5 Sure now they dwell in Ireland; You'll see their castle looking down And the old lord's wife is dead and gone, For he sits beside his own Kathleen, With her darling on his knee. of low degree, the poorer people; kin, kindred or relatives; kern, a poor man; rue, regret; shealing-fires, fires in the huts; gleemen and harpers entertained the people by singing songs, often of their own composition; hall, the castle hall; quoth, said; Banshee, a fairy spirit that warns of death or misfortune; wake-lights, funeral torches; requite, pay back. A poem of this kind, containing a story, and written as though it might be sung, is called a ballad. Each group of lines or verses is called a stanza. Which verses are rhymed? You will notice how apt you are to read poetry in a sing-song way. If you study a few poems carefully, you will see the reason. The words or syllables that you accent strongly occur at regular intervals, and in this respect poetry resembles music. In Kathleen you accent every other syllable. How many stanzas in Kathleen? How many verses in each stanza? How many strong accents in the first and in the third verse of each stanza? How many strong accents in the second and in the fourth verse of each stanza? Who tells the story? Two persons are now introduced. Contrast them in two ways. Give the meaning of stanza 4 in your own words. To whom is Kathleen compared? In what way was the stepmother's anger aroused? What cruel thing did she do? How did the fairies show their love for Kathleen? Substitute shining for glancing and glowing for glimmering. Do you get exactly the same picture? Which is better? Do you see any change in the old lord (stanza 15)? What has caused this? What means does he now take to recover Kathleen? Who comes to the rescue? What is a page? Describe his search. Synonym for ancient (stanza 21)? Could you use it here? How had Kathleen fared in her new home? Describe the meeting with the page (stanza 24). With what happy scene does the ballad close? You will find that in this ballad Whittier has given us several pictures which an artist might paint. Try to picture them: the fair Kathleen on her father's knee; the cruel stepmother clipping Kathleen's glossy hair; the fairy folk with the glimmering funeral torches; the old father and the young page; the finding of Kathleen; the happy home scene. Tell the whole story as briefly as you can. Spelling. Bargain, ancient, requite, kin, glimmering, glancing. Grammar. Make a list of the nouns in the ballad. How many of them are names of persons? How many are names of places? of things? Go over the various names applied to the daughter: child, maid, darling, lady, Kathleen. Which of these might refer to some other daughter? Which name belongs to the particular girl of the story? Go over the following names of places: town, Limerick, Boston, Galway, etc. Which of these names might refer to several places? Which to some particular place? Such names as lady, child, town, belong in common to several persons or places, so that we call them common nouns. Names that belong to particular ones of a class, as Kathleen, which names a particular girl, and Limerick, which names a particular town, are called proper nouns. You will notice that each proper noun begins with a capital letter. Make a rule for this. Nouns, whether common or proper, are often composed of more than one word as Old Stony Phiz, lily of the valley. What kind Classify all the nouns in Kathleen as common or proper. Give a class name for several of the proper nouns. of nouns will you then have? Composition. You have learned that it is not well in writing to make many short sentences which could as well be combined into one. Another danger you must avoid is trying to get too much into your sentence, so that you express more than one complete thought. You must learn, then, not only what to put into a sentence, but what to leave out. Learn to look well at each sentence you make. See if you have expressed one thought clearly. Be sure to begin with a capital and put the correct punctuation mark at the end. In the following, you will find that sentences have been combined that do not properly belong together. Write them over correctly. If there are any that can be put together in one sentence, write them so. John Greenleaf Whittier was born at Amesbury, Massachusetts, and I enjoy reading his poems. He was a Quaker and wrote many anti-slavery poems. His parents were very poor while Whittier lived to be very old and he had to work very hard on the farm when he was young, so he lived to be beloved and known by all the nation. His antislavery poems helped to make people anxious to free the slaves and he suffered all his long life from ill health. 7 TREASURE ISLAND [This extract is from Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, an exciting story of adventure. Jim Hawkins, who is supposed to tell the story, was the son of a woman who kept a little inn in an out-of-the-way part of Great Britain, many years ago. They had a strange lodger, an old sea-faring man, who seemed to be in hiding, and who died suddenly in their house. While Jim and his mother are searching the old sailor's chest to see if they can find the money that is due them, a band of violent men, who are apparently in pur suit of the old sailor, rush into the house, and the lad and his mother barely escape, the mother carrying with her the sum of money that covered her debt, the boy a little package he found in the old sea chest. Finding the sailor dead, the men begin to search his chest for the mysterious package which the boy has taken, but run away when a band of mounted police ride up. With the officer in charge, Mr. Dance, the boy goes to the squire of the village, or justice of the peace, to give an account of the matter.] I HAD never seen the squire so near at hand. He was a tall man, over six feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. His eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave 5 him a look of some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high. "Come in, Mr. Dance," says he, very stately and condescending. "Good evening, Dance," says the doctor, with a nod. 10 "And good evening to you, friend Jim. What good wind. brings you here?" Mr. Dance stood up straight and stiff, and told his story like a lesson; and you should have seen how the two gentlemen leaned forward and looked at each other, 15 and forgot to smoke in their surprise and interest. When they heard how my mother went back to the inn, Dr. Livesey fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried, "Bravo!" Long before it was done, Mr. Trelawney (that, you will remember, was the squire's name) had got 20 5 up from his seat, and was striding about the room, and the doctor, as if to hear the better, had taken off his powdered wig, and sat there, looking very strange indeed with his own close-cropped, black poll. At last Mr. Dance finished the story. "Mr. Dance," said the squire, "you are a very noble fellow. And this lad Hawkins is a trump, I perceive. Hawkins, will you ring that bell? Mr. Dance must have some ale." 10 "And so, Jim," said the doctor, "you have the thing that they were after, have you?" "Here it is, sir," said I, and gave him the oilskin packet. The doctor looked at it all over, as if his fingers were 15 itching to open it; but, instead of doing that, he put it quietly in the pocket of his coat. "Squire," said he, "when Dance has had his ale, he must, of course, be off on his Majesty's service; but I mean to keep Jim Hawkins here to sleep at my house, 20 and, with your permission, I propose we should have up the cold pie, and let him sup." "As you will, Livesey," said the squire; "Hawkins has earned better than cold pie." So a big pigeon pie was brought in, and put on a side 25 table, and I made a hearty supper, for I was as hungry as a hawk, while Mr. Dance was further complimented, and at last dismissed. |