"Mermaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bearing on one slope the largest copy of the 'Bishops' Bible'; on the other, one of the Prayer-book. The ornaments of the oaken mantelpiece culminated in a shield bearing a cross boutonnee, i.e. with trefoil terminations. It was supported between a merman with a whelk shell and a mermaid with a comb, and another like Siren curled her tail on the top of the gaping baronial helmet above the shield, while two more upheld the main weight of the chimney-piece on either side of the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... infinite possibilities of beauty and goodness which are so slightly out of reach; the forgotten wonder of elfs and brownies suggests itself to us from the heart of flowers and amidst the leaves of trees. The clear depths of the sea take half their charm from the memory of the mermaid's palace; the silence of forests is rich with the expectancy of the Knight of the Golden Plume; the large spaces of kitchens and corridors are hushed for the concealment ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... beginning to feel cheery again, "it seems to me that we have got into a mermaid's cave, for there is nothing but water all round us; and as for earth or sky, they are things of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... that the law oft obeys; K is a Key, that no secret betrays. L is a Lamb, often freaks o'er the lea; M is a Mermaid, that sings ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... Ego straight in the eye, and pronounce unbiased judgment, were worthy of Sir Thomas Browne's Museum. Had Cheiron written his autobiography, the consciousness of his equine crupper would have ridden him like a nightmare; should a mermaid write hers, she would sink the fish's tail, nor allow it to be put into the scales, in weighing her character. The mermaid, in truth, is the emblem of those who strive to see themselves;—her mirror is too small to reflect anything more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Neptune's hand. Only the professional mermaid can look well at sea. The other women either lie on deck in pale green rows and live throughout the voyage on sea biscuits and sherry, or, giving up completely, seek burrows in the ship and hibernate like animals awaiting spring. Yes, even now I think I recognise the ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... replied: 'I weep, O mother, because thou hast promised me to the aged Wainamoinen, to be his comforter and caretaker in his old age. Far better if thou hadst sent me to the bottom of the sea, to live with the fishes and to become a mermaid and ride on the waves. This had been far better than to be an ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... being able to realize—as how should she?—that the condition of Eleanor's fine spun locks on her arrival the night before, had been attributable to the fact that the O'Farrel baby had stolen her comb, and Eleanor had been too shy to mention the fact, and had combed her hair mermaid-wise, ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... sentiment relating to some visionary world where young girls were held aloft in the sunshine of luxury and love and happiness. One day she was lying on her back on the heather of the Peel hill, with her head on her arms, thinking of a story that Aunt Rachel had told her. It was of a mermaid who had only to slip up out of the sea and say to any man, "Come," and he came—he left everything and followed her. Suddenly the cold nose of a pointer rubbed against her forehead, a strong voice cried, "Down, sir!" and a young man of two and twenty, in leggings and a shooting-jacket, strode between ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolved to live a fool the ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... into the same plight for want of funds; but his mother wit came to his aid again, and this time he posed before the public as a naturalist who had discovered off the coast what he pronounced could be nothing else than a "mermaid," and for the exhibition of this marine creature, which he had cleverly constructed from the head and breast of an ape and half the body of a fish, he obtained a good round sum. We hear of him next at Singapore, ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... she whispered, "that I want to send some down to the 'Mermaid's Cave.' I'll begin to-day to ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... got no birthmarks," ses the woman, speaking very slow—and I could see she was afraid of making a mistake and losing me—"but he's got tattoo marks. He's got a mermaid tattooed on 'im." ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... thought; and this was another bond between us. His Radicalism was not very formidable; it amounted to little more, indeed, than a turn for humorous paradox. Our discussion reminded me of Fuller's description of the wit-combats between Ben Jonson and Shakespeare at the "Mermaid." I was the Spanish galleon, my Fascinating Friend was the English man-of-war, ready "to take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." An hour sped away delightfully, the only thing I did not greatly enjoy ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... Could this be the mermaid's retreat of which the old captain had spoken, and of which the natives on Queen Charlotte's Island had such a strange superstition? Tite thought to himself. All the pleasant associations of home, all that he loved there, and all that he had hoped for, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... of the Old Oak The Last Pearl Little Claus and Big Claus The Little Elder-tree Mother Little Ida's Flowers The Little Match-seller The Little Mermaid Little Tiny or Thumbelina Little Tuk The Loveliest Rose in ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... he continued, "a twentieth-century writer, to build yourself a Tudor House would be as absurd as for Ben Jonson to have planned himself a Norman Castle with a torture-chamber underneath the wine-cellar, and the fireplace in the middle of the dining-hall. His fellow cronies of the Mermaid would have thought him ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... thoughtless, dissipated and unstudied; but he cannot avoid being constant, generous, and sincere. The union of first rate abilities with malignity, avarice, and envy, seems to me very nearly as incredible a phenomenon, as a mermaid, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... luck of picking up a mermaid," she declared. "I may find Father Neptune, or the Sirens, if I go a little farther; or perhaps I might drag back the sea serpent, as a neat little specimen for the school museum. If the trippers are often going to provide us with such entertainment, we ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... true that you rowed me over here, my good fellow, but no fair lady accompanied me, unless it might have been some mermaid. I hope you are satisfied,' said he, turning to my companions, 'that the man who has brought you here has played you ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... the evenings to bathe in the silent pool. It seemed to have an attraction for her that was not quite human, just that attraction you might imagine that a mermaid who had won a soul would have for the cool salt waves of the sea; and sometimes Lawson went also. I do not know what urged him to go, for Ethel was obviously irritated by his presence; perhaps it was because in that spot he hoped ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... hearts! to Britain's pride, Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died, With the gallant good Riou, Soft sigh the winds of Heaven o'er their grave! While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the souls ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to the extent to which one is aware of this object of consciousness, he is said to recognize, or to know it. A state of consciousness is always, therefore, a state of knowledge, or of intelligence. Thus, whether we perceive this chair, imagine a mermaid, recall the looks of an absent friend, experience the toothache, judge the weight of this book, or become angry, our conscious state ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... night shed pale its light, The billows are gently swelling; See a mermaid merge from the briny surge, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... has written a poem on an Argyllshire tradition attaching to the whirlpool of Corryvreckan. Near that dreaded tumult of waters, Macphail, a Colonsay man, was pulled out of his boat by a mermaid, and taken down to her shell-strewn chamber at the bottom of the sea. They stayed for years together, and five little, unbaptized Macphails claimed him at length as their sire. By and by he grew tired of the eternal swirling of the currents, the saltwater garden growths, and the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... nine men's morris, old Hiems, etc. 5. Account of theories as to meaning of references to the imperiall votresse, a little westerne flower, a mearemaide on a dolphins backe, etc. Warburton says the mermaid was meant for Mary Queen of Scots. N.H. Halpin thinks that by Cynthia is meant Queen Elizabeth; by Tellus, Lady Douglas; by the little 'western flower,' Lettice, wife of Walter, Earl of Essex, while Cupid is Leicester. (See "First Folio Edition" ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... his own brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she came—he thought she came—in the form of a mermaid, raising herself aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this window, and below it we saw the deep moat in ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... look like, Maida?" Rosie said once. Before Maida could answer, she went on. "You look like that little mermaid princess in Anderson's fairy tales—the one who had to suffer so to get ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... have enforced the worth of a simple method. But, though he constantly brags of his success at Drury Lane, we take not his generalities for gospel, and the one exploit whose credibility is enforced with circumstance was pitiful both in conception and performance. A meeting of freeholders at the 'Mermaid Tavern,' Hackney, was the occasion, and after drawing blank upon blank, Vaux succeeded at last in extracting a silver snuff-box. Now, his clumsiness had suggested the use of the scissors, and the victim not only discovered ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... scenery of the Derbyshire hills, with the villages nestling in the glens, and of the "Kinder Fall," where much of the water from the summit pours down a cataract of some five hundred feet height, while not far away is the "Mermaid's Pool," where, if you go at the midnight hour that ushers in Easter Sunday, and look steadily into the water, you will see a mermaid. The man who ventures upon that treacherous bogland by night certainly deserves to see ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... thought she ought to know. "Jimmy. You heard her? Now Macartney and I are both called James. But who ever made a