"Mermaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... fenced on one side by walls of emeralds, and on the other by a boisterous sea. The king, by pretending an attachment to the fairy, obtained the liberty to walk by himself on the shore. There, one day, he heard a voice, and presently after was surprised by the appearance of a mermaid, who, swimming up to him with a pleasing smile, spoke to this effect:—"O King of the Golden Mines, I well know all that has befallen you and the Princess All-Fair. Do not suspect this to be a contrivance ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... small and blond, and in a white evening gown of satin and silver sequins that made her look like a lovely and fashionable mermaid, sat in her drawing room and stretched her feet out to the flames of a gentle woodfire. It was seven o'clock of a late April night, and through an open window to her left came, from the little park beyond the house, a faint breeze that stirred lazily the curtains and brought ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with a run and a leap, and for fifteen minutes or more she was over and under and up and down on the waves like a snowy mermaid. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... company of scoffers my brier was known as the Mermaid. The mouth-piece was a cigarette-holder, and months of unwearied practice were required before you found the angle at which the bowl ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... than you!" said Hilda, with a little laugh. Indeed, they were both streaming with water, and looked like a merman and mermaid very much out of ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... occasions like this, means the forfeit of life. The throng of the bathers had scattered before Roger carried his burden safe into the shore And saw her emerge from the water, a place Where most women lose every vestige of grace Or of charm. But this mermaid seemed fairer than when She had challenged the glances of women and men As she went to her bath. Now her clinging silk suit Revealed every line, from the throat to the foot, Of her beautiful form. Her arms, in their splendor, Gleamed white like wet marble. The ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... then." And Philip ran upstairs three at a time. He went first to the attics, and made a systematic search of every hall, room, and closet. He even peeped into the great tank, as if Patty might have been transformed into a mermaid. Then followed a thorough search of the second story, with all its rambling ells and side corridors; he tiptoed through the nursery, smiling at the sleeping baby and casting a casual glance at the still figure on the couch with the long, white cap-strings ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... hear that d—d Jew sing,—referring thus civilly to the respectable John Braham. I have sometimes wished that Shakspeare could make a similar descent, and face his critics. Ah! how much he could tell us over a single bottle of Rosa Solis at some new "Mermaid" extemporized for the occasion! What wild work would he make with the commentators long before we had exhausted the ordinate cups! and how, after we had come to the inordinate, would he be with difficulty prevented ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... with ruby, or flecked with amethyst, reflect the colours of the gorgeously-frilled and rosetted anemones in parterres between red coral crags. Tresses of filmy green floating from the mouth of a cavern, suggest a mermaid's hair, and her visible presence would scarcely add to the wonders in this under-world of glamour and mystery. Shells, pink and pearly, brown and lilac, scarlet and cobalt, strew the flower-decked floor with infinite variety, concave and spiral, ribbed and fluted, fretted and jagged—the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... into the moon, On every breaker tossed. And all across from star to star, I've seen the watery sea, With not a single ship in sight, Just ocean there, and me; And heard my father snore. And once, As sure as I'm alive, Out of those wallowing, moon-flecked waves I saw a mermaid dive; Head and shoulders above the wave, Plain as I now see you, Combing her hair, now back, now front, Her two eyes peeping through; Calling me, 'Sam!' -quietlike- 'Sam!'... But me .... I never went, Making believe ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... sorceress, married to Basa-Jaun, a sort of vampire. Basa-Andre sometimes is a sort of land mermaid (a beautiful lady who sits in a cave combing her locks with a golden comb). She hates ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... fortunate owner of the prize. It was gained by a fine young girl of about seventeen years of age, and who had a splendid pair of black eyes. She swam like a frog, and with her long hair streaming in the water behind her, came pretty well up to our ideas of a mermaid. ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... "Mother says there is no such thing as a mermaid, but I like to think there is. Have you ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a comb in its hand, for one thing; and besides, my dear, I hope I know a mermaid when I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of Allan. In love with Lucy Ashton, daughter of Sir William Ashton, lord-keeper of Scotland. The lovers plight their troth at the "Mermaid's Fountain," but Lucy is compelled to marry Frank Hayston, laird of Bucklaw. The bride, in a fit of insanity, attempts to murder the bridegroom, and dies in convulsions. Bucklaw recovers, and goes abroad. Colonel ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my cloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Jane: both your cheek and hand are burning hot. I ask again, is there anything ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the worthy farmer and his family a good while to sit down to supper, which that night included a kettle of furmety, a mermaid pie, and a taffaty tart. What were they? A very reasonable question, especially as to the mermaid pie, since mermaids are rather scarce articles in the market. Well, a mermaid pie was made of pork and eels, and was terribly rich and indigestible; ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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
... 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 ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... despairing cry she leaped into the sea, but was instantly rescued by the Pirate Prodigy. Yet, even in that supreme moment, such was his coolness, that on his way to the surface he captured a mermaid, and placing her in charge of his steward, with directions to give her a stateroom, with hot and cold water, calmly resumed his place by the Amazon's side. When the cabin door closed on his faithful servant, bringing champagne and ices to the interesting stranger, Chitterlings ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the Nereids, So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the other way, from Salem. Do you remember Swampscott was where he found pink and white Susan, who gave him the sugar heart? That was pink, too, with a touch of white perhaps. She sounds so delightful as the "Mermaid!" I'm glad Hawthorne kept the heart for years, and then instead of throwing it away ate it—gave it honourable burial, so to speak—which shows that you can have your heart and eat it, too! (I must, by the by, make a parable of this for Pat, who is eating hers, though she certainly ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... allusions to 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" for ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... and 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 being the cigarette, which seemed to me no better than ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... supporting her chin and her knees supporting her elbows, her eyes fixed on the horizon-line. Her hair dried, too, but she did not touch it. It flowed down her back and spread into a pool of gold on the sand. She might have been a mermaid cast up by that sea on which she gazed with such a tragic wistfulness—and forever cut off ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Well, I can't say, Captain. You know—she's a little wild. Her mother was wild, too, you know—that is, before the Lord spoke to her. They say she used to be seen at the Mermaid Tavern in London with all those play-acting people. She always used to say that Priscilla ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... if Lawrence, hired to grace His costly canvass with each flatter'd face, Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush, Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush? Or should some limner join, for show or sale, A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail? Or low Dubost (as once the world has seen) Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen? Not all that forced politeness, which defends Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends. Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems The book, which, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... be, till I can get to London,—till I can find congenial spirits, and take my rightful place in the great parliament of mind. I am Pegasus in harness, here!" cried the vain, discontented youth. "Let me but once get there,—amid art, civilisation, intellect, and the company of men like that old Mermaid Club, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of these lovers gave occasion to various fictions and conjectures. Some are of opinion, that they were changed into stars; others imagine, that Anningait was seized in his passage by the genius of the rocks, and that Ajut was transformed into a mermaid, and still continues to seek her lover in the deserts of the sea. But the general persuasion is, that they are both in that part of the land of souls where the sun never sets, where oil is always fresh, and provisions always warm. The virgins sometimes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of champagne with the foam on't, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the heat of the moment. * * * * * He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the 'Mermaid,' Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,— The topmost bright bubble on ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... without afterthought on the occasion of the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in the original Gaelic ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friendly schoolmaster took up a new volume of Mr. Swinburne's and told me that it was by the new great poet. How wonderful that little incident made the world for me! Real poets actually existing in this unromantic to-day! If you had told me of a mermaid, or a wood-nymph, or of the philosopher's stone as apprehensible wonders, I should not have marvelled more. While a single poet existed in the land, who could say that the kingdom of Romance was all let out in building lots, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... was the device of James I. and the siren or mermaid of Lady Frazer, who is said to have worked her own golden hair in the heart of a Tudor rose on a ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... 