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Tartan   Listen
noun
Tartan  n.  (Naut.) A small coasting vessel, used in the Mediterranean, having one mast carrying large leteen sail, and a bowsprit with staysail or jib.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tartan" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mars, acute fevers and tartan agues, continual and intermitting fevers, imposthumes, erisepelas, carbuncles, fistulas, dysentery, and similar hot ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... his youth never forsook him. In his early voyage into Greece, not only the shapes of the mountains, but the kilts and hardy forms of the Albanese,—all, as he says, "carried him back to Morven;" and, in his last fatal expedition, the dress which he himself chiefly wore at Cephalonia was a tartan jacket. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... genius. Though the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island, perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin—a singular peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the tartan came from the still-despised Highlands, and these were Lowland ladies ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... my horse to grass,' replied George, giving a peculiar whistle, which brought to his side a shock-headed, barefooted lad, in a shepherd's tartan and little else, but with limbs as active as a wild deer, and ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... set of people these Lowlanders are!" exclaimed the senior lady—"so different from the brave and noble mountaineers. My brother, the chieftain, is lucky in having such a splendid set of retainers, and the tartan ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... began making a sandwich of the bread and cheese, which she wrapped up in a clean handkerchief. She would not take the napkin, because that belonged to Grandma. Hanging up in the wardrobe was a long cloak of the MacDonald hunting tartan, which looked as if it had been fashioned out of a man's plaid. On each side was a pocket; and into one of these Barrie slipped her little package. Already made up and lying on the floor of the wardrobe was another parcel, very much bigger, rolled in ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... south that was wise, A periwig'd lord of London,[2] Called on the clans to rise. And the riders rode, and the summons Came to the western shore, To the land of the sea and the heather, To Appin and Mamore. It called on all to gather From every scrog and scaur, That loved their fathers' tartan And the ancient game of war. And down the watery valley And up the windy hill, Once more, as in the olden, The pipes were sounding shrill; Again in Highland sunshine The naked steel was bright; And the lads, once more in tartan, Went forth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of Parliament. More extensive measures of repression were needful in the Highlands. The feudal tenures were abolished. The hereditary jurisdictions of the chiefs were bought up and transferred to the Crown. The tartan, or garb of the Highlanders, was forbidden by law. These measures, and a general Act of Indemnity which followed them, proved effective for their purpose. The dread of the clansmen passed away, and the sheriff's writ soon ran through the Highlands with as little ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... the trim gravel, and by the neat shrubberies, up the steps to the hall-door, which old John opened, Mr. Wagg noted everything that he saw; the barometer and the letter-bag, the umbrellas and the ladies' clogs, Pen's hats and tartan wrapper, and old John opening the drawing-room door, to introduce the new-comers. Such minutiae attracted Wagg instinctively; he seized them ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Iris, whom mortals know as Trotting Nelly in her tartan cloak, will bring us the stranger's answer to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... also in the royal carriage, and shared the attentions of the people. Next to her majesty and her royal consort, the Prince of Wales was the object of interest, as, led by his royal father, and wrapped in a tartan cloak, he walked down to the bridge. The royal party then entered a carriage in waiting on the south shore, and drove slowly off to the lodge. The Duchess of Norfolk and Lady Jocelyn followed; and in a third carriage came the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Grey. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... their tools upon their arm. But the most part are of a different order—skulking jail-birds; unkempt, barefoot children; big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of uniform of striped flannel petticoat and short tartan shawl: among these, a few supervising constables and a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and broken men from higher ranks in society, with some mark of better days upon them, like a brand. In a place no larger than Edinburgh, and where the traffic is mostly centred in five or six chief ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and looked up in the air as they walked along. In those days Marjolin wore a big scarlet waistcoat which hung down to his knees; it had belonged to the defunct Monsieur Chantemesse, who had been a cab-driver. Cadine for her part wore a white and blue check gown, made out of an old tartan of Madame Chantemesse's. All the canaries in the garrets of the Latin Quarter knew them; and, as they passed along, repeating their cry, each echoing the other's voice, every ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... delight at finding himself in such good quarters. Robert went to a forsaken press in the room, and brought out an ancient cloak of tartan, of the same form as what is now called an Inverness cape, a blue dress-coat, with plain gilt buttons, which shone even now in the all but darkness, and several other garments, amongst them a kilt, and heaped them over Shargar as he lay on the mattress. He then handed ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... well-proportioned, very tanned and ruddy. He had a quick lively eye and a firm good-humoured mouth. In brief, he was the very picture of a frank open-hearted Highland gentleman, and in the gay Macleod tartan looked as gallant a figure of a soldier as one would wish to see. He greeted me with charming friendliness and expressed himself as deeply gratified for my care of his sister, offering again and again to put himself at my service in any ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... repaired to Harwich, where he embarked for Holland, from whence he proceeded to Brussels, where he procured a passport from the French king, by virtue of which he travelled to Marseilles, and there took a tartan for Genoa. The first letter Sir Everhard received from him was dated at Florence. Meanwhile the surgeon's prognostic was not altogether verified. Mr. Darnel did not die immediately of his wounds, but he lingered a long time, as it were ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... Mother Fetu, but Mother Fetu transformed, magnificent in a clean white cap, a new gown, and tartan shawl wrapped round her shoulders. Her voice, however, still retained its ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... bishop of the persecuted Episcopalian Church in Scotland. Mr. Forbes collected his information very carefully, closely comparing the narratives of the various actors in the story. Into the boards of his volumes are fastened a scrap of the Prince's tartan waistcoat, a rag from his sprigged calico dress, a bit of his brogues—a twopenny treasure that has been wept and prayed over by the faithful. Nobody, in a book for children, would have the heart to tell the tale of the Prince's later years, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... respected, if we always did what was right. It was a repetition of Helen Macgregor, in her reply to Osbaldistone in which she threatened to have her prisoners "chopped into as many pieces as there are checks in the tartan." But the reason for the outburst was different. It was not because the occupation suggested was peaceful labor, for we were taught that idleness was disgraceful; but because the suggested occupation was somewhat vagrant ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... had the pleasure of dining with the Sultan of Egypt at his Palace near Alexandria, his tartan slacks attracting considerable notice. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... the yearning strong upon her, put on her bonnet and shawl—that is to say, the bundle of dirty silk, pasteboard, and flowers which represented the one, and the soiled tartan rag that ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog—a picturesque and pretty group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I know them, and I know the dog's ribs also, which are nearly as bare as the dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old tartan jacket through, so sharp ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... and wise, entirely free from the soft look which we see on many of the faces to-day. Historical examples of the show Collie have also been seen in Champions Christopher, Anfield Model, Sappho of Tytton, Parbold Piccolo, and Woodmanstern Tartan. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... transparent still; and over her topknot she wore a rusty black cap that enclosed the keen monkeyish face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation which even she did not care should be seen. She wore a black stuff apron full of fine tones from fruit-stains and fire-scorchings; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... contained in milk is so trifling, that it can hardly answer that purpose. I have heard of only one instance of its being used for the production of a spirituous liquor, and this is by the Tartan Arabs; their abundance of horses, as well as their scarcity of fruits, has introduced the fermentation of mares' milk, by which they produce a liquor called koumiss. Whey is likewise susceptible of being acidified by combining with oxygen from the atmosphere. It then produces ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... in the military fashion of former days, and the right side of his head a little turned up, the better to catch the sound of the clergyman's voice, were all marks of his profession and infirmities. Beside him sat his sister Janet, a little neat old woman, with a Highland curch and tartan plaid, watching the very looks of her brother, to her the greatest man upon earth, and actively looking out for him, in his silver-clasped Bible, the texts which the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... mottled legs and a tartan costume, who was frisking about between his grandpapa's legs, who heartily wished ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... words, put me grandly in the lead, come gasping at a respectful distance behind, modelling his behavior (as he thought) after that of some flunky of nobility he had once clapped eyes on; and as we thus proceeded up the hill—a dandy in tartan kilt and velvet and a gray ape in slops—he would have a quick word of wrath for any passenger that might chance to jostle me. 'Twas a conspicuous progress, craftily designed, as, long afterwards, I learned; we were not long landed, you may be sure, before the town was ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr. Canning; "we have no ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... embarrassment by the impatient orphan and dragged off to witness the triumph of Isaac and Rebekah. When the geese had been sufficiently admired, and even poor Keturah's small achievement duly noted, the doctor escaped, and making a wide detour of the tartan shawls, found his way to the grand-stand. Here, seated on the dry pine-needles, under a spreading tree, was a group of three: Malcolm Cameron, with his sister and the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... middle-class household, the servants wear what they choose on all occasions. In most places they are as fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where everything else is methodical and well arranged, you will find the dishes plumped on the table by a young woman wearing a tartan blouse decidedly decolletee, and ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I have dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all luxurious; while the girl who waited on us wore a red and white checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... her, and she showed me to the best spare room, with oleographs of Highland scenery on the walls, and coloured Landseer prints, and tartan curtains, and everything made of ormolu that can be made of ormolu. In about twenty minutes the girl returned with tea and poached eggs and toast, and jam and marmalade. So I dressed for the lecture, which was to begin at eight—just when people ought to be ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... a pleasant-faced young woman of about thirty, who greeted Cockerell—tartan is always popular with French ladies—with a beaming smile, but shook her head regretfully upon seeing the billet de logement in his hand. The inevitable duet with Alphonso followed. Presently Alphonso turned to ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... was to be expected, was the deck member, with her curiously-wrought chair and her furs and her portable bookcase; while Miss Skeat, who looked tall and finny, and sported a labyrinthine tartan, was generally to be seen entangled in the weather-shrouds near by. As for the Duke's sister, Lady Victoria, she was plain, but healthy, and made regular circuits of the steamer, stopping every now and then to watch the green swirl of the foam by the side, and to take long draughts of salt ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... though I've twenty years to go, I see myself quite plain, A wrinkling, twinkling, rosy-cheeked, benevolent old chap; I think I'll wear a tartan shawl and lean upon a cane. I hope that I'll have silver hair beneath a velvet cap. I see my little grandchildren a-romping round my knee; So gay the scene, I almost wish 'twould hasten to arrive. Let others sing of Youth and Spring, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... bear, the fox, the horse, &c.; (2) dances to represent agriculture and the vintage performed with wine-skins; (3) the simple arts, such as weaving, where the dancers, each holding a long coloured ribbon, dance round a pole on which is gradually formed a pattern like a Scotch tartan; (4) war-dances, as the sword-dance and others; (5) religious dances in procession before the Host and before the altar; (6) ceremonial dances in which both sexes take part at the beginning and end of a festival, and to welcome distinguished people. How large a part these played ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... four different sorts of studs, and a butterfly brooch, made of various coloured glasses, sat in the centre. His cravat was of a yellow silk with a flowered border, confining gills sharp and pointed that looked up his nostrils; his double-breasted waistcoat was of red and yellow tartan with blue glass post-boy buttons; and his trousers, which were very wide and cut out over the foot of rusty-black chamois-leather opera-boots, were of a broad blue stripe upon a white ground. A curly, bushy, sandy-coloured wig protruded from the sides of his ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... looking more radiantly beautiful than ever I had seen her, in a sweet dress of Stuart tartan. I had to make my apologies, which were most sincerely penitent ones, for not being in time to claim my privilege of dancing the first quadrille with her. She smiled at my evident earnestness, and good-humouredly added, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... with fillibeg and tartan-skirted knee; There pale was "Cleveland," as he slept by Stromness' howling sea; With faltering step crept "Trapbois" by, with drooping palsied head, More like a charnel truant stray'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... score of them were lying face downwards between what had been the first houses of the village, and he recognised the regiment by the green-and-yellow tartan. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... your palate. The Shaw is one of the most esteemed of the early potatoes for field culture; and the Kidney and Bread-fruit are also good sorts. The Lancashire Pink is also a good potato, and is much cultivated in the neighbourhood of Liverpool. As late or long-keeping potatoes, the Tartan or Red-apple stands very high ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at first affected him, 'you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off: if not,' she added, with a sobbing sigh, 'it does not ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... to an old woman dressed in tartan stuff, and who looked like a porter's wife in her Sunday best, "so you are all very happy? Your daughter ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... an hour on the fore-castle; and finding all efforts to extinguish the flames unavailing, he jumped from the jib-boom, and swam to an American boat approaching the ship, by which he was picked up and put into a Tartan then in the charge of Lieut. Stewart, who had come off to the assistance of ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... gold tassel at the crown; nankeen gaiters, and a pair of blue spectacles, completed his costume, which was any thing but becoming. This was his general dress of a morning for riding, but I have seen it changed for a green tartan plaid jacket. He did not ride well, which surprised us, as, from the frequent allusions to horsemanship in his works, we expected to find him almost a Nimrod, It was evident that he had pretensions on this point, though he certainly was what I should call a timid ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various

... day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge. It was spring indeed—bluebirds in the air, and all the sky ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... animal's tooth resembles a gun-shot wound; it is generally followed by a great deal of sloughing and discharge, and pains are felt in the part periodically ever afterward. I had on a tartan jacket on the occasion, and I believe that it wiped off all the virus from the teeth that pierced the flesh, for my two companions in this affray have both suffered from the peculiar pains, while I have escaped with only the inconvenience of a false joint in my ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... of dreadful uncertainty, Phil was reminded of what he had read about some Highland chief leading his tartan clan to battle, a Rob Roy McGregor, it ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... astonish people with it when they have ceased to believe in its existence. If her complexion had not been netted all over with a lacework of infinitesimal wrinkles, she would have looked like a little girl dressed up for an old lady. She had a ribbon of the MacGregor tartan on her cap, and an uncompromising cairngorm fastened her fichu of valuable point lace. A figure more out of place than hers in an ancient Arab palace of Algiers it would be impossible to conceive; yet it was a pleasant figure ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... latter was struck with the peculiar grace and dignity of the Chieftain's figure, Above the middle size, and finely proportioned, the Highland dress, which he wore in its simplest mode, set off his person to great advantage. He wore the trews, or close trousers, made of tartan, chequed scarlet and white; in other particulars, his dress strictly resembled Evan's, excepting that he had no weapon save a dirk, very richly mounted with silver. His page, as we have said, carried ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... had his head bound about with bandages till it looked like a great melon, and his sleeve dangled empty from his great-coat. Others of the Seaforths, and mere boys of the Highland Territorials, wore khaki shirts over their tartan, and these were bullet-torn and hanging in great rents. And some boys still wore their caps with the wee dambrod pattern jauntily, and some had no caps to wear, and some were all daubed about with ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... the picture of a little dandy. The other lad had a broad Scotch bonnet on, and no wig; beautiful silky yellow locks fell about his shoulders. He had laid his sword on the grass. He was dressed in tartan, which Ricardo had never seen before; and he wore a kilt, which was also new to Ricardo, who wondered at his bare legs—for he was wearing shoes with no stockings. In his hand he held a curious club, with a long, slim ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... completed, busily employed on some plans which he had taken home from Mr Todd's office, when he was aroused by a knock at the door. On opening it he saw standing before him a tall slight young man, whom he knew by his bonnet and tartan coat to be Scotch, "Does one Donald Morrison live here?" asked the stranger, gazing eagerly at his face. The moment he spoke Donald knew the voice; it was David's, and the ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston

... often, as a cloud obscured for an instant the moon's light, and threw a transitory shade across the path, did her heart bound with the thought that her watching was at an end! It was he whom she had seen start from the abrupt rock! They were the folds of his tartan that darkened the white cliff! But the moon again rolled through her train of clouds and threw her light around. Where then was her Wallace? Alas! it was only a shadow she had seen! the hill was still lonely, and he ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... said McTurk, "he's a Philistine, a basket-hanger. He wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says that any man who wears a tartan tie will, without ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... nothing half so picturesque as the tartan. Her clothes were dingy and dust-stained. But they could not eclipse the divine, dusky youth of her. She was slender, as a panther is, and her movements had more than a suggestion of the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... is a little woman of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. Dr. Johnson was rather quiescent, and went early to bed. I slept in the same room with him. Each had a neat bed with tartan curtains. Dr. Johnson's bed was the very bed in which the grandson of the unfortunate King James II. lay on one of the nights after the failure of his rash attempt ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... the field to the habited place, and not from the place of habitation to the desert; for Shanet, her nainsell, kent a glen where there were men as weel as there may be in Croftangry, and if there werena altogether sae mony of them, they were as good men in their tartan as the others in their broadcloth. And there were houses, too; and if they were not biggit with stane and lime, and lofted like the houses at Croftangry, yet they served the purpose of them that lived there, and mony a braw bonnet, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... charming picture of him in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" as the patriotic Scotchman, whose heart must "be cold as death can make it when it does not warm to the tartan"—the kind and generous protector of Jeanie Deans. Argyll was a man of many gifts. He was a soldier, a statesman, and an orator. He had charged at Ramilies and Oudenarde, had rallied a shrinking column at Malplaquet, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... could not help feeling struck at the evidence of the desperate battle that so lately had raged there. The whole surface of the hill was one mass of dead and dying, the bearskin of the French grenadier lying side by side with the tartan of the Highlander. Deep furrows in the soil showed the track of the furious cannonade, and the terrible evidences of a bayonet charge were written in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the shape and slenderness of which at once pronounced her a psychic. She greeted me with all the stately courtesy of the Old School; my portmanteau was taken upstairs by a solemn-eyed lad in the Macdonald tartan; and the tea bell rang me down to a most appetising repast of strawberries and cream, scones, and delicious buttered toast. I fell in love with my hostess—it would be sheer sacrilege to designate such a divine creature by the vulgar term of "landlady"—at ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... Scotch hewer. On hearing that it had been remarked among a party of Edinburgh masons that, though regarded as the first of Glasgow stone-cutters, he would find in the eastern capital at least his equals, he attired himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed coat of tartan, and, looking to the life the untamed, untaught, conceited little Celt, he presented himself on Monday morning, armed with a letter of introduction from a Glasgow builder, before the foreman of an Edinburgh squad of ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... us. All men admire Margot," said Ron to himself, noting with an artist's appreciation the picture made by the graceful figure of the girl, with her vivid, healthful colouring, the little cap set jauntily on her chestnut locks, the breeze showing glimpses of the bright tartan lining ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... tartan and the eagle plume, The gathering, and the glories of the clan, Let others sing, we will not so presume, We bring our humble tribute ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... Grizel, set off excitedly for the town, the country folk were already swarming in. The Monypenny road was thick with them, braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan waistcoats, scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the strutting wearers in two minds—whether to take off the scarf to display the shirt, or hide the shirt and trust to the scarf. Came lassies, too, in wincey bodices they were like to burst through, and they were ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... the present; accordingly I was quickly attired in kilt, sporran, and Glengarry bonnet, and to the utter amazement of the crowd, the ragged-looking object that had arrived in Kisoona now issued from the obscure hut, with plaid and kilt of Athole tartan. A general shout of exclamation arose from the assembled crowd; and taking my seat upon an angarep, I was immediately shouldered by a number of men, and attended by ten of my people as escort, I was carried towards the camp ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... off her hat, and, heedless of the ribbon upon it, filled it with water again and again and drenched the swollen leg. It was so great a relief to him that he hardly noticed that she stood ankle-deep in the river to do it. She wore a little red tartan shawl upon her shoulders, and she dipped this also in the river, binding it round and round the ankle, and tying it tight with her ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... Highland men, who for the most part speak nothing but Irish; and in former time were those people which were called the Red-shanks.[22] Their habit is shoes with but one sole apiece; stockings (which they call short hose) made of a warm stuff of divers colours, which they call tartan: as for breeches, many of them, nor their forefathers never wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuff that their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreaths of hay or straw, with a plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor

... window. A tall man in light clothes was coming to the house—a tall man, with a clear-cut, sunburnt face, and a lean, curved nose that gave him the air of a bird of prey. By his side was a lady with sweet, delicate features, dressed in a tartan travelling costume. There was a knock at the door. Josephine went down very slowly, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... the Memory of a late Author (Churchill) The Battle of the Pigmies and Cranes The Hares. A Fable The Wolf and Shepherds. A Fable Song, in imitation of Shakspeare's "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" To Lady Charlotte Gordon, dressed in a Tartan Scotch Bonnet, with Plumes, &c Epitaph: being part of an Inscription designed for a Monument erected by a Gentleman to the Memory of his Lady Epitaph on Two Young Men of the name of Leitch, who ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... tied with string, revealing a pair of skinny arms. Round his middle hung what was meant to be a kilt—a kilt of home manufacture, which may once have been a tablecloth, for its bold pattern suggested no known clan tartan. He had a massive belt, in which was stuck a broken gully-knife, and round his neck was knotted the remnant of what had once been a silk bandanna. His legs and feet were bare, blue, scratched, and very dirty, and this toes had the prehensile look common to monkeys ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... word 'exquisite.' 'Exquisite,' pinned on a piece of broad tartan ribbon, appeared to Constance and Mr. Povey as the finality of appropriateness. A climax worthy to close the year! Mr. Povey had cut the card and sketched the word and figures in pencil, and Constance was doing her executive portion of the undertaking. They were very happy, very absorbed, in this ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... expression relaxes, as the lines about the mouth soften, and the brown eyes grow kindly, one begins to think that Bell must have been once quite handsome. She is always scrupulously clean whenever I chance to visit her, and is usually arrayed in a white "mutch" cap, spotless apron, and small tartan shawl over her shoulders. Willy and she have reared up a large family, all of them now settled in the world and most of them married. They are most proud of their youngest, Margaret, who is a lay sister in a town convent. Though her husband is reckoned a traveler, Bell can lay no claim to ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... lords. Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of a motley band of soldiery who came at her call—half-clad, uncouth, and savage—she rode into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground, sharing the camp food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierce as any eagle. Her spirit ran like fire through the veins of those who followed her. She crushed the insurrection, scattered its leaders, and returned in triumph ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... Washerwomen, Ghosts, Clowns and God-knows-what, armed with jezails, umbrellas, brooms, catapults, pikes, brickbats, kukeries,[52] pokers, clubs, axes, horse-pistols, bottles, dead fowls, polo-sticks, assegais and bombs. They were commanded by a Highlander in a bum-bee tartan kilt, top-hat and one sock, with a red nose a foot long, riding on a rocking horse and brandishing a dem great cucumber and a tea-tray made into a shield. There was a thundering great drain-pipe mounted on a bullock-cart and a naked man, painted blue, in a cocked-hat, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... Captain Mitchell and Lieutenant Davidson went in the pinnace, furnished with all necessaries, in order to make a discovery of a passage on the southern side of the straits, through which a French tartan is said to have gone into the South Sea in May, 1713, and to examine if there were any anchorage beyond Cape Quad. The pinnace returned on the 29th, having found the passage, but so narrow that it was deemed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... it has been since, and mine was out of all correctness. I was made to sport an enormous plume of black ostrich-feathers, such as never was worn by any Highland chief, and had a huge tiger-skin sporran to dangle like an apron before innumerable yards of plaid petticoat. The tartan cloak was outrageously hot and voluminous; it was the dog-days, and all these things I was condemned to wear in the midst of a crowd of a ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his eyes for years was not at that moment sufficient. He had dressed himself in his full chieftain's suit to meet them. The eagle's feather in his Glengary gave to his great stature the last grace. The tartan and philibeg, the garters at his knee, the silver buckles at his shoulder, belt, and shoon, the jewelled mull and dirk, had all to these poor fellows in this last hour a proud and sad significance. As he stood on the steps to welcome them, the wind ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... date, was a vixen of forty years, of royal blood, like her colleagues. She wore a bright tartan, a straw petticoat embroidered with pearls, and necklaces wherever she could put them. Her hair was dressed so as to make an enormous framework on her little head. She was, in ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... this," replied Alec. "I have been watching him, and I have noticed that the only two things he seems to have any love for are his red-beaded leggings and his brilliant red neckerchief. So I have been thinking that if I offer him that red tartan shirt of mine it will so please him that it will break through his reserve, and will get ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... feast to which we had been bidden, and we had done our best to honor the occasion. We had prepared a large bouquet tied with the Maclean tartan (Lady Baird is a Maclean), and had printed in gold letters on one of the ribbons, "Another for Hector," the battle-cry of the clan. We each wore a sprig of holly, because it is the badge of the family, while I added a girdle and shoulder-knot of tartan velvet to ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... to be blessed with a treat, A balleting one if the Scotch have their nacks, For the papers put forth he's at Perthshire to meet, Dressed in tartan and bonnet, a band of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... and presence of Charles Stuart were not ill suited to his lofty pretensions. He was in the prime of youth, tall and handsome, of a fair complexion; he had a light coloured periwig with his own hair combed over the front: he wore the Highland dress, that is a tartan short coat without the plaid, a blue bonnet on his head, and on his breast the star of the order of St. Andrew. Charles stood some time in the park to show himself to the people; and then, though he was very near the palace, ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson

... appointed."] This was the news from the land of the Ukkai. Ashur-risua has sent, saying, "News from Armenia. What I sent before, that is so. A great slaughter took place among them. Now his land is quiet. His nobles are dead. He has come into his own land. Kakkadanu, his tartan, is taken, and the King of Armenia is in the land of Uazaun." This is the news from Ashur-risua. Nabu-li', the commander of Halsu, has sent to me, saying, "Concerning the garrisons of the fortresses which are on the border, I sent to them for news of the King of Armenia. They ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... though she, smitten by the gallant appearance of her nephews, seemed inclined rather to take the opposite side. My uncle, on the other hand, said nothing either for or against the display. He had been a keen Highlander in his younger days; and when the inhibition against wearing tartan and the philabeg had been virtually removed, in consideration of the achievements of the "hardy and dauntless men" who, according to Chatham, conquered for England "in every quarter of the globe," he had celebrated the event in a merrymaking, at which the dance was kept up from night ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... with the muslin dressing-gown, and the satin shoes; in the hall, she might find her hat, her little sabots which she wore in the garden, and the large tartan cloak for driving in wet weather. She half-opened her door with infinite precautions. Everything slept in the house; she crept along the corridor, she ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy

... mercantile brilliancy best described perhaps as stylish; nor could anything be said against him, as a rule, but that he looked a trifle too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman. Today he had fallen altogether from these heights. He wore a flannel shirt of washed-out shepherd's tartan, and a suit of reddish tweeds, of the colour known to tailors as 'heather mixture'; his neckcloth was black, and tied loosely in a sailor's knot; a rusty ulster partly concealed these advantages; and his feet were shod with rough ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... the pines; the riders were gathered along the hill-side, bending far out in their saddles to scan the valley below. McCraw, his white face bound with a bloody rag, drew his straight claymore and wound the tattered tartan around his wrist, motioning Billy Bones ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... figure. Once he presided at a Valentine dinner given by some Players to David Munro. He had never presided at a dinner before, he said, and he did it in his own way, which certainly was a taking one, suitable to that carefree company and occasion—a real Scotch occasion, with the Munro tartan everywhere, the table banked with heather, and a wild piper marching up and down in the anteroom, blowing savage airs in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... which, as it happened, the weather made precarious, began to let me go, without them, along the 'Meseglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan scandalised Francoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was wholly unsatisfactory, since we had not entertained the neighbours ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... big for his clothes, which were stretched on him tightly, his short trousers showing the tops of his patched boots, which were several sizes too large for him, and gave him a very ungraceful appearance. He had not even a collar, only an old tartan scarf knotted round his neck, and from the shrunk sleeves of the old jacket his hands, red and bony, appeared abnormally large. But when she looked at his face, at the eyes which looked out from the tangle of his hair, she forgot all ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... bagpipe, or saw ye the banners That floated sae light o'er the fields o' Kildairlie; Saw ye the broadswords, the shields and the tartan hose, Heard ye the muster-roll sworn to Prince Charlie? Saw ye brave Appin, wi' bonnet and belted plaid, Or saw ye the Lords