Jimmy of him?" She was annoyed with him—the man seemed to suppose she could be pleased by crabbing James—and glad of Margery Dacre, a mermaid in sea-green, who swam in with apologies—due to Macartney's abhorrent eyeglass upon her. And then they all went in to their archumpelygo, where Crewdson and his ladies were ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... in Armorica (Le Braz, i. p. xxxix), or the towers under Lough Neagh. In some Welsh instances a man is the culprit (Rh[^y]s, CFL i. 379). In the case of Lough Neagh the keeper of the well was Liban, who lived on in the waters as a mermaid. Later she was caught and received the baptismal name of Muirghenn, "sea-birth." Here the myth of a water-goddess, said to have been baptized, is attached to the legend of the careless guardian of a spring, with whom she is ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... another. In the latter case the man took refuge in the church, where he was besieged by the trolls until morning. In Bornholm a chalice and paten belonging to the church are said to have been made out of a cup stolen in the same way by a peasant whose mother was a mermaid, and who had inherited some portion of her supernatural power; hence, probably, his intercourse with the trolls, of which he took so mean an advantage. At Vioel, near Flensborg, in Schleswig, is a beaker belonging to the church, and, like the chalice at Aagerup, of gold, of which it is narrated ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... in Dutch Fairy Land, there lived a young mermaid who was very proud of her good looks. She was one of a family of mere or lake folks dwelling not far from the sea. Her home was a great pool of water that was half salt and half fresh, for it lay around an island near ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... had afterwards been the town-house of Elizabeth, belonged to Sir Walter Raleigh, by whom it was held on leave from the queen. Raleigh, a friend of William Shakespeare and the players, was also a friend of Francis Bacon and the philosophers. Raleigh is said to have founded the Mermaid Club; and it is certain that he numbered friends among the poets and players. The proofs of his having known Shakespeare, though indirect, are strong. Of his long intercourse with Bacon every one is aware. Thus it requires no effort of the fancy ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... that art, so far as a humble but laborious student and practitioner thereof knoweth. He could not for the life of him help admiring "Adeline," "Oriana," "Mariana," "The Ode to Memory." Yet he had nothing but scorn for the scarcely less exquisite "Mermaid" and "Sea Fairies"—though the first few lines of the latter, excluded by this and other pseudo-criticism from the knowledge of half a generation of English readers, equal almost anything that the poet has ever done. And only the lucky ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... for some twenty years, when Henry Hudson was despatched in 1607 with a crew of ten men and a boy. He reached Spitzbergen, and reached 80 deg. N., and in the following year reached the North (Magnetic) Pole, which was then situated at 75.22 deg. N. Two of his men were also fortunate enough to see a mermaid—probably an Eskimo woman in her kayak. In a third voyage, in 1609, he discovered the strait and bay which now bear his name, but was marooned by his crew, and never heard of further. He had previously, for a time, ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... the waves watered every day: she had a palace of pretty shells, where she kept all sorts of little water-creatures as fairy tenants; she had friends and playmates among the gulls and peeps, and learned curious things by watching crabs, horse-shoes, and jelly-fishes; and every day she looked for a mermaid. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... father, draw your dam!' Binnorie, O Binnorie! 'There's either a mermaid or a milk-white swan,' By ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... an enormous whale showed a back so broad and motionless that it looked like an island. Alcina had fixed her eyes on me, and planned to get me into her power. Addressing us, she said: 'This is the hour when the prettiest mermaid in the sea comes regularly every day to the shore of yonder island. She sings so sweetly that the very waves flow smoother at the sound. If you wish to hear her come with me to her resort.' So saying, Alcina pointed ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... many like places that make noses red; Th' Bore's Head in Old Fish Street, Three Crowns in the Vintry, And now, of late, St. Martin's in the Sentree; The Windmill in Lothbury; the Ship at th' Exchange, King's Head in New Fish Street, where roysters do range; The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand, Three Tuns, Newgate Market; Old ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... started, and Kerr made strong running on Mermaid, Through furrows that led to the first stake-and-bound, The crack, half extended, look'd bloodlike and splendid, Held wide on the right where the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in the human as well as religious sense—triumphed over suffering. The second has its proof in the contempt for poetic melancholy which flashes from the supposed utterance of Shakespeare in 'At the Mermaid'; its negative justification in the whole range of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... him, working in him as it worked abroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such men as he saw and knew; the words they utter were such as he heard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, and at a thousand un-named English firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... where the old man sits in his old arm- chair; but on Thanksgiving night the blaze should dance high up the chimney, and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relics of the Mermaid's knee-timbers, the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and clearer be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in the village, and the light of our household mirth flash far across the bay to Nahant. And now, come, Susan, come, my children, ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... revives: her vespers done, Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees; Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees: 230 Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, But dares not look behind, or ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... have some sort of a meeting down Church," said Cass. "But you can come afterward. I'll wait for 'ee in Dollar Cove. That's the next cove to Church Cove on the other side of the Castle Cliff, and there's some handsome cave there. Years ago my granfa knawed a chap who saw a mermaid combing out her hair in Dollar Cove. But there's no mermaids been seen lately round these parts. My father says he reckons since they scat up the apple orchards and give over drinking cider they won't see no more mermaids to Nancepean. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... fear. "We are dead men now," he muttered; for, not many feet below him, seated on the crest of a massive wave, he saw the form of a beautiful woman, with a cruel face and long fair hair, which floated like a veil on the top of the water. 'Twas a mermaid, and he knew ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... to think! (Looking down.) No! I say, do just look down here! There's the "Mermaid" walking along and chatting with him. Not with father. I wonder if those two aren't making ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... trouble, carried her importunities beyond the mark at which Harry thought his generosity should stop, he withdrew from the advances of the Opera-House Siren with perfect coolness and skill, leaving her to exercise her blandishments upon some more easy victim. In vain the mermaid's hysterical mother waited upon Harry, and vowed that a cruel bailiff had seized all her daughter's goods for debt, and that her venerable father was at present languishing in a London gaol. Harry declared that between himself ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... sonnets, pearls, Sunsets gay as Joseph's coat and seas like milky jade, Dancing at your birthday like a mermaid's dancing curls —If my father'd only brought me up to half ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... concerning Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can truly be called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian makara, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of Aphrodite," and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," pp. 382 et seq. and 399 et seq.; and especially the detailed reports in de Morgan's Memoires ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... catch me a Little mermaid, Some island where he lands, With her dripping curls, And her crown of pearls, And the looking-glass in her hands! Hail! Ho! Sail! Ho! Sail far o'er the fabulous main! And if I were a sailor, I'd sail with you, Though I never ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... how pinched they were at times, how, when they possessed money, they flung it from them as if it were poison, with what fierce speed they wrote, how they shook the stage. Then we think of the "Mermaid" in session, with Shakspeare's bland, oval face, the light of a smile spread over it, and Ben Jonson's truculent visage, and Beaumont and Fletcher sitting together in their beautiful friendship, and fancy as best we can the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... opinions, affections, and enmities. And we hear, too, of valorous potations; but in the words of Herrick addressed to his master, Jonson, at the Devil Tavern, as at the Dog, the Triple Tun, and at the Mermaid, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... truly one of 'the glories of our birth and state.' The third (idem) I have ventured to shorten by three stanzas: a proceeding which, however culpable it seem, at least gets rid of the chief who gave a country's wounds relief by stopping a battle, eliminates the mermaid and her song (the song that 'condoles'), and ends the lyric on as sonorous and romantic a word ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... exclaimed Joe Dumsby, a short, thickset, little Englishman, who, having been born and partly bred in London, was rather addicted to what is styled chaffing. "Was you arter a mermaid, shipmate?" ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid tavern, where he drunk seas of Canary, then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising to his dramatic studies. Shadwell appears, from the slight traits which remain concerning him, to have followed, as closely as possible, the same course of pleasure and of study. He ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... also happy to add the expression of his approbation of the liberal and judicious assistance rendered to Mr. Oxley, by Lieutenant King, commander of His Majesty's colonial cutter, Mermaid, whose exertions are so justly appreciated by Mr. Oxley, in the following report; and his excellency desires both those gentlemen to accept his thanks for the service thus rendered by their joint efforts ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... thought of this, the wicked step-mother sprang to her, and thrust her on a sudden overboard. The young girl was carried away by the blue waves, and came to the mermaid who rules over all those who ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... sought their seats with hanging heads. By and by, however, the failures were not all at the bottom of the class; here and there such lists as "inane, profane, humane, insane, mundane, urbane," or, "staid, unlaid, mermaid, prayed, weighed, portrayed" began to pick out uncertain ones the ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... characters he might assume; he might go to the back door and request a job; he might bang on the front door with that iron knocker, shaped like a mermaid, and ask for ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no! shark is only one syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh! Miss Woodhouse, do you think we shall ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... 5, 54, and 68) in which a child is promised to a Dervish, a Drakos, the Devil, and a Demon—and the Gaelic tales of "The Battle of the Birds" and "The Sea-maiden," (Campbell, Nos. 2 and 4) in the former of which the child is promised to a Giant, in the latter to a Mermaid. The likeness between the Russian story and the "Battle of the Birds" is very striking. References to a great many other similar tales will be found in Grimm (KM. iii. pp. 96-7, and 168-9). The group to which all these stories belong is linked with a set of tales about a father ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... changes which a pretty girl can always make when her lover is expected any instant and she does not want to lose a moment of his time, but it had sufficed. Something soft and clinging it was now; her lovely, rounded figure moving in its folds as a mermaid moves in the surf; her hair shaken cut and caught up again in all its delicious abandon; her cheeks, lips, throat, rose-color in the joy ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... have the water about my ears presently. I thought I was drowning on a mermaid's bosom. Read no more, Virginia. One nibble at a time is enough of Spenser. He ought to be made into a thousand little poems. Then we should have a multitude of gems instead of a great granite mountain that nobody ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... nights. Land sakes alive!" as another gust shot and beat its accompanying cloudburst through and between the carriage curtains; "right in my face and eyes! I don't wonder that boy wished he was a duck. I'd like to be a fish—or a mermaid. I couldn't be much wetter if I was either one, and I'd have gills so I could breathe under water. I SUPPOSE mermaids ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... listening to a long fairy tale, every page a new adventure of wizardry, a story of elf, or mermaid, or gnome, of treasures underground guarded by enchanted monsters, of bells heard silverly in the depth of old forests, of castles against the sunset, of lakes beneath the quiet moon? Know you how light gathers in the eyes dreaming ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... went up to Grettir and pointed finger, and wagged head at him, and called him mermaid's son, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... this piece of oaken timber, twisted and torn and furrowed,—its iron bolts snapped across as if bitten,—there is yet twined a gay garland of ribbon-weed, bearing on its trailing stem a cluster of bright shells, like a mermaid's chatelaine. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, tea, coffee, and chocolate were unknown save to travellers and savants, and the handmaidens of the good queen drank beer with their breakfast. When Shakespeare and Ben Jonson forgathered at the Mermaid Tavern, their winged words passed over tankards of ale, but later other drinks became the usual accompaniment of news, story, and discussion. In the sixteen-sixties there were no strident newspapers to destroy one's equanimity, and the gossip of the day began to be circulated and ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... seaman, has a characteristic dialect; but that is very different from continually letting out his ruling passion. This brings me, Sir, to the alteration you offer in the personage of Mrs. Winter, whom you wittily propose -to turn into a mermaid. I approve the idea much: I like too the restoration of Mrs. Vernon to a plain reasonable woman. She will be a contrast to the bad characters, and but a gradation to produce Barbara, without making her too ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... these replies are worded! See now, dear Manuel, how divertingly you have described King Helmas' hideous nose in your letter to King Helmas, and how trenchant is that paragraph about the scales of his mermaid wife—" ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... girls. After some instructions they sang a hymn, which a Sister of Mercy was accompanying on the harmonium. The air was taking. It puzzled me at first. It was familiar and yet strange, and not till the children had reached the last verse did I recognise a wonderfully distorted form of the mermaid's song in Oberon, all the accents being altered. In this crypt is the tomb of a Neapolitan knight attached to the court of king Rene; and in the floor a well the water of which rises and falls with the river. In all probability this crypt was originally the baptistery of ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... Mrs. Ellison, "it was no mermaid, it was a mistake; and I'm going to see about it. Will you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mugwort, occasionally corrupted into "muggons," was once a favourite prescription in Scotland. A charming girl, whom consumption had brought to the brink of the grave, was lamented by her lover, whereupon a good-natured mermaid sang to him:— ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... I hear the mermaid singing; The mermaid music at its portal ringing; The mermaid song, that hinged with gold its door, And, whispering evermore, Hushed the ponderous hurl and roar And vast aeolian thunder Of the chained tempests under The frozen cataracts ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... mermaid," said the mate, who was inclined to be superstitious, as he peered doubtfully down at it. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... Holland that when, in 1440, the dikes were broken down by a violent tempest, the sea overflowed the meadows. Some women of the town of Edam, going one day in a boat to milk their cows, discovered a mermaid in shallow water floundering about with her tail in the mud. They took her into the boat, brought her to Edam, dressed her in women's clothes, and taught her to spin, and to eat as they did. They even taught her something of religion, or, at any rate, to bow reverently when she passed ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... landscape might be French, these flowers were unmistakably Californian. The two pools, ornamented with the Arthur Putnam fountain of the mermaid, in duplicate, decidedly French in feeling, were brilliant with the reflected coloring from both the flowers ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... explore that," went on the scientist. "We are going to make a voyage to the interior of the earth in our Flying Mermaid." ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... example, the portrait of a poet or rather of the poet of the Elizabethan period; for the specimen here represented stands as a type for all his class; and it is worth notice, for if Shakespeare himself was different, many of his associates at the "Mermaid," we may be sure, well answered the description. "I espied far off a certain kind of an overworne gentleman, attired in velvet and satin; but it was somewhat dropped and greasie, and bootes on his legges, whose soles wexed thin and seemed to complaine of their maister, which treading thrift ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... and you, Master Block, save your breath, and spare your money; and if this worshipful gentleman must become innkeeper at any price, let him have the place in the Devil's name, and I will give thee the Mermaid, at Bridport, with a snug parlour, and ten times the ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... money wherewith to pay the charges of the ship-master. From the manor-house to Scarborough there was a distance of twenty odd miles, and therefore we rode our horses. Sir Thurstan had given us instructions to put up at the Mermaid Tavern, near the harbor, and there we accordingly stabled our beasts and made arrangements for our own accommodation. The ship which we were expecting had not yet arrived, and was not likely to come in before the next day, so that we had naught to do but look about us and derive what amusement ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... Dr. Todd in his book on St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, page 460, cites from 'An Irish Life of St. Brendan,' but which must evidently be the fabulous voyage, four incidents, of which one is about the finding of a dead mermaid, another about one of the voyagers being devoured alive by sea-cats, and the third about an huge sea-cat as large as an ox which swam after them to destroy them, until another sea-monster rose up and fought with the cat, and both were drowned, none of which incidents ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... No. 6, F. I. M. X. T. S. Z., was about to hold a meeting. The Council was composed of seven eminent Freaks—Sim Boles, the Double-Jointed Wonder; Bony Perkins, the Ossified Man; Duffer Leech, the Man with the Phenomenal Skull; Miss Tilly Boles, the Beautiful Mermaid of the Southern Sea; Mrs. Smock, the Bearded Circassian Beauty; Mr. Billy O'Fake, the Wild Man from Borneo, and the President of the Brotherhood, Runty, the Dwarf. These ladies and gentlemen were the leaders, nay, the fathers and mothers of the organization, distinguished ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... sometimes thought to be different from mermaids, but we fishes know them to be one and the same thing—that is, if they exist at all. It used to be said that a mermaid murmured, but that a siren sang, with dangerous sweetness. Both murmur and both sing, one as much ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... irritation vanished like magic. Water was Sahwah's element, and as she propelled herself gracefully across the sparkling lake, feeling the absolute mastery of her muscles, changing regularly from left to right in her side stroke, she might have been taken for a mermaid by some Neckan of the deep. She reached Blueberry Island in good time and, climbing up on the rocky shore, sat down in the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... our front that faces Drury Lane Much criticised; they say 'tis vulgar brick-work, A mimic manufactory of floor-cloth. One of the morning papers wish'd that front Cemented like the front in Brydges Street; As it now looks, they call it Wyatt's Mermaid, A handsome woman with a ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... bound with a band in the furrow'—when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'—when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as fate or inspiration directs. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you—the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... ago—when the Bishop sent off that ring—a sudden grip at the base of my heart filled me with a nameless terror—me, the fearless! I recognized its cause when she walked into the room. Cecil: this woman is a harpy, a siren, a mermaid, a vampire. There is only one chance for me: flight, instant precipitate flight. Make my excuses. Forget me. Farewell. [He makes for the door and is confronted by Mrs George entering]. Too late: I'm lost. [He turns back and throws himself desperately into the chair nearest ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... of pearl was her chariot and six dolphins harnessed with purpling coral used to draw it along. The tritons, her sons, handled the reins. The Naiads, their sisters, lashed the sea with their scaly tails, lifting their mermaid bodies wrapped in the magnificence of their sea-green tresses between whose ringlets might be seen their heaving bosoms. White seagulls, cooing like the doves of Aphrodite, fluttered around their nude sea-queen, serenely contemplating them from her movable throne, crowned with pearls and phosphorescent ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the vessel than that part of it which had served him so well could he see; this fragment seemed rent from the bow; yes, there was the yellow wooden mermaid bobbing to the waves; but not as of old! Poor cast-out trollop,—now the seas made sport of her who once had held her head ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... gave him what he considered its value—at all events enough to make Sulu ring with his generosity—and sent the pearl to China; but what became of it afterwards I could never distinctly trace; but I learned that a pearl in Bengal called 'The Mermaid' originally came from China, and as the one found in Sulu was said to be shaped like a woman's bust, it is probably ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and the Mermaid were celebrated taverns, which the poets, wits, and gallants were accustomed to visit. Mr. Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street, is in possession of a manuscript full of songs and poems, in the handwriting of a person of the name of Richard ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... as well as the ear. No doubt much of this charm was derived from association; for it was only his own "Melodies" he sang. It would be difficult to describe the effect of his singing. I remember some one saying to me, it conveyed an idea of what a mermaid's song might be. Thrice I heard him sing, "As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow,"—once in 1822, once at Lady Blessington's, and once in my own house. Those who can recall the touching words of that song, and unite them with the deep, yet tender pathos of the music, will be at no loss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... on the left thumb, imprisoned, and his goods confiscated; in prison he turned Catholic, but twelve years later reverted to Protestantism; the opening of the century brought an unpleasant difference with Dekker and Marston, and saw the famous Mermaid Club at its zenith; for nine years after Shakespeare's death he produced no dramas; in 1619 he received a degree, M.A., from Oxford, the laureateship, and a small pension from the king; now a widower, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... her what she saw, and what most pleased her the first day. Perhaps he will forgive you. She did not believe her own ears. He did not know that he had (has) to thank her [for] his life. She saved his life. The witch cut off the tongue of the mermaid. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... who in a moment took That which so long, so charily she kept; And fain by stealth away she would have crept, And to some corner secretly have gone, Leaving Leander in the bed alone. But as her naked feet were whipping out, He on the sudden cling'd her so about, That, mermaid-like, unto the floor she slid; One half appear'd the other half was hid. Thus near the bed she blushing stood upright, And from her countenance behold ye might A kind of twilight break, which through the air, As from an orient cloud, glimps'd here and there; ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... light, And the many colored star lights, Blended in a great profusion, To the limits of our world, Which we best can know and search in. First, unto the boundless ocean, By the billow which returneth Echo to great Neptune's call, Where the mermaid host sojourneth In his ancient rocky hall; Where Leviathan, the mighty Keeper of all Neptune's treasure, Roams around the rocky caverns In majestic state, exploring. Let us see these mighty waters When they rise in foaming billows, Swallowing towns, and ships, and people, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... who used to lie in a hammock under the roses every day and smile at my antics. She was young, I remember, and very pretty, but her face was as white as the marble mermaid in the fountain. The old gentleman and his wife always sat beside her when she lay in the hammock. Sometimes he read aloud, sometimes they talked, and sometimes a long silence would fall upon them, when the splashing of the ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... used to fancy Russia as a giant devil-fish, whose arms extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Then I would think of my native land as a beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Love or Phoebus? have I been Or Lusignan or Biron? By a Queen Caressed within the Mermaid's haunt I lay, And twice I crossed the unpermitted stream, And touched on Orpheus' lyre as in a dream, Sighs of a Saint, and laughter ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the gardenia?' replied a friend, idiomatically. 