If ever capital punishment were lawful, (which I confess I do not think it ever can be,) it would be as a desperate remedy against this horrid relic of mediaeval superstition and impiety, no wiser or more Christian than the ordeal by burning ploughshares or poisoned wine.

And when he and the sorcerer met, both breathing flame, the people knew not which to follow; but when Abdallah walked over nine hot ploughshares, and the sorcerer could not touch one of them, they beat his brains out, and became Abdallah's disciples.

A little farther on, the ground was whitened with an immense number of daisies,daisies, daisies, everywhere; and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy.

They meant a degree of detailed repetition and dehumanised division of labour, to which no man born would surrender his brief span in the sunshine, if he could hope to beat his ploughshare into a sword.

Krishna, it is clear, cannot go himself, but Balarama is less impeded and with Krishna's approval, he takes a ploughshare and pestle, mounts a chariot and speeds on his way.

THE PHEASANT-HEN But when you sing by day? CHANTECLER I am practising, or else promising the ploughshare, the hoe, the harrow, the scythe, not to neglect my duty of waking them.

Some think that the return to nature is achieved by beating swords into ploughshares; some think it is achieved by turning ploughshares into very ineffectual British War Office bayonets.

His principal work is making and sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat blunt chisels than anything else.

So he hid himself and saw the Strong man snap the ploughshare in two; but in view of such a display of strength he was much too frightened to let his servant know that he had found out the trick that was being played on him.

The farmers shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as Allah has given them.

Were we designed for daily toil, To drag the ploughshare through, the soil, 20 To sweat in harness through the road, To groan beneath the carrier's load?

Robert Burns could sing as he drove his ploughshare through the fields of Ayr.