"Runic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they have already planted amid the Wisconsin forests? Soon, soon their tales of the origin of things, and the Providence which rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian, that the very oak trees will not know them apart,—will not know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid, or a ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... seeing that the national profession of heathenism ended before our literature began, unless the annals mentioned at the beginning of this chapter are exceptions. The facilities of writing must have been very limited if the only alphabet in use was the Runic. It is, perhaps, a little too rigid to assume that the use of the Roman alphabet is to be dated strictly from the Conversion. As the use of Runes did not then suddenly terminate, but gradually receded before the superior instrument, so perhaps it is most reasonable ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... we say? Perhaps that is not altogether fanciful; for 'spell' itself in the Saxon primarily imports a word; and we know that the runes or Runic letters were long employed in this way. For instance, Mr. Turner thus informs us ('History of the Anglo-Saxons,' vol. i, p. 169): 'It was the invariable policy of the Roman ecclesiastics to discourage ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... can be identified with certainty are some silver pieces which bear in Runic letters the name of the Mercian king AEthelred (675-704). There are others, however, of the same type and standard (about 21 grains) which may be attributed with probability to his father Penda (d. 655). But it is clear from the laws of AEthelberht that a regular silver coinage ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... incapable of possessing such stones; even Scotland, as I shall show, can boast two or three samples, such as the stone of the Keiss broch, a perfect circle, engraved with what looks like an attempt at a Runic inscription; and another in a kind of ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... this wicked world. Hence there is never a quaint Gothic decoration, floral or animal, but it must be symbolic of some great mystery. So the reticulated and geometrical tracery on the sculptured stones has been invested with mythic attributes, under such names as "the Runic Knot." It has been counted symbolical of a mysterious worship or creed, and has been associated with Druids and other respectable, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... his time, produced art forms totally different from those in vogue, and Walpole[1] said of these forms: "Gray has added to his poems three ancient odes from Norway and Wales ... they are not interesting, and do not, like his other poems, touch any passion.... Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories they could conceive—the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... Crucified seems shining through the features transfigured since He wore them, and the cross glitters in all the glory of Self-sacrifice on her broad breast. She wears a girdle blue as if woven from the depths of heaven, and as we gaze we see great opals with veiled hearts of fire form into quaint old runic letters upon it, and the God-word LOVE flashes down the secret of her inner life upon us. She is still young as when she woke in Paradise, and, seeing the End, is not yet weary with her long journey of Exile. Brighter gates than those of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... older than the year 1000, and he arrived at this conclusion by a study of the ornamentation, which he placed as late as the Carlovingian period, the style having been imported from France into England. Muller, however, though a good archaeologist, was not a runic scholar, and Professor George Stephens maintained* that not ornamentation merely, but a variety of other things must also be taken into consideration, and that these are often absolute and final, so that sometimes the object itself must date the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... precious or the most beautiful, connects itself with the chapel of Altenoetting—its association with historical names of all ages, from Charlemagne and Otto of Wittelsbach, whose monuments we find inscribed in Runic characters, to Pius the Sixth, whose dedication, "O clemens, O pia Virgo Oettingana!" is graven in a "fine Roman hand." It contains sepulchral vaults of the families of Wallenstein, Tilly, Montecuculi, besides those of divers electors, archbishops, and archdukes, whose titles speak far ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... reminds us of the conjurations of the Scandinavian prophetess—before she poured forth "the Runic rhyme," as related by Bartolinus; we wish the writer had mentioned whether they moved eastward or westward. The prophetess we have just alluded to, grasped her staff carved with Runic characters, all the time, and singing a low monotonous chant, she proceeded, contrary to the course of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... calls, in her sublime Old Erse or Irish, or it may be Punic;— (The antiquarians[424]—who can settle Time, Which settles all things, Roman, Greek, or Runic— Swear that Pat's language sprung from the same clime With Hannibal, and wears the Tyrian tunic Of Dido's alphabet—and this is rational As any other notion, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... common in Ireland as to have proved the favourite theme of her antiquaries; but of which the real use and meaning seems yet to be hidden in the mist of ages. This of Holm-Peel had been converted to the purpose of a watch-tower. There were, besides, Runic monuments, of which legends could not be deciphered; and later inscriptions to the memory of champions, of whom the names only were preserved from oblivion. But tradition and superstitious eld, still most busy where real ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... alphabet by heathen Teutonic tribes prior to their coming under the influence of Roman civilisation; are formed almost invariably of straight lines, and scarcely exist except in inscriptions dating back to A.D. 1; found chiefly in Scandinavia, also in Britain. There are three runic alphabets (much alike), the oldest being the Gothic of 24 letters or runes. They are now believed to have first come into use among the Goths in the 6th century B.C., and to be a modified form of the old Greek alphabet ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... poetic interpreter of bygone views of life, the philosopher, the historian, the aesthete and the critic, the master of languages, the mythologist and the myth poet, who was the first to include all these wonderful and beautiful products of primitive times in a single Ring, upon which he engraved the runic characters of his thoughts— what a wealth of knowledge must Wagner have accumulated and commanded, in order to have become all that! And yet this mass of material was just as powerless to impede the action of his will as a matter of detail—however ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the bautastean, or gravestone, of some early Saxon