hard work, ran lightly over the keys. Every person sat still to listen. Even Martha Perkins forgot to twirl her fingers and leaned forward. It was a simple little English ballad he sang: ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... at carving in wood, and both he and Gretel were good gardeners. Gretel could sing and sew and run on great, high homemade stilts better than any other girl for miles around. She could learn a ballad in five minutes and find, in its season, any weed or flower you could name; but she dreaded books, and often the very sight of the figuring board in the old schoolhouse would set her eyes swimming. Hans, on the contrary, was slow and steady. The harder the ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... fiction in the historical incidents recorded in the following ballad. The indignities that were heaped upon Montrose during his procession through Edinburgh, his appearance before the Estates, and his last passage to the scaffold, as well as his undaunted bearing, have all been spoken to by eyewitnesses of the scene. A graphic and vivid sketch of the whole will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... had fought his emotion then, too proud to show it. Now he felt a hot something spatter on his hand. His mouth quivered. "Doggone the dog!" he exclaimed. "Doggone the whole doggone outfit!" And to cheat his emotion he began to sing, in a ludicrous, choked way, that sprightly and inimitable range ballad; ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... Holkar, etc., have shown us types of other races than the Caucassian. One of the stamps of Congo is adorned by a couple of natives in local full dress which appears to be much on the order of that of the lady in the ballad who wore a wreath and a smile. Japan has placed on her stamps the portraits of two heroes of her late war with China. Guatemala has the head of an Indian woman. The stamps of British North Borneo have the arms of the company with two stalwart natives as supporters and a similar device ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff

... and looked up at the ceiling. Beyond that, he thought, was the adored Miss Sidebottom. What a narrow space sundered them! He walked to the fire-place and looked on the mantel for a book. He selected an old copy of Burns, and opened at the pathetic ballad of 'John Anderson.' Mr. Hardesty sat down and read it once aloud. Then he read it to himself over and over again, until he had gotten it by heart. And then by degrees the room swam dizzily before him, the fire glowed like a pale meteor, his eyes closed ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... sees it (even if he cannot ride it); that he is accustomed to hospitable inn-parlours where you may discuss any philosophy so long as it is not a system; that he has a chivalrous admiration for women; that he likes sunshine and adores the moon; that he believes in God, the respectability of wives, ballad poetry, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... man and his wife that is to be, and it was nigh twelve o' the clock ere I minded it was time to go home. Well, so I puts on my cloak, and the moon was up, an' I goes along by the wood, and up by Fairlegh Field, an' I was singing the ballad on Joe Wrench's hanging, for the spirats had made me gamesome, when I sees somemut dark creep, creep, but iver so fast, arter me over the field, and making right ahead to the village. And I stands still, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... downright blows. This strong rhetorical instinct is shown conspicuously in the 'Lays of Ancient Rome,' which, whatever we might say of them as poetry, are an admirable specimen of rhymed rhetoric. We know how good they are when we see how incapable are modern ballad-writers in general of putting the same swing and fire into their verses. Compare, for example, Aytoun's 'Lays of the Cavaliers,' as the most ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... Miss Chapman, and many others have done really good work in poetry, either in the grave Dorian mode of thoughtful and intellectual verse, or in the light and graceful forms of old French song, or in the romantic manner of antique ballad, or in that 'moment's monument,' as Rossetti called it, the intense and concentrated sonnet. Occasionally one is tempted to wish that the quick, artistic faculty that women undoubtedly possess developed itself somewhat more in prose and somewhat less in verse. Poetry is for ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... into a Cozening! Had I been drunk, I might fondly have credited the young Quean! but as I was in my right Wits, to be thus cheated, confirms I am a dull believing English Country Fop.— But my Comrades! Death and the Devil, there's the worst of all— then a Ballad will be sung to Morrow on the Prado, to a lousy Tune of the enchanted Squire, and the annihilated Damsel— But Fred, that Rogue, and the Colonel, will abuse me beyond all Christian patience— had she left me my Clothes, I have a Bill of Exchange at home wou'd have sav'd my ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... forbid! But who that knows you have been a single Hour in Wilding's Hands, wou'd not swear you have lost your Maidenhead? And back again I'm sure you dare not go unmarried; that wou'd be a fine History to be sung to your eternal Fame in a Ballad. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... refused to take a dollar's pay, at the reduced price. "We'se gib our sogerin' to de Guv'ment, Gunnel," they said, "but we won't 'spise ourselves so much for take de seben dollar." They even made a contemptuous ballad, of which I ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... at any rate, he was the handsomest man she had seen in the desert, and the desert was just then her sphere of society. You could see in his figure how strong he was, and in his face how brave he was. He was a good fellow, too; "tendir and trew" as the Douglas of the ballad; sincere, frank, thoroughly truthful and honorable. Every way he seemed to be that being that a woman most wants, a potential and devoted protector. Whenever Clara looked in his face her eyes said, without her ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... returning presently with a guitar. "I've been wanting to play a little," he confessed as he tuned the neglected instrument, "but it seemed sort of sacrilegious—after coming home and finding my father gone and the ranch about to go. However—why sip sorrow with a long spoon? What's that ballad about the old-fashioned garden, Miss Kay? I like it. If you'll hum it a ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... yet this shall go, I am determined. Only consider how it is a matter of necessity that I should have nothing to say. If you could see this place of Boulge! You who sit and survey marble palaces rising out of cypress and olive. There is a dreadful vulgar ballad, composed by Mr. Balfe, and sung with the most unbounded ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... ancient dame a foe to mirth. Her ballad, jest, and riddle's quaint device, Oft cheered the shepherds round their social hearth; Whom levity or spleen could ne'er entice To purchase chat or laughter at the price Of decency. Nor let it faith ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... those who, in murdering this hoary culprit, were heard to say, that they would handle his master worse, and would have minced his flesh, and have had every one a bit of him. This is one more instance of the political cannibalism of the mob. The fate of Dr. Lambe served for a ballad; and the printer and singer were laid in Newgate.[237] Buckingham, it seems, for a moment contemplated his own fate in his wretched creature's, more particularly as another omen obtruded itself on his attention; for, on the very day of Dr. Lambe's murder, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... her singing a popular nautical ballad, on the devotion of a sailor's bride to her betrothed. Upon this, Madame Torvestad's patience broke down, and, losing her usual self-control, she went into the room, and gave Henrietta a box on each ear, saying: "I will soon teach you a ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... with the reading of the ballad, slightly transposed and adapted. As Leslie led Sir Charles before the curtain, in response to the continued demand, he added ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's — Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?"*2* How tenderly Lanier was touched by the life of our Lord may be seen in his 'Ballad of Trees and the Master', a dramatic presentation of the scene in Gethsemane and on Calvary. How implicit was his trust in the Christ may be gathered from this paragraph in a letter to the elder Hayne: "I have a boy whose ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... to understand her if he only could,—"who ever would have thought that things would turn out as they have when I last patted your dear old head at Bingen, 'Fair Bingen on the Rhine,' eh?" and she murmured to herself the refrain of that beautiful ballad. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Unfortunately, the story of Bernardo ends here. None of the ballads tell what he did for revenge. We may imagine that he joined his power to the Moors and harried the land of Leon during his after life, at length reaching Alfonso's heart with his vengeful blade. But of this neither ballad nor legend tells, and with the pathetic scene of the dead father's ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... have seen you on your way back from Ellery. I believe you did not get the ballad of the 'Devil and the Bishop,' which Hartley transcribed for you. I am reprinting my miscellaneous poems, collected into three volumes. Your projected publication[32] will have the start of it greatly, for the first volume ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... have known better than to have set an example of rhyming before Archie Blair. He turned and looked down at the elder, and the sight of him marching peaceably beside Captain Jimmie reminded him of an old doggerel ballad: "But man, there's worse than that written in your own ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... Goggins, who started another long ballad about Jimmy Barlow, in the opening of which all joined. It ran ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... and stature you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth,—running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... seem to the sufferer a special and direct judgment on him for impiously endeavouring to find pleasure otherwise than by the practice of the domestic virtues. Disquieting memories of bursting boilers surge up to the surface of the mind, and old catches like the weird ballad of Sir Patrick Spens lilt themselves to the clank of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... another person, strictly historical, Knight