Some have supposed that the psalter was not in fact an instrument, but that the term was applied merely to harmony produced by the voice in conjunction with instruments.

This practice of harbouring and protecting the purple martin does not appear to be of European origin, as the aboriginal Americans had adopted a similar practice from time immemorial.

He was blathering on about something, but I managed to shut him up.

Folio Society 1973, p. 333: Our travellers had happened to take up their residence at a house of exceeding good repute, whither Irish ladies of strict virtue, and many northern lasses of the same predicament, were accustomed to resort in their way to Bath. The landlady therefore would by no means have admitted any conversation of a disreputable kind to pass under her roof. Indeed, so foul and contagious are all such proceedings, that they contaminate the very innocent scenes where they are committed, and give the name of a bad house, or of a house of ill repute, to all those where they are suffered to be carried on.