chief at one end) had been sacrilegiously placed an altar to Thor, as was apparent both from the shape, from a rude, half-obliterated, sculptured relief of the god, with his lifted hammer, and a few Runic letters. Amidst the temple of the Briton the Saxon had reared the shrine of his ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they foreknew. They had planted together, and together they had felled; together they had, with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree whence they stretched; ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... which, though spread over a broad area, are yet confined to but a few of the many spots available, and may very probably have passed by unexplored the fruitful fields. But, in the words of Professor Stephens, the apostle of Runic monuments, I claim for this work that it is "only a beginning, a breaking of the ice, a ground upon which others may build." My pages are but "feelers groping out things and ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... with that one that peered forth from the flood and said, 'This shall be Zealand!' I saw them become the dwelling-place of birds that are unknown to us, and then become the seat of wild chiefs of whom we know nothing, until with their axes they cut their Runic signs into a few of these stones, which then came into the calendar of time. But as for me, I had gone quite beyond all lapse of time, and had become a cipher and a nothing. Then three or four beautiful falling stars came down, which ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... I visited it, the path was rough and so obstructed with bushes that it was hard to comprehend how it had afforded passage for these various materials; it seemed more as if some strange architectural boulder had drifted from some Runic period and been stranded there. It was as apt a confessional as any of Wordsworth's nooks among the Trossachs; and when one thinks how many men are wearing out their souls in trying to conform to the traditional mythologies of others, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... slumbering half, Half-waked by matin beams—"The Gods must die." Three times that awful sound was in mine ear: Later I learned that voice was nothing new. My Son, the earliest record of our Faith, So sacred that on Runic stave or stone None dared to grave it, lore from age to age Transmitted by white lips of trembling seers, Spared not to wing, like arrow sped from God, That word to man, "Valhalla's Gods must die!" The Gods and Giant Race that ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! 5 While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline deligit; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, 10 To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; shed ink, spill ink, dip one's pen in ink. Adj. writing &c v.; written &c v.; in writing, in black and white; under one's hand. uncial, Runic, cuneiform, hieroglyphical^. Adv. currente calamo [Sp.]; pen in hand. Phr. audacter et sincere [Lat.]; le style est l'homme meme [Fr.]; nature's noblest gift - my gray goose quill [Byron]; scribendi recte sapere et principium ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... decipherer, as containing matters of the utmost secrecy, not fit to be trusted to the common character. If you were to write so to an antiquarian, he (knowing you to be a man of learning) would certainly try it by the Runic, Celtic, or Sclavonian alphabet, never suspecting it to be a modern character. And, if you were to send a 'poulet' to a fine woman, in such a hand, she would think that it really came from the 'poulailler'; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and went To contend in runic lore With the wise and crafty Jute. To Vafthrudni's royal hall Came the mighty ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... together; for the storm continued to rage with such increasing fury over the sea, that no sea voyage could be thought of, and the oldest man in Norway could not call to mind such an autumn. The priests examined all the runic books, the bards looked through their lays and tales, and yet they could find no record of the like. Biorn and Sintram braved the tempest; but during the few hours in which Folko and Gabrielle showed themselves, the father and son were always ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... instruments. Now the players were in their seats, waiting for the conductor; late-comers in the audience entered with an air of guilty haste. The chief curtain had risen, and the stage was hidden only by stuff curtains, bordered with a runic scroll. A delightful sense ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Russia to King Jaroslaf; he had been in the Emperor's Varanger guard at Constantinople—and, it was whispered, had slain a lion there with his bare hands; he had carved his name and his comrades' in Runic characters—if you go to Venice you may see them at this day—on the loins of the great marble lion, which stood in his time not in Venice but in Athens. And now, king of Norway and conqueror, for the time, of Denmark, why ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... in later times, when Christianity had nominally conquered Paganism, remained as the sole conservators of the ancient Teutonic magico-religious lore, and in the curtained recesses of dark-timbered halls whiled away the white hours of winter by the painful spelling out of runic characters and the practice of arts which they were destined to convey from the priests of Odin and Thor to the witches ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... place they came to was a vast Runic cavern, covered with dark inscriptions of a forgotten tongue; and sitting on a huge stone they found a dwarf with long yellow hair, his head leaning on his breast, and absorbed in meditation. "This is a spirit of a wise and powerful race," whispered Fayzenheim, "that ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conditions of lives long ago extinct, endless heaps of barbarous weapons, of garments of leather and of fish skin, Amurian, Siberian, Gothic, Mexican, and Peruvian; African and Red Indian masks, models of boats and canoes, sacred drums, Liberian idols, Runic calendars, fiddles made of human skulls, strange and barbaric ornaments, all producing together an amazing richness of colour—all things in which the man himself had taken but a passing interest, the result of his central study—life in all ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... retained, but special stress laid on the keeping of the Christian holiday, the man suffers punishment not so much for cutting firewood, as because he did it on a Sunday." [23] Manifestly "Jack and Jill went up the hill" is more than a Runic rhyme, and like many more of our popular strains might supply us with a most interesting and instructive entertainment; but we must hasten ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... boat grew to the sound of Annie's voice uttering not Runic Rhymes, but old Scotch ballads, or such few sweet English poems, of the new revelation, as floated across her way, and folded their butterfly wings in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald |
