"Changeling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 still King, and passing forth to breathe, Then from the castle gateway by ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... II.i.23 (23,8) [changeling] Changeling is commonly used for the child supposed to be left by the fairies, but here for the ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... fact that they never turned it to account, shows plainly how little they ventured to make it a matter of serious reproach. Luther during his lifetime had to hear from them that his father was a Bohemian heretic, his mother a loose woman, employed at the baths, and he himself a changeling, born of his mother and the Devil. How triumphantly would they have talked about the murder or manslaughter committed by his father, had the charge admitted of proof! Whatever occurrence may have given rise ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... carpenter's shop was now standing. I saw many faces I knew, but even in six years they seemed to have grown wonderfully older. Some of the very old were dead, and the old were getting very old in their stead. I felt like the changeling in the fairy story who came back after a seven years' sleep. Everyone seemed glad to see me, though I had never given them particular cause to be so, and everyone who remembered old Mr and Mrs Pontifex spoke warmly of them and were pleased at their granddaughter's wishing to be ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... elegant flower. I have but a short story about it. The young Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis the Fifteenth, was brought up in the midst of flatterers as fulsome as those rebuked by Canute. The youthful prince was fond of cultivating pinks, and one of his courtiers, by substituting a floral changeling, persuaded him that one of those pinks planted by the royal hand had sprung up into bloom in a single night! One night, being unable to sleep, he wished to rise, but was told that it was midnight; he replied "Well then, I desire ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... 15.—Old England is no changeling. It is long since I travelled this road, having come up to town chiefly by sea of late years, but things seem much the same. One race of red-nosed innkeepers are gone, and their widows, eldest sons, or head-waiters exercise ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... her eyes. She opened her lips farther, but the sound that came was strange and muffled; and she listened to it as if it were some changeling given to her by a mischievous demon in exchange ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... 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 ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... a changeling of the Fairies. You must not look for your mother's soul in Joanna's eyes." He jumped from his chair, and came towards me, resting his paw upon my knee. "I am glad you have not spoken of me, Etienne. Now you must keep ...
— My Father, the Cat • Henry Slesar
... ignorance of the pain he gave, but afterward proceeding to a malicious pleasure in suffering, really seemed to afford some ground to the superstitious notion of some of the common people that he was a fairy changeling. ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 came ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... 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, saturnine character, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... name and for the love 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 occur some ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... painted tiles and 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 ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of the cradle, like the fairies, and left a fool and changeling in his place. He new dyes his religion, and commonly into a sadder and darker colour than it was before. He gives his opinion the somersault and turns the wrong side of it outwards. He does not mend his manners, but botch them with patches of another stuff ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... not for him. Mask cannot but marry Agnes, Mrs. Font thinks, if Agnes has a large fortune. To secure the fortune and the lord for her daughter, Mrs. Font determines to get Guy Font out of the way. Her purpose coincides with her peasant belief that he is a "changeling," and is really of the sea people. So she goes with him to a sea cave he is fond of visiting, and only she comes from the cave. She is suspected, but before the officers come for her, she learns that her crime has defeated its own end. Mask is driven mad by the loss of his friend ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... patronizes Antony, and is sued to by Augustus! Still do I doubt whether Augustus will ever come forth again. Is this a peace patched up by Livia for the sake of her children, seeing the imbecility of her husband? or is Augustus to own he has been acting changeling, like the first Brutus, for near two years? I do not know, I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... world and she shall be neither mine nor theirs, for that she is presently my sprite [FN243] from between my ribs; and how shall any part with his sprite?" When the Ifrit heard Maymun's words, he said to him, "By Allah, O Maymun, art thou a changeling in thy wits, that thou speakest these words of my lady, and thou one of her page-boys?" Whereupon Maymun cried out and said to him, "Woe to thee, O dog of the Jinns! Wilt thou bespeak the like ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... makes, And, after she has made 'em fools, forsakes. With Nature's oafs 'tis quite a diff'rent case, For Fortune favours all her idiot race. In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find, O'er which she broods to hatch the changeling kind: No portion for her own she has to spare, So much she dotes on her ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... 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
... have strangled me!' I returned. 'I'm not going to endure the persecutions of your hospitable ancestors again. Was not the Reverend Jabez Branderham akin to you on the mother's side? And that minx, Catherine 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 mortal ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... dwarfed and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing and inexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and pitiful, needing indulgence ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... On trousers, ties, and hunting-tops— Think no more on City dinners, On office hours and all the winners— For you are fitted by field and dell Us to follow, with us to dwell, To be for ever free from harm, A fairy changeling by this charm, To be the lord of light and mirth, To be the lord of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... it became a little squawberry vine nestling under the dead leaves. It had not lived in peace and seclusion very long before the women came and tore up many of the vines, stopping just before they reached the changeling, and saying, "We will come back to-morrow ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... suddenly awakened energy. "For one so changeling as thyself the scaffold were befitting;, but know, if I have had the heart to do this deed, I have also had the head to provide ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... is dead, art thou to blame for bringing in his place a substitute, even so poor a changeling as this man Amber? Nay, be not angry; do I blame thee? Have I done aught but serve thee to the end thou dost desire?... Thou shouldst be grateful to me, rather than menace me with thine anger.... And," she added sweetly, "it were well for thee that thou shouldst bear always ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 she ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother—no anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands; and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... reverse the old saying, "Happy is 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... 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 mortal ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... though I could not see them), and who was to do any good for mother, or stop her from weeping continually? And more than this, what was become of Lorna? Perhaps she had cast me away altogether, as a flouter and a changeling; perhaps she had drowned herself in the black well; perhaps (and that was worst of all) she was even married, child as she was, to that vile Carver Doone, if the Doones ever cared about marrying! That last thought sent me down at ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of this precious elixir," continued he, "if it touch the form of yon changeling, will dissolve the charm: on the real person of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... thee, draw not thy hand away, turn not from me, or by the blood of Christ, by thine own gray hairs, I'll lay thee beside thy woman-son, the puny changeling whose face now is scarce paler than his blood was thin. Now, by the God who made ye, swear 'twill be given out as but an accident, and no man will ever know from thee ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... wants to kiss the baby, and bends over the cradle. Suddenly he starts back. What a nose! The deceit is found out and the shepherds are very angry. Yet even in their anger they can hardly help laughing. Mak and Gill, however, are ready of wit. They will not own to the theft. It is a changeling child, they say. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... look for the changeling; but the tears made her so that she couldn't see very well; and there were so many potatoes! She looked every moment she had a chance all the next day, and cried a great deal. "I can never be real happy again," ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury
... 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 and Robinson had left Seymour the one ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 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 his voice, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... "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, ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... blessed the changeling flower, The heavens smil'd down above; A boundless life was the daisy's life, Her ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... 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
... good man, although we are willing to count him amiable, ready to make very considerable allowance for his period and his circumstances, not disposed to think him so much a renegado and deliberate knave as a fickle, needy, and childish changeling, in the matter of his "perversion" to Popery; although we yield to none in admiration of the varied, highly-cultured, masculine, and magnificent forces of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... embodied so many Runic secrets, explained to me what I have often felt toward myself, when he tells of the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone and so pitied herself that she wept. Yet me also, the wonderful bird, singing in the wild forest, has tempted on, and not ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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, And ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... gone away, and in the long months of absence her mind and soul had grown out of her mother's knowledge, so that now, when Aurelia had time and strength to study her child, she was like some enchanting changeling. Aurelia and Hannah had gone on in the dull round and the common task, growing duller and duller; but now, on a certain stage of life's journey, who should appear but this bewildering being, who gave wings to thoughts that had only ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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
... 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
... Luther's "defection" from 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 ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... came to her. As he entered the doorway she noted how handsome he looked with his massive head and square-jawed face, and how utterly unlike any Arnott or Walrond known to her personally or by tradition. Had he been a changeling, such as the girl Bess spoke of, he could ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... fallen fingers, she have filthy, long unpared nails, scabbed hands or wrists, a tanned skin, a rotten carcass, crooked back, she stoops, is lame, splay-footed, "as slender in the middle as a cow in the waist," gouty legs, her ankles hang over her shoes, her feet stink, she breed lice, a mere changeling, a very monster, an oaf imperfect, her whole complexion savours, a harsh voice, incondite gesture, vile gait, a vast virago, or an ugly tit, a slug, a fat fustilugs, a truss, a long lean rawbone, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... clung to with great persistency, that the person with him was not even of the race, but had been substituted in the cradle for a white child stolen by an Indian woman with some great wrong to avenge. He would call her his Chippewa Changeling, and at lunch would be most solicitous as to whether or not the Wild Rose would have a little more of the chicken salad. Would the Flying Pawn try the celery? Some of the jelly, he felt confident, would please the palate of the Brown Dove. Might the white hunter ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... lips, but at my heart there raged the blackest and most unbridled terror. What if he failed? And oh, tenfold worse! what if he succeeded? What detested and unnatural changeling would appear before me to claim my hand? And could there, I asked myself with a dreadful sinking, be any truth in his boasts of an assured victory over my reluctance? I knew him, indeed, to be masterful, to lead my life at a sign. Suppose, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Titania while Puck is made to minister to the other victims of the charm? Is Oberon's explanation of the Fairy Queen's sudden change of heart about the changeling quite satisfactory, or does it simply appear so by a sort of artistic sleight-of-hand characteristic of Shakespeare in small touches at the close of ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... 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 to-night." ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... stars he 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
... Squire John! Where was he, and what had become of the old Nabob? Could any one have recognized him? Was this merry, sprightly, leaping, smiling, triumphant creature the same man? Why, he had grown twenty years younger at the very least! It was a changeling, surely! ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... So I sat dumb and thoughtful by her side, till Aunt Jacoba sent for me to lay cold water on the arm of the little kidnapped maid. The child had been well washed, and lay clean and fresh between the sheets, and the swarthy dirty little changeling was now a sweet, fair-haired darling. I tended it gladly; all the more when I thought of the joy it would bring to its father and mother; notwithstanding the evil nightmare would not be cast off, not even when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... time, unless he tastes fairy food, in which event he can never return. Children in cradles are frequently snatched away by the fairies, who leave, instead, imps of their own called "changelings." A changeling may always be recognized by its peevishness and backwardness in learning to walk and speak. If well treated, the fairies will sometimes show their gratitude by bestowing on their favorites health, wealth, and long ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... send 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 service were "provoking puppet," "malicious elf," "sprite," "changeling," &c. 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 favours ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... beginning the Amphibians had been a little separate from the Ssassaror and when the Earthmen came they did not get any more neighborly. Nevertheless, they preserved excellent relations and they, too, participated in the Changeling-custom. ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... dining-house, of the class known 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 in a monkeyish way; and his neck is ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... wife did not at first notice any change, but the wife gradually became suspicious, and she asked the advice of a wise woman, who told her to brew in a nutshell, with an eggshell as beer barrel, in the changeling's presence, who exclaimed that it had lived so many years as to have seen Rold Wood hewn down and grow up three times, but had never seen any one brew in a nutshell before. 'If you are as old as that,' said the wife, 'you can go elsewhere;' and she took the broom-stick ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... 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. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... the plantation with my babe, and Mr. Duroy hurried me on 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, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... 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 ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... thank the creature 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
... at one time, in Wales, that the Fairies exchanged their own weakly or deformed offspring for the strong children of mortals. The child supposed to have been left by the Fairies in the cradle, or elsewhere, was commonly called a changeling. This faith was not confined to Wales; it was as common in Ireland, Scotland, and England, as it was in Wales. Thus, in Spenser's Faery Queen, reference is made in the following words to this ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... Mak, with an assurance worthy of a better cause, declines to believe their report of the cradle's contents, and his wife comes nimbly to his aid with the startling explanation that it is her son without doubt, for she saw him transformed by a fairy into this misshapen changeling precisely on the stroke of twelve. Not so, however, are the shepherds to be persuaded to disbelieve their eyes. Instead Mak gets a good tossing in a blanket for his pains, the exertion of which sentence ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... at her gentleness and kindness, was gone. That fierce, truculent hatred that she had so striven to put from her, now behold! of its own accord, it had seemed to leave her. How had it happened? Before she had dared the ordeal of confession this feeling of hatred, this perverse and ugly changeling that had brooded in her heart, had seemed too strong, too deeply seated to be moved. Now, suddenly, it had departed, unbidden, without ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... admiration is produced in the operatic world it is generally due to the right instincts of the vocalists, just as in the orchestra the merit lies almost entirely in the good sense of the musicians. One has only to examine an orchestra part of "Norma," for instance, to see what a curious musical changeling (Wechselbalg) such innocent looking sheets of music paper can be turned into; the mere succession of the transpositions—the Adagio of an Aria in F sharp major, the Allegro in F, and between the two (for the sake of the military band) a transition in E flat—offers a truly horrifying picture ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... Without the help of the Y.M.C.A. that club could never have come into existence. And the association deserves credit not only for generosity in material things, but for its liberal spirit. The club was not run according to Y.M.C.A. rules, and was an embarrassing changeling child in their nursery, just as it was a suspicious innovation under ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... The kindly green and rounded trunks, that meet Under the soil with twinings of their feet And in the sky with twinings of their arms: The yellow stools: the still ungathered charms Of berry, woodland herb, and bryony, And mid-wood's changeling child, Anemone. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... 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
... 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 elements which make up the knowledge ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... simplest art we know, To keep your fortune in its statu quo; Who holds loose cash, nor cheques his changeling gold, Buy what he will, is certain to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... 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 ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... 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 ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... collaboration, and received assistance in his best work from Drayton, Webster, Dekker, Rowley, and Jonson; his comedies are smart and buoyant, sometimes indecorous; his masques more than usually elaborate and careful; in the comedy of "The Spanish Gypsy," and the tragedies of "The Changeling," and "Women beware Women," is found the best fruit of his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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, ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... 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. Gabrielle, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... feel no warmth shuddered in the eternal cold. He was oppressed by the grim conceit that he himself still slept within the matted thicket, imprisoned by the green bastions of the Roman fort. He had never come out, but a changeling had gone down the hill, and now ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... five rounds in the cylinder, he inspected the changeling carefully. It was, he thought, the revolver Lane Fleming had kept in the drawer of the gunroom desk. There was no obstruction in the two-inch barrel, the weapon had not been either fired or cleaned recently, the firing-pin had not been shortened, the mainspring ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... 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
... 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 die ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... King and Slave A Chant Dream-Life Rest The Tyrant and the Captive The Carver's Lesson Three Roses My Picture Gallery Sent to Heaven Never Again Listening Angels Golden Days Philip and Mildred Borrowed Thoughts Light and Shade A Changeling Discouraged If Thou couldst know The Warrior to his Dead Bride A Letter A Comforter Unseen A Remembrance of Autumn Three Evenings in a Life The Wind Expectation An Ideal Our Dead A Woman's Answer The Story of the Faithful Soul A Contrast The Bride's Dream The ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... sharply. "From the beginning, when she was a baby of three months old, and howled at me because I kissed her, and that dreadful mother of hers flew at me like a wildcat and said I had the evil eye, Leam Dundas has been more like some changeling than an ordinary English girl. I declare it sometimes makes my heart ache to, see her with those awful eyes of hers, looking as if she had seen one does not know what—as if she was being literally burnt up alive with sorrow. However, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... 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 ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... indignities put on Greece by Sparta or ourselves were at least the work of genuine sons of the land; they may be likened to the wild oats of some heir to a great estate—if they were the excesses of some slave or changeling we all would have considered them monstrous and scandalous. But that is not our attitude to Philip and his diplomacy, though he is not a Greek or a relation; rather he is not born even of decent barbarian parents—he is a cursed ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... and temperament his speech was always slow and deliberate, not to say prosy, and my own quite the opposite, I became so strangely changed that my dear people at Belley (where the above incident occurred) almost failed to recognise me. They thought a changeling had been foisted upon them in the place of their own Bishop, whose vehement action and passionate words they dearly loved, even though sometimes they had found his discourses hard to follow. In fact, I had ceased to ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... long hesitated, I was long before I could tell my mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am glad. If we could have had my father, that would have been a different thing. But to keep that changeling - suffering changeling - any longer, could better none and nothing. Now he rests; it is more significant, it is more like himself. He will begin to return to us in the course of time, as he was ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men and women." A much more complete bill had been introduced by the Labour Party early in the session, which passed through all its stages in the House of Commons notwithstanding Government opposition but was defeated in the House of Lords and the Government changeling substituted. This Act, though it did not give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as men nor admit them to the civil service on equal terms, and though the clause specifically conferring on them eligibility ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... 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
... departure: asking passports of the Ministry, safe-conducts of the Municipality; which Marat warns all men to beware of. They will carry gold with them, 'these old Beguines;' nay they will carry the little Dauphin, 'having nursed a changeling, for some time, to leave in his stead!' Besides, they are as some light substance flung up, to shew how the wind sits; a kind of proof-kite you fly off to ascertain whether the grand paper-kite, Evasion of the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... not known how dear to her was that bright young identity she remembered. She had not realized how far it had gone from her. She felt a forlorn changeling looking upon ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... on. I dined herewith Mr. Shepley and Howe. After dinner to 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
... 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 nocent ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... 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, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... sacrilege, I had thought, had been thrust from the City? And did in this lie the explanation of her strangeness? Had she there sucked in with her mother's milk the enigmatic life of the Metal Hordes, been transformed into half human changeling, become true kin to them? What ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... that in which Borrow says, when describing the interior of the Mosque at Tangier: "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." In later editions the words "no scarlet strumpet," etc., were changed to "the besetting sin of the pseudo-Christian Church did not stare me in the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... that the girl never did. She was sure he did not love her in that way, and that he would not have welcomed demonstrations of affection on her part. She had learned the reason, or she thought she had: she was a STEPCHILD; that was why, and a stepchild was almost as bad as a "changeling" in a ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of him," she said smiling, "but still I always tell John he's a changeling child—so absurdly unlike ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... eyes like other people. 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 certain that I was not the cause of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... not this the Thiodolf whom thou hast loved? no changeling of the Gods, but the man in whom men have trusted, the friend of Earth, the giver of ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... 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; ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... thing?" said Minny. "She makes me think sometimes of the fairy changeling that was a hundred and fifty years old, and never saw ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... 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
... Margray, looking after her with a perplexed gaze, and dropping her scissors. "Surely, Mary, you shouldn't tease her as you do. She's worn more in these four weeks than in as many years. You're a fickle changeling!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... steel plates and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the part of fate, just as though, for her shining lover, someone had substituted a changeling stuffed with sawdust. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... 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 I to other people. Could I only have said ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... mother," she said again. "She is nothing but an old croak. There's a bit of spirit about you. Oh! they all tell stories about me; but I'm not half bad, only I think I'm a changeling. Did you ever ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... born in 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 down ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... send 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 favours to ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... 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, that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... 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 ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... mother's sister," says Miss Wynter calmly. "I have seen my mother's picture. It is lovely! Aunt Jane was a changeling—I'm sure of it. But never mind her. You were ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... and when Pisani turned 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 successful airs ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... tried to persuade 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... my cake Holds out so cold a hand to shake, It makes me shrink and sigh:— On this I will not dwell and hang,— The changeling would not feel a pang Though these should ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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 have been called patience, an acceptance ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... This turn of mind it is that causes his work occasionally to seem somewhat freakish. Thus, in the fogs and horrors of London, he plays at being an Arabian tale-teller, and his "New Arabian Nights" are a new kind of romanticism—Oriental, freakish, like the work of a changeling. Indeed, this curious genius, springing from a family of Scottish engineers, resembles nothing so much as one of the fairy children, whom the ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in the cradles of Border keeps or of peasants' cottages. Of the Scot he has little but the power of touching ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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, for good ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... 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 ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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, stol'n 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 ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... What 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
... not to blame; Invisible the fairy came. Your precious babe is hence conveyed, And in its place a changeling laid. Where are the father's mouth and nose, The mother's eyes as black as sloes? See here, a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... 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
... 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. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... the finished Changeling in the front of the book. It will help you to make all the ...
— The Twelve Magic Changelings • M.A. Glen
... admiration of this man's misapplied powers, what must it have been at a time 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 ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... themselves from his communion, and were called 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 ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... planned murder, either. Take it easy. Just some of them. A few of them—different. Growing up. 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
... a higher level among our tragic poets than that occupied by Marston and Dekker and Middleton on the one hand, by Fletcher and Massinger and Shirley on the other. "Antonio and Mellida," "Old Fortunatus," or "The Changeling"—"The Maid's Tragedy," "The Duke of Milan," or "The Traitor"—would suffice to counterweigh (if not, in some cases, to outbalance) the merit of the best among these: the fitful and futile inspiration of "The Devil's Law-case," and the stately but subdued inspiration of "Appius and Virginia." ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 counsel from the "Holy Church." It was therein resolved ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... alien to our skies, A wistful stray of radiance on this earth, A changeling with deep memories in thine eyes Mistily gazing thro' our loud-voiced mirth To some fair land beyond the gates of birth; Yet as a star thro' clouds, thou still didst shed Through our dark world thy lovelier, rarer glow; Time, like a picture of but little worth, Before thy young hand ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... ignorance, thou beauteous changeling—I tell thee I do love thee, and tell it for a truth, a naked truth, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Hester, and the Danvers 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 Old Woman's ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... of the people and upon their flocks. Of the reality of witchcraft Luther harbored not a doubt. The first use he made of the ban was to {656} excommunicate reputed witches. Seeing an idiotic child, whom he regarded as a changeling, he recommended the authorities to drown it, as a body without a soul. Repeatedly, both in private talk and in public sermons, he recommended that witches should be put to death without mercy and without regard to legal niceties. As a matter of fact, four witches were burned at Wittenberg ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... alarmed, in his beauty, 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 ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... house, and there saw "The Mad Couple;" which is but an ordinary play; but only Nell's and Hart's mad parts are most excellent done, but especially her's: which makes it a miracle to me to think how ill she do any serious part, as the other day, just like a fool or changeling; and, in a mad part, do beyond all imitation almost. It pleased us mightily to see the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the children brought on the stage: the child crying she by force got upon the stage, and took up her child and carried ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... bed; but that they were contracted long before, and time enough for the child to be legitimate. But I do not hear that it was put to the Judges to determine whether it was so or no. To the Play-house, and there saw "The Changeling," ["The Changeling," a Tragedy, by Thomas Middleton. The plot is taken from a story in "God's Revenge against Murder."] the first time it hath been acted these twenty years, and it takes exceedingly. Besides, I see ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... her, and his eye fell. A certain anger rose within him; here was a Flora he disowned; she was hard; she was of a set colour; a settled, mature, undecorative manner; plain of speech, plain of habit - he had come near saying, plain of face. And this changeling called herself by the same name as the many-coloured, clinging maid of yore; she of the frequent laughter, and the many sighs, and the kind, stolen glances. And to make all worse, she took the upper hand with him, which (as John well knew) ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her part with consummate cleverness; but there were two women who knew the true story of the birth of the child, which had been smuggled into the palace from a Florence slum. One was the changeling's mother, a woman of the people, whom a substantial bribe had induced to part with her new-born infant; the other was Bianca's waiting woman. These witnesses to the ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... nape of his neck, and hazel eyes set rather deeply under straight, sulky-looking brows. The lower part of his face was small and pointed for the breadth across forehead and cheek bones, and, with his outstanding ears, combined to give him something the look of a piskie's changeling. Already the first innocence of childhood was wearing away, and the deliberate cleanliness of mind achieved, if at all, in the malleable years between fifteen and twenty was as yet far ahead. Nevertheless, Parson Boase ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and Lemures of heathen Rome; yet 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 ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... turn 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 the help ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... could understand nothing clearly by day—only as night came on his wits gathered, and he seemed to find a meaning for things. And some said it was his mother's fault, and some that it was his father's, and some that he was a changeling sent by the fairies, and that the real child had been taken to share his father's bondage. But which of these things was true Little Toonie ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman |
