Kirtle

“ Kittel, masculine, ‘smock-frock,’ from Middle High German kitel, kittel, masculine, ‘smock-frock, shirt, chemise.’ Anglo-Saxon cyrtel, English kirtle, Old Icelandic kyrtell, on account of the medial r and the abnormal dental correspondence, cannot be compared (they are allied to kurz) . Its connection with χιτών is impossible. The origin of the High German word has not been explained. The strong suspicion that it has been borrowed cannot be proved.
Kitze (1.) , feminine, from the equivalent Middle High German kitze, kiz, neuter, Old High German chizzî, kizzîn, neuter, ‘kid’ ”

“ Kirtley took refuge in an alcove. He fancied he would before long spy Fritzi. She would be the only person he knew. But she discovered him first. She tripped up to him with a green cavalier redolent of salad oil and beer. She was very proud to be able to claim Herr Kirtley for one of her "sales." Foreigners are always distinguished. ”

“ With this meeting we leave that Oxford before the Conquest, of which possibly not one stone, or one rafter, remains. We look back through eight hundred years on a city, rich enough, it seems, and powerful, and we see the narrow streets full of armed bands of men—men that wear the cognisance of the horse or of the raven, that carry short swords, and are quick to draw them; men that dress in short kirtles of a bright colour, scarlet or blue; that wear axes slung on their backs, and adorn their bare necks and arms with collars and bracelets of gold. ”

“ The promise of a picturesque ruin led us to Kirkstall-Abbey, about three miles from Leeds— a little deviation from our road, which amply repaid our trouble. Ascending to the summit of Kirkstall hill, the rich vale in which these remains are situated, watered by the winding river Aire, darkened by deep and lofty woods, and grandly backed by distant hills, opened to us at once a scene of uncommon beauty. ”

“ The Prophet said, purchase lands in the vicinity of Kirtland; men were induced to buy farms, and to go to work and build houses, to quarry rock, and haul them on the ground, to build a Temple. We were not then supplied with reporters and clerks as we are now, and many of the books that were kept have been wrested from the hands of the Church by apostates. The foundation of the Kirtland Temple was laid in 1833, and there is scarcely a scrap of history relating to it to be found, not even the names of the twenty-four Elders in their order who laid the foundation of it. ”

“ Kirkstall Abbey is about three miles away, on the edge of the city. Nothing can excel the beauty of this ancient place. It is situated near a country road, and slopes to the river a distance of perhaps a thousand feet. The walls are varied in outlines and heights. The tower and walls are quite complete, and the adjoining ruins are as fine as any in England. They comprise many rooms, roofless for centuries. The low-cropped grass, with its thick math, fills them, and there are ten or twelve elm-trees, full two feet in diameter, growing in the deserted apartments. ”

“ Close by the sea lay the many gables (black wood with green turf-roofs) of the farm of Kirkjubae (Kirkby) , a little white-washed church being the nearest to the sea, while close under the basalt cliff was the ruin of a stone mediæval church: a most beautiful and poetical place it looked to me, but more remote and melancholy than I can say, in spite of the flowers and grass and bright sun: it looked as if you might live for a hundred years before you would ever see ship sailing into the bay there; as if the old life of the saga-time had gone, and the modern life never reached the place. ”

“ The Kirtland Temple served temporarily only. It was built because a house was necessary where the Lord could come and restore the various keys of former dispensations, that the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times might be made complete. In the Kirtland Temple the Lord gave a partial endowment, but not in the fulness, that the apostles and others might be endowed with necessary power to go forth “to prune the vineyard for the last time.” But the great object was the restoration of the keys of former dispensations. ”

“ The incoming tide kept her where she sank, and he soon brought her to the surface and through the surf to the beach. I spread my cloak on the sand, and, wrapping her in it, began rubbing and rolling her, with the assistance of other ladies, for resuscitation from drowning.
In three minutes more Kittredge was kneeling by my side with a brandy-flask, administering its contents drop by drop, and giving orders. "It is congestion," said he. "You must rub her chest, her back, her hands and feet; so, so. She will die in your hands if you are not quick. For God's sake, work fast!" ”

