begirt

"That city shall be begirt" (he told me he did not know what the word begirt meant then) "by a foreign nation, that will come and pitch their camp in the Hay wood, and they shall batter such gate," which they did, (I have forgot the name of it) "and shall go away and not take it."

Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects John Aubrey 1661

The door was seen from every point in the fog-begirt world.

The Kempton-Wace Letters 2010

You poor fog-begirt Dane Kempton, could you but have lounged with me on the window couch, an hour past, and watched the light pass out of the day through the Golden Gate and the night creep over the Berkeley Hills and down out of the east!

Kempton-Wace Letters 2010

I think this is similar to the technique of assigning epithets, often poetic, to various characters in oral tradition, such as these examples from Orphic Hymns: "Poseidon, ruler of the sea profound, dark-haired, whose waves begirt the solid ground" or "Righteous Themis, with sagacious eyes."

Oral Tradition, Epithets, and J.D. Robb Victoria Janssen 2009

Not yet were cities begirt with steep moats; there were no trumpets of straight, no horns of curving brass, no swords or helmets.

"The real problem with literary types is..." Ann Althouse 2009

Inwardly glowing with impatience, Arthur yet saw the necessity of obeying his guide; and when he had pulled the long and loose upper vestment from the old man, he stood before him in a cassock of black serge, befitting his order and profession, but begirt, not with a suitable sash such as clergymen wear, but with a most uncanonical buff-belt, supporting a short two-edged sword, calculated alike to stab and to smite.

Anne of Geierstein 2008

While the cavalcade were getting to horse, Sir William Ashton, a man of peace and of form, censured his son Henry for having begirt himself with a military sword of preposterous length, belonging to his brother, Colonel Ashton.

The Bride of Lammermoor 2008

Dietrich, march along, well armed, begirt with swords, while in their hands they bare their shields.

The Nibelungenlied 2007

That plaguesome Polypheme was Captain Stubbard, begirt with a wife, and endowed with a family almost in excess of benediction, and dancing attendance upon Miss Dolly, too stoutly for his own comfort, in the hope of procuring for his own Penates something to eat and to sit upon.

Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

His close-shaven crown, surrounded by a circle of stiff curled black hair, had something the appearance of a parish pinfold begirt by its high hedge.

Ivanhoe 2004