May-game

It is said that their Bruce, and the rest of his kinsmen, intend a new May-game, and that the outlawed king proposes to land near Turnberry, early in summer, with a number of stout kernes from

Castle Dangerous 2008

It is Amy Robsart, the same who, to make up the May-game yesterday, figured in the pageant as the wife of his servant

Kenilworth 2004

I shall this day in the first place present you with a May-game; but such a one as is not usuall, and deserves to be taken notice of, and it is an action of Warre too, and therefore the more sutable to the times.

War Game Price, Anthony 1976

For out of that little, odd, ridiculous May-game came the supercilious philosophers, in whose room have succeeded a kind of people the world calls monks, cardinals, priests, and the most holy popes.

In Praise of Folly c. 1466-1536 1958

Life is not a May-game, but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and powers.

Leaves of Life For Daily Inspiration Margaret Bird Steinmetz

I am but a silly, poor girl, set up by the gambol of fortune for a May-game.

The World's Greatest Books — Volume 07 — Fiction Various 1910

Or, maybe I'd been thinking already -- what with their May-game hints and the loneliness out there.

Wandering Heath Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

Israelite judges, Assyrian kings, Alexander, the infuriate and insatiable conqueror, May-game monarchs like Darius, Rehoboam with his

Sir Walter Ralegh A Biography 1879

Life was never a May-game for men: in all times the lot of the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable; not play at all, but hard work that made the sinews sore and the heart sore.

Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. Thomas Carlyle 1838

Souls to whom the omnipotent guinea is, on the whole, an impotent guinea: Not a May-game is this man's life, but a battle and stern pilgrimage: God's justice, human Nobleness, Veracity and Mercy, the essence of his very being. (p. 355.) -- What a man of Genius is.

Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. Thomas Carlyle 1838