Word: dourness
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...diary of that old Puritan, Samuel Sewall, shows how completely the order of the English Parliament in 1644 put an end to merry Christmas. All the hoary customs were forced to hide their faces for very shame, and none of them dared to reappear, except on Merrymount, until dour Cromwell was succeeded by the lively Charles. Then one by one they came back until in 1719 Sewall mournfully writes "New England men came hither to avoid anniversary days, the keeping of them, such as the twenty-fifth of December...
...Anti-Prohibition Campaign Council of Edinburgh is evidently angry, Scotch anger is decidedly dour. The fact that prohibition is approved as a wise measure by the great majority of the American people does not count among the lairds of the glass, who hold fast to the old gospel of the Scotch lady, remonstrated with for her evident condition, who proclaimed: "Better have a wee drappie too much than waste the Lord's mercies." -Boston Transcript...