o' Seaforth and Airlie; Saw ye the Glengarry, M'Leod, and Clandonachil, Plant the white rose in their ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... called in Scotland. She wore a striped woolen petticoat, short enough to show her thick worsted stockings and stout little shoes that were tied close round her ankles; a striped pink-and-white cotton short-gown, as it is called, with a small tartan shawl pinned round her neck. This was her dress—the dress common to female farm-servants, which to neatness joins fitness: it is not in the way, and it gives all the muscles free room for exercise; but it is rapidly becoming a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... in the part of the Englishman. He had kept on purpose an immense chimney-pot hat and a tartan plaid which he used to perfection, and his "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" were of such ludicrous prolongation, and his gait so stiff, and his comical blunders delivered with so much of haughty assurance, that he "brought down ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... his philibeg an' tartan plaid, An' gude claymore down by his side, The ladies' hearts he did trepan, My gallant braw ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... himself that night, as he confronted his brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... "It is among the earliest of my recollections," wrote he in 1824, "that I lay in bed one morning during the grievous famine in Britain in 1800-1, while my poor mother took from our large kist the handsome plaid of the tartan of our clan, which in her early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof to make our scanty breakfast; and of another time during the same famine when she left me at home crying from hunger, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... Mr. Cameron's Poolewe Choir, heard in Gairloch school-house. That energetic and complaisant conductor brought his clear-throated minstrels over to the meeting in a brake. It was a luxury to see them with their white robes and tartan sashes, while in front of them stood their genial leader clad in kilts. The Gaelic Mod, which is now a regular institution in the land, is bound to do splendid service towards keeping alive the fine old music of the North. The Poolewe Choir, I am happy ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... Goddess found in the Temple Repositories. In some cases—e.g., that of the votaress of the Snake Goddess—the skirt, below a small panier or apron, is composed of different coloured materials combined in a chequer pattern distantly resembling tartan. A fresco from Hagia Triada represents a curious and elaborate form of dress, consisting apparently of wide trousers of blue material dotted with red crosses on a light ground, and most wonderfully frilled and vandyked. Diaphanous material was sometimes used for part of the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... you know what I think of these Scotch inmates, whom I have but too much reason to believe my father means to quarter in his house as a brace of honourable spies; a sort of female Rozencrantz and reverend Guildenstern, one in tartan petticoats, the other in a cassock. What a contrast to the society I would willingly have secured to myself! I shall write instantly on my arriving at our new place of abode, and acquaint my dearest Matilda ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... music of the evening, to Scottish hearts and ears, has begun. It is the fine pipe band of the 42nd Royal Highlanders from Montreal, khaki clad, kilts and bonnets, and blowing proudly and defiantly their "Wha saw the Forty-twa." Again a pause and from the other side of the hill gay with tartan and blue bonnets, their great blooming drones gorgeous with flowing streamers and silver mountings, in march the 43rd Camerons. "Man, would Alex Macdonald be proud of his pipes to-day," says a Winnipeg Highlander for these same pipes are Alex's gift to the 43rd, and harkening to ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... the same little table with the same books of devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the quarter, with steam-trams—diminished to toy trains—puffing past to the suburbs. But as Madame ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... visit from Dona Maria de Jesus, the young woman who has lately distinguished herself in the war of the Reconcave. Her dress is that of a soldier of one of the Emperor's battalions, with the addition of a tartan kilt, which she told me she had adopted from a picture representing a highlander, as the most feminine military dress. What would the Gordons and MacDonalds say to this? The "garb of old Gaul," chosen as ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... covering showered from heaven upon his head. Leave his broadsword as we found it, rent and broken with the blow, That, before he died, avenged him on the foremost of the foe. Leave the blood upon the bosom—wash not off that sacred stain; Let it stiffen on the tartan, let his wounds unclosed remain, Till the day when he shall show them at the throne of God on high, When the murderer and the murdered meet before their Judge's eye. Nay—ye should not weep, my children! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... figure of Ellwood for its presiding master and who believed in and practiced the command of the Holy Writ: "Spare the rod and spoil the child," was to me in those years of tenderness, a dismal contemplation. But Sundays had a brighter hue when Mother would dress me in full Highland suit of tartan, and adorn my cap with an eagle feather, surmounted with a brooch of the design of an arm with a dagger, bearing the motto, "We fear nae fae." With my small claymore and buckled shoes and plaid, how proudly I would walk up to the barracks at Castle Gate, where the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... pink, and pale green—an idea which I candidly confess was inspired by the spectacle of a Neapolitan ice. If you think that this is merely an idle whim, just imagine endeavouring to sleep in pyjamas patterned like an Axminster carpet or a Scotch tartan. No wonder Macbeth "murdered sleep" if he was arrayed in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various

... still in sight, making her way up the steep pitch of the main street, and the detective followed her discreetly, loitering before shop windows, as if fascinated by the display of Scottish homespuns, or samples of Royal Stewart tartan, and taking an extraordinary interest in fishing-tackle ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... To-day, as an eye-witness of the accomplished fact, I was impressed, sharply enough, and I went nearer to the crescent, drawn by a sort of dreadful fascination. I found that the cottages all had names. One cottage was Mermaid's Rock; another (which had fluttering window-curtains of Stuart tartan), Spray o' the Sea; another, The Nest; another, Brinynook; and yet another had been named, with less fitness, but in an ampler and to me more interesting spirit, Petworth. I looked from them to the not-yet-converted railway-car. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... tall, pock-pitted lad, very black hair, and wore a blue coat and metal buttons, an old red vest, and breeches of the same colour." A second witness testified to having seen him wearing "a blue coat with silver buttons, a red waistcoat, black shag breeches, tartan hose, and a feathered hat, with a big coat, dun coloured," a costume referred to by one of the counsel as ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... through the islands in the region which was now exciting Jack's expectations. Soon after they were passing great heavy-looking junks with their Celestial crews, or light Malay prahus with their swarthy, coffee-coloured sailors in tartan skirts, in whose folds at the waist the formidable wavy dagger known as a kris was worn, the handle, like the butt of a pistol in form, carefully covered by the silk or cotton ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... their white spats flashing in time with their step, their kilts swaying free over their tartan hose and naked knees, their white tunics gleaming through the dusk of the evening, and over all the tossing plumes of their great feather bonnets nodding rhythmically with their ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... regiments marched through the Place Royale and the Parc, with their bagpipes playing before them, while the bright beams of the rising sun shone full on their polished muskets and on the dark waving plumes of their tartan bonnets. Alas! we little thought that even before the fall of night these brave men whom we now gazed at with so much interest and admiration would be laid low." (Mrs Eaton's Waterloo ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey

... in dazzling white caps astonishingly gauffered; the lawyer in decent black, with his white cambric tie; the fat and greasy citizen with fat and greasy wife and prim, pig-tailed little daughter clad in an exiguous cotton frock of loud and unauthentic tartan, and showing a quarter of an inch of sock above high yellow boots; the superb pair of gendarmes with their cocked hats, wooden epaulettes and swords; the white-aproned waiters standing by cafe tables—all these types are distinct, picked out pleasurably by the eye; they give a cheery sense ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... I hadn't. The tie in question was an attempt to hybridise the respective colour-schemes of a tartan plaid and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... the pockets of his polo coat. To his relief he found a small package in one of them, pulled it out. It was wrapped with the city jeweler's tartan paper and he handed it to his mother. She said, "Thanks—I've missed it ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin

... evening party, and when you compare that radiant vision, in her robes of misty texture, and with hair arranged in folds the most complicated, wreathed, and satin-shoed, with the homely figure that took a walk with you that afternoon, russet-gowned, tartan-plaided, and shod with serviceable boots for tramping through country mud. One does not think of loveliness in the case of men, because they have not got any; but their aspect, such as it is, is mainly made by their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... wore a blue dress-coat, trimmed with lace, and bearing a Government gilt button. In his hand he carried a cocked hat. At the Communion on Sunday (he sat on Dr. Wilson's right hand, who sat on my right) he wore a blue surtout, with Government gilt buttons, and shepherd-tartan trousers; and he had a gold band round his cap[67]. I spent two hours In his society last evening at Dr. Wilson's. He was not very complimentary to Burton. He is to ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... thronged precincts of the College, might be observed many a glistening form: airy Greek or sumptuous Ottoman, heroes of the Holy Sepulchre, Spanish Hidalgos who had fought at Pavia, Highland Chiefs who had charged at Culloden, gay in the tartan of Prince Charlie. The Long Walk was full of busy groups in scarlet coats or fanciful uniforms; some in earnest conversation, some criticising the arriving guests; others encircling some magnificent hero, who astounded them with his slashed doublet ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... still raining; it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house will leak; how well I know that! Here the showers only patter on the iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout my house or bring my heart into my mouth.—The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to Princess Galitzin, where were a whole covey of Princesses of Russia arrayed in tartan! with music and singing to boot. The person in whom I was most interested was Mad. de Boufflers,[399] upwards of eighty, very polite, very pleasant, and with all the agremens of a French Court lady of the time of Mad. Sevigne, or of the correspondent rather of Horace Walpole. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... general signification means a sheath or covering, e.g., the sheath of a sword is a sarong, and the envelope enclosing a letter is likewise its sarong. The sarong or sheath of the Brunai human being is a piece of cotton cloth, of Tartan pattern, sewn down the side and resembling an ordinary skirt, or petticoat, except that it is not pleated or attached to a band at the waist and is, therefore, the same width all the way down. It is worn as a petticoat, being fastened at the waist sometimes ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... the Philistines. The Egyptians, having seized it some time before, had fortified it with such care, that it was their strongest bulwark on that side. Nor could Sennacherib enter Egypt, till he had first made himself master of this city,(456) which was taken by Tartan, one of his generals. The Assyrians had possessed it hitherto; and it was not till after the long siege just now mentioned, that the Egyptians ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... festival indeed tends to become more and more of a GRAVES solo (with of course the innumerable customary da capos) and a bright sketchy EVANS obbligato. As a Grand Duchess and Duke respectively the genial twain present themselves. Mr. GEORGE GRAVES, in a flounced skirt of green tartan check, copper curls and mahogany features, is a delectable creation; says some strangely unlady-like things (as is expected of him); is still oddly preoccupied with "gear-boxes" and other anatomical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... his steps by a long staff. His hair and beard hung long and matted over his broad shoulders. A rusted mail, once splendid with arabesque enrichments, protected his breast; but the loose gown—a sort of tartan, which descended below the cuirass—was rent and tattered, and his feet bare; in his girdle was a short curved cimiter, a knife or dagger, and a parchment roll, ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... ("of y' ilk" was the form that most delicately tickled his palate) still dwelt in the fortalice built by his ancestors at a time when to the average Scot the national tartan suggested but an alien barbarian who stole his cattle; and the national bagpipe, the national heather, and the national whisky were merely the noise the brute made, the cover that preserved him from the gallows, and the stuff that gave you your one chance ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... Murewell. Outside, the night was slightly frosty. A clear moon shone over the sloping reaches of the park; the trees shone silverly in the cold light, their black shadows cast along the grass. Robert found himself quartered in the Stuart room, where James II. had slept, and where the tartan hangings of the ponderous carved bed, and the rose and thistle reliefs of the walls and ceilings, untouched for two hundred years, bore witness to the loyal preparations made by some bygone Wendover. He was mortally tired, but by way of distracting his thoughts a little ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... watch an old woman who was slowly making the circuit of the hall with a noiseless step, like a bird of night flying in a circle. A black hat, of the hue of charred paper, confined her bandeaux of grizzled hair. From her square, high masculine shoulders, hung a sombre-hued Scotch tartan. When she reached the door, she cast a last glance about the hall, that embraced everyone therein, with the eye of a vulture seeking in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... the neighbourhood of Lichfield [in 1750] the principal gentlemen clothed their hounds in tartan plaid, with which they hunted a fox, dressed in a red uniform.' Mahon's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... rail of a chair. Vashti had discarded her cloak of furs, and faced him now in such garb as is worn by the poorest in the Islands: a short gown of hodden gray, coarse-knitted stockings, and stout shoes. Across her shoulder, for a "turn-over," she wore a faded shawl of Tartan pattern. (The Commandant recognised it for a surplus one which Mrs. Treacher kept in the Barracks kitchen, to wear "against the draughts" on occasions when she helped Archelaus with the cooking.) But most wonderful of all was her hair. By some swift art the heavy ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... brush to paint the scene. Rogers' Rangers, dressed in buckskin, led the way in birch canoes. Lord Howe was there, dressed like a bushfighter; and with bagpipes setting the echoes ringing amid the lonely mountains, were the Highland regiments in their tartan plaids. Flags floated from the prow of every boat. Each battalion had its own regimental {257} band. Scarcely a breath dimpled the waters of the lake, and the sun shone without a cloud. Little wonder those who passed through the fiery Aceldama that was ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... he couldn't sit still. He was wearing a decorative new traveling cap, very smart and extensive and expensive, shaped like a muffin, and patterned with the Douglas tartan and an Etruscan border. He rather wanted to let people see it. He was no Pilkings clerk now, but a world-galloper. With his cap clapped down on one side and his youthful cigarette-holder cocked up on the other, and in his ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... up a steep stair, in a narrow, confined, dark-browed house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, one of the belles of 17—made her toilette. Her chamber woman, in curch and tartan screen, was old nurse and sole domestic of the high-headed, strong-minded, stately widow of a wild north-country laird, whose son now ruled alone in the rugged family mansion among the grand, misty mountains of Lochaber. Nelly Carnegie was no beauty; not fair as ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... is a translation made at Tobolsk by Swedish officers, prisoners of war from the battle of Pultava, from a Tartan manuscript by Abulgasi Bayadur Chan. The original manuscript (?) is in the library at Upsala, to which it was presented in 1722 by Lieutenant-Colonel Schoenstroem. The translation has notes by Bentinck, a Dutchman ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... B., popularly known by the name of Old Rag, being indisposed in a hotel in London, the landlord came to enumerate the good things he had in his larder, to prevail on his guest to eat something. The earl at length, starting suddenly from his couch, and throwing back a tartan night-gown which had covered his singularly grim and ghastly face, replied to his host's courtesy; "Landlord, I think I could eat a morsel of a poor man." Boniface, surprised alike at the extreme ugliness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... weather, yet having a ruddiness in his cheeks, over a great part of which his rough beard extended. His eye was quick and lively, yet his look was not fierce, but he appeared at once firm and good-humoured. He wore a pair of brogues, tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare, a purple camblet kilt, a black waistcoat, a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord, a yellowish bushy wig, a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button. I never saw a figure that gave a more perfect representation ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... red, eyes widely opened, dark deep grey and decidedly prominent, though curtained with thick black lashes. The glossy chestnut hair partook of the redundance and vigour of the whole being, and the roses hung on it gracefully though not in congruity with the thick winter dress of blue and black tartan, still looped up over the dark petticoat and hose, and stout high-heeled boots, that like the grey cloak and felt hat bore witness to the early walk. Grace's countenance and figure were in the same style, though without so much of mark or animation; and her dress was of like description, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... dear, ye 're sune asteer; Cam' ye to hear the lav'rock's sang? Oh, wad ye gang and wed wi' me, And wed a rantin' Highlandman? In summer days, on flow'ry braes, When frisky are the ewe and lamb, I 'se row ye in my tartan plaid, And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... heard the war-notes wild, Hop'd that, one day, the Pibroch's strain Should play before the Hero's child, While he should lead the Tartan train. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... poker-worker and the bookbinder, have a sitting-room to themselves—their work-shop they call it. They were there still, I suppose, for I did not see them until dinner. We used to meet once a year at Mrs. Carruthers's Christmas parties ever since ages and ages, and I remember I hated their tartan sashes, and they generally had colds in their heads, and one year they gave every one mumps, so they were not asked the next. The altar-cloth one, Jean, is my age, the other ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... flowing line with forms branching out on one side or on both. Figs. 18 and 19 are border designs, for which purpose this arrangement is often used, though it can also well form an all-over pattern; sometimes these lines used over a surface are made to cross each other, tartan wise, by running in two directions, producing an apparently complicated ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... steed to the shock! Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock! But we to his kindred, and we to his cause, When Albyn her claymore indignantly draws; When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd, Clanranald the dauntless, and Moray the proud; All plaided and plumed in their tartan array—— ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... had taken to decent ways and now acted as head-foreman to a firm of stevedores. He was an office-bearer of the local Scottish Society, talked braid Scots on occasions (though his command of Yankee slang when stimulating his men in the holds was finely complete), and wore a tartan neck-tie that might aptly be called a ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... Lake—Ellen. Her last name was McTavish—if she had been a man she would have been The McTavish (and many people did call her that)—and her middle names were like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a charge—Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family tartan—heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses—and she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland loch, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... been seen, pacing up and down the shore on the seaward side of the Lido, and peering anxiously about him through an eyeglass, as if in search of somebody or something, the figure of a tall, spare Englishman, clad in a complete suit of shepherd's tartan, with a wide-awake on his head, a leather bag slung by a strap across his shoulder, and a light coat over his arm. Myself, in point of act, in the travelling-costume ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various



Words linked to "Tartan" :   fabric, cloth, textile, plaid, material



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