Eppo, of Kuesnach, who, while acting as bailiff for the Duke of Austria, put down two revolts of the inhabitants in his district, one in 1284 and another in 1302. Finally, there was the tyrant bailiff mentioned in the ballad of Tell, who, by the way, a chronicler, writing in 1510, calls, not Gessler, but the Count of Seedorf. These three persons were combined, and the result ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Coverdale?" said she, smiling. "Ah, I perceive what you are about! You are turning this whole affair into a ballad. Pray let me hear as many stanzas as you happen to ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the Carolina wren's vigorous lays, but this songster's voice was of a finer quality and had less volume than that of the Carolina. The little bird was found flitting among the pines, and continued to sing his gay little ballad with as much vigor as before. Indeed, my presence seemed to inspire him to redouble his efforts and to sing with more snap and challenge. He acted somewhat like a wren, but was smaller than any species of that family with which I was acquainted, and no part of his plumage ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... and their mistresses, to sporting men and women of fashion, just as, in the mournful song of Rosabelle, Sir Walter Scott is able to address himself to the "ladies gay," or Coleridge in his sad "Ballad of the Dark Ladie" to ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... or depart from the keynote, till we reach the semitone above or below, when it ceases altogether. Even so do our emotions increase in exact proportion as the exciting cause approaches perfection—according as the beauty heard or seen or felt approaches the heavenly keynote. A simple ballad awakens a quiet pleasure, while the magnificent symphonies of Beethoven or Mozart fill the soul with a rapture with which the former feeling is no more to be compared than the brooklet with the ocean; for the latter is inexpressibly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... my lord," responded the courageous young girl, "ought also to know the ballad that is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of his father's hate and his own unreciprocated affection. He would also, on rainy or cold days, when the inmates could not stir abroad, mount his horse and ride to the almshouse beyond the town mill, and, taking a pleasant story or ballad from his pocket, read to the huddled paupers, as well as to the keeper's family, attracted by his pleasant condescension. By degrees the boy's face also took the shadow worn by ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... heartier and more harum-scarum fellow never lived. It is a pleasant remembrance, after many years, to see again a group of lads round the big fire in the winter time, and to hear Duncan Robertson read the stirring ballad, "How Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old," till Peter can contain himself no longer, and proposes that a select band shall go instantly to McIntyre's Academy and simply compel a conflict. Dunc went into his father's regiment and fell at Tel-el-Kebir, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... "The Tale of Gamelyn." Lodge did not invent the plot of "Rosalynde." The story is based upon "The Tale of Gamelyn." This is a narrative in rough ballad form, written in the fourteenth century and formerly attributed to Chaucer. Indeed all the copies of it that have been preserved occur in the manuscripts of the "Canterbury Tales" under the title "The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn." From ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... or ducal libraries, there to wait till a more cultured age, curious as to the literature of its ancestors, should bring it forth from its hiding places. However, the figures of the old legend were not forgotten, but lived on among the people, and were finally embodied in a popular ballad, "Das Lied vom Hurnen Segfrid", which has been preserved in a print of the sixteenth century, although the poem itself is thought to go back at least to the thirteenth. The legend was also dramatized by Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet of Nuremberg, ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... there. As the story runs, he called them "rats who ate the corn." Numberless mice swam to the tower which he had built in the midst of the stream, and devoured him. Southey has put the tale into a ballad,—"God's Judgment on a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... in hired bruisers, to MILL the refractory into subjection. This irritated most of their former friends, and, amongst the root, the annotator, who accordingly wrote the song of "Heigh-ho, says Kemble," which was caught up by the ballad-singers, and sung under Mr. Kemble's house-windows in Great Russell-street. A dinner was given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, to celebrate the victory obtained by W. Clifford in his action against Brandon the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... in which, after a hard engagement lasting four hours, the Mary Rose triumphed decisively without losing a single sail of her convoy. A rude song was made about the action, and the two lines of the ballad, summing up the results, were ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... adapted to rendher the Homeric swinge. It consists of an Oiambic pinthimitir followed by a dacthylic thripody; an' in rhythm projuices the effects of the dacthylic hixamitir. Compeer wid this the ballad mayther, an' the hayroic mayther, and the Spinserian stanzas, of Worsley, an' Gladstone's Saxon throchaics, and Darby's dull blank verse, an' the litheral prose, an' Mat Arnold's attimpts at hixameters, an' Dain somebody's hindicasyllabics. They're one an' all ayqually contimptible. But in ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... meetings, of his eloquent speech in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, and his genial letters to Lucretia Mott, in favor of woman's right to vote. After three cheers for O'Connell, they shouted, "Go on, go on." The Hutchinsons then sang their stirring ballad, "The good time coming." The reception at each booth was respectful, and at the end of the speech or song there followed three ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and far through England, to warn each town and village that the enemy had come at last. In every seaport there was instant making ready by land and by sea; in every shire and every city there was instant mustering of horse and man. [In Macaulay's Ballad on the Spanish Armada, the transmission of the tidings of the Armada's approach, and the arming of the English nation, are magnificently described. The progress of the fire-signals is depicted in lines which are worthy of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... down and swept her fingers with a flourish over the keys. Then, without further prelude, she sang a little French song in a pleasing, musical voice, without much compass, but well trained; before the applause ended she broke into a Spanish ballad, tender and passionate, which gained her still greater success; and thus accepted and approved amidst continual cries of "Brava!" and "Encore!" she was not allowed to leave her seat until she had sung at least ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... of Kilspindie, a noble Douglas, and until the disgrace of his clan, a personal friend and favourite of James V. of Scotland. For the incidents of this ballad, vide Tales of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various

... written a ballad about you," said Marion, "and have sung it to the accompaniment of my harp—and my pot-boilers would never have been. And we should all have worn trains and picturesque headdresses instead of shirtwaists and sports hats, and I should have called some ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... he comes, upon reversion, into the property from which he has been so long excluded? Mr. Blewitt treats this incident with a sense of romance and picturesqueness of language reminiscent of the ballad of "The Lord of Lynn." In its facts the ballad bears a striking resemblance to those so graphically described by our author, but in point of execution lacks the true breath of poetic inspiration which pervades ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse's head along the road by which they had come. 'You've only a few yards to go,' he said, 'down the hill and over that little brook, and then you'll be a Queen—But you'll stay and see me off first?' ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... listened, however, from behind this closed door came a cheerful, cracked voice—the same voice she had heard whispering the lullaby in the middle of the night. But now it was tuning up on an old-time ballad, very popular in ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... the humbler poetry which has much greater worth. In the Robin Hood Ballads which Professor Arber has printed from an edition by Wynkyn de Worde we have at least one piece of salvage. It must be owned, indeed, that to claim a ballad as the product of any one century is rather rash, and that in some form or another this cycle was probably in existence before Chaucer died. The 'Ballad of Otterburn,' again, is founded on an incident of border war which took place in ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... he doubted not, were the outlaws his tyranny had driven to the forests, the forerunners of the Robin Hoods and Little Johns of later days, whose exploits against the Norman race awoke the enthusiasm of so many minstrels and ballad makers {x}. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... guarding it for her; and there I left him patiently waiting, in spite of his hunger, till his mate could share it with him. As I took a last look at his fine old face, I named him Douglas, and walked away, humming to myself the lines of the ballad,— ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... me than you've yet found out. Now, then! Give us your hand that you'll chuck art, and we'll drink to your popular ballad—hundredth thousand edition, no drawing-room should ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... yesterday. It can't fail, therefore, to seem extraordinary, your calling again to-day. You must be prepared with an excuse, an explanation. But suppose, when you arrive, suppose that (like the lady in the ballad) she greets you with 'a glance of cold surprise'—what then, my dear? Why, then, it's obvious, you can't allege the true explanation—can you? If she greets you with a glance of cold, surprise, you 'll have your answer, as it were, before the fact you 'll know that there's no manner of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then, a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... all means, I'll only have a Ballad made of't, sung to some lewd Tune, and the name of it shall be Justice Trap; it will sell rarely with your Worships name, and ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... late in life when the success of his poetry seems to be over. His early experiments in verse are queerly suggested and full of hazard. It needs a foreign language—German—to encourage him to rhyme. The fascination of Buerger's Lenore is a reflection from English ballad poetry; the reflected image brought out what had been less remarkable in the original. The German devices of terror and wonder are a temptation to Scott; they hang about his path with their monotonous and mechanical jugglery, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker

... a moment. The old woman told me the history of her life, sometimes smiling, sometimes drying her eyes. Perrine sang an old ballad with her fresh young voice. Henry told us what he knows of the great writers of the day, to whom he has to carry their proofs. At last we were obliged to separate, not without fresh thanks on the part of ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... persuaded. Pale, disenchanted, with her mind upon other things, in the flickering light of the candles which seemed to be burning incense, the air was so heavy with the odor of the hyacinths and lilacs in the garden, she began a Creole ballad very popular in Louisiana, which Madame Dobson herself had arranged for the voice ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... the Moral Matron, and the Young Person, with a love of larkiness and lilt, but a distrust of politics, pugilism, and deep potations, the following eclectic adaptation of this prodigiously popular ballad may ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various

... Felicia murmured, bending over her sewing. "But it wouldn't have been so happy if the defender of his kindred hadn't slaved on the high seas 'for to maintain his brither and me,' like Henry Martin in the ballad." ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... began in something of the same strain, but singing more of a song than a story ballad; and thus much I ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... Medsger, the naturalist of Lincoln High School, Jersey City, N. J., for reading with critical care those parts of the manuscript that deal with flowers and insects, as well as for the ballad of the Ox-eye, the story of its coming to America, and the photograph of ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... class finish their collegiate studies, and retire to make preparations for the ensuing Commencement,) after cheering the buildings, to encircle this tree, and, with hands joined, to sing their favorite ballad, "Auld Lang Syne." They then run and dance around it, and afterwards cheer their own class, the other classes, and many of the College professors. At parting, each takes a sprig or a flower from ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... twice within two steps of Croisset and I sent you some big kisses; always ready to return with you to the seaside or to talk with you at your house when you are free. If I had been alone, I should have bought an old guitar and should have sung a ballad under your mother's window. But I could not take ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... Another ballad relates the prowess of William of Cloudslee, who scorned to shoot at an ordinary target, and cutting a hazel rod from a tree, he shot at it from twenty score paces, ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... wind from me, are you?" "Yes, sir, I am." "Why do you do that?" "God bless you, sir! I owe everything I have in the world to you." "But I never saw you before." "No, sir; but I have seen you. I was a ballad-singer once. I used to go round with a half-starved baby in my arms for charity, and a draggled wife at my heels half the time, with her eyes blackened; and I went to hear you in Edinburgh, and you told ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... bars to open the performance. Strong-i'-th'-lung at once rose full of pitying confidence and craked for two and a half hours the song of the practically accepted suitor. It was a good song, and Thisbe seemed pleased, though I fancy she rather resented the note of assurance which he imparted to his ballad. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... and Andrew - in the proper Border diminutives, Hob, Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott - these ballad heroes, had much in common; in particular, their high sense of the family and the family honour; but they went diverse ways, and prospered and failed in different businesses. According to Kirstie, "they had a' bees in their bonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was, indeed, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... James McPherson published what he claimed to be translations from the poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal. Whether genuine or not, these poems indicated the tendency of the time. In Scotland, the old ballad spirit, which had continued to exist with a vigor but little abated by the influence of the artificial, mechanical school of poetry, was gathered up and intensified in the songs of him "who walked in glory and in joy, following his plow, along the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson



Words linked to "Ballad" :   ballad maker, vocal, folk ballad, edda, minstrelsy, balladeer



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