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Basque   /bæsk/   Listen
Basque

noun
1.
A member of a people of unknown origin living in the western Pyrenees in France and Spain.
2.
The language of the Basque people; of no known relation to any other language.



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"Basque" Quotes from Famous Books



... close of the year 1809 was darkened by national disappointment and political anxieties, the honour of British arms had been amply vindicated in the Spanish peninsula, and the brilliant exploit of Lord Cochrane in Basque Roads had recalled the glories of the Nile. Cochrane had already achieved marvels under Collingwood in the Mediterranean, and notably off the Spanish coast, when he was selected to conduct an attack by fireships on the French squadron blockaded under the shelter of the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... driven by the great races out of the fruitful lands to take refuge in mountains and deserts. The retainers of the couvade in Asia are the Miau-tsze of China and the savage Tibareni of Pontus. In Europe they are the Basque race of the Pyrenees, whose peculiar manners, appearance, and language, coupled with their geographical position, favour the view that they are the remains of a people driven westward and westward, by the pressure of more ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... threw back her heavy veil with a quick gesture. She was past middle age, and her hair was beginning to silver, but her full, proud figure and clear olive skin retained traces of the beauty peculiar to the Basque province. But, once you had seen her eyes, and comprehended the great sadness that was revealed in their deep shadows and hopeless expression, you saw that the woman ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... Eight hundred women, crowned with white plumes, flowers, and diamonds, cheered her. The 18th, she slept at Pau, the native place of Henry IV. The mountaineers, descending from their heights, banner in hand, with their Basque costumes, came to meet her. The next day she visited the castle where was born the Bearnais, whose cradle, formed of a great tortoise-shell, she saw: it was shaded by draperies and white plumes. The following day she visited the ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... a great feast which he was giving for his daughter's marriage, who was called Gyptis, according to some, and Petta, according to other historians. A custom which exists still in several cantons of the Basque country, and even at the centre of France in Morvan, a mountainous district of the department of the Nievre, would that the maiden should appear only at the end of the banquet, and holding in her hand a filled wine-cup, and that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... shipbuilders and engineers, of Pointhouse, Glasgow, have recently built a somewhat unique and certainly interesting steamer, for the conveyance of passengers between Port an Basque, in Newfoundland, and Sydney, Cape Breton, in connection with the Newfoundland and Canadian systems of railways. The distance from port to port is about one hundred miles, and the vessel has been designed to make the run in six hours. Messrs. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... slain.] Wounded and faint, Roland now slowly dragged himself to the entrance of the pass of Cisaire,—where the Basque peasants aver they have often seen his ghost, and heard the sound of his horn,—and took leave of his faithful steed Veillantif, which he slew with his own hand, to prevent its falling into the ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... total ignorance under which labored all who were charged with an undertaking that could only succeed as a surprise, executed with unhesitating rapidity. Hawke himself was astounded at finding in Basque Roads, before Rochefort, "a safe spacious road in which all the navy of England, merchant ships included, may ride without the least annoyance. Before I came here, the place was represented as very difficult of access, and so narrow that ships could not ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... but Susan's untiring efforts and remonstrances had never convinced her that it mattered how one looked in the house—except indeed when a formal caller arrived, for whom she hastily tied a scarf at the neck of her dirty basque and flung a purple wool shawl over her shoulders. Her spirit had been too long broken for her to rebel consciously against her daughter's authority; but her mind was so constituted that the sense of order was missing, and the pretty ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... persons with a repressed manner, which characterises both men and women of their ancient race, and they spoke to him in Basque. Some freed their hands from the folds of the long blanket, which each wore according to his fancy, to shake hands with him; others nodded curtly. Men from the valley of Ebro muttered "Buenas"—the curt salutation ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... said Pantagruel. "What do you want, and what is your name?" The man answered him in German, gibberish, Italian, English, Basque, Lantern-language, Dutch, Spanish, Danish, Hebrew, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... and study it closely at your leisure, by the fireside. It is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor the arrow-headed character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but destined to be copied in sculpture one day, if they ever get to whittling stone here. What a wild and pleasing outline, a combination of graceful curves and angles! The eye rests with equal delight on what is not leaf ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... can hardly be classed as numerals in the strict sense of the word. German possesses exactly the same number of native words in its numeral scale as English; and the same may be said of the Teutonic languages generally, as well as of the Celtic, the Latin, the Slavonic, and the Basque. This is, in fact, the universal method observed in the formation of any numeral scale, though the actual number of simple words may vary. The Chiquito language has but one numeral of any kind whatever; English contains twelve simple terms; Sanskrit has twenty-seven, while Japanese possesses ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... himself justice that afternoon. His downcast eyes presently noticed that she wore shoes of a peculiar kind—white canvas with soles of plaited cord; in the course of conversation he learnt that these were a memento of the Basque country, about which Miss Elvan talked with a very pretty enthusiasm. Will went away, after all, in a dissatisfied mood. Girls were to him merely a source of disquiet. "If she be not fair for me—" was his ordinary thought; and he had ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... Hadden's puffs and French-blue bands, and bits of embroidery looked, for the stitches somebody had put into them, and the weary starching and ironing and perking out that must be done for them, beside the simple hem and the one narrow basque ruffling of Leslie's cambric morning-dress, which had its color and its set-off in itself, in the bright little carnations with brown stems that figured it. It was "trimmed in the piece"; and that was precisely what Leslie ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Biscayan, a member of that ancient race which neither Romans nor Moors were ever able to subdue. Nothing is known about his antecedents. Not improbably he was a son of one of the innumerable small gentlemen with whom the Basque provinces used to swarm. Almost every house in the little towns even to-day has its coat of arms over the door. Every inhabitant claimed to be a nobleman, and in the reign of Charles V. they furnished many soldiers of repute in the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... Castilho and his brother Diogo were really natives of one of the Basque provinces, they might rightly be included among the foreign artists who played such an important part in Portugal towards the end of Dom Manoel's reign and the beginning of that of his son, Dom Joao III. Yet the earlier work of Joao de Castilho at Thomar ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... pictures, which were bequeathed as every one knows to the San Marcello Museum. The next word I had of it was when Anitchkoff, Mantovani's disciple and successor, reported it in the Del Puente Castle in the Basque mountains. He added a word on its importance though avowedly knowing it only from a photograph. It appeared that Mantovani in his last days had given the portrait