“ Through many a hot noon-tide hour, through many a gloaming, he went as one in a dream. Whenever he saw a birch swaying in the wind, or a wave leaping upon Loch Liath, that was near his home, or passed a bush covered with wild roses, or saw the moonbeams lying white on the boles of the pines, he thought of Katreen: his fawn for grace, and so lithe and tall, with sun-brown face and wavy dark mass of hair and shadowy eyes and rowan-red lips. ”

“ But when into Kyrle’s existence blank, arid as African sands,
Into the barrenness marred and vexed by alien tongues and hands,
An angel’s voice rang heavenly high, and a star in his pathway fell,
Welcomer ’twas to the lonely man than water in nethermost hell. ”

“ The next day I was intending to go fifty miles south to the town of Suffield, Ohio, to pay some taxes, but my wife thinking that one or two days would not make much difference about that, proposed that we should hunt up those strange men in Kirtland.
The next morning I took my wife, another man and his wife, and started for Kirtland. When we arrived there, the men we were seeking had gone to the town of Mayfield, but were to return to Kirtland the next day. The following morning I hitched up my carriage and again drove to Kirtland, one of my neighbors accompanying us with his team and family. ”

“ Kitterbell was a tall, thin young lady, with very light hair, and a particularly white face—one of those young women who almost invariably, though one hardly knows why, recall to one’s mind the idea of a cold fillet of veal. Out went the servant, and in came the nurse, with a remarkably small parcel in her arms, packed up in a blue mantle trimmed with white fur.—This was the baby. ”

“ The Kirree people are a savage-looking race; they are amazingly strong and athletic, and are also well proportioned. Their only clothing is the skin either of a leopard or tiger fastened round their waist. Their hair is plaited, and plastered with red clay in abundance; and their face is full of incisions in every part of it; these are cut into the flesh, so as to produce deep furrows, each incision being about a quarter of an inch long and dyed with indigo. It was scarcely possible to make out a feature of their face, and never were individuals more disfigured. ”

“ Nobody, at least in Kiteroa; and perhaps it is as well. It is good at times that curiosity should go ungratified. Miss Kirkcaldie succeeded in remaining a problem to the end. Three years to the very day, after she had drifted into the farm, she drifted away from it again, as suddenly and unexplainingly as she had come. Nobody ever heard where she went to, or anything more about her. The patient bullocks took the boxes and piano-case down the hill again, the cold ashes were swept up from the unrequired hearth, the music was gone, and the old kitchen was shut up once more. ”

“ The little church of Kirkdale, remarkable for its Saxon sun-dial and other pre-Norman remains, is surrounded by masses of foliage, and the walk up the dale from this point to the romantically situated Cauldron Mill is one of remarkable beauty. As one follows the course of the beck higher and higher towards it source north of Bransdale, the densely wooded sides become bare, and wide expanses and the invigorating moorland air are exchanged for the rich land scents and the limited views. ”

“ So in Bible History, while lesser kings keep their dignity, great Solomon's wit is outwitted by the riddles of some countryman; and Lucifer himself, known in Kiltartan as "the proudest of the angels, thinking himself equal with God," has been seen in Sligo rolling down a road in the form of the Irish Times. The gods of ancient Ireland have not escaped. Mananaan, Son of the Sea, Rider of the Horses of the Sea, was turned long ago into a juggler doing tricks, and was hunted in the shape of a hare. ”

“ The building of a temple in Missouri was regarded, even by the prophet and those who assisted him in dedicating the site, as an event of the future, perhaps even of the far distant future. The center of activity, the seat of the Church for the time being, was in Ohio, and Kirtland was the place of temporary gathering. In Kirtland too was to be erected the first temple of modern times. ”

“ I remained in Kirtland until the temple was finished and dedicated. I then received my anointings, and was also a witness to the great manifestations of God's power in that sacred edifice.
On Thursday, April 7th, 1836, all things being ready, Lydia and I started for Clay county. Brother Hyrum Smith let me have his horses to go to Liverpool, on the Ohio river, where we were intending to take passage on a steamer for our destination; the roads were very muddy. ”

“ This love for the woods has never left me, and often in later life, at the aspect of a beautiful spreading landscape or of the open sea, I have asked myself whether what I had seen and felt in the forest did not surpass all else.
Summer was for us a period of festivities. Already in May occurred the kirmess in Lind, Ohm Peter's home, and late in the autumn the kirmess in Herrig, where Ohm Rey lived; and between those there were still a great many more kirmesses on farms of uncles and cousins. To most of them the whole family went, including the children. ”

“ At last, when the string was all let out, there came a sudden gust of wind, and in an instant poor Zingle was drawn into the air as easily as an ordinary kite draws its tail. Up and up he soared, and the kite followed the wind and carried him over many countries until the strength died out of the air, when the kite slowly settled toward the earth and landed the Prince in the top of a tall tree. ”

“ A great deal of interest has centred round an Anglo-Saxon cross-slab built into the west wall of Kirkdale church. At the time of its discovery the late Rev. Daniel H. Haigh1 tells us that a runic inscription spelling Kununc Oithilwalde, meaning "to King Æthelwald," was quite legible. This would seem to indicate that the founder of Lastingham monastery was buried at Kirkdale, or that the site of Bede's, "Læstingaeu" was at Kirkdale if the stone has not been moved from its original position.
1 Yorkshire Archæological Journal, v. 134. ”

“ The feelings of the brethren on leaving Kirtland and parting with those who were left behind were somewhat peculiar, notwithstanding the scenes they had passed through in Kirtland; but the consciousness of doing the will of their heavenly Father, and obeying His commandments in journeying to Zion, over balanced every other consideration that could possibly be presented to their minds, and buoyed up their spirits, and helped them to overcome the weaknesses and infirmities {101} of human nature which men are subject to here on the earth. ”

“ A murmur went up as he stretched out his hand.
“Name of a name,” the merchant cried, “do not touch it!”
But Kirdy had lifted the heavy painted lacquer countenance and was studying the pallid features beneath—the strong features of a youth no older than himself, without a beard. ”

“ It would be very cosy to have them coming in on Christmas night—his own!
But at the chiming of those two words through his brain, thought sharply asserted itself, keen and crystalline in retrospect. As a man brings all his life to God at the end, the Bishop looked into the Nazarene’s eyes from the picture of the little city that belonged to them both, whispering, “But those out there have been my own.”
Presently the silvered head sank back in the sudden drowsiness that falls upon the very old, but even as he yielded to it, the Bishop’s eyelids flickered an instant. ”

“ This Captain Kirton was really the best of the Kirton bunch: a quiet, unassuming young man, somewhat delicate in health. Lord Hartledon was grieved for his accident, and helped to nurse him with the best heart in the world.
And now what devilry (there were people in Calne who called it nothing less) the old countess-dowager set afloat to secure her ends I am unable to tell you. She was a perfectly unscrupulous woman—poverty had rendered her wits keen; and her captured lion was only feebly struggling to escape from the net. ”

“ It seemed to me that the sun would never set that evening, and I was in mortal fear that when it did the wind would also go down. At last, the shadows of night [Pg 64] descended upon the earth, and still the breeze blew finely. I waited at the window, and watched with all my eyes until near midnight, when, to my delight, I saw the shadow of a kite coming between me and the stars. With one quick, strong pull I wrenched the grating out, and stood with my head projecting from the hole, ready to catch the kite. ”

“ His body lay in state in the church of Ross for nine days and was then buried without a head-stone.
For the prose of Kyrle's life and achievements, as distinguished from Pope's poetry, we have to go first to the diary of Thomas Hearn the antiquary. Under the date April 9th, 1732-33, Hearn writes: "He (John Kirle or Kyrle) was a very humble, good-natured man. He was a man of little or no literature. He always studied to do what good charitable offices he [Pg 77] could, and was always pleased when an object offered. He was reverenced and respected by all people. ”