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 ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... now," said Pete. "Look at the bogh smiling in his sleep. Just like a baby mermaid on the egg of a dogfish. But where's the ould man at all? Has he seen it? We must have it in the papers. The Times? Yes, and the 'Tiser too. 'The beloved wife of Mr. Capt'n Peter Quilliam, of a boy—a girl,' I mane. Aw, the wonder there'll ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... in time. The Governor (who is his own only subject) was very cordial and jolly and kind. We all went ashore, and pitched tents, and ate ducks and penguins till the men grew strong. I scraped her, nearly down to the bends, for the grass floated by our side like a mermaid's hair as we sailed, and the once swift Florida would not make four knots an hour on the wind;—and this was the ship I was to get into Bahia in good order, at my ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... hurried on, and when they came up close to the rocks they saw sitting on a flat and polished stone a mermaid combing her golden hair, and singing a strange sweet song that brought the tears to their eyes, and by the mermaid's side was a ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... his left hand on the wrist that hung over the edge of the sofa. 'Ay, I hope that wicked little siren has done no great damage. Pulled you below, true mermaid fashion—eh?' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not spoken of those glorious and fantastic guide-books which are, as it were, the textbooks of a whole science of Erratics. In these he is borne beyond the world with those poets whom Keats conceived as supping at a celestial "Mermaid." But the "Mermaid" was English—and so was Keats. And though Hilaire Belloc may have a French name, I think that Peter Wanderwide is ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... passion for the cup that does more than cheer, neither he himself conceals it, nor is evidence to the same effect wanting on the part of his contemporaries. Drayton says that he was in the habit of 'wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid Tavern, where he drank seas of Canary; then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising to his ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the vessel's waist, I tried the difficult trick of scooping up a pail of water while the boat was in motion, and while so engaged my watch slipped out of my pocket, and into the water. We were then just below Fort Carroll, mid-stream. The watch is there yet, unless some mermaid has carried it off. I would not have lost it had I not divested it of the chain, to help appearances. On these trips one could not discover that we were not ordinary helpers "before ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... of reality and deception were strongly contending in Lord Glenvarloch's imagination, and it required him to rouse himself from his reverie, so strange did the proposal at first sound when his companion declared King Richard should sup with them at the Mermaid. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... upon Fu-hi as their first historical emperor; and they place his lifetime in the years 2852-2738 B.C. Some accounts represent him as a supernatural being; and we see him depicted as a human figure with a fish tail something like a mermaid. He is credited with having established social order among his people, who, before him, had lived like animals in the wilds. The social chaos out of which Chinese society arose is described as being characterized by the absence of family life; for "children knew only their mothers and not their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... comfortable, especially here where the old man sits in his old arm-chair; but on Thanksgiving-night the blaze should dance higher up the chimney and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relicts 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 ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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, where he also advertised his "mermaid" as being ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... waist, remember, takes the prize; When motoring or shopping The coatee must be flopping Through a belt that's sagging downward to the thighs. But the evening toilette scheme Shows the opposite extreme, And, when for dance or dinner you're equipped, A clinging "mermaid's tail" The nether limbs must veil, While the corsage is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... and feebler. And did he communicate his views of Mackarel Lane? I saw him regarding, me as a species of mermaid or syren, evidently thinking it a great shame that I have not a burnt face. If he had ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forth to the action of the waves, as if moved by some invisible hand. We get a glimpse, in passing, of the interior view with its white, pebbly floor, in which the basket starfish have possession—a fitting reception room for sea nymph or mermaid. Pillars of stone incrusted with barnacles and periwinkles rise all around, while long tendrils of sea ferns wave like banners around ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... tampered with, states, on the other hand, that Gradlon led his people into extravagances of every kind, and that Dahut received the key from him, the misuse of which precipitated the catastrophe. Dahut, the ballad continues, became a mermaid and haunted the waters which roll over the site of the city where she loved and feasted. "Fisherman," ends the ballad, "have you seen the daughter of the sea combing her golden hair in the midday sun at the fringes of the beach?" "Yes," replies the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... quite absorbing, and her "cubby," as she called it, rapidly became a pretty grotto, where she lived like a little mermaid, daily loving more and more the beauty of the wonderful sea. Finding the boat too sunny at times, the boys cut long willow boughs and arched them over the seats, laying hemlock branches across till a green roof made it cool and shady inside. There ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... tree, sat down beneath it till supper time when he climbed up into the branches to sleep. As he sat considering the wonderful works of Allah behold, the waters became troubled, and there rose therefrom the daughters of the sea, each mermaid holding in her hand a jewel which shone like the morning. They came ashore and, foregathering under the trees, sat down and danced and sported and made merry whilst Bulukiya amused himself with watching ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... idea of an unicorn, your questioner included the whole traditionary character of the unicorn, as an antagonist and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon—and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... 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
... strange mixture of the useful with the ridiculously ornamental. Here were the beautiful banks of a lake and Nature's embellishment of reeds and water plants, which, for a wonder, were left to grow in their native luxuriance, and in the midst a huge pasteboard or wooden swan, and a wooden mermaid of tasteless proportions blowing from a conchshell. In another part was a cottage with puppets the size of life moving by clock-work; a peasant smoking and turning a reel to wind off the thread which his 'goed vrow' is spinning upon a wheel, while a most sheep-like dog is made to open his mouth ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... 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
... of '49 and the strenuous work of the Young Ireland Party which gathered about the Nation in 1848, to displace this traditional figure in favour of a more earnest and tragical national type. But a single quotation will illustrate the natural magic of which Arnold speaks: "The Merrow (mermaid) put the comb in her pocket, and then bent down her head and whispered some words to the water that was close to the foot of the rock. Dick saw the murmur of the words upon the top of the sea, going out towards the wide ocean, just like a breath of wind rippling along, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... means of branches from several parts, to various of the suburbs:—1st, by way of Pershore Street, Moat Row, Bradford Street, and Moseley Road, to Moseley; 2nd, by way of Deritend, Bordesley, Camp Hill, along Stratford Road, to Sparkhill; 3rd, leaving Stratford Road (at the Mermaid) and along Warwick Road, to Acock's Green; 4th, striking off at Bordesley, along the Coventry Road to the far side of Small Heath Park; 5th, from Moat Row, by way of Smithfield Street to Park Street, Duddeston Row, Curzon Street, Vauxhall Road, to ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... authorities at Halifax were informed of Allan's expedition and of what was going on at the River St. John they sent the warship "Mermaid" and the sloops "Vulture" and "Hope" with a detachment of troops under Major Studholme to put a stop to the proceedings. Allan's force at the mouth of the river consisted of about sixty men under command of Captains West and Dyer. The "Vulture" arrived on June 23rd and an attempt ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... trident? or 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 ever ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and then irritably took a hand-rail and hauled himself along it, with his legs trailing behind him like the tail of a swimming mermaid. He thought of the simile and was not impressed by his ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... loose companions, and the tavern in Eastcheap came in to fill out his picture; although Mrs. Quickly and Falstaff, and Poins and Bardolph were more likely to have been fallen in with by Shakespeare himself at the Mermaid, than to have been comrades of the true Prince Henry. It was enough for Shakespeare to draw real men, and the situation, whatever it might be, would sit easy on them. In this sense only it is that Poetry is truer than History, that it can make a picture more complete. It may take liberties ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... tell me not of stormy graves— Though winds be high, there let them roar; I 'd rather perish on the waves Than pine by inches on the shore. I ask no willow where I lie, My mourner let the mermaid be, My only knell the sea-bird's cry, My ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... why she wept so, and Aino 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 old ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... several alligators and crocodiles, and a giant sloth from South America. The stable is well stocked with monkeys, parrots, eagles, lizards, tortoises and other curiosities, and in the watering trough are a sea serpent and a mermaid (said to be the only specimens of these marvels in ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... positive epoch in her career. How the people of Plainville would have been scandalized if they could have witnessed her shocking familiarity with a horse! She thought of an English girl who had been cut by the good society of Plainville because she dared to ride like a biped instead of a mermaid. And she laughed in a wild exultant freedom, while the wind whipped her hair about her shoulders, and she felt her mount firm beneath her as they cantered across the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... by a yachting hand, who heard it from a Shetlander named Abernethy who was serving in the same yacht with him. Not many years ago, some volunteers at Beaumaris swore they saw a mermaid there, and fired several shots at it. I think this story ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... amateurs who must have been incessantly talking about plays and play-writing, and some of whom were ardent champions of the rules and full of contempt for the lawlessness of the popular drama? Who can doubt that at the Mermaid Shakespeare heard from Jonson's lips much more censure of his offences against 'art' than Jonson ever confided to Drummond or to paper? And is it not most probable that those battles between the two which Fuller imagines, were waged often on the field of dramatic criticism? ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... so's they plunge into the waves to get to the mermaids. But the mermaids haven't any hearts, Trot, no more'n a fish has; so they laughs when the poor people drown an' don't care a fig. That's why I says, an' I says it true, that nobody never sawr a mermaid an' lived ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... 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
... "it was no mermaid, it was a mistake; and I'm going to see about it. Will you go ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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
... they will accept service?" (Here I rolled over and leaned on my elbow.) "You do look fit. Just move your heel out of that pool—there's an anemone going to mistake it for a piece of alabaster. That's right! Oh, but, Mermaid, do tell me how you keep your hair ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... little at a nonplus, as he never had undergone the operation which he had described. Fortunately for the support of his veracity, it happened that during one of his piratical excursions, in an idle fit, he had permitted one of his companions to tattoo a small mermaid ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I hear, with awful dread, The plaintive music of the dead; They leave the amber fields of day: Soft as the cadence of the wave, That murmurs round the mermaid's grave, They mingle in ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the church are the by-streets of Rye, so old and simple and quiet and right; particularly perhaps Mermaid Street, with its beautiful hospital. In the High Street, which is busier, is the George Inn, the rare possessor of a large assembly room with a musicians' gallery. One only of Rye's gates is standing—the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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
... ever going to keep her out of the bottom of the sea?" the captain inquired sternly. "I don't know that I care for the role of playing guardian to a mermaid." ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... 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 ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... pale moon's ever-fair 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 ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... said the skipper. "P'raps you've never seen a vanilla iceberg, or a mermaid a-hanging out her things to dry on the equatorial line, or the blue-winged shark what flies through the air in pursuit of his prey, or ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... must now be recalled; but they are not merely recalled—they are rearranged and give a new result that may never have been perceived. A typical product of imagination is composed of parts perceived at different times and later recalled and combined, as a centaur is composed of man and horse, or a mermaid of woman and fish. Imagination is like reasoning in being a mental reaction; but it differs from reasoning in being manipulation rather than exploration; reasoning consists in seeing relationships that exist between facts, and imagination ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Night. Hilda Van Sicklen, photo. (Frontispiece) Panorama—Exposition from Presidio Heights. W. Zenis Newton, photo Tower of Jewels—The Illumination by Night. J. L. Padilla, photo Fountain of Energy—A View in the South Gardens. W. Zenis Newton, photo Festival Hall—South Gardens and Mermaid Pool. W. Zenis Newton, photo Festival Hall—The Terrace and Colonnade. W. Zenis Newton, photo Festival Hall—Mermaid Pool in the Mist. Jesse T. Banfield, photo Palace of Horticulture—The Dome and East Entrance. W. Zenis Newton, ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... minnows, and not a word could we say about our pearl-fisheries and coral-banks! And as for fishing for minnows ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had asked us to fish for a mermaid! Do you see, now, one reason why I have let you go thus early into the world? Well, but amongst these minnow-fishers there was one who fished with an air that made the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he had been born in the wrong century. He could imagine himself at the Mermaid Tavern, hob-nobbing with Shakespeare and all the rest of them. He wondered if Richard Greene would be there. Then he wondered who ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The Lark and the Daisy The Ugly Duckling The Seven Stories of the Snow Queen The Flax The Little Match Girl The Fir-Tree The Red Shoes Ole Lukoeie Monday Saturday Sunday The Elf of the Rose Five Peas in a Pod The Portuguese Duck The Little Mermaid (much shortened) The Nightingale (shortened) The Girl who trod on a Loaf The ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... as a bricklayer; that he did not like the work; and that he ran off to the Low Countries, and there enlisted as a soldier. On his return to London, he began to write for the stage. Jonson was a friend and companion of Shakespeare's; and at the Mermaid, in Fleet Street, they had, in presence of men like Raleigh, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and other distinguished Englishmen, many "wit-combats" together. Jonson's greatest plays are Volpone or the Fox, and the Alchemist— both comedies. In 1616 he was created Poet-Laureate. For ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... by haunted well Is subject to the Nixie's spell; He who walks on lonely beach To the mermaid's charmed speech; He who walks round ring of green Offends ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pulled the flagon toward him, tilted it, and found it empty. His rueful face made me laugh. My lord laughed too,—somewhat loudly,—but ordered no more wine. "I would I were at the Mermaid again," lamented the now drunken Secretary. "There we did n't split a flagon in three parts.... The Tsar of Muscovy drinks me down a quartern of aqua vitae at a gulp,—I've seen him do it....I would I were the Bacchus on this cup, with the purple grapes adangle above me.... Wine and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... sea-gull shrieks high overhead, and dimly to our sight The moonlit crests of foaming waves gleam towering through the night. We'll steal upon the mermaid soon, and start her from her lay, When once the sandy bar is cross'd, and we are ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... if thy gorge at first rises against it, for, when thou art wonted, it is a balm for all sorrows and griefs, and as a dream of Paradise. And now, my sweet Will, whom my soul loveth, why comest thou not as of yore to the "Mermaid," that I may have speech with thee? Thou knowest that from my youth up I have adventured all for the welfare and glory of our Queen Elizabeth. On sea and on land and in many climes have I fought the accursed Spaniards, and am honored recognize thy supreme merit, for daily and hourly are sung ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... one is called "May Colvin," and relates the story of a king's daughter who was beguiled from her father's house by a false Sir John; the other, intitled "Clerk Colvil," treats of a young man who fell into the snares of a false mermaid; the latter, indeed, bears a still stranger resemblance to the Danish tradition of "The Erl-King's Daughter." The fragment of "The Water King" may be found ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... "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 waiting for ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... 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 ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to, seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe, a sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose upon his intelligent children! And now people talk about geological epochs and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history as calmly as if they were discussing the age of their deceased ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... roof was a dense mass of greenery, and wire baskets filled with sinuous creepers hung down, with their contents straggling over. Electric lights in green globes were skilfully hidden all round, and a faint aquamarine twilight permeated the whole place, and made it look like a mermaid's grotto in the depths of the sea. Here and there were delightful nooks, with well-cushioned seats, many of which were occupied by pretty girls and their attendant cavaliers. On one side of the fernery a wide door opened on to a low terrace, from whence steps ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... sub-conspiracy in the City of London while the trials of Hewit and Slingsby were in progress. A few desperate cavaliers about town, the chief of whom were a Sir William Leighton, a Colonel Deane, and a Colonel Manley, holding commissions from Charles, had met several times at the Mermaid Tavern and elsewhere, and had arranged for a midnight tumult on Saturday the 15th of May. They were to attack the guard at St. Paul's, seize the Lord Mayor, raise a conflagration near the Tower, &c. The hour had come, and the conspirators were in the Mermaid Tavern for their ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... if I'd been afloat for forty days and 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 have ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... leave Isabella quite alone in the world and practically penniless, her father brought her up more like a boy than a girl; she could ride a horse as gracefully as an Amazon, she could swim like a born mermaid, and even outdo her father in his favorite sport of fencing. Yet so sweet was the gentle nature which the girl had inherited from her mother, that this strange upbringing never spoiled her in ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... like a fairy, and swim like a mermaid, and ride like an Indian princess, but these accomplishments are not lucrative, save in a Midway Plaisance or a Wild West show. You are well educated and your memory is remarkable. You have a facility in mathematics, and your knowledge of grammar and rhetoric will, as ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