'That is Sir Runan Errand, the amateur showman—him that runs the Live Mermaid, the Missing Link, and Koot Hoomi, the Mahatma of ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... seen Done at the 'Mermaid'! Heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtile flame, As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolved to live a fool the rest Of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... puzzled, as if she were trying to understand what he meant, but could not—revealing a notion that he meant something. But as soon as ever she left the lake, she was so altered, that the prince said to himself, "If I marry her, I see no help for it: we must turn merman and mermaid, and go out to sea ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... difficult to see, as it is high up on a buttress beneath a statue at the side of the Rue des Bonnetiers. From mythology you will find here countless sirens, some playing instruments before their victims, others, like the mermaid of the fable, admiring themselves in mirrors and waving a seductive comb. There is also yet another violin player, with his back towards you, playing to a dancer who is posturing head downwards on his hands, like the daughter of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... patron of literature, and had to devote evenings to the wits. To him has been ascribed the institution, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of the Mermaid Tavern meetings in Bread Street, Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Selden's, Cotton's, Camden's, and Donne's club. It is very likely; so likely that the intrinsic probability of the fact might be a motive for a fiction. Whether ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... wordes, and not mine; I can no harm of no woman divine.* *conjecture, imagine Fair in the sand, to bathe* her merrily, *bask Lies Partelote, and all her sisters by, Against the sun, and Chanticleer so free Sang merrier than the mermaid in the sea; For Physiologus saith sickerly,* *certainly How that they singe well and merrily. And so befell that, as he cast his eye Among the wortes,* on a butterfly, *cabbages He was ware of this fox that lay full low. Nothing *ne list him ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... shows where they hev pictures behind a piece o' calico, Paul Pry with his umbrella, Daniel i' th' lions' den, ducks swimming across a river, a giantess who was a man shaved and dressed in women's clothes, a dog wi' five legs, and a stuffed mermaid—just what little lads would like. There was a man, besides, who played on a flute, and another singing funny songs. When I went outside into the street there was little Billy Yates, as used to play with Bobby, so I says, 'Come along, Billy, and I'll tek thee to the show.' When we got there ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... "'Tis said a mermaid haunts yon water," said Mrs Harrington; "I have heard many marvellous tales of her, a few years ago. Strange enough, last night I dreamed she took away our little girl, and plunged with her into the water. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and a vote taken. The Prophet received a majority of seventy-five, out of one hundred and twenty-five votes polled. This created a tremendous laugh, and we kept it up till we got to St. Louis. Here the most of us took the steamer Mermaid. ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... all the old dishes vanished to? Who has ever known "A smoothening Quiddany of Quinces?" Who can tell the composition of a Tansy? These are tame days when we have forgotten how to make Cock-Ale. They drank 'Sack with Clove-gilly-flowers' at the "Mermaid," I am sure. What is Bragot? What is Stepony? And what Slipp-coat Cheese? Ask the baker for a Manchet. The old names call for a Ballade. Ou sont les mets d'antan? And, cooks, with all your exactness about pounds and ounces and minutes of the clock, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... owners. As with the woman in the Sadducee's riddle, she of many husbands, seven political powers have had this mermaid as bride. Spain, the English, the Dutch, the Spaniards again, the French, the Knights of Malta, the French again, who sold her to the Guiana Company, who in 1734 passed her over to the Danes, from ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... a most decorous crew, but the next morning something in the air seemed to cause a general overflow of spirits, and they went up the river like a party of children on a merry-making. Sylvia decorated herself with garlands till she looked like a mermaid; Mark, as skipper, issued his orders with the true Marblehead twang; Moor kept up a fire of pun-provoking raillery; Warwick sung like a jovial giant; while the Kelpie danced over the water as if inspired with the universal gayety, and the very ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott |
