"Elves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very happy little boy all the same, after a strange, quiet fashion of his own, and he liked best of all to be alone with Norah in the woods or by the river, when they would make up all sorts of fancies about queer little elves and fairies who, they said, lived in the trees or bushes, and in the sticklebacks' nests ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... green tint, and its colour was very soothing to the eye. All at once I saw approaching a set of the most beautiful little people, so little that they would only have reached to my knee; they looked like men and women, but they were better proportioned. They called themselves Elves, and their garments were composed of the leaves of flowers, trimmed with the wings of gnats and flies—not at all ugly. They seemed as if they were searching for something—what I did not know; but when they ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... rites of the Anglo-Saxons. Woden or Odin, Thor and the other deities did not lose their adherents in a day, and Bede records the relapses into idolatry of Northumbria as well as the other parts of England. There can be no doubt that fairies and elves entered largely into the mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, and the firmness of the beliefs in beings of that nature can be easily understood when we realise that it required no fewer than twelve centuries of Christianity to ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... performers retired again downstairs, Picotee of necessity following. Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from their shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill—sometimes doing heavy work, sometimes none; teasing and worrying with impish laughter half suppressed, and vanishing directly mortal eyes were bent ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... and another noise of children. More sliding? Oh no! This is a sport of higher pretension. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and his own pretty little boys, and two or three other four-year-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of joy and wonder! Oh what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the Serpentine. He really ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the dancing joys compete Take now your choice; the world is at your feet, All turned into a gay and shining pleasance, And every face has smiles to greet your presence. Treading on air, Yourself you look more fair; And the dear Birthday-elves unseen conspire To flush your cheeks and set your eyes ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... banished the old professional clown from the stage, they felt the necessity of running about themselves as clowns. The sober, enlightened age protested against the old folk-tales with goblins, gnomes, elves, and other kindred sprites, but, to make up for it, thousands of living caricatures played in their own rooms the part of goblins and gnomes, and lady shepherdesses appropriated the roles of the elves, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... balance sufficiently to reach the other in safety. The greatest of his physical fears—greater even than that of drowning which sometimes whelmed him in dreams and on ships—was the dread of empty space; a touch of vertigo seized him; the enemy gathered round the torch beneath suddenly seemed elves, puny impossible things far off, and he almost slipped into their midst. But he dragged back his senses. "We must all die," he gasped, "but we need not be precipitate about the business," and shut his eyes as he stood up, and with feet upon the moulding stretched to gain grip of the other window. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... up the fire. Fresh birch logs blistered and sputtered as creeping curls of bluish flame enwrapped them. Kindling rapidly, they threw out fantastic lights, which danced like a regiment of red elves around the old ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Coleridge, who said, "No boy ever imagined himself a poet while he was reading Shakespeare or Milton." And speaking of Landor's oaths, he said, "They are so rich, they are really nutritious." Talking of criticism, he said he did not believe in spiteful imps, but in kindly elves who would "nod to him and do him courtesies." He laughed at Bishop Berkeley's attempt to destroy the world in one octavo volume. His doctrine to mankind always was, "Enlarge your tastes, that you may enlarge your ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... foxgloves are the sentinels That guard the fairies' sleep, When twilight comes, and to their beds The wee elves softly creep. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... he knows most rhymes An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes: Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves, An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers therselves! An', wite by the pump in our pasture-lot, He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got, 'At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' can Turn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann! Aint he a funny old Raggedy Man? ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... seeming idle shapes, Of little frisking elves and apes To earth do make their wanton scapes, As hope of pastime hastes them; Which maids think on the hearth they see When fires well-nigh consumed be, There dancing hays by two and three, {98} Just ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... dayes of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; This was the olde opinion, as I rede. But now can no man see none elves mo. For now the grete charitee and prayeres Of ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain. Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... me no surprise or even curiosity. It simply sounded homelike and familiar. I gazed abstractedly out of the window at the brilliant blossoms in the garden, that nodded their heads at me like so many little elves with coloured caps on, but I said nothing. I felt that Cellini watched me keenly and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... canvases, some unfinished. Most were of nymphs and winged elves, but there were three landscapes. One of these, a stream reflecting a high spring sky between banks of young meadow grass, showed a little faun skipping merrily in the distance. The atmosphere was indescribably light-hearted. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... fly, Drenched across yon rainy sky, With the vex'd moon-mother'd elves, And the clouds do weep themselves ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... she and her maids spun the wool of the last clipping. She was a fair woman out of the Western Isles, all brown and golden as it seemed to him, and her voice was softer than the hard ringing speech of the Wick folk. She told him island stories about gentle fairies and good-humoured elves who lived in a green windy country by summer seas, and her air would be wistful as if she thought of her lost home. And she sang him to sleep with crooning songs which had the sweetness of the west wind in them. But her maids were a rougher stock, and they stuck to ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement: they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarreling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... little terror of small hobgoblins, good-natured fairies, a love-sick river-sprite, and so forth, beings who with us in the north, almost go about our houses like superstition's tame domestic animals. You have there, too, good-natured elves, who carry on their peaceful boating and coasting trade invisibly among the people. But then, in addition, natural terror creates a whole host of wicked demons, who draw people with an irresistible power, the ghosts of drowned men, ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... it! We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun, The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves That leave they: dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to Nature's mysteries, for ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... wore a green velvet dress barred with grey fur, which I should have called artistic, but that she hated all the talk about art; and she had an attractive face, which I should have called elvish, but that she hated all the talk about elves. But what was arresting and almost blood-curdling about her, in that social atmosphere, was not so much that she hated it, as that she was entirely unaffected by it. She never knew what was meant by being ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... is invulnerable," he said to himself; "her power to wish is invincible, her fulness of life complete." He felt that she bore a certain resemblance to his Eva; that she was one of those elves of light in whose cheerfulness there is occasionally a touch of the terrible. He decided then and there not to let mischievous chance have its own way: he was going to put out his hand when he felt ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Aberfoyle pits were haunted, and that certain strange beings were seen there frequently, just as in the Highlands. To hear them talk, it would have been more extraordinary if nothing of the kind appeared. Could there indeed be a better place than a dark and deep coal mine for the freaks of fairies, elves, goblins, and other actors in the fantastical dramas? The scenery was all ready, why should not the supernatural personages come there to play ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... their chieftains were traced back to Woden, it is not improbable that he may have been really a deified ancestor of the principal Germanic families. The popular creed, however, was mainly one of lesser gods, such as elves, ogres, giants, and monsters, inhabitants of the mark and fen, stories of whom still survive in English villages as folk-lore or fairy tales. A few legends of the pagan time are preserved for us in Christian books. Beowulf is rich in allusions to these ancient ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... sure, the boy had heard stories about elves, but he had never dreamed that they were such tiny creatures. He was no taller than a hand's breadth—this one, who sat on the edge of the chest. He had an old, wrinkled and beardless face, and was dressed in a black frock coat, knee-breeches ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... accustomed to be twitted on account of the abstracted or absent look which so often tempts children of the world to offer its wearer a penny for his thoughts. For "elfish" means bewitched by the elves, and hence vacant ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... backs upon them. In Brittany they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence their hard doom; they are condemned to live until the Day of Judgment.[19] Many of them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the Kow-riggwans for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night round the old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... of these Christian elements [in Bewulf] is the sense of a fairer, softer world than that in which the Northern warriors lived.... Another Christian passage (ll. 107, 1262) derives all the demons, eotens, elves, and dreadful sea-beasts from the race of Cain. The folly of sacrificing to the heathen gods is spoken of (l. 175).... The other point is the belief in immortality (ll. 1202, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... recitation, is a very singular and interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... as his name should really be spelled, Aelfred, [Footnote: That is, the rede or councel of the elves. A great many Old-English names are called after the elves or fairies.] was the youngest son of King Aethelwulf, and was born at Wantage in Berkshire in 849. His mother was Osburh daughter of Oslac the King's cup-bearer, who came of ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... four thousand, The myriads four of the nimble, The four hundred thousand elves, The countless host of sprites, 5 Rank upon rank of woodland gods. Pray, Kane, also inspire us; Kanaloa, too, join the assembly. Now grows the ohi'a, now leafs ie-ie; God enters, resides in the place; 10 ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... that the Society had investigated came into the discussion, and Malone heard quite a lot about the Beyond, the Great Summerland, Spirit Mediums and the hypothetical existence of fairies, goblins and elves. ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... even see The gold upon the greenwood tree, The wealth of coloured lights that pass In soft gradations through the grass, The riches of the love untold That wakes the day from grey to gold; And howsoe'er the moonlight weaves Magic webs among the leaves Englishmen care little now For elves beneath the hawthorn bough: Nor if Robin should return Dare they of an outlaw learn; For them the Smallest Flower is furled, Mute is the music of the world; And unbelief has driven away Beauty from ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... will be coming out in woods wherever they have been sheltered from the north. They will grow bolder as the days go by, and spread and come all down the slopes of sunny hills. Then the anemones will come, like a shy pale people, one of the tribes of the elves, who dare not leave the innermost deeps of the wood: in those days all the trees will be in leaf, the bluebells will follow, and certain fortunate woods will shelter such myriads of them that the bright fresh green of the beech trees will ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... of the fairies may be in caves, and examples of this form of dwelling-place are to be met with in different parts of the world. The Scandinavian hill people live in caves or small hills, and the Elves or dwarfs of La Romagna "dwell in lonely places, far away in the mountains, deep in them, in caves or among old ruins and rocks," as Mr. Leland,[A] who gives a tale respecting these little people, tells us. A Lithuanian tale[B] tells "how the hero, Martin, went into a forest to hunt, ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... as he descended the stairs. "Before I would call that gray carle my father, or his child my wife, may I feel all the hammers of the elves and sprites he keeps tortured within that ugly little prison-house playing a death's march on my body! Holy Saint Dunstan, the timbrel-girls came in time! They say these wizards always have fair daughters, and their love can be ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the whip-poor-will, an American bird, and not the conventional lark or nightingale, although the elves of the Old World seem scarcely at home on the banks of the Hudson. Drake's memory has been kept fresh not only by his own poetry, but by the beautiful elegy written by his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck, the first stanza of which is ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... palms. And all the trees trimmed as carefully and precisely as the lawn, some cut in the shape of pyramids, others in the shape of green columns. There's a lovely fountain and little plaster elves and deer scattered all ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... me, to ape those saving Elves, Who rob God of his due, to grow richer themselves; But be mine the pursuit, which all good men approve, To strive to be rich in the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... last night: but a beauty like this," she pushed a finger at Clara's cheek, and doated a half instant, "you have the very beauty to break in an ogre's temper. And the man is as governable as he is presentable. You have the beauty the French call—no, it's the beauty of a queen of elves: one sees them lurking about you, one here, one there. Smile—they dance: be doleful—they hang themselves. No, there's not a trace of satanic; at least, not yet. And come, come, my Middleton, the man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pointing to the glowing piece of charcoal. "Now, Frederick, you will get to see those ant-like little elves that are called noctiluci or night-lights. They pompously call themselves Toilers of the Light. But whatever their name, it must be admitted that they are the ones that take the light hidden in the entrails of the earth, store it up, and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... o'er many a fable And longed for the bright-capped elves, The faery folk who are able ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... cried Betty suddenly. She was walking ahead with Alice Waite. "I can see two people. They're stooping over the fire. Why, Alice, it's two dear little brown elves." ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... eccentric members that I was startled into biblical phrases. In the market they were strange enough, dead and on the marble slabs, or in green leaves, but in the lagoon they were a kaleidoscope of complexions and shapes. They were the lovely elves to complement the fantastic shellfish, yellow, striped with violet; bright turquoise, with a gold collar; gold, with broad bands of black terminating in winglike fins; scarlet, with cobalt polka-dots; silver, with a rosy flush; glossy green, dazzling crimson, black ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... it is," continued the dwarf, "that we see many strange things; but I have nothing very remarkable at present to relate, for my journey was an ordinary one but for my accident. I had to see the elves who had charge of healing herbs, and gain their permission to cull them, for they are very particular that they should be pulled in the right season, and they so cover their gardens up that one could easily think there was not a bit of motherwort or hoarhound to be found ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... evening they sat at the feet of their kind teacher and together they learned to read. Often they danced on the sward at twilight, when they looked like golden-haired elves ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... Birds," written in the early spring of 1864, when, as you know, the country was in great trouble, and the birds saw many a sorry sight. If you like a beautiful fairy-tale in verse, all about children and the elves or sprites that children love, read his "Little People of The Snow." There also is the pretty legend of "The White-footed Deer"; or if you bigger boys and girls wish something more weird and exciting, read ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... p. 228. In Scandinavia the dead were called elves, and lived feasting in their barrows or in hills. These became the seat of ancestral cults. The word "elf" also means any divine spirit, later a fairy. "Elf" and side may thus, like the "elf-howe" and the sid or mound, have a parallel history. See Vigfusson-Powell, Corpus ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun, The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to nature's mysteries, for ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, 25 My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair; And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, Go dancing round the china plates ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... And this! and this! and this for both of them!" shouted Cloudesley, as he vigorously laid about him. "Strike for Hay Hill and vengeance! Let them have it, my men! And you, little fellows! Small young gentlemen, with the souls of heroes, and the bodies of elves, who can't strike a very hard blow, aim where your blows will tell! Aim at their faces. This for Fanny! This for Edith!" shouted Cloudesley, raining his strokes right and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... chafed—the call is sharp and high For carnage, as the eagles cry; When pleased—the mood is meek, and mild, And gentle, as an unweaned child. Sing, sing of haunted shores and shelves, St. Oluf and his spiteful elves, Of that wise dame, in true love need, Who of the clear stream formed the steed— How youthful Svend, in sorrow sharp, The inspired strings rent from his harp; And Sivard, in his cloak of felt, Danced with the green oak at his belt— Or ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... satisfaction, and I shamelessly acknowledge that I experienced keen pangs of regret as her tender illusions, one after another faded into the chill white light of later day. Without actually deceiving her, I permitted her to believe that I too, heard the wondrous voices of Titania and her elves in convention behind the rose bush, or the whispers of gnomes hiding ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... made one of my nieces hunt up the book for me the other day, and the story brought back at once the little crib, or the watered blue moreen canopy of the big four-poster to which I was sometimes lifted for a change; even the scrawly pattern of the paper, which my weary eyes made into purple elves perpetually pursuing crimson ones, the foremost of whom always turned upside down; and the knobs in the Marseilles counterpane with which my fingers used to toy. I have heard my mother tell that whenever I was most languid and suffering I used ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brought back his wife Eurydike from the shades of death. In our Western fairy tales we still have these Ribhus, or Arbhus, transformed, through various changes of language, into Albs, and Elfen, and last into our English Elves. It is not needful to go further into the fanciful way in which the old Aryans slowly made ever-increasing deities and superhuman beings for themselves out of all the forms and aspects of Nature; or how their Hindu and Persian and Greek ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... fanciful mental existences which I was then beginning to enjoy. And even as I glide through it now, on the railroad that has laid its still depths open to the sun's glare and scared its silence with the eldritch snort and shriek of the iron team, I have visions of Undine and Sintram, the Elves, the little dog Stromian, the Wood-Witch, and all the world of supernatural beauty and terror which then peopled its recesses for me, under the influence of the German literature that I was becoming acquainted ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... amusement for them on this broad reach of sand and shingle. Some are groping for shells or for pebbles, which the lapidary will transform for a trifle into dazzling jewels; others are playing ducks and drakes on the waves, or entertaining themselves like Prospero's elves, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... settlement at Molokai, is a ledge that can be reached neither from above nor below, and on it stands a temple of their construction. In Pepeeko, Hilo, the natives labored for a month in quarrying and dressing stone, but when it was ready the elves built their temple in a night. So at Kohala they formed a chain twelve miles long between the quarry and the site, and, passing the blocks from hand to hand, finished the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... who openly flouts it. Boldly flung out of the window, it creeps back into the cellar and vexes the soul with petty tricks played on the subterranean consciousness. The man who expels his good angel is haunted by imps and elves. He who will not believe in God and despises truth succumbs to the ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... origin at Ferney. Voltaire's inimitable style had at last found a medium in which it could display itself in all its charm and all its brilliance. The pointed, cutting, mocking sentences laugh and dance through his pages like light-toed, prick-eared elves. Once seen, and there is no help for it—one must follow, into whatever dangerous and unknown regions those magic imps may lead. The pamphlets were of course forbidden, but without effect; they were sold in thousands, and new cargoes, somehow or other, were always slipping across the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... all the tiny elves come dancing in a ring, With the merry, merry pipe, and the tabor, and the horn, And the timbrel so clear, and the lute with dulcet string; Then round about the oak they go till peeping of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... leaves, Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs, Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as spring Flowers in veins of trees; bringing such peace As comes to seamen when they dream of seas. "O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight! Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moon To thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail, Above that mountain—arch your green benediction Once more over my heart. Muffle the sound of bells, Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley; Close, with your leaves, about ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... about their own affairs. Rather more than a hundred years ago, for instance, a war broke out in Fairyland because the King of the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all that was a wicked prejudice, and that the Trolls ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... mysterious whispering echo, they repudiated all talk of acoustics. It was for them an eerie thing, like the laughter of elves or the shriek of ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... what had happened. There had been a busy time in the North Pole workshop of Santa Claus that day, for it was getting near to Christmas. The little men, like elves, who built the Noah's Arks, the toy animals, the dolls, and the other playthings, had been as busy ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... a time the Fairy Elves, Being first array'd themselves, Thought it meet to clothe their King In ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... Nicholas, what how man, loke adoun: Awake and think on Cristes passioun I crowche the from Elves and from Wightes.' There with the night-spel seyde he anon rightes On the foure halves of the hous aboute And on the threissh-fold of ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that pygmaean race Beyond the Indian mount; or fairy elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... are whispering. Soon the fairies and elves will come forth to revel. Ah, what a wonderful thing the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... around, on the dewy ground, The quivering moonbeams stray; And the light and shade, By the branches made, Give motion and life to the silent glade, Like fairy elves at play. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... open season is now secure, it is not yet settled. No chance of a relapse into the winter's death, but plenty of change in the unfolding of the summer's life. There are still caprices and wayward turns in nature's moods; cold nights when the frost-elves are hovering in the upper air; windy mornings which shake and buffet the tree-tassels and light embroidered leaves; sudden heats of tranquil noon through which the sunlight pours like a flood of eager love, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... life, but the creatures are amazingly unfamiliar. They have horns and hoofs, halos and wings, or fins and tails. An esoteric band of fabulous monsters these: harpies and vampires take tea at Sherry's; succubi and incubbi are observed buying opal rings at Tiffany's; fairies, angels, dwarfs, and elves, bearing branches of asphodel, trip lightly down Waverly Place; peris, amshaspahands, aesir, izeds, and goblins sleep at the Brevoort; seraphim and cherubim decorate drawing rooms on Irving Place; griffons, chimeras, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the bad wood elves dwell," whispered Anne. "They are impish and malicious but they can't harm us, because they are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around that old twisted fir; and didn't you see a group of them on that big freckly toadstool we just passed? ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the children who laughed now at Blue Aloes, merry and free as elves in a wood. There was a glow came out of Christine Chaine that communicated itself to all. She and Saltire were to be married as soon as a Quentin aunt, who was on her way, had settled down comfortably with the children. Afterward, Roddy would live with them at the Cape until his schooldays ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... would have gained him—had he been of humbler birth—the descriptive title of "natural." Being a son of Sir Clarence Butt Malmaison, he was considered to be peculiar only. The old wives of the village maintained that he was the sort that could see elves, and that, if one but knew how, he might be induced to reveal valuable secrets, and to confer magic favors. But, looking the other way, he was to be dreaded as a possible (though involuntary) agent of evil; especially perilous was it, these venerable dames would affirm, to become the object ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... he sped with the swiftness of light, over the hills and the wooded slopes, and the deep dark valleys, and the fields and forests and sleeping hamlets, until he came to the place where dwelt the swarthy elves and the cunning dwarf Andvari. There the River Rhine, no larger than a meadow-brook, breaks forth from beneath a mountain of ice, which the Frost giants and blind old Hoder, the Winter-king, had built long years before; for they had vainly hoped that they might imprison ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... it is so strange; indeed I think I ought to call it the fairy tale of all fairy tales, for by the time we get to the end of it I think it will explain to you how our forefathers got to believe in fairies, and trolls, and elves, and scratlings, and all strange little people who were said to haunt the ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... awkward arms and cruel thorns; the third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and the wild fruit; the second, haggish, full of witches whose finger-nails ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... not what, unsight, unseen, For what do lovers, when they're fast In one another's arms embrac't, 950 But strive to plunder, and convey Each other, like a prize, away? To change the property of selves, As sucking children are by elves? And if they use their persons so, 955 What will they to their fortunes do? Their fortunes! the perpetual aims Of all their extasies and flames. For when the money's on the book, And, All my worldly goods — but spoke, 960 (The formal livery and seisin That puts a lover in possession,) ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Windsor Castle, elves, within and out; Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room; That it may stand till the perpetual doom, In state as wholesome, as in state 'tis fit, Worthy the owner, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... world that smoky mist of magic were elves, and they did so because Conaire's tabus ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... Nick, "and nicely prepare All a little girl wants where money is rare." Then, oh, what a scene there was in that room! Away went the elves, but down from the gloom Of the sooty old chimney