"Elves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... by AEolian harps When, in vernal showers descending, Blossoms gently veil the earth, When the fields' green wealth, up-tending, Gleams on all of mortal birth; Tiny elves, where help availeth, Large of heart, there fly apace; Pity they whom grief assaileth, Be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, Sing my fair love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... 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
... spoke of it to any one else, kept their rites as private as possible; and, as they never tried to describe it even to themselves, this being had a vague mysterious charm very agreeable to Demi, who delighted in elves and goblins. A most whimsical and tyrannical imp was the Naughty Kitty-mouse, and Daisy found a fearful pleasure in its service, blindly obeying its most absurd demands, which were usually proclaimed from the lips of Demi, whose powers of invention were great. Rob and Teddy ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the South Wind's flute I call the elves to our tryst Down rainbow bubbles they softly float, Light-winged ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... spot of earth, you might, I ween, Have guessed some congregation of the elves, To sport by summer moons, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 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; ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Rotha, she pursued a little footpath leading to the lakeside. It was a cold day, with flying clouds and gleams on hill and water. The bosom of Silver How held depths of purple shadow, but there were lights like elves at play, chasing each other along the Easedale fells, and the stony side ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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
... 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 the royal house of the Jutes in ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... a wonderful play, depicting Elf-land with fairies, water nymphs, elves and witches, goblins, and gnomes, with exquisite scenery, beautiful costumes, and graceful dancing that held them entranced, from the time that the curtain went up until the grand march of the ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... beneath the hollyhocks I spied the tiny tailor who makes the fairies' frocks; There he sat a-stitching all the afternoon And sang a little ditty to a quaint wee tune: "Grey for the goblins, blue for the elves, Brown for the little gnomes that live by themselves, White for the pixies that dance upon the green, But where shall I find me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... glancing up at us from the blue; when we moor the boat and climb the hillsides, we are dazzled by the luxuriant beauty of it all. It hardly seems real—it is too green, too perfect, to be believed; and one thinks of some fairy drop-scene, painted by cunning-fingered elves and sprites, who might have a wee folk's way of mixing roses and rainbows, dew-drenched greens and sun-warmed yellows; showing the picture to you first all burnished, glittering and radiant, then 'veiled in mist and diamonded with showers.' ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... when meteors play And light the breakers dance, The Oreads from the caves With silvery elves advance; And up from ocean stream, And down from heaven far, The rays that blend in dream The ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... laughter strange— Warned them of the wild laborers they must meet. A moment more, and the pale fugitives Stood at the bottom of those countless steps, Peering into the lowest deep of all. A hell-like spot! and spirits of the doomed Were scarce more haggard than the clumsy elves Who here pursued their ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune,[451-5] and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... 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 ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... now despaired of ever being able to secure the wolf with any chain of their own making. All-father, however, sent Skirnir, the messenger of the god Frey, into the country of the Black Elves, to the dwarfs, to ask them to make a chain to bind Fenris with. This chain was composed of six things—the noise made by the fall of a cat's foot, the hair of a woman's beard, the roots of stones, the nerves of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... 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
... thoroughly to enjoy itself alone in the shady nook which it had chosen—a place overshadowed by broad leaves of ferns and Heliconiae. I thought, as I watched it, that there was no need for poets to invent elves and gnomes while Nature furnishes us with such marvellous ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... yet, that he be alive, and dwelling in Avalon with the fairest of all elves: still look the Britons for the day of Arthur's ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the Nibelung race, and Nibelheim is their land. There, all are black elves, and once upon a time, Alberich was their lord. He tamed them with the spell of a magic ring formed ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... genius alike look through and over the lattice-work which separates the regions of the natural and the supernatural. She had firm faith in midnight revels in the woods, held by those elves, fairies, and satyrs who come down to us from the dim and shaded life of earlier ages, and whose existence she had eagerly accepted when I hinted its possibility. Her theory of the mutability of species exceeded Darwin's; for she fancied that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... me out of the house when my sister married. I was born out of wedlock, when my family were bankrupt and in mourning for an uncle who had taken his life. Now you know my family! That's the stock I come from. Once I narrowly escaped fourteen years' hard labour—so I've every reason to thank the elves, though I can't be altogether pleased ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... 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 ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... he, shook his head. "Nay, nay, gaffer," he answered. "I am wise; I know my business. I think I have been asleep in the green wood a thousand years and waited upon by elves and fairies and all manner of pygmies, and they taught me the speech of birds, and what the trees whisper to each other from dawn to dusk, and the war-cries of the winds, with other much delectable knowledge which would have made me wiser than the wisest—but ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... lump, you chaos of a man, To buffet one whom Heaven pronounces good! [Bells ring.] There go the bells rejoicing over you: I'll change them back to the old knell again. You marry, faugh! Beget a race of elves; Wed a she-crocodile, and keep within The limits of your nature! Here we go, Tripping along to meet our promised bride, Like a rheumatic elephant!—ha, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... phenomena 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
... evening, that I ever remember, as we wandered in the park-lands, she began to say—half unthinking—that it was truly an elves-night. And she stopped herself immediately; as though she thought I should have no understanding; but, indeed, I was upon mine own familiar ground of inward delight; and I replied in a quiet and usual voice, that the Towers of ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... modest, but not embarrassed; she made answer courteously 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 were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 is a man to be proud of. You can send him into Parliament ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slow, "the other day Nurse shut me up in the back nursery for borrowing her scissors and losing them; but I'd got 'Grimm' inside one of my knickerbockers, so when she locked the door, I sat down to read. And I read the story of the Shoemaker and the little Elves who came and did his work for him before he got up; and I thought it would be so jolly if we had some little Elves to do ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the most charming little people came marching forth. They were only tall enough to reach to my knee. They looked like men, but were better proportioned: they called themselves elves, and had delicate clothes on, of flower leaves trimmed with the wings of flies and gnats, which had a very good appearance. Directly they appeared, they seemed to be seeking for something—I know not what; but at last some ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... half-open doors, out upon balconies, hither and thither, after the manner o' my little lady on her most unquiet days, till at last, for the sake o' peace, I did slyly lead him in the direction o' the great nursery. There, catching sight o' a little red petticoat, he enters, where stand my truant elves confessed, Mistress Marian frowning and biting o' her dark hair, but my little lady like to stifle, with both hands over her mouth to hide her smiles, and her blue eyes dancing a very Barley Break o' mirth among the yellow ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... self-assuming elves, Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves, Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... great golden moon, shouldered over the rim of the world by the backs of the crooked elves. The horse and the two persons made a black, distorted shadow that jerked along as though it were a thing evil and persistent. Far off in the thickets of the hills an owl cried, eerie and weird like a creature in some bitter ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... windows, the sea was moaning, the wind blew furiously round the house, which seemed like a ship in a terrible storm. We drank to the fertilization of the dunes, to the victors of Achen, to the prosperity of the colonies, to the memory of Nino Bixio, to the elves. Nevertheless, I was still a little uneasy. Our host when he needed the servant touched a hidden spring; to tell the coachman to get the carriage ready he spoke some words into a hole in the wall; and these tricks did ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... a time the Fairy Elves, Being first array'd themselves, Thought it meet to clothe their King In robes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... our feelings. To the Greeks—to our own ancestors,—every River or Mountain or Forest had not only its own special Deity, but in some sense was itself instinct with life. They were not only peopled by Nymphs and Fauns, Elves and Kelpies, were not only the favourite abodes of Water, Forest, or Mountain Spirits, but they had a ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... clouds and whirlwind, or wheeling the sun and the moon like chariots through the blue vault. And so again, fancy most naturally peoples the gloom of the night with demons, the woods and the waters with naiads and dryads, elves and fairies, the church-yard with ghosts, and the dark cave and the solitary cot with wizards, imps and old witches. Such, then, is theology in its origin; and, in all its stages, we find it varying in grossness according to the degree ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... wooded hill clattering like a troop of the queen's cavalry, and turned down toward the great level bow which the road makes before it crosses the Gauley. There was a dim light rising beyond the flat lands where the crooked elves toiled with their backs against the golden moon. But they were under the world yet, with only the yellow haze shining through the door. This was the acre of ghosts. Tale after tale I had heard, sitting on the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... this sentient, seething world Is, after all ideal, Or in the Immaterial furl'd Alone resides the Real, FREED ONE! there's wail for thee this hour Through thy loved Elves' dominions[33]; Hush'd is each tiny trumpet-flower, And droopeth Ariel's pinions; Even Puck, dejected, leaves his swing[34], To plan, with fond endeavour, What pretty buds and dews shall keep Thy pillow bright ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... 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, (No.43. vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... for The Seven Castles Of The Diamond Lake was as brilliant and wonderful as heart could wish. But in spite of the comical red imps, sparkling elves, and the gorgeous princes and princesses, Jo's pleasure had a drop of bitterness in it. The fairy queen's yellow curls reminded her of Amy, and between the acts she amused herself with wondering what her sister would ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... cavorting still outside the walls, while the good citizens inside are making sly sport of him. Who, being recently banished from Boyville, has not sought to return? In vain does he haunt the swimming hole; the water elves will have none of him. He hushes their laughter, muffles their calls, takes the essence from their fun, and leaves it dust upon ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... all ye fairy elves, hither to me, Over the holme so green, over the lea, Over the corrie, and down by the lake, Cross ye the mountain-burn, thread ye the brake, Stop not at muirland, wide river, nor sea: Hasten, ye fairy elves, hither ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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
... pray let me die In the right way, nor shed such tears." Not at all, the consolers, With many a tear, and many a sigh, Had come resolved by him to lie; And when they left they helped themselves Upon his lands, the greedy elves! And drank from out his brook, And every one of them such suppers took, That when the stag revived, He found his meals reduced; So that while his friends had thrived, He had to fast or ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... him an intrepid look and then said proudly, "I'd never go back—I might be frightened, but I'd be ashamed to run. Going to aunt Mirandy's is like going down cellar in the dark. There might be ogres and giants under the stairs,—but, as I tell Hannah, there MIGHT be elves and fairies and enchanted frogs!—Is there a main street to the village, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... If any elves had been hovering about the dingy hall just then, they would have seen the mother's tired face brighten beautifully when she discovered the gifts, and found that her little girls had been so kindly remembered. Something more brilliant than the mock diamonds in Miss Kent's best ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... well with the starch prudery of things Elizabethan; but they are still replete with grotto, fountain, labyrinth, and alcove—a very paradise for the more court-bred rank of sylphs, and the gentler elves of Queen Titania. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thee, The shooting stars attend thee; And the elves also, Whose little eyes glow Like the sparks of fire, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... elves were away from home, a giant came into the glen. He was seeking just such a cool place for his ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... He forebore comment, however, and presently struck down a road which wound into a little suburb peopled by Polish quarry-workers. It was essentially an alien community in whose straggling streets and lanes one heard English but seldom. Tow-headed children, shy elves peeping from odd hiding-places, swarmed a half-dozen and upward to a house. Work was the key-note of Little Poland, as it was called. While the men toiled in the sandstone quarries the women did a ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... of hers! Drenched irises. And they used to dance like elves of delight. And all through a foolish misunderstanding about a shark. What a tragedy misunderstandings are. That pretty romance broken and over just because Mr. Glossop would insist ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... elves That do by moonshine green sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe bites not; whose pastime 'tis To make these ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... novel color, their fantastic beauty, their infinite variety of subject. Yet, like the "Arabian Nights," they will amply repay the attention of the older reader as well. Some are exquisitely poetic, such as "The Flower-Elves," "The Lady of the Moon" or "The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden"; others like "How Three Heroes Came By Their Deaths Because Of Two Peaches," carry us back dramatically and powerfully to the Chinese ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Elves! while the dew is sweet, Come to the dingles where fairies meet; Know that the lilies have spread their bells O'er all the pools in our forest dells; Come away, under arching bows we'll float, Making ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... quickly again beneath the surface. "How beautiful and blue are the reflections on their glittering wings, how transparent their tiny bodies, how light their movements!" observed Emily; "they look like ocean elves, as they float through the air. What a happy life they must lead—now in the pure ocean, now getting an uninterrupted sight of the glorious sun and the clear ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... laugh with him, though one could not quite tell why. We lads of the harbour loved him very much, for his good-humour and for his tenderness—never more so, however, than when, by night, in the glow of the fire, he told us long tales of the fairies and wicked elves he had dealt with in his time, twinkling with every word, so that we were sorely puzzled to know whether to take him in ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... we own thee, but a name, And from thy hall of clouds descend? Nor find a Sylph in every dame, A Pylades [1] in every friend? But leave, at once, thy realms of air [ii] To mingling bands of fairy elves; Confess that woman's false as fair, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... and 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 hide themselves ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... power over you, and you will go elf-wild!—so say the Danes. I had unconsciously laid 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, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... on, ye little elves and fairies! Put your winter ones away in burrows underground— Thick leaves and thistledown, Rabbit's-fur and missel-down, Woven in your magic way which no one ever varies, Worn in earthy hidey-holes till Spring ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... actions of a separate order of beings, living on this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their presence; known in almost all countries and ages as demons not necessarily bad, gnomes, fairies, kobolds, elves, goblins, Puck, &c. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... 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, and sometimes ill-humoured. But can we be surprised at them, remembering their woeful ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... nay; Those stories are too childish, Uncle John, Too childish even for little Willy here, And I am older, two good years, than he; No, let us have a tale of elves that ride, By night, with jingling reins, or gnomes of the mine, Or water-fairies, such as you know how To spin, till Willy's eyes forget to wink, And good Aunt Mary, busy as she is, ...
— The Little People of the Snow • William Cullen Bryant
... Dream," has mingled the mythologies of Hellas and Scandinavia, of the North and the South, making of them a sort of mythic olla podrida. He represents the tiny elves and fays of the Gothic fairyland, span-long creatures of dew and moonshine, the lieges of King Oberon, and of Titania, his queen, as making an irruption from their haunted hillocks, woods, meres, meadows, and fountains, in the North, into the olive-groves of Ilissus, and dancing their ringlets in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... in the garden from morning till night, but am too impatient for mortal roots and branches. I should have loved the sort of planting described in Tieck's "Elves," where they stamp a pine-cone into the earth, and presently a fir-tree springs up, and, rising towards the sky with the happy children who plant it, rocks them on its topmost branches, to and fro in ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... actually so many words, there was the way he went about. That of itself was enough to have started the whole thing, to say nothing of that loony old Irish housekeeper of his, with her head stuffed full of elves and banshees and ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... 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 ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... scene, a faint glow filtered in through the whiteness, and made it all seem a fairy-land. Indeed, was it not? And were not the little swaying mist-wreaths that wavered in at our windows some dainty elves timidly come to give us greeting? All day the fog held, and the sad tolling of the bell went on. Now and then, the calls of the river craft would come ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... fete at the royal palace of Versailles, outside of Paris, and the beautiful gardens of the palace, world famous for their wonderful statues and fountains, flowers and groves, presented an amazing sight on that midsummer night. A hundred elves and fairies, hobgoblins and wood-nymphs danced in and out about groups of strangely dressed grown-up people, who were neither in court costume nor in real masquerade. The older lords and ladies of the court were trying to humor their young Queen's whim without parting with ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... night! Dotted all round this skeleton of what was once a wood, but now merely a few sticks of charred tree trunks, and in and out as far as the eye could see, were scores of tiny fires. The flames danced up and down like elves, and crowded round the fires were groups of our boys, laughing and chatting as if there was no such thing as war. Now and then the flash of the big howitzers momentarily lighted up the whole landscape. What ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... to watch the children play, upon a wintry, snowy day; like little elves they run about, and leap and slide, and laugh and shout. This side of heaven can there be such pure and unmixed ecstacy? I lean upon ye rustic stile, and watch the children with a smile, and think upon a vanished day, when I, as joyous, used to play, when ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... idiotize, unable to see dryads dancing in the moonlight (as she and I saw them in the same spot to-night), careless that Nature was distilling magic perfume for us from tree and fern and wild flower, our eyes shut to the fact that elves disguised as Indian lilies were ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... popular beliefs of all countries, the beliefs cherished by the non-literary classes whose ballads and fairy tales have only recently been collected, would probably reveal a general identity, concealed by diversity of name, among the 'lesser people of the skies,' the elves, fairies, Cyclopes, giants, nereids, brownies, lamiae. It could then be shown that some of these spirits survive among the lower beings of the mythology of what the Germans call a cultur-volk like the Greeks or Romans. It could also ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... who do not like her at least I do not know. There are a few typical errors; and a "said he," or a "said she," would sometimes make the dialogue more immediately clear; but "I do not write for such dull elves" as have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves. The second volume is shorter than I could wish, but the difference is not so much in reality as in look, there being a larger proportion of narrative in that part. I have lop't and crop't so successfully, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... dark forest. There was a fragrance of lilies all about her, and a gossamer gown floated around her, whiter than the whiteness of the fairest lily. It was fine, like the finest lace that the frost-elves weave, and softer than the softest ermine of the snow. On her long golden hair gleamed a coronet ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... protector, only holding his hand, and looking piteously at him if invited away; and Percy declared, he was as much courted as a young lady in her teens. Sitting down with him at a table surrounded by small elves, Percy had of course kept them in a roar of laughter, throughout which Johnnie had preserved his gravity, only once volunteering a whisper, that he wished Helen was there; but Percy thought that when unmolested by attention, he had seemed quietly amused. When admitted to the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this century these ideas of the personel of supernatural agencies had become slightly modified in this country at least, giants and dragons having given way to fairies, brownies, elves, witches, etc. The Rev. Mr. Kirk, of Aberfeldy, published a work descriptive of these supernatural beings. He says they are a kind of astral spirits between angels and humanity, being like men and women in appearance, and similar in many of their habits; ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Spring! who with her amorous gales Kissing the violets, each stray sweet exhales Of May-thorn, and the wild flower on the heath. I love thee, virgin daughter of the year! Yet, ah! not cups,—dyed like the dawn, impart Their elves' dew-nectar to a fainting heart!— Ye birds! whose liquid warblings far and near Make music to the green turf-board of swains; To me, your light lays tell of April joy,— Of pleasures—idle, as a long-loved ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... 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
... religious 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 ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... Schmidt, 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 sow it in fields, the soil of which has been especially ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... thy nest, robin 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! Sing, birds, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... spell Of Merlin old that ministered to fate, The tales of visiting ghosts, or fairy elves, Or witchcraft, are no fables. But his task Is ended with the night;—the thin white moon Evades the eye, the sun breaks through the trees, And the charmed wizard comes forth a mere man From out his circle. Thus it is, whate'er We know and understand hath lost the power ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Syracuse. May illustrated my book and tales called "Christmas Elves." Better than "Flower Fables." Now I must try ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... not so; though I can raise no Devils, Yet I Confederate with Rogues and Juglers, Things that can shape themselves like Elves, And Goblins— And often do like Spirits haunt great Houses, Most times to steal, but many times for mirth; These I'le soon send ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... 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 around in ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... gifts were of the simplest sort. There were the Danish twins that Ethel Blue had made for the real Ship—little worsted elves fastened together by a cord; and rubber balls covered with crocheting to make them softer; dolls, small and inexpensive, but each with an outfit of clothes that would take off; a stuffed kitten or two; several baskets, each with a roll ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... gain, the ages' loss, A wealth of wonders and so much away— When now hears one the woodland elves at play, Or angry dryads where tall tree-tops toss. No more they lightly tread the dewy moss As danced they through cool haunts in ecstasy; But rank and lost the paths in lone decay Where fairy footsteps once ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... combination of form and movement,—such sensitive teeth and fingers and wheels and points of steel,—such fairy knives of sapphire, with which King Oberon the first might have been beheaded, had he insisted upon levying dew-taxes upon primroses without the authority of his elves,—such smooth cylinders, and flying points so rapidly revolving that they seem perfectly still.—such dainty oscillations of parts with the air of intelligent consciousness of movement,—that a machinery so extensive in details, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... men, these holds forego, Nor trust such cunning elves: These artful emblems tend to show ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... best plan for observing the order is to make a person first raise his eyebrows, and this produces transverse wrinkles across the forehead; and then very gradually to contract all the muscles round the elves with as much force as possible. The reader who is unacquainted with the anatomy of the face, ought to refer to p. 24, and look at the woodcuts 1 to 3. The corrugators of the brow (corrugator supercilii) seem to be the first muscles to contract; and these draw the eyebrows ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... the people of England and Scotland were very superstitious. It is not two centuries since our good forefathers on that island were burning witches by scores. At that time, a great many believed in the existence of fairies, or elves. I have been at some pains to find out at what time this fairy superstition first appeared among the Britons. But it seems not very easy to determine. One thing is certain, that the belief in some kind of spirits—either the same with the fairies, under a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... before. Over stream and meadow rolled the fog, in strange fantastical shapes, floating like a silver gauze among the tree-stems and foliage, till it gradually wove itself into one close and impervious veil. To such appearances as these must legends of elves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and Elves Who slept in buds ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... love the fairy elves Took the forlorn child-maiden to themselves And reared her in the wildwood, where no jar Of alien discord, echoing from afar, Broke the sweet forest murmur, long years round. Her ears, attuned to every woodland sound, Translated to her soul the great ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... to me: a multitude of elves: a host supine; foes' prostration: a conflict of men on the Dodder[8]: oppression of Tara's king: in youth he was destroyed; lamentations will overcome laughter: ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... the road, in practical illustration of Robin's doctrine; comic incidents from the old ballads are reproduced; and so the episode ends merrily of these frolics in the wood. At that point a delicious fairy pageant is introduced, presenting Queen Titania and her elves and illustrating at once the grievance of the fairies against the men whose heavy feet have crushed their toads and bats and flowers and mystic rings, and Marian's dream of love. Sir Arthur Sullivan's music is here again used, and again it ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... been told that fairies, and elves, and gnomes, and things of that sort were merely myths, and existed only in the ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... her elderly patron, and she also gave me back the manuscript of Lohengrin, with the assurance that it had appealed to her very much, and that while she was reading it she had often seen the little fairies and elves dancing about in front of her. As in the old days I had been heartily encouraged by the warm and friendly sympathy of this naturally cultured woman, I now felt as if cold water had been suddenly poured ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... her lips, the moon shone out from behind the clouds above the dark forest. There was a fragrance of lilies all about, and a gossamer gown floated around her, whiter than the whiteness of the fairest lily. It was fine like the finest lace the frost-elves weave, and softer than the softest ermine of the snow. On her long golden hair gleamed a coronet ...
