"Changeling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little fiend had got in at the window she probably would have strangled me," I returned... "Catharine Linton or Earnshaw, or however she was called—she must have been a changeling, wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years; a just punishment for her ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... with Anstey (the author of the New Bath Guide), or with the author of the Heroic Epistle, he continues:—'I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Moreover, setting aside the affair of my eye, I had a very ugly countenance; my mouth being slightly wrung aside, and my complexion rather swarthy. In fact, I looked so queer that the gossips and neighbours, when they first saw me, swore I was a changeling—perhaps it would have been well if I had never been born; for my poor father, who had been particularly anxious to have a son, no sooner saw me than he turned away, went to the neighbouring town, and did not return for two days. I am by no means ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... mettest with things dying, I with things new-born. Here's a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire's child! look thee here; take up, take up, boy; open't. So, let's see:—it was told me I should be rich by the fairies: this is some changeling:—open't. What's within, boy? ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... small comfort would they find in me! I am a stricken and most luckless deer, Whose bleeding track but draws the hounds of wrath Where'er I pause a moment. He has children Bred at his side, to nurse him in his age— While I am but an alien and a changeling, Whom, ere my plastic sense could impress take Either of his feature or ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... their manifestoes, which proclaimed the Pan-Turkish ideal, she conceived and began to carry out under their very noses the great new chapter of the Pan-Germanic ideal. And the Young Turks did not know the difference! They mistook that lusty Teutonic changeling for their own new-born Turkish babe, and they nursed and nourished it. Amazingly it throve, and soon it cut its teeth, and one day, when they thought it was asleep, it arose from its cradle a baby no more, but a great Prussian guardsman who shouted, ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... of this unhappy disagreement was Titania's refusing give Oberon a little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania's friend; and upon her death the fairy queen stole the child from its nurse and brought him up ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with her father are idyllic. She is more necessary to him than Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continual negotiator of peace in his divided house, and 'in this she could not have displayed more courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-world changeling with centuries of experience respecting rich fathers of uncertain testamentary inclinations.' In her limited knowledge of things outside Piper's Hill, 'street-crossings and railway-platforms presented themselves to her in the light of shocking ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... land of larvae, few are so spectacular as the process by which, without warning, a man is converted from a toiler and bearer of loads to a taker of his bien. However, to none, one must believe, is the changeling ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... mechanic and ornamental arts may sacrifice to fashion, she must be entirely excluded from the art of painting; the painter must never mistake this capricious changeling for the genuine offspring of nature; he must divest himself of all prejudices in favour of his age or country; he must disregard all local and temporary ornaments, and look only on those general habits that are everywhere and always the same. He addresses his ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... MOTHER. I cannot speak for greefe: when thou went home, I would that I had murdered thee my sonne. My sonne: thou art a changeling, not my sonne. I curse thee and exclaime thee miscreant, Traitor to God, and to the ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... themselves and the world that they had succeeded in delivering Italy in labor of an epic. But their maieutic ingenuity was vain. The nation carried no epic in her womb. Trissino's Italia was a weazened changeling of erudition, and Tasso's Gerusalemme a florid bastard of romance. Tassoni, noticing the imposition of these two eminent and worthy writers, determined to give his century an epic or heroic poem in the only form which then was possible. Briefly, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... in the same manner and degree in the women of both people. I have often asked Native women whether it would be possible for any mother among them to distinguish her own new-born baby from a supposed "changeling" of the same sex and of the same general appearance, and the answer has always been negative. The Native and the white woman alike would continue to cherish the substituted child exactly as they would have cherished ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... the deposit it has permanently left behind it in the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,' 'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,' 'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the words puck, urchin, gramary, are not of Teutonic origin. The etymology of puck is unknown; urchin means properly 'a hedgehog,' being the old ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the letter, however. "Oh, my dear, my dear, you should see Truxton. He is so perfectly splendid that I am sure he is a changeling and not my son. I tell him that he can't be the bundle of cuddly sweetness that I used to carry in my arms. I wore your white house-coat that first morning, Becky, and he sent some roses, and we had breakfast together in my rooms at the hotel. I believe it is the first ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... from his employment, lo! both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew again to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a fairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to soothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted bow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal, at times, out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not mortal laughter. It was one of his most ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... masquerade proceeds with spirit. Isabella mixes in the festive scene, disguised in a domino, made of black sticking-plaster. Czerina overhears that she is a usurper and a changeling, and expresses her surprise in a line most unblushingly stolen from Fitz-Ball and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Queen's Gallery; the procession of attendants seen emerging from the background through the transparent gloom is quite awful; but in this miraculous picture, the lovely Virgin Mother is metamorphosed into a coarse Dutch vrow, and the divine Child looks like a changeling imp. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... remained of his appearance, save a slight whirlwind of dust, like a mist-wreath curling down the valley, which, to their terrified apprehensions, became the chariot of the departing demon. Nothing could shake this belief; and in after ages the boy was spoken of as a changeling, left by some fairy, whose appointed sojourn had been then accomplished, the means for his release being fulfilled. Old Cicely became nigh crazed with the loss of her son; but Gamel, seriously pondering on these events, sought ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... constructively, it had become a fierce though governed passion with both—to learn something of the spiritual life coursing back of the material universe. Equally slowly and inevitably had the two come to believe that the little changeling at the lodge held some wordless clue, some unconscious knowledge as to that outer sphere, that surrounding, peopled ether, in which, under their apparent rationality, the two had come to believe. Yet the banker and his wife stood to Mockwooders for no special cult or fad; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a decent meal since this changeling crept out of the eggshell," said one of them, and when the youngster heard that they were all of the same opinion, he said he was quite willing to go his way; "if they did not want him, he was sure he did not want them," and with ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... Whitehall Chappell with Mr. Child, and there did hear Captain Cooke and his boy make a trial of an Anthem against tomorrow, which was brave musique. Then by water to Whitefriars to the Play-house, and there saw "The Changeling," the first time it hath been acted these twenty years, and it takes exceedingly. Besides, I see the gallants do begin to be tyred with the vanity and pride of the theatre actors who are indeed grown very proud and rich. Then by link home, and there to my book awhile and to bed. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... mother's child had been taken away out of its cradle by the elves, and a changeling with a large head and staring eyes, which would do nothing but eat and drink, laid in its place. In her trouble she went to her neighbour, and asked her advice. The neighbour said that she was to carry the changeling ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... "facciata" of the Abbey Church, complained of the "narrow, uneven and unpleasant streets," and inter-visited with the company frequenting the place for health. "Among the rest of the idle diversions of the town," he says, "one musician was famous for acting a changeling [idiot or half-wit], which indeed he personated strangely." (Diary, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... this great question. There was no one, however, able to settle this question but himself; and when Lord John Russell failed in forming an administration, he resumed office with a fixed resolution, at the risk of being denominated a changeling and a deceiver of party, to open the English ports to all the world. How he grappled with and settled the question will be seen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... become to you father and mother and sister and fairy prince? Then what were you to me in those old days? A child fanciful and charming, too fine in all her moods not to breed wonder, to give the feeling that Nature had placed in that mountain cabin a changeling of her own. A child that one must regard with fondness and some pity,—what is called a dear child. Moreover, a child whose life I had saved, and to whom it pleased me to play Providence. I was young, not hard of heart, sedulous to fold back to the uttermost the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... let me tell thee now another tale: For Bleys, our Merlin's master, as they say, Died but of late, and sent his cry to me, To hear him speak before he left his life. Shrunk like a fairy changeling lay the mage; And when I enter'd told me that himself And Merlin ever served about the King, Uther, before he died; and on the night When Uther in Tintagil past away Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two Left the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... shut out,— As some detected changeling elf, Doomed, with strange agony and doubt, To enter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... worst foes of man. Fabre not only studied these implacable beings but loved them. There was something unnatural about it; something disloyal to the whole human race. It is probable that Fabre was not really human at all. He may have been found in some human cradle, but he was a changeling. You can see he has insect blood in him, if you look at his photograph. He is leathery, agile, dried up. And his grandmother was waspish. He himself always felt strangely close to wasps, and so did wasps to him. I dare say that in addition to ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... the child whose father goeth to the Devil!"—for the happiness of the father was made by the child's taking the downward road. "At a later day," says Motley, "when the unfortunate eldest son of Orange returned from Spain, after twenty-seven years' absence, a changeling and a Spaniard, the restoration of those very estates was offered to him by Philip II., provided he would continue to pay a fixed proportion of their rents to the family of his father's murderer. The education which Philip William had received, under the King's auspices, had, however, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... when I myself was in vain trying, year after year, to write a single Essay, nay, a single page or sentence; when I regarded the wonders of his pen with the longing eyes of one who was dumb and a changeling; and when, to be able to convey the slightest conception of my meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost hopeless ambition! But I never measured others' excellences by my own defects: though a sense of my own ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... thought he must die. Now a "wise" old man, who knew about Fairies, came to see the smith at work, and the poor man told him all about his trouble. The old man said, "It is not your son you have got; the boy has been carried off by the Dacorie Sith (the Fairies), and they have left a sibhreach (changeling) in his place." Then the old man told him what to do. "Take as many egg-shells as you can get, go with them into the room, spread them out before him, then draw water with them, carrying them two and two in your hands as if they were a great weight, and when they ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... of God, as an abatement of and deduction from so much of my future pains in purgatory. He did it not out of any evil intent. He thought, belike, to have hit some of the pages. He is an honest fool, and an innocent changeling. It is a sin to harbour in the heart any bad conceit of him. As for myself, I heartily pardon him. He flirted me on the nose. In that there is no harm; for it importeth nothing else but that betwixt my wife and me there will ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... board the boat before sunrise. I told no one what I had done; but it filled me with remorse then, and has troubled me ever since. I resolved to atone for it, as far as I could, by taking the tenderest care of the little changeling, and trying to educate him as well as his own mother could have done. It was that which gave me strength to work so hard for musical distinction; and that motive stimulated me to appear as an opera-singer, though the publicity was distasteful to me. When I heard that the poor little ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... The 'Changeling' alone would sustain a reputation. It seems always like the plaintive but sweet warble of some unknown bird rising from the midst of tall water-rushes in the day's dim dawning. A wonderful melody as of Mrs. Browning's best efforts ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... precious elixir," continued he, "if it touch the form of yon changeling, will dissolve the charm: on the real person of the king it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... collection of poems for children. But it is not that, any more than "The Masses" is a paper for the proletariat. Before you have gone very far you will find that the imaginary child you set out with has been magicked into a changeling. The wee folk have been at work and bewitched the pudding—the pie rather. The fire dies on the hearth, the candle channels in its socket, but still you read on. Some of the poems bring you the cauld grue of Thrawn Janet. When at last you go up to bed, it will ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... winning human wives or by stealing unbaptized children, and substituting their own offspring for the human mother to nurse. These dwarf babies were known as changelings, and were recognisable by their puny and wizened forms. To recover possession of her own babe, and to rid herself of the changeling, a woman was obliged either to brew beer in egg-shells or to grease the soles of the child's feet and hold them so near the flames that, attracted by their offspring's distressed cries, the dwarf parents would hasten to claim their own and return ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... commutation; supplanting &c. v.; metaphor, metonymy &c. (figure of speech) 521. [Thing substituted] substitute, ersatz, makeshift, temporary expedient, replacement, succedaneum; shift, pis aller[Fr], stopgap, jury rigging, jury mast, locum tenens, warming pan, dummy, scapegoat; double; changeling; quid pro quo, alternative. representative &c. (deputy) 759; palimpsest. price, purchase money, consideration, equivalent. V. substitute, put in the place of, change for; make way for, give place to; supply the place of, take the place of; supplant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... received with boyish gratification the festivities with which Lodron enlivened his brief sojourn at Antwerp, and he set forth without reluctance for that gloomy and terrible land of Spain, whence so rarely a Flemish traveller had returned. A changeling, as it were, from his cradle, he seemed completely transformed by his Spanish tuition, for he was educated and not sacrificed by Philip. When he returned to the Netherlands, after a twenty years' residence in Spain, it was difficult to detect in his gloomy brow, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... should do it in the day. I do not sit up enough to hurt me. I have, on an average, three hours' night-work, five days in the week; and if that can damage a strong fellow like me, call me a puny changeling." ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the rock that spy, Eyes in the pine-tree dark— Is it his mother?—and cry: "Lo, what is this that comes, Haunting, troubling still, Even in our heights, our homes, The wild Maids of the Hill? What flesh bare this child? Never on woman's breast Changeling so evil smiled; Man is he not, but Beast! Loin-shape of the wild, Gorgon-breed of ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... mother put her arms around the body of her son, it turned out that it was only a straw bolster, no heart, no guts, nothing! Of course the witches had swooped down upon the lad and put the straw changeling in his place! Believe me or not, suit yourselves, but I say that there are women that know too much, and night-hags, too, and they turn everything upside down! And as for the long-haired booby, he never got back his own natural color and he ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... black butterflies. She was a changeling of a girl, veering from gayety to shyness.... Her gaze was now on her wrist watch, a slender blaze of platinum ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Magic Pow'r, Of the juice of this small flower, It shall jaundice so her sight, Foul shall be fair, and black seem white; Then shall dreams, and all their train, Fill with Fantasies her brain; Then, no more her darling joy, She'll resign her changeling boy. ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... "Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts." From this book I have borrowed, as to their substance, the story of Earl Gerald, in Chapter II. of my own book; the story of the children of Lir, in the same chapter; the account of the changeling who was tempted by the bagpipes, which Naggeneen tells of himself, in Chapter V.; the changeling story which Mrs. O'Brien tells, in Chapter VI.; and the most of the story of Oisin, in Chapter IX., besides ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... pause. It seemed to Jack that the whole thing must be a dream. This simply wasn't Frank at all. The wild idea came to him that the man who sat before him with Frank's features was some kind of changeling. Mentally he shook himself. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... into a house and snatched a child out of the cradle. In place of the stolen baby, one of their own wizened children was laid. That was the reason why many a poor little baby, that grew puny and thin, was called a "wiseel-kind," or changeling. When the sick baby could not get well, and medicine or care seemed to do no good, the mother thought that the goblins had taken ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... we not children of our own, that thou must needs bring a changeling to sit by the hearth? And who knows if it will not bring us bad fortune? And how shall we tend it?' And she ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... stirred By purr of cat, or chirp of bird, Or mother's twilight legend, told Of Horner's pie, or Tiddler's gold, Or fairy hobbling to the door, Red-cloaked and weird, banned and poor, To bless the good child's gracious eyes, The good child's wistful charities, And crippled changeling's hunch to make Dance on his crutch, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... effect of a thing on paper, or even in its last rehearsal, and the effect of it when it is performed before an audience which has paid to see it. It was no wonder he was dazed, for the opera he found himself listening to seemed like a changeling. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Decay's self be but last May's elf, wing shifted, eye sheathed— Changeling in April's crib rocked, who lets 'scape rills locked fast since frost breathed— Skin cast (think!) adder-like, now bloom bursts ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Papers. Magnum Bonum. Love and Life. Unknown to History. Stray Pearls. The Armourer's 'Prentices. The Two Sides of the Shield. Nuttie's Father. Scenes and Characters. Chantry House. A Modern Telemachus. Bye-Words. Beechcroft at Rockstone. More Bywords. A Reputed Changeling. The Little Duke. The Lances of Lynwood. The Prince and the Page. P's and Q's, and Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe. Two Penniless Princesses. That Stick. An ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... back. I have heard that Arthur is not the real king, but a changeling brought from fairyland in a great wave all flame. He has done all his deeds with ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... doth keep his revels here to-night; Take heed, the queen come not within his sight. For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling. And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy: Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove, or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Phenix and a new Trick to catch the old one, Comedies; The world toss'd at Tennis, and the Inner Temple, Masques; and Women beware Women, a Tragedy. Besides what, he was an Associate with William Rowley in several Comedies and Tragi-Comedies; as, the Spanish Gypsies, the Changeling, the Old Law, the fair Quarrel, the Widow: Of all which, his Michaelmas Term is highly applauded both for the plot and ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... convention would not admit him, he threateningly assembled one of his own in Shakespeare Hall, to be used, if the party did not yield, in knocking at the door of the Cincinnati convention. William Dorsheimer acted as its temporary chairman. Dorsheimer had become a political changeling. Within a decade he had been a Republican, a Liberal, and a Democrat, and it was whispered that he was already tired of being a Kellyite. His appeal for Horatio Seymour indicated his restlessness. The feuds of Tilden and Church and Kernan and Kelly ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... could only be sure that Lisbeth would behave properly and not act like a changeling, a ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... for leaving such a unique specimen, at least," laughed Mr. Garth, completely mollified; (if you will not accuse us of an insane desire to make a pun). "Come, fairy changeling, and let's ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... clubs! My fingers left it as though it were a snake. It was the eight of clubs! Where I had seen, in fancy, the queen of hearts, there lay like a changeling the eight of clubs, with corner bent as only token of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... left in her stead a changeling, A little angel child, That seems like her bud in full blossom, 35 And smiles as she never smiled: When I wake in the morning, I see it Where she always used to lie, And I feel as weak as a violet Alone 'neath the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... of unpardonable bad taste to be found in his correspondence or the notes of his conversation, are insulting phrases applied to a man who was really more unfortunate than criminal in his relations to this changeling from the realms of faery. It is not too much to say that his dislike of his father amounted to derangement; and certainly some of his suspicions with regard to him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How so just and gentle a nature was brought into so ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... particularly the "Ode to Agassiz," is likewise due to the passion, sweetness, and splendor of certain strophes, rather than to the perfection of these poems as artistic wholes. Lowell's personal lyrics of sorrow, such as "The Changeling," "The First SnowFall," "After the Burial," have ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... like 'Bella Donna,' and like a lynx. There was just that look of deformity I had dreamed—mysterious and dreadful. I hated the creature. I couldn't feel she was mine and Jack's. She was like some changeling in an old witch tale. I couldn't bear it! I knew that I'd rather die than have Jack see that wicked elf after all his hopes. I told the doctor so. I threatened to kill myself. I don't know if I meant it. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... fast? But when I meant to adopt thee for my son, And did as learned a portion assign As ever any of the mighty nine Had to their dearest children done; When I resolved to exalt thy anointed name Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame; Thou changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise and show, Wouldst into courts and cities from me go; Wouldst see the world abroad, and have a share In all the follies and the tumults there; Thou wouldst, forsooth, be something in a state, And business thou wouldst find, and wouldst ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... republicans, like Ludlow, were never able to comprehend the chilling contrast between the ideal aim and the material fulfilment, and looked askance on the strenuous reign of Oliver,—that rugged boulder of primitive manhood lying lonely there on the dead level of the century,—as if some crooked changeling had been laid in the cradle instead of that fair babe of the Commonwealth they had dreamed. Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men, but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction; and those waves of enthusiasm on whose crumbling ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... experience of boys; but she had expected to win the little girl to her, and make her a little friend, perhaps almost a sister. Susan D. received her advances with an elfish coldness that had something not human in it, Margaret thought. The child was like a changeling, in the old fairy stories. That evening, when bedtime came, Margaret went up with her to the pretty room, hoping for a pleasant time. She sat down and took the little girl on her knee. "Let us have a cuddle, dear!" she said; "put your head down ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... perception of genius is prophetic,—an anticipation of manhood for this boy, who is the King's son, child of Eternity, and only changeling of Time. Wherever any magnanimity is revealed, I lay claim to it. The courage of heroes, the purity of angels, the generosity of God, is no more than I need. Only show virtue unmixed at the heart of this system, and you open my destiny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... said the girl, suddenly taking him up in her arms. "I believe you are some little changeling god sent by your master Apollo to put his thoughts into ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... the middle of a beet-field, and I carried him back to the farm myself in my apron. He was deformed even then: the mistress's evil eyes had done it. I said to myself that she should always have the changeling in her sight, and refused to go away. The farmer couldn't quite bring himself to turn me out by force, and so he put me into the house ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Kiuprili (aside). Ha! the elder Brutus Made his soul iron, though his sons repented. They boasted not their baseness. [Draws his sword. Infamous changeling! Recant this instant, and swear loyalty, 225 And strict obedience to thy sovereign's will; Or, by the spirit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... places both as regards the words and the substance (nach den Worten und sonst in den Haendeln), which thus became a buskin, Bundschuh, pantoffle, and a Polish boot, fitting both legs equally well [suiting Lutherans as well as Reformed] or a cloak and a changeling (Wechselbalg), by means of which Adiaphorists, Sacramentarians, Antinomians, new teachers of works, and the like hide, adorn, defend, and establish their errors and falsifications under the cover and name of the Augsburg Confession, pretending to be likewise ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... story of a changeling who is suddenly transferred to the position of a rich English heiress. She develops into a good and accomplished woman, and has gained too much love and devotion to be a sufferer by the surrender ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Edward the Sixth; he was a papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth.[59] When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, "Not so neither; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... not wring his hands, as do Those witless men who dare To try to rear the changeling Hope In the cave of black Despair: He only looked upon the sun, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... delivers to me the changeling whom he wants to use as his Deus ex machina," replied Bonaparte. "My dear sir, it helps you not at all to begin again this system of lies. Your anger has betrayed you, and I have succeeded in outwitting the fox. The so-called 'son of the king is alive;' that has escaped you, and you cannot ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the Changeling" has similar features. The hero slew first a giant and then the giant's father. Thereafter the Hag came against him and exclaimed, "Although with cunning and deceitfulness you killed my husband last night and my son on the night before last, I shall certainly kill you ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... peculiar desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. 'That night,' as Shakespeare says, 'there was ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... pirate expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry. "Oh," said I, "perhaps ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... thou with thy butterfly wings in thy light summer garment, thou that hoverest aloft, and flittest over the mountains, and sweepest along the earth! from the airy changeling of the caterpillar, up or down to the lion and to man, ye all of you, fostering a brief momentary spark in you, like the glance from the flint and steel ... gone is the red bubbling up of the spark ... and again a mere slough is lying before us, after its short dream of ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Even Lamb, in his own favourite subjects and authors, misses treasure-trove which Leigh Hunt unfailingly discovers, as in the now pretty generally acknowledged case of the character of De Flores in Middleton's "Changeling." And Lamb had a much less wide and a much more crotchety system of admissions and exclusions. Macaulay was perfectly right in fixing, at the beginning of his essay on the dramatists of the Restoration, upon this catholicity of Hunt's taste as the main ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... taught her, and their names, And how the chartless mariner they guide; Of quivering light that in the zenith flames, Of monsters in the deep sea caves that hide; Then changed the theme to fairy records wild, Enchanted moor, elf dame, or changeling child. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... all right and so is he." And a humorous wistfulness crept into the tramp's eyes. "He's what you might call a changeling." ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the woman's arms like a nursing Pestilence, which, could it live and grow up, would make the world a more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank Heaven, it could not live! This baby, if we must give it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might have been considerably older. It was all covered with blotches, and preternaturally dark and discolored; it was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless; it breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a kind of duty; but one I wanted to get out of. (Pause.) I've another secret. It's whispered in the family that I'm a changeling. ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... composed, one would have said, of elements too fine and pure for the breath of this world. When I spoke to him and he came and held out his hand and smiled at me I felt a sudden strange pity for him—quite as if he had been an orphan or a changeling or stamped with some social stigma. It was impossible to be in fact more exempt from these misfortunes, and yet, as one kissed him, it was hard to keep from murmuring all tenderly "Poor little devil!" though why one should have applied this epithet to a living cherub is more than I ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... Placing their young with well-to-do families somehow, and then dropping unobtrusively out of the picture. And the young growing up, and always the natural children dying off in one way or another. The changeling inherits, and the process is repeated, step by step. Can you say it's impossible? Do you ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Wesley Barefoot
... her stead a changeling A little angel child, That seems like her bud in full blossom, And smiles as she never smiled: When I wake in the morning, I see it Where she always used to lie, And I feel as weak as a violet Alone 'neath the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... on this strange scene: turn it how he could he came back to the same conclusion, that she must have an hallucination on this subject. He said to himself, "If Bella really believed the boy was a changeling, she would act upon her conviction, she would urge me to take some steps to recover our true child, whom the gypsies or the fairies have taken, and given us ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... exposed to the sky; on all sides were arched piazzas, and in the middle was a fountain, at which several Moors were performing their ablutions. I looked around for the abominable thing, and found it not; no scarlet strumpet with a crown of false gold sat nursing an ugly changeling in a niche. "Come here," said I, "papist, and take a lesson; here is a house of God, in externals at least, such as a house of God should be: four walls, a fountain, and the eternal firmament above, which mirrors his glory. Dost thou build such houses to the God who hast said, 'Thou shalt ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... this region are "The Changeling," and "The New Wife and the Old." The ancient house which is the scene of the last named poem is still standing, and may be seen by passengers on the Boston and Maine road, near the Hampton station. It has a gambrel roof, and is on the left when the train is going ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... therefore untried. You might suppose that you had won her heart; she might believe that she gave it to you, and both be deceived. If fairies nowadays condescended to exchange their offspring with those of mortals, and if the popular tradition did not represent a fairy changeling as an ugly peevish creature, with none of the grace of its parents, I should be half inclined to suspect that Lilian was one of the elfin people. She never seems at home on earth; and I do not think she will ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have ever been one of the most common methods of expressing distinction of class and differences of faith, until thence has arisen the imperative adage: 'Show your colors;' and he who refuses to do so is despised as a hypocrite or changeling. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Acephali, or, without a head. Acacias, the patriarch of Constantinople, received the sentence of St. Simplicius against Cnapheus, but supported Mongus against him and the Catholic church, promoted the Henoticon, and was a notorious changeling, double-dealer, and artful hypocrite, who often made religion serve his own private ends. St. Simplicius at length discovered his artifices, and redoubled his zeal to maintain the holy faith which he saw betrayed on every side, while the patriarchal sees of Alexandria and Antioch were ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran an undercadence through it like a low-pleading prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic little changeling thus began:— ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... pondering; then shook her head. "That is not the reason. Do you not believe in the power of the devil? our Lord Christ forgive me! do not you believe in the power of wicked men? There is no greater difference between the human child and the changeling brat which the underground spirits lay in his stead in the cradle, than there is between you when you were a boy and you as you became during the last year of your stay here. 'That comes from books, from so much learning,' said ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... her prayer. They had given her back Geoffrey, and with a careless generosity they had given her twice as much of him as she had expected. She had asked for the slim Apollo whom she had loved in Wales, and this colossal changeling had arrived ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... lady-like little Nancy, with her dimpled white hands. Perhaps Nancy had no business to have white hands, and dainty, refined ways; but she had, and that was Aunt Sabina's fault for having her so much at the Manor. It was partly nature's fault, too, certainly, for Nancy had always seemed like a changeling, she was ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... thy father favours him. Richard, that vile abortive changeling brat, And Fauconbridge, are fallen at Henry's feet. They woo for him, but entreat my son Gloster may die for this, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... portrayed in Dante's lay. "With heads fixt on, the wrong and backward way, "His feet and eyes pursue a diverse track, "While those march onward, these look fondly back." And well she knew him—well foresaw the day, Which now hath come, when snatched from Whigs away The self-same changeling drops the mask he wore, And rests, restored, in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... "It's like a changeling," thought Eleanor, looking with fascinated eyes at the weird little being. Lady Philippa smiled, and laid her hand softly on the furry black head. "This is an unusual sight in your cottage," she said. "Whence ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... paid the town a visit last summer. His presence was hailed with enthusiastic delight, and people crowded from the most remote settlements to gaze upon the tiny man. One poor Irishwoman insisted "that he was not a human crathur, but a poor fairy changeling, and that he would vanish away some day, and never be heard of again." Signor Blitz, the great conjuror, occasionally pays us a visit, but his visits are like angel visits, few and far between. His performance never fails in filling the large room in the court-house ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... fire-drakes in the skie! And giddie Flitter-mice, with lether wings! The scalie Beetles, with their habergeons, That make a humming Murmur as they flie! There, in the stocks of trees, white Faies doe dwell, And span-long Elves, that dance about a poole, With each a little Changeling, in their armes! The airie spirits play with falling starres, And mount the Sphere of fire, to kisse the Moone! While, shee sitts reading by the Glow-wormes light, Or rotten wood, o're which the worme hath crept, The banefull scedule of her ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... exciting than night-work on a city paper. Well, I dare say I have only my come-uppings. You see, I was afraid Elsie wouldn't be lively enough! I had visions of an extremely proper, blase young person moping about, and rather dreaded her. Getting Elsie was like finding a changeling." ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... home from his successful sales, he found a changeling. His wife was not so different in looks or words as in a subtle something he could not define. She laughed at his jokes, and even, in a gentle way, ventured pleasantries of her own; but a strange languor hung about her. It might ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... carefully at the finished Changeling in the front of the book. It will help you to make all ...
— The Twelve Magic Changelings • M.A. Glen
... a wife, and about dinner time must by order come forth Sicut sponsa de thalamo, very demurely and stately to be sene and acknowledged of her parents and kinsfolkes whether she were the same woman or a changeling, or dead or aliue, or maimed by any accident nocturnall. The same Musicians came againe with this last part, and greeted them both with a Psalme of new applausions, for that they had either of them so well behaued them selues that night, the husband to rob his spouse of her maidenhead and saue her ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... sharp shining blade in the glowing embers. As it grew hotter and hotter, Prince Lionheart felt a burning fever creep over his body, and knowing the magical property of his sword, drew it out to see if aught had befallen it, and lo! it was not his own sword but a changeling! He cried aloud, 'I am undone! I am undone!' and galloped homewards. But the wise woman blew up the fire so quickly that the sword became red-hot ere Prince Lionheart could arrive, and just as he appeared on the other side of the stream, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... pox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards the end of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe. At length the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and blooming ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the highest circles of society. During the years of the emigration Madame de la Baudraye, a girl of no fortune, chosen for her noble birth, had patiently reared this sallow, sickly boy, for whom she had the devoted love mothers feel for such changeling creatures. Her death—she was a Casteran de la Tour—contributed to bring about Monsieur de la ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... magnitude. Those who have never been initiated into the mysteries of metaphysics may have the presumptuous ignorance to fancy that they understand what is meant by the common words I, or me; but the able metaphysician knows better than Lord Orford's changeling how to prove, to our satisfaction, that we know nothing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... silly honest Fool did you mistake me for? what senseless modest thing? Death, am I grown so despicable? have I deserv'd no better from thy Love than to be taken for a virtuous Changeling? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Rome. They apply to Luther's stubborn resistance the law of heredity: Luther's wildness was congenital. Some have declared him the illegitimate child of a Bohemian heretic, others, the oaf of a witch, still others, a changeling of Beelzebub, etc. ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... among its frequenters by the denomination slap- bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he drinks and smokes ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... children? Umm! Some folks and some fields never alter. But the People of the Hills didn't work any changeling tricks. They'd tiptoe in and whisper and weave round the cradle-babe in the chimney-corner—a fag-end of a charm here, or half a spell there—like kettles singing; but when the babe's mind came to bud out afterwards, ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... arms! Let the battle-cry rise, Like the raven's hoarse croak, through their ranks let it sound; Set their knell on the wing of each arrow that flies, Till the shouts of the free shake the mountains around; Let the cold-blooded, faint-hearted changeling now tremble, For the war-shock shall reach to his dark-centered cave, While the laurels that twine round the brows of the victors Shall with rev'rence be strew'd o'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain who smothers babies and offs with people's heads, we are revolted at the imposture and repudiate the changeling. Faulconbridge, Coriolanus, Leontes are admirable descriptions of instinctive temperaments: indeed the play of Coriolanus is the greatest of Shakespear's comedies; but description is not philosophy; and comedy neither compromises the author nor reveals him. He must be judged by those ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... bound to play thee False, and betray thee to her arms: I might not Choose, though my heart should rend itself in twain And cleave with ravenous anguish: yet I live. Vex not thy soul too sorely: me, not her, Thy spirit embraced, thine arms and lips made thine Me, not my darkling wraith, my changeling foe, My thief of love, our traitress. This I bid thee, Forget thy fear and shame to have wronged me: night Breeds treacherous dreams that can but poison day If thought be found so base a fool as dares Fear. Did I doubt thy ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... At the Keyhole The Old Stone House The Ruin The Ride-by-Nights Peak and Puke The Changeling The Mocking Fairy Bewitched The ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... displeased might th'angry Moses play. Onely his Law was Brittle i'th' wrong place: For had our Corah been in Moses Case, The Fury of his Zeal had been employ'd To build that Calf which th'others Rage destroy'd. Thus Corah, Baals true Fayry Changeling made, He Bleated onely as the Pharisees pray'd, All to advance that future Tyrant pow'r, Should Widows Houses gorge, and Orphans ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... and, above all, after these years of patient suffering, she wanted him for herself. It was neither religion nor morality that drove her to her final decision, but a thing far stronger: her passionate instinct to possess the son of her body. Even if she were to lose him, to rescue no more than the changeling that she had always known, she could not bring herself to share him with any other woman on earth. He was hers and hers alone. She did not know if she were right. She did not care if she were wrong. The decision formed itself inexorably in her mind. She could only obey it. ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... is she of mine, madam. Rather do I believe her some changeling forced upon us by witches' craft. Never did Stafford betray trust before! Stay me not! Whether child or changeling yet still shall ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... ordinary measure of infant comprehension. She was like a creature to which Nature, in some cruel but bright caprice, has given all that belongs to poetry, but denied all that belongs to the common understanding necessary to mankind; or, as a fairy changeling, not, indeed, according to the vulgar superstition, malignant and deformed, but lovelier than the children of men, and haunted by dim and struggling associations of a gentler and fairer being, yet wholly incapable to learn the dry and hard ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