came tumbling low A child's whole wardrobe, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... met him in the twilight. He seems robed in a long cloak, with a peaked cap or hood like the elves in my nursery stories. Sometimes when I look out of the window here, I see him passing round this house like a shadow; and see his pointed hood, dark against the sunset or the ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... severity With their grave saws in slumber lie We that are of purer fire Imitate the starry quire Who in their nightly watching spheres Lead in swift round the months and years The sounds and seas with all their finny drove And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... are the days of elfs and fays: Who says that with the dreams of myth, These imps and elves disport themselves? Ah no, along the paths of song Do ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... once, so they say, He set out to see what people were kind, Before he took presents their way. 'This year I will give but to givers, To those who make presents themselves,' With a nod of his head old Santa Claus said To his band of bright officer-elves. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... white, yet scarcely seen Are its walls of mantling green; Not a window lets in light But through flowers clustering bright, Not a glance may wander there But it falls on something fair; Garden choice and fairy mound Only that no elves are found; Winding walk and sheltered nook For student grave and graver book, Or a bird-like bower perchance ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... in good phrases to all their questions; all fear of noble persons and their equipage had passed away from her; for when she measured these halls and forms by the wonders and the high beauty she had seen with the Elves in their hidden abode, this earthly splendor seemed but dim to her, the presence of men was almost mean. The young lords ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... when I bid thee croak, 'Twill be when frogs sing ditties on an oak; When hopping toads like winged skylarks fly; When limping elves are lovely ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till the signal giv'n, Behold a wonder! They but now who seem'd In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute what they command them. The Fairies likewise are said to take young Children out of their Cradles, and to change them into Naturall Fools, which Common people do therefore call Elves, and ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... alongside which the road ran in a brown, winding thread, were little wooded and grassy promontories sitting like islands upon the water and suggesting the last peaceful reservation of all the fairies, wood-elves and brownies who might be crowded out from the cities and the busy lands now over-run and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... seems to have been a place which abounded in supernatural beings. Some elves who came from this mountain to take fresh-brewed beer, and left good, though unknown money, to pay for it, are mentioned in another story in the Deutsche Sagen, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... elves who lived in the garden. One, who lived in a lily which made a lovely home; and a poppy elf, who was always sleepy; but the rose elf liked her own sweet smelling room, with its crimson ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... sat with the knaves and the maids, and listened to their harp-playing, and harp they can, these Cornish, like very elves; and then I, too, sang songs and told them stories, for I can talk their tongue somewhat, till they all blest me for a right good fellow. And then I fell to praising up old ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... as if every image, etc.: Note the exquisite fancy in these lines. The elves have preserved in the ice the pictures of summer foliage and clouds that were mirrored in the water as models ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite, Bottom; or Hippolita's description of a chace, or Theseus's answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... myself down upon haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely the elves and genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable means, with the principle of intelligence lurking within the poor uncultivated clod! Perhaps to that ethereal principle the wonders of the past, as connected with that stream, the glories of the present, and even the history of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the eye, but the grey north has its marshes, and fenny ground, and fetid mists, which produce agues, low fevers, and moping madness, and are as fatal to cattle as to man. Such disorders are attributed to elves and fairies. This superstition still lingers in some parts of England under the name of elf-shot, whilst, throughout the north, it is called elle-skiod, and elle- vild (fairy wild). It is particularly prevalent amongst shepherds ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... point of view which created mythology, fairy lore, and popular superstitions; to believe, at all hazards, not only in God and the immortal soul of man, but in the old-time corollaries of these beliefs, in ghosts, elves, demons, and witches. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... whose power, though in itself uncontrollable, was yet often exerted by the interposition of his angels and subordinate ministers, who executed his sacred purposes. But they also believed, that all nature was full of other invisible powers: fairies, goblins, elves, sprights; beings stronger and mightier than men, but much inferior to the celestial natures who surround the throne of God. Now, suppose that any one, in these ages, had denied the existence of God and of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... elves, where the down with its darkening shoulder Lifts on the death of the sun, out of the valley of thyme? Dropt on the broad chalk path and, cresting the ridge of it, smoulder Crimson as blood on the white, halting ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... observed, she could see all that passed. Long did she gaze, without taking off her eyes for an instant, on the dance—on the bold and wonderful springs of the little creatures, who seemed to float in the air, and not so much as to touch the ground, while the ravishing melody of the Elves filled her whole soul. The child, meanwhile, which lay in her arms grew sleepy and drew its breath heavily, and, without ever thinking on the promise she had given the old woman, she made, as is usual, the sign of the cross over the mouth of the child, and said, "Christ bless you, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... hall tingled a chime, sweet almost playful music for the elves of midnight and a challenge to baser intruders. Jane must have dozed when she suddenly became ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... one, a highly transfigured one, and the mountain scenery made him very threatening to her brother. A silky haired youth, brown-eyed, unconquerable in adversity, immensely rich, fond of solitude, curled, decorated, bejewelled by all the elves and gnomes of inmost solitude, must have marvellous attractions, she feared. She thought of him so much, that her humble spirit conceived the stricken soul of the woman as of necessity the pursuer; as shamelessly, though timidly, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to which the children had exposed themselves. Without doubt their immunity was due to their very audacity. Apparently the boar had not connected these fearless mites with human beings whom he knew to be vulnerable, but had fancied them sportive elves, against whom his tusks would be powerless. Peggy registered a vow not to let Dorothy out of her sight ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... when he remembered the enchanting dreams of his boyhood, instead of sighing after them as something gone for ever, he would say to himself, "what matter they are gone? In the heavenly kingdom my own mother is waiting me, fairer and stronger and real. I imagined the elves; God imagined ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... don't mind," he said, "I prefer this path. I like the sweep of the hill to the right. These vast stretches of grass at this hour always make me feel that I am walking on the edge of a carpet, on which the elves and the fairies ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... riches, when the muse steps in and cheer his despondency, by assuring him of undying fame. "Halloween" is a strain of a more homely kind, recording the superstitious beliefs, and no less superstitious doings of Old Scotland, on that night, when witches and elves and evil spirits are let loose among the children of men: it reaches far back into manners and customs, and is a picture, curious and valuable. The tastes and feelings of husbandmen inspired "The old Farmer's Address to his old mare Maggie," which ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Elves! who, on whings made o'leather, Still roun my poorch whiver an' whiver at night; Aw mAc naw hord-horted, unveelin disturber, DestrAcy your snug nests, an your plAc ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... without emission, cost him his life. Then the terrible scene changes; the wild beast suddenly disappears and encircled by a soft light two beautiful fairies come forward to teach the new Ala the occult science of his chosen ministry including cabalistic words and medical art. The two elves then become the familiar spirits of the sorcerer who is in ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... purple buds where they have lain Until the mystic midnight time drew near, To chimes of hare-bells and the far-off strain Of forest melodies, the elves appear In all the gorgeousness of goblin gear. With brilliant dress the golden-beetle wore, With scarlet plumes the humming-bird once bore, They come in troops from every flower and tree, And 'round the fairy throne in concourse pour,— The ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... night is the fairies' day, and the moon their sun; and I thought—Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the night comes, it will be different. At the same time I, being a man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should fare among the elves and other children of the night who wake when mortals dream, and find their common life in those wondrous hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... hand enchasing here those warts Which we to others from ourselves Sell, and brought hither by the elves. The tempting mole, stolen from the neck Of some shy virgin, seems to deck The holy entrance; where within The room is hung with the blue skin Of shifted snake, enfriezed throughout With eyes of peacocks' trains, and trout— Flies' curious wings; and these among Those silver ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... along the hall. They saw rings strung on bast which the hero owned, seven hundred in all; they took them off and put, them on again, all but one. The keen-eyed archer Voelund came in from hunting, from a far road.... He sat on a bear-skin and counted his rings, and the prince of the elves missed one; he thought Hlodve's daughter, the fairy-maid, had come back. He sat so long that he fell asleep, and awoke powerless: heavy bonds were on his hands, and ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... Renaissance both in England and in Italy had a similar craving. But the aspect under which these ancient dreams are regarded by them is most significantly different. With Spenser and Ariosto, fairies and elves, gods and demons, are regarded in their fancied connection with man. Even in the age of Pope, when the gods and the Rosicrucian Sylphs have become alike "poetical machinery," this is their work. But among ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... elves actually remember that I fed them the other day," again soliloquized Louis. "They want some more biscuit. To-day I forgot to save a fragment. Eager little sprites, I have ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... on the shore, And silent fell, amid the roar And crash of battle Mute and still The Fians watched; while on the hill The little elves came out and gazed, To be amused and were amazed ... They saw upon the shrinking sands The warriors with restless hands And busy blades, with shields that rose To buffet the unceasing blows; They ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie |
