"Elf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most was the figure that sat facing them, as they entered the van. It was that of an old, old crone, sitting on a stool, bent forward with her sharp chin resting on her clenched fists, and her elbows on her knees, while iron-gray elf-locks hung about her wrinkled, nut-brown face, half ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... elf-locks tossing in the wind, and their flaring matches casting a strange lurid light over their features. Taking up a position, one body began to fire upon the Utaybah robbers, whilst two or three hundred, dismounting, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... out," he said. "Trust you to get telepathic messages from the elf-folk! Why, this gorge teems with fairy tales and legends of magic, black and white. The Rhine Valley and the Black Forest together haven't as many or as wonderful ones. I should like you to hear the stories from ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... good deeds, and hateth talk; But sitteth in a corner turning crabs, Or coughing o'er a warmed pot of ale. Backwinter th'other, that's his nown[123] sweet boy, Who like his father taketh in all points. An elf it is, compact of envious pride, A miscreant born for a plague to men; A monster that devoureth all he meets. Were but his father dead, so he would reign, Yea, he would go good-near to deal by him As Nebuchadnezzar's ungracious son, Foul Merodach[124], ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Wilson) who resided in the family, remarkable for her credulity and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs, concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poesie; but had so strong an effect upon my imagination that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a look-out on suspicious ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Elf the minstrel, With womanