half-ribald

Updated: July 11, 2025

They were not the only people on that errand; the pale road was scattered with moving specks of blackness solitary old men and women that stumbled on faster than they had done for years in their anxiety lest no place should be left for them; family groups already discussing all they had heard of the preacher; knots of youths, half-ribald and half-curious, encouraging each other as over their reluctant spirits there blew the first breath of that dread which was to send them, shaking, to the penitents' bench.

F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson) Jesse - Secret Bread