— The Legend of the Bleeding-heart • Annie Fellows Johnston
... which the earth and the elements obey as they did Orpheus, that attracts them. Sometimes it is by more sensual blandishments, and sometimes by sweet and tender persuasion, suadae medulla. Mountain elves start from the ground, and from unseen caverns, and attempt to entice brave knights to their ruin; they dance round them beneath the trees, and endeavor to make them join in their dances. The natural fortitude of the stalwart champions is rarely able to resist the temptation, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 came ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... figure: Was it regal as Juno's own? Or only a trifle bigger Than the elves who surround the throne Of the Faery Queen, and are seen, I ween, By mortals in ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 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 my feet ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... doubtless imagination would people it then with gnomes, horrid afrits, and shapes of fear. To-day, under an exquisite sky, pearly clouds floating across the blue, a soft southern air wafting the fragrance of wild pink, thyme and lavender, it was a region surely peopled by good genii, sportive elves and beneficent fairies only. We were in a spirit, a phantasmal world; but a world of witchery and gracious ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... glows Warm, At thought of his paternal farm, Round to his mates a brimmer fills, And drinks, "The Chieftain of the Hills!" No fairy forms, in Yarrow's bowers, Trip o'er the walks, or tend the flowers, Fair as the elves whom Janet saw By moonlight dance on Carterhaugh; No youthful baron's left to grace The forest-sheriff's lonely chase, And ape, in manly step and tone, The majesty of Oberon: And she is gone, whose ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... told of royal visits to studios, there are two which refer to an enfant terrible, the baby son of one of the painters. This small man having undertaken to be cicerone to his father's work, sought specially to point out to her Majesty that two elves were likenesses of himself and a little brother, "only, you know, we don't go about without clothes at home," ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the Black Forest and all the other haunts of elves and fairies and hobgoblins; but for good honest spooks there is no place like home. And what differentiates our spook—Spiritus Americanus—from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it responds to the American ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... about the piney woods, near the asylum, with two beautiful elves, when I chanced to meet her. She was singing at the time. Beulah, I am glad to find you out again; and in future, when I pay the doctor long visits, I shall expect you to appear for my entertainment. Look to it, Guy, that she is present. But I am fatigued with my unusual exercise, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... from thy nest, Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing birds, in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Buns! Hot Cross Buns! One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns! If you have no daughters, If you have no daughters, If you have no daughters, Pray give them to your sons; But if you have none of these little elves, Then you must eat them ...
— The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... a flock of turkeys were foraging among the clover-blossoms, and over the dewy grass a large brood of young guineas raced after their mother, or played hide-and-seek, like nut-brown elves, under the white and purple tufts of flowers. Save the bird-world—always abroad early—no living thing seemed astir, and the silence that reigned was broken only by the distance-softened ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... exhibit the influence of early environment. True child of Alsace, he revelled in local folklore and legend. The eerie and the fantastic had the same fascination for him as sacred story, and the lives of the saints, gnomes, elves, werewolves and sorcerers bewitched no less than ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of Elbkoenig, i.e., the king of the elves. Notice the difference in the speeches of the three characters: the calm assuaging tone of the father, whose senses seem dead to the supernatural; the luring song of the Erlkoenig, that changes abruptly ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... in 1825. This was the first of his works which has retained its popularity. The year following he composed the overture to "The Midsummer Night's Dream," one of the most remarkable pieces of the early romantic school. In this the fairy-like music of Titania and her elves is charmingly contrasted with the folk songs and the absurd bray of the transformed Bottom. He had already written an opera "Camacho," which had been submitted to Spontini, the musical director ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews |
