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Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.

Forefathers

Could I trace back the time to a far distant date,
Since my forefathers toil’d in this field:
And the farm I now hold on your honour’s estate
Is the same that my grandfather till’d.
A Song, “Ere around the huge oak.”

This was the cottage his forefathers knew,
It saw his birth; shall see his burial too.
Fenton.—Claudian’s Old Man.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
Gray.—Elegy, Verse 4.