to his old friend the Carlist Marquesa del Puente, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... gratification, of the forty-page, thin-paper pamphlet which was wrapped, a miracle of fine folding, about each packet of the Cure. On each page the directions for use were given in a separate language. French, Fijian, Syrian, Basque were there—forty languages—so that all the sons of men could read the good tidings and amuse themselves at the same time by trying to decipher the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... battle. The Nervian cohorts, either from panic or treachery, left our flanks exposed; thus the legions had to bear the brunt. They had already lost their standards and were being cut down in the trenches, when a fresh reinforcement suddenly changed the fortune of the fight. Some Basque auxiliaries,[322] originally levied by Galba, who had now been summoned to the rescue, on nearing the camp heard the sound of fighting, and while the enemy were occupied, came charging in on their rear. This caused more consternation than their numbers warranted, the enemy taking ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... of glass was due to a mere accident—the building of a fire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at Bayonne, in France, owes its existence to the fact that a Basque regiment, being hard pressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as their ammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into the barrels of their muskets, which was done, and ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... only by means of the Basque language that the problem can be attempted. The physical conformation of the still extant Iberians, has nothing definitely characteristic about it. The ancient mythology has died away. The tribes most immediately allied have ceased to be other than unmixed. So ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... the instincts which in after years led me away from these paths of peace already existed within me; but they were dormant. From the accident of my birth I was torn by conflicting forces. There was some Basque and Bordeaux blood in my mother's family, and unknown to me the Gascon half of myself played all sorts of tricks with the Breton half. Even my family was divided, my father, my grandfather, and my ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... up a basque or a polonaise or something. Or put on a raincoat or an Indian blanket,—but for goodness' sake get out and around. I'll ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... There is a Basque legend told of the giant Tartaro, who caught a young man in his snares, and confined him in his cave for dessert. When, however, Tartaro fell asleep, the young man made the giant's spit red hot, bored out his one eye, and then made his escape by fixing the bell ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... and hard. Whipped them lots. Mother had to pick cotton all day every day and Sunday. When I first seen my father to remember him, he had on a big old coat which was given to him for special days. We called it a ham-beater. It had pieces that would make it set on you like a basque. He wore a high beaver hat too. That was his uniform. Whenever he drove, he had to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... anguish, how, on first touching the shores of America, almost the very first word that met her ear had been from him, the brother whom she had killed, about the 'Pussy' of times long past; how the gallant young man had hung upon her words, as in her native Basque she described her own mischievous little self, of twelve years back; how his color went and came, whilst his loving memory of the little sister was revived by her own descriptive traits, giving back, as in a mirror, the fawn-like grace, the squirrel- like restlessness, that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Martinique, Holland, Bohemia, Bulgaria, and the Tyrol. Besides these there are 31 intermediate stories approximating to the Cinderella type, from Russia, Asia Minor, Italy, Lorraine, The Deccan, Poland, Hungary, Catalonia, Corsica, Finland, Switzerland, and in Basque, Spain. The earliest form in which the pure type occurs is in Basile's Pentamerone, 1634, and of the indeterminate type in Bonaventure des Periers Nouvelles Recreations, 1557, though the latter seems more cognate to ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... influence of the metrical stanza of words and of the balanced phrases in the instrumental part, necessary to accompany the steps of the dancers. The melody of the accompaniment was played on a flute or some simple kind of pipe, and the bass on a Tambour de Basque—a rude form of drum, which repeated continually the tonic and dominant of the key; the same effect which we associate with ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... are the Basque Provinces, on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees and stretching along the Bay of Biscay. The Basque people are known as the "Mystery Men of Europe," because nobody is sure where they came from. Nobody knows where the strange language they speak ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day

... place," she went on, "I found that it was a Basque shepherd, who had been hurt by some of the cattlemen. That made it much more interesting for me, for you know, my people were Basques, that strange old race, who, tradition tells, are all that are left of the shepherds on the mountains of the lost ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... first sight of the new arrivals. Ma Briskow resembled nothing so much as one of those hideous "crayon enlargements" he had seen in farmhouses—atrocities of an art long dead—for she was clad in an old-fashioned basque and skirt of some stiff, near-silk material, and her waist, which buttoned far down the front and terminated in deep points, served merely to roof over but not to conceal a peculiarity of figure which her farm dress had mercifully hidden. Gray discovered that Ma's body, alas! ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... of the sight held him as well. The roadway had become a flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated past wary and curious in their regard for him and his nervous horse. Two Basque herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad, swarthy men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked their heads to him. Forrest lifted his right hand, the quirt dangling from wrist, the straight forefinger ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... proportioned to their present condition and their birth. She had charged herself with the maintenance of two former nuns, noble and well educated, who, at the fall of their community, had been recommended, or had procured a recommendation, to her. Mesdames de Brinon and du Basque were these two vagrant nuns. Madame de Maintenon, instinctively attracted to this sort of ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... these gypsies, often render them strikingly handsome; and when this dangerous heritage falls to the share of the young women, it often leads to experiences too tragic to record. Many of the men wear embroidered velvet jackets, with hanging silver buttons, like a Basque postilion, and add a scarlet sash about the waist, the legs being bound up in sheep's skins with fancy-colored ribbons, and the feet covered with crude ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... bright and the sea thundered on the beach and the battered breakwaters. To the east and south are the Pyrenees—lower summits, it is true, but bold and fine in outline. The dominant peak, being the first of the chain, is Larhune (a Basque word, not French), where English blood was spilt when Clauzel held it for Napoleon against the English. Further to the south, and across the Bidassoa, in Spain, rises the sharp ridge of the Jaisquivel, beneath which lies Fuentarabia. Yonder by Irun is the abrupt cliff of Las Tres ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... with the fireships in Basque Roads followed in 1809, and with that Lord Cochrane's services to England as a seaman were brought to a conclusion. Official persecution kept him in idleness during the remaining period of war with France, and he was in the end driven to seek relief from oppression at home, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... in the life of his time and country and served his day in the trenches of the new enlightenment. He is anything but a theorist. But there is surely no little significance in his final retreat to his Basque hillside, there to seek peace above the turmoil. He is, one fancies, a bit disgusted and a bit despairing. But if it is despair, it is surely not the despair of one who has ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... character of the aboriginal languages, numbering over four hundred, some philologists are inclined to attribute them all to a common origin, the Basque tongue being one of the two or three in Europe which have a like peculiarity. In the languages of the American Indians one syllable is piled upon another, each with a distinct root-significance, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... Here we have him! O—Durandarte: Air Basque, variations—his own. Again, Senor Durandarte, Mendelssohn. Encore him, and he plays you a national piece. A dark little creature a Life-guardsman could hold-up on his outstretched hand for the fifteen minutes of the performance; but he fills the hall and thrills the heart, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... center of commercial affairs for the Basque country, its citizens must, at any rate, go to Biarritz if they want to live "the elegant and worldly life." The prosperity and luxury of Biarritz are very recent; it goes back only to the Second Empire, when it was but a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... of Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland has found a permanent place in history as that of the captor of Napoleon. Apart from the rare piece of good fortune which befell him in the Basque Roads in July 1815, his distinguished career of public service entitles him to an honourable place in the records ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... the prejudices—and for some time the laws—ran stronger against them than any which I have hitherto mentioned. The Basque Cagot was not allowed to possess sheep. He might keep a pig for provision, but his pig had no right of pasturage. He might cut and carry grass for the ass, which was the only other animal he was permitted to own; and this ass was permitted, ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... ho! Champagne, Picard, Bourguignon, Cascaret, Basque, La Verdure, Lorrain, Provencal, La Violette. I wish the deuce took all these footmen! I do not think there is a gentleman in France worse served than I am! These rascals are always out of ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... said I, "that's not a Spanish air you have just been singing. It's like the zorzicos I've heard in the Provinces,* and the words must be in the Basque language." ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips, make haste! Glissez, glissez! pas de basque! Tap with your heels, be a ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... attacked him, and so he passed away. Some persons who took refuge from external danger, under the protection of the Blessed, our fathers Ignatius and Xavier, were preserved alive. To three women Ignatius granted easy childbirth; and one Basque they relieved of toothache, when he prayed to them. Xavier came to the aid of a Spanish commander of a battalion of soldiers, who was near to death; and prolonged his life in return for two wax ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... Salic law excluding females from the succession. Her daughter Isabella was born a few months later. After the death of the king (1833), the Carlists resisted the exclusion of their favorite from the throne. Don Carlos was proclaimed in the Basque provinces, and a civil war arose. The queen, Maria Christina, as regent, was supported by the moderados (moderates) and the liberals, and was allowed to recruit for her army in England and France. The leading ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... with which he juggled, disappeared, being fastened to an elastic contrivance to his back, and his expression of reproach when, turning Elodie round, he discovered her wearing the plates as a sort of basque, which once excited, on no matter what stage, rolling guffaws of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... get along so well. Minnie was hungry lots and came to town to get scraps of food. When she was a "good big girl" she came to town one day with her hair full of cukle-burrs, dressed in her mother's basque looking for food, when she saw a man standing in front of a store eating an orange. She wanted that peeling. No one kept their cows and pigs up and when the man threw the peeling on the ground a sow grabbed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... as afterwards, were always encroaching on the French wherever a seaway gave them an opening. In 1578 they were reported to be lording it off Newfoundland, though they had only fifty vessels there, as against thirty Basque, fifty Portuguese, a hundred Spanish, and a hundred and fifty French. Their numbers and influence increased year by year, till, in 1600, they had two hundred sail manned by eight thousand men. They were still more preponderant farther north and farther south. Frobisher, Davis, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... R. Laparra's poem on four popular verses, "Un Dimanche Basque," for orchestra with pianoforte, produced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with the composer as soloist. P. ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... having any tight-fitting garments that bring the fact into relief. She should not wear the long coat, but she can effectively modify it to suit her needs, by only having a skirt, or tabs, or finishing straps in the back. If her jacket or basque is finished off with a skirt effect, it is best to have the little skirt swerve away just at the hip-line, half revealing and half ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... of an ancient and noble race, said to have been of Basque origin. His father held a high post in the household of Louis XIII., who became the child's god-father, and gave him his own name. At the age of fifteen, the young Louis showed an incontrollable passion for the life of a soldier. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... appellation which survives in that of the largest island. It is stated on the authority of certain old chroniclers, that the islands off the mainland had been known more than a century before the era of Columbus and Cabot to sailors from the Basque Provinces, who named them "Bacallos," their term for cod-fish. The name "Canada" seems to have been vaguely applied at this period sometimes to a part, sometimes to the whole of the region watered by the ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... for example, which have spoken a Semitic language; there are Semitic races which have not spoken one. Against 'Indo-European' the same objection may be urged; seeing that several languages are European, that is, spoken within the limits of Europe, as the Maltese, the Finnish, the Hungarian, the Basque, the Turkish, which lie altogether ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... voices and music stops all regular proceedings: old women and children tattling; apes, bears, and show-boxes under the windows; French rattling, English swearing, outrageous Italians, frisking minstrels; tambours de basque at every corner; myself distracted; a confounded squabble of cooks and haranguing German couriers just arrived, their masters following open-mouthed; nothing to eat, the steam of ham and flesh-pots all the while provoking their appetite; ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... left of the old stock of commanders, and they have turned him out of the navy lest he should infect the psalm-singers. Look out a-head there, shipmate; d'ye see that fine frigate, the Peranga, now lying oft' Spithead, and can you ever forget Basque Roads and the gallant Cochrane? I just got a glimpse of his figure head t'other morning, coming up Point here; so I hauled to and threw my shattered hulk slap across his headway, lowering my top-gallants as I passed round under ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... could not tell her and Mrs. Triplett, too busy to be bothered, set her down to turn the leaves of the family album. But the photograph of Cousin Mehitable had been taken when she was a boarding-school miss in a disfiguring hat and basque, and bore little resemblance to the imposing personage who headed the procession of visitors, arriving promptly ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... sold us some clusters which were peculiarly fine; in another garden a very fine bush of white cistus was completely covered with blooms. The hedgerows, too, were bright with flowers; the wild Guelder roses and medlars [Footnote: The "makilahs," or slicks peculiar to the Basque people, are made from the wild medlar. They are very heavy, tipped with iron, and unpleasant to carry.] preponderating, but elder bushes were also plentiful, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... (100% of population); rapidly declining regional dialects (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish) ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... men of the Basque province—small, muscular and proud, agile of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and childlike ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... the true Irish of to-day. The black hair, associated with deep-blue eyes and a skin of extreme whiteness, found abundantly in Ireland, and amongst the offspring of Irish emigrants, are, in all probability, tokens of descent from this appallingly ancient people. The type appears occasionally in the Basque provinces, and on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, but nowhere else. Few civilised races inhabit the land where the fossil relics of their own lineal ancestors mark the furthest point of human occupancy; yet it would seem to be so with the true Irish. In ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... Iberian? Ah, for the man who could tell us! What is a Basque?—what is an Etruscan?—what is a Magyar?—above all, what is a Cagot? Miss Caroline, my dear, there are deep questions in all arts and sciences; and, without knowing it, you have lighted on one of the deepest and most ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... vaguely down at herself. She had no belt to stick her violets in. She wore no belt. She wore a basque. A basque is a beltless something that you can't remember, but that females did, once upon a time, cover the upper half of their forms with. Basques buttoned down the front with ten to thirty buttons, and may be studied ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... moment two men passed, in brown velveteens, enormous trousers, and basque caps. They were young, but ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... province where they are to be found; perhaps, indeed, it will be considered that I have already been more circumstantial and particular than the case required. The other districts which they inhabit are principally those of Catalonia, Murcia, and Valencia; and they are likewise to be met with in the Basque provinces, where they are called Egipcioac, or Egyptians. What I next purpose to occupy myself with are some general observations on the habits, and the physical and moral state of the Gitanos throughout Spain, and of the position ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... Daisy took her guitar to the sands and sang one or two Basque hymns. Unlike us, the Basques do not take their pleasures sadly. One of their pleasures is ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... grizzled hair and eyebrows to match, which were all fastened on with a certain liquid so firmly to the skin that it was necessary to apply vinegar in which the ashes of vine-twigs had been steeped, when they instantly fell off. My Basque was at length dressed in a torn, threadbare cassock, masked by his false beard, with an old hat upon his head, a breviary under his arm, and a tolerably thick stick in his hand, and received an order to post himself near the little gate ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... whisky in modern parlance, is involved in considerable obscurity. Some authorities consider that the word is derived from the first part of the term usquebaugh; others suppose it to be derived from the name of a place, the Basque provinces, where some such compound was concocted in the fourteenth century. In Morewood's History of Inebriating Liquors, he gives a list of the ingredients used in the composition of usquebaugh, and none of these are ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... that the word 'Malach' means Salt. It is sometimes asserted that the name is from the Aramaic word Malek, 'King;' but W. Humboldt (Pruefung der Untersuchungen ueber die Urbewohner Hispaniens) says that it is a Basque word.] ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... ilhun, the twilight, is contracted from hill, dead, and egun, day; and belhaur, the knee, from belhar, front, and oin, leg. . . . The fact is indisputable, and is eminently noteworthy, that while the affinities of the Basque roots have never been conclusively elucidated, there has never been any doubt that this isolated language, preserving its identity in a western corner of Europe, between two mighty kingdoms, resembles, in its grammatical structure, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... his hand. Africa, Asia, the isles of the Pacific, were the usual scenes of his dramas. Finally from France itself, and from the oldest provinces of France, he drew subject-matter for two of his novels, An Iceland Fisherman and Ramuntcho. This proved a surprise. Our Breton sailors and our Basque mountaineers were not less foreign to the Parisian drawing-room than was Aziyade or the little Rahahu. One claimed to have a knowledge of Brittany, or of the Pyrenees, because one had visited Dinard or Biarritz; while in ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... century, and Punic-speaking clergy, it appears, were needed in some of the villages of fourth-century Africa. Celtic is stated to have been in use at the same epoch among the Treveri of eastern Gaul—presumably in the great woodlands of the Ardennes, the Eifel and the Hunsrueck.[1] Basque was obviously in use throughout the Roman period in the valleys of the Pyrenees. So in Asia Minor, where Greek was the dominant tongue, six or seven other dialects, Galatian, Phrygian, Lycaonian, and others, lived on till a very late date, especially (as it seems) ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... has been ably illustrated and explained by Mr. Tylor, under the name of the Couvade, or "Hatching," by which it is known in some of the Bearn districts of the Pyrenees, where it formerly existed, as it does still or did recently, in some Basque districts of Spain. [In a paper on La Couvade chez les Basques, published in the Republique Francaise, of 19th January, 1877, and reprinted in Etudes de Linguistique et a' Ethnographie par A. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Cassius, had received the privilege of Roman citizenship from Julius Caesar, whom its people had aided against Pompey's officers. The tribes in the northwest of Spain, however, were savage and unquiet, and their language, the Basque, which still exists, shows that they were never perfectly ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... lived very modestly until the end, and appeared to spend nothing; and he only kept one old servant, who spoke to him in the Basque dialect. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... a Basque shallop, with mast and sail, an iron grapple, and a kettle, came boldly aboard us, one of them appareled with a waistcoat and breeches of black serge, made after our sea fashion, hose and shoes on his feet: all the rest ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... men—rough-looking rascals—were standing round the door, and amid them facing the dais was a young fellow in the uniform of the light infantry. As he turned his head I recognised him. It was Captain Auret, of the 7th, a young Basque with whom I had drunk many a glass during ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... French soldiers at the bridge were startled to perceive a party of the enemy, each horseman bearing a foot-soldier on his crupper, approach the river at the ford and begin to move across it. Instantly, as Paez had intended, they left the bridge and rushed toward the spot. Bayard, attended by Le Basque, was in the act of putting on his armor. He sprang into the saddle, and was about to spur after his companions, when he perceived, across the river, a party of two hundred Spaniards making for the bridge. The danger was extreme; for if the bridge were taken the camp ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... were as the last green leaf on a dying tree. They were of a world-conquering race, and they sailed the seas of the world, seeking profit fearlessly. Four hundred years ago Jacques Cartier, himself a Breton, with the old Basque or Iberian blood warm in him—for the Bretons were of the old Iberian stock, with the same temper and look of face—sailed into the gulf of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various

... marked by a decided advance in both the development and the application of sea-power. Previously its operation had been confined to the Mediterranean or to coast waters outside it. Spanish or Basque seamen—by their proceedings in the English Channel—had proved the practicability of, rather than been engaged in, ocean warfare. The English, who withstood them, were accustomed to seas so rough, to seasons so uncertain, and to weather so boisterous, ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... witches were directed to procure such victims accordingly. After this grand fiction he confined himself to the petty vengeance of impeding the access of confessors to the condemned, which was the more easy as few of them could speak the Basque language. I have no time to detail the ingenious method by which the learned Councillor de Lancre explains why the district of Labourt should be particularly exposed to the pest of sorcery. The chief reason ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... was afterwards Sir Eliab Harvey, one of Nelson's captains at Trafalgar. But unfortunately he so violently resented the appointment of Lord Cochrane, who was only a post-captain, to carry out the attack on the French fleet in Basque Roads, which he himself, who was an admiral, had also suggested, and used such violent and insubordinate language towards Lord Gambier, the Commander-in-chief (who, though a most incompetent officer, had had nothing to do with the appointment), that it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... 1833, and the infant Isabella was proclaimed queen, with her mother as regent. The liberals supported her, the absolutists gathered around Don Carlos, and for years there was a bitter struggle in Spain, the strength of the Carlists being in the Basque provinces and Spanish Navarre,—a land of mountaineers, loyal in nature and ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... by the Spanish Government in July and October 1841, supported by cordons of troops at the foot of the Pyrenees, have, indeed, very materially interfered with and checked the progress of this contraband trade. In consequence of ancient compact, the Basque, that is frontier provinces of Spain, enjoyed, among other exclusive privileges, that of being exempt from Government customhouses, or customs' regulations. For this privilege, a certain inconsiderable subsidy was periodically voted for the service of the State. Regent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... America.—Who are the Basque people? A curious race of Spanish mountaineers, who have been as great a puzzle to ethnologists and historians as their language has been to philologists and scholars. We know, however, that in former times they were nearly all seamen, making long ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... Watson's Peak, 8500 feet high, with its basaltic crown, looms before us. At our feet is a big bed of wild sunflowers, their flaring yellow and gold richly coloring the more somber slopes. Here I once saw a band of upwards of 2000 sheep, herded by a Basque, one of that strange European people who seem especially adapted by centuries of such life to be natural shepherds. Few of them speak much American, but they all know enough, when you ask them how many sheep they have, to answer, "About sixteen hundred." The limit allowed on any government ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... in Ireland. Do not play any games on me about whether I am a Celt, a word that is dim to the anthropologist and utterly unmeaning to anybody else. Do not start any drivelling discussions about whether the word Shaw is German or Scandinavian or Iberian or Basque. You know you are human; I know I am Irish. I know I belong to a certain type and temper of society; and I know that all sorts of people of all sorts of blood live in that society and by that society; and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... and those under his command, for the preservation of the country, and defence thereof now at need. All this pleased Grangousier very well, and he commanded that so it should be done. Presently therefore he sent the Basque his lackey to fetch Gargantua with all diligence, and wrote ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... then careless and untidy and totally unconscious of her personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious then of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange merchant, a Basque peasant, to whom her other uncle, the great man of the family, the priest of some parish in the hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at the age of thirteen or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasant stock, you know. This is the true origin of the 'Girl in ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its hiss, the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth their note.... Have the Basque mountains and the snowy haunts of the Pyrenees taken away thy urbanity?... May he, who advises thee to keep silence, never enjoy the singing of sweet songs nor the voices of Nature ... sad and in need may he live in desolate regions, and wander silent in the rounded heights ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... by the French to share in the advantages of these discoveries was in the year 1504. Some Basque and Breton fishermen at that time began to ply their calling on the Great Bank of Newfoundland, and along the adjacent shores. From them the Island of Cape Breton received its name. In 1506, Jean Denys, a man of Harfleur, drew a map of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... festival small earthenware figures used to be for sale for the pleasure of children. Although the Spanish race is a mixed one and various peoples have been in power from time to time, at one period the country was, with the exception of Basque, entirely Romanized. It is interesting to note the lingering influence of this mighty Roman nation and find in this century that some of the main features of the great Roman feast are retained in the great Christian feast ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... reply. "They speak a language which seems to be about one-third Basque, mixed oddly with Greek. It merely proves another hypothesis of mine, namely, that the Atlantean influence reached eastward to the Pyrenees mountains and the Hellenic peninsula, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... was every prospect of our having her ready for sea, by the following evening. But, the duty had been carried on, in silence. Napoleon said there had been more noise made in the little schooner which carried him from l'Orient to Basque Roads, than was made on board the line-of-battle ship that conveyed him to St. Helena, during the whole passage. Since that memorable day, the French have learned to be silent on board ship, and the fruits remain to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... him writing a disquisition on Some Enquiries concerning the First Inhabitants, Language, Religion, Learning, and Letters of Europe, by a Mr. Wise, who, along with his critic, appears to have got into hopeless confusion in believing Basque and Armorican to be the remains of the same ancient language. The last phrase of a note appended to this review by Goldsmith probably indicates his own humble estimate of his work at this time. "It is more our business," he says, "to exhibit the opinions of the learned than to controvert them." ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... merge and be absorbed in another; and when it was originally an inferior and more backward portion of the human race, the absorption is greatly to its advantage. Nobody can suppose that it is not more beneficial to a Breton, or a Basque of French Navarre, to be brought into the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly civilized and cultivated people—to be a member of the French nationality, admitted on equal terms to all the privileges of French citizenship, sharing the advantages of French protection, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... of soft, rich lace. This, after it was completed, was tried on at least half a dozen times, and the effect carefully studied before the long mirror. Anna, who cared much less for dress than her sister, decided upon a black flounced skirt and velvet basque. This was Mr. Everett's taste, and whatever suited ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... went home and lost his appetite. He was haunted by the elegant basque and graceful shoulders of the fair ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... she began to undress Miranda. Off came the green silk dress with its tight "basque" and overskirt. Off came the ruffled petticoat and little chemise edged with fine lace. And Miranda stood in shapeless, kid-bodied ugliness, which stage of evolution the doll of ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown

... the Don de Dieu at Tadousac, Champlain found that Pont-Grave had been attacked by Captain Darache, a Basque, who continued to trade furs with the Indians in spite of the king's commands. Darache had brought all his guns to bear upon the Levrier, and Pont-Grave being unable to defend himself, had offered no resistance, whereupon Darache's ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... the help of their own tails, and safely landed with their spouses in Europe, where they lived very happily and had a numerous progeny. This progeny are we, Europeans. Dravidian words found in some European languages, in Basque for instance, greatly rejoice the hearts of the Brahmans, who would gladly promote the philologists to the rank of demi-gods for this important discovery, which confirms so gloriously their ancient legend. But ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... twentieth, the fleet made the isle of Oleron, and then sir Edward Hawke sent an order to vice-admiral Knowles, requiring him, if the wind permitted the fleet, to proceed to Basque road, to stand in as near to the isle of Aix as the pilot would carry him, with such ships of his division as he thought necessary for the service, and to batter the fort till the garrison should either abandon or surrender ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... big bunch of feathers fastened to a stick, advanced to the fire and made a few impressive gestures. She was garbed in the wide, gathered calico skirt, the velvet basque trimmed with silver buttons, and the high brown moccasins so dear to feminine Navajos. The orchestra was vocal, the bucks again furnishing the music. After circling around the spectators a few times the squaw decided ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... the most obvious sources of importation from the Occident have been Spain and Portugal, the possibility of the introduction of French, Italian, and even Belgian stories through the medium of priests of those nationalities must not be overlooked. Furthermore, there is a no inconsiderable number of Basque sailors to be found on the small inter-island steamers that connect one end of the archipelago with the other. Even a very cursory glance at the tales in this collection reveals the fact that many of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... and meant nothing. But there was a familiarity to the tune. That at least needed no interpreter. The old ballad of troubadours, the French war song of old, the song of raillery, the song of Revolution, this that had been a folk song of the Crusader, a Basque rhyme of fairy lore, the air known in the desert tents of Happy Arabia, known to the Jews coming out of Egypt, known to the tribes in the days without history or fifes—why, if this wasn't the rollicking, the defiant paean of Americans! ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... he cruised along the coast of France from Ushant to the mouth of the Gironde, saw some active service in the Mediterranean, and, after a return to the ocean, was finally engaged in the Basque Roads. A page of his private log contains a lively resume ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... of basque to feet just before we see them, in the seventeenth century, parting down the front and separating to show a petticoat. In Queen Elizabeth's time the acme of this style was reached by Spanish women as we see in Velasquez's portraits. Gradually the overskirt ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... here. He left us when we reached Madrid, for the purpose of entering France through the Basque countries; but this month the General received another letter from him—he is staying in Italy. The General, it seems, had written that he had obtained my consent to become his wife, and the answer is—'Whatever will conduce to your happiness, and that of the lady, must ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... clear or correct opinion concerning it without having, however slightly, investigated its racial descent and the language which, among Eastern dialects, has so long been as great a puzzle to the philologist as has Basque among the European languages. Respecting the origin of the Japanese we know practically nothing—at any rate nothing authentic. The native legends and histories afford us neither guide nor clue in the matter. These legends and histories ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... full upon the old man's honest, weather-beaten face, the few scattered locks of snow-white hair escaping from under his dark blue woollen cap, his thick, black eyebrows and deep wrinkles. He had the usual characteristics of the Basque race; a long face, hooked nose, and dark, gipsy-like complexion. He wore a sort of livery, which was so old and threadbare that it would be impossible to make out its original colour, and his stiff, soldier-like carriage and movements ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... marital happiness. Occasionally, in more serious moods, she might talk largely about Archie's "going into business" when they "got their money," but as time went on and Archie displayed little aptitude for managing money, she talked less about this. Adelle would have been content to buy the Basque villa they had rented and establish herself and Archie there in complete idleness and luxury, provided he would always be "good" to her, by which she meant faithful to those unconsidered marriage vows made in the Paris consulate, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... we found several visitors of the better class in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium; ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... and learned Celtic Polyglott Grammar, giving a Comparative View off the Breton, Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and Basque Languages. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various

... subject of general remark that age and official perplexities were evidently leaving their traces on his features, but he had lost none of his determined, defiant looks. During the more ceremonious part of the reception his two daughters stood near him. Mrs. Stover wore a rich black silk dress, with a basque of the same material, both being embroidered with violet-colored wreaths and trimmed with bugles. Mrs. Patterson wore a similar dress and basque, embroidered in white. Both ladies wore lace collars and had ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... convince you," said Saint-Aignan, "that have received nothing in any way from him." And he rang the bell. "Basque," he said to the servant who entered, "how many letters have or notes were sent ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... cream and drank the milk; then, filling the bowl with mud, replaced the cream atop. Says the fox, "Here is the bowl; one shall have the cream, and the other all the rest: choose, friend, which you like." The bear told the fox to take the cream, and thus bruin had only the mud.—A Basque Tale. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... there was little chance of his carrying away any masts or spars, by which the "Imperious" might have gained an advantage. Night drew on; but the moon rose and her beams fell on the chase exactly in the position she had so long held. It was now very evident that she was steering for Basque Roads. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... Jesuit order was the thirteenth child of a Spanish noble, born in 1491 at his father's castle of Loyola in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa.[158] His full name was Inigo Lopez de Recalde; but he is better known to history as Saint Ignatius Loyola. Ignatius spent his boyhood as page in the service of King Ferdinand the Catholic, whence he passed into that of the Duke ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... bills are produced from the shabbiest of coats, whose owners one would hardly associate with such an amount of portable wealth. The three umpires sit together on a sort of rostrum, each one crowned with the national Basque "beret." Points are being continually referred to their decision, amidst the shouts and yells of the excited partisans. Every time the three umpires stand up, remove their berets, and make low bows to each other; they then confer in whispers, and having reached a decision, they again stand ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... bird-carol of this kind is printed by Mr. H. J. L. J. Masse in his delightful "Book of Old Carols,"{26} a collection of the words and music of Christmas songs in many languages—English, Latin, German, Flemish, Basque, Swedish, Catalan, Provencal, and French ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... been known to the French public that it has been stated time and again that he is an Alsatian. He is not, but comes of a Basque family which has lived for many generations in the territory which is now the Department of the Hautes-Pyrenees, directly on the border of Spain. Foch was born in the town of Tarbes in that department. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... privateersmen arrived in the St Lawrence in July and took up their headquarters at Tadoussac. Already they had captured several Basque fishing or trading vessels. At Tadoussac they learned that at Cap Tourmente, thirty miles below Quebec, there was a small farm from which the garrison of Quebec drew supplies; and, as a first effort to 'root out' the French, David Kirke decided to loot and destroy this ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... what he considers the proper price for telling fortunes, and find out what his ideas are on the subject of horse-trading. And no doubt he will ask me what I think about his coming marriage with the Princess of Basque. She is to arrive to-night, I believe, and be married tomorrow, to this King whom ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... distressed damsel was to escape. So, before all the decencies of Hendrik had recovered from the shock of the Hoop, she threw them into a new and worse "conniption" by an even more daring innovation upon their good, easy notions of her; for the next thing she did was—a basque and flounces. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... these dialects were of Latin origin, some as in the Germanies and Scandinavia, mixed original Teutonic and Latin; some, as in Brittany, were Celtic; some, as in the eastern Pyrenees, Basque; in North Africa, we may presume, the indigenous tongue of the Berbers resumed its sway; Punic also may have survived in certain towns and villages there. [Footnote: We have evidence that it survived in the fifth century.] But men paid no attention ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... as the greatest strategist in Europe. He comes of a Basque family and was born in the town of Tarbes, in the Department of the Hautes-Pyrenees, which is on the border of Spain, on October 2, 1851. Foch served as a subaltern in the Franco-Prussian War and at twenty-six was made captain in the artillery. Later ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... geographical limits with those which have been assigned to that variety of mankind which generally shews a fair complexion, called the Caucasian variety. It may be said to commence in India, and thence to stretch through Persia into Europe, the whole of which it occupies, excepting Hungary, the Basque provinces of Spain, and Finland. Its sub- families are the Sanskrit, or ancient language of India, the Persian, the Slavonic, Celtic, Gothic, and Pelasgian. The Slavonic includes the modern languages of Russia and Poland. ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... known race. All sorts of dialects have been examined with a view to discover affinity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple interrogation, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in vain. The geographical position of the Basque nation would naturally suggest it for comparison; but even in the Basque language no analogies of a decisive character have been brought forward. As little do the scanty remains of the Ligurian language which have reached our time, consisting ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... reached the Basque there was a sudden change, a change there was no mistaking. He was unable to proceed, and I laid his mattress under a great live oak whose branches overshadowed space enough for our camp. I cannot tell you, Elizabeth, what a singular stillness ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... Tartars, another Hittites, another Pelasgians, and so on. And all of them, in each of the theories, have as a fact a great many unexplained characteristics, different from those of our historical nations. Some of these characteristics, most markedly the Basque, but also not a few at greater distance, have definite American similarities. It might not be a far guess that these fragments represent an eastward movement, which later in the history of the Aryan development met and was pushed back westward again by the fully formed and dominant Aryan race ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... Total fertility rate: 1.8 children born/woman (1992) Nationality: noun - Frenchman(men), Frenchwoman(women); adjective - French Ethnic divisions: Celtic and Latin with Teutonic, Slavic, North African, Indochinese, and Basque minorities Religions: Roman Catholic 90%, Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim (North African workers) 1%, unaffiliated 6% Languages: French (100% of population); rapidly declining regional dialects (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish) Literacy: ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... a gray gown of a style I never had seen before and never expect to see again. It was fastened with huge black buttons all the way down the breathlessly tight front, and the upper part was composed of that pre-historic garment known as a basque. She curved in where she should have curved out, and she bulged where she should have had "lines." About her neck was suspended a string of cannon-ball beads that clanked as she walked. On her forehead rested ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... military Commandant. According to the secret correspondence which I had established with Brazilian patriots resident within the city, the Admiral's consternation on learning that fireships were nearly equipped was excessive—and being in nightly expectation of a repetition of the scene in Basque Roads; or at least of that which little more than a year previous had been enacted before Callao—every precaution was taken against surprise. He was quite right in the conjecture as to what was intended; ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... Cochrane, a few years ago, was preparing for an attack upon the French fleet in Basque Roads, suppose the French admiral had sent this letter to him:—Sir, You are preparing to attack me to-morrow, the bearer is the best pilot on our coast, I should be sorry that you should run upon a rock, he will pilot you safely, do but accept his ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... Basque captains, economical in words, rude and sparing in affectionate discourse; the Asturian and Galician captains, self-confident and spendthrift in strange contrast to their sobriety and avaricious character when ashore; the Andalusian captains, reflecting in their witty ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Cognac; "Rhythme," "Dryades," "Automne," a study, Manzi collection; "Espagne," "Ete," Behourd collection; "Automne," Gallery of the Luxembourg. The latter is a decorative work of rare interest. At the Salon of 1903 Mlle. Dufau exhibited two works—"La grande Voix" and "Une Partie de Pelotte, au Pays basque." The latter was purchased by the Government, and will be hung in ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... to buy them ice or wine; and how in their delirium the sweet, fresh voice of the child of the regiment would soothe them, singing above their wretched beds some carol or chant of their own native province, which it always seemed she must know by magic; for, were it Basque or Breton, were it a sea-lay of Vendee or a mountain-song of the Orientales, were it a mere, ringing rhyme for the mules of Alsace, or a wild, bold romanesque from the country of Berri—Cigarette ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... had in the year 1809 fitted out 9 line-of-battle ships, in addition to the squadrons already at sea, which, under the command of M. Allemand, had arrived in Basque Roads. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... a mountain sheep, but to-night the likeness was further increased by a grizzled bunch of frizzled hair that stood out on either temple like embryo horns. Mrs. Taylor looked, as it were, "in the velvet." She wore a brown sateen basque secured at the throat by a brooch consisting of a lock of hair under glass. It was observed, also, that for the evening she had removed the string which she commonly wore around her two large and widely separated front teeth, and which were being drawn together by ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... mon maitre," he said in parting; "may you be as well served as you deserve. Should you chance, however, to have any pressing need de mes soins, send for me without hesitation, and I will at once give my new master warning." A few days later Borrow engaged a Basque, named Francisco, who "to the strength of a giant joined the disposition of a lamb," {216a} and who had ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... one made in princess style, and one empire gown, and one that had a pull-back in the skirt, and one was a tub dress, whatever that is, and there was a crepe de chine and a basque and peau de soie effect and—and—er—well, I know you'll excuse me from mentioning any others, as I don't know very much about dresses; it took me quite a while to look those up, and I must get on with ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis

... men like the Semites but they spoke a different language which is regarded as the common ancestor of all European tongues with the exception of Hungarian and Finnish and the Basque dialects of Northern Spain. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... her agitation at the sight of this youth of about twenty, of a form and stature so slender that at a first glance he might have been taken for a mere boy, or a young girl in disguise. His black cap—like the beret worn by the Basque people—showed a brow as white as snow, where grace and innocence shone with an expression of divine sweetness—the light of a soul full of faith. A poet's fancy would have seen there the star which, in some old tale, a ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac

... why not set out at once? What prevented him? And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's head on the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... The Basque, Breton, and Norman, fishermen are believed to have made their voyages as early as the year 1504, just 100 years before Champlain entered the mouth of the St. John river. But these early navigators were too intent upon their own immediate gain ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... writing his letters and was standing, with his wife and the potato baron, in front of the hacienda when Pablo and his prisoner rode into the yard. Thin rivulets of blood were trickling from the Basque's nose and lips; his face was ashen with rage ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... their graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had specially created toothless whales of the Family Balaenidae solely for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... equalised, the inhabitants of the remaining provinces of Spain differ as widely from one another as they do from the sister kingdom, while the folklore of Asturias and of the Basque Provinces is very closely allied with that of Portugal. To judge the Biscayan by the same standard as the Andaluz, is as sensible as it would be to compare the Irish squatter with Cornish fisher-folk, or the peasants of Wilts and Surrey with the Celtic races of the West ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... arrived from Biscay of a new revolt, extending through all the Basque provinces; and they are only waiting for some eligible pretender to come forward to give to this happy country another ruler. Advices from all parts are indeed crowded with reports of a rebellious spirit, so that a dozen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... Islands. Urdaneta, now a priest, was not overlooked. Accompanied by five priests of his Order, he was entrusted with the spiritual care of the races to be subdued by an expedition composed of four ships and one frigate well armed, carrying 400 soldiers and sailors, commanded by a Basque navigator, Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. This remarkable man was destined to acquire the fame of having established Spanish dominion in these Islands. He was of noble birth and a native of the Province of Guipuzcoa in Spain. Having settled ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... Language.—The Basque language stands alone amongst European tongues, having affinity with none of them. According to Farrar, "there never has been any doubt that this isolated language, preserving its identity in a western corner of ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... Ellawea," corrected her mother. "Yes, we've got several. Miss Stanhope, do you know there's a sculpture in town? and what do you think? He wants to make a basque relief out o' one o' them photographs of my 'Lijah. But I don't know as I'll ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... admiral, was the fourth son of the 1st Viscount Barrington. He entered the navy at an early age and in 1747 had worked his way to a post-captaincy. He was in continuous employment during the peace of 1748-1756, and on the outbreak of the Seven Years' War served with Hawke in the Basque roads in command of the "Achilles" (60). In 1759 the "Achilles" captured a powerful French privateer, after two hours' fighting. In the Havre-de-Grace expedition of the same year Barrington's ship carried the flag of Rear-Admiral ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... this gallant officer was entrusted with the perilous duty of conducting the fire-ships in the attack upon the French fleet in Basque Roads, he had lighted the fusee which was to explode one of these terrific engines of destruction, and had rowed off to some distance, when it was discovered that a dog had been left on board. Lord C. instantly ordered the men to row back, assuring them ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... as they race the strand, their dash into the water, or their nervous pausing at the rim of the wet—here is poetry for you, the poetry of glorious days in youth-land. Curiously enough his types are for the most part more international than racial; that is, racial as are Zuloaga's Basque brigands, manolas, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... the Salic law of succession in Spain, so as to assure the throne to his new wife, raised up a party of absolutists against him. His brothers, Don Carlos and Francisco, became the heads of this movement and rallied their supporters around them, in the Basque provinces. In Portugal kindred dissensions rent the land in twain. Dom Miguel's claims to the crown were disputed on behalf of the constitutional government by the Duke of Palermo. Across the seas, Dom Pedro ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... drawing of a crooked and grotesque old negro, in a frame of carved wood; and, finally, a suit of clothes hung against the wall in the position of a human figure, consisting of a jaunty scarlet cap, with a little flag of the United States fastened to the front by an army-badge; a basque, skirt, and trousers of blue cloth, with a worn and clumsy pair of boots below. From a belt fastened across the waist hung a little barrel, a flask, and by a wide ribbon of red, white and blue, a ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... not see the same kind of thing in the present day, in spite of our railways and other modes of rapid communication, and the perpetual intermarrying of modern peoples? Compare the ornaments of Normandy with those of the Basque provinces, those of Brittany with those of Burgundy, and surely the differences between them will be found to be as great as we note in the weapons and ornaments of the builders of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... of Tadoussac early in June. Here he found Basque fishermen engaged in the peltry {45} traffic with Indians from Labrador. When Pontgrave read his commission interdicting all ships but those of De Monts from trade, the Basques poured a fusillade of ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... said he, mixing execrably bad Spanish with Basque words. "Muy barato. You shall have ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... indefatigable and vivid shining), and candlesticks of the same,—not the long prisms, like those on Mary's astral, but a network of crystals diamond-cut. The two ladies were in embroidered white muslin dresses over rose-colored silk, and black velvet jackets, basque-shaped, with a dozen bracelets on their arms, which were bare, with flowing sleeves. They received us with that whole-hearted cordiality we meet everywhere. They told us some terrible stories about the haunted house, and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... new songs," she said, "from the Basque country. I wonder if you will prefer them ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman



Words linked to "Basque" :   Espana, French Republic, France, Spain, tongue, Kingdom of Spain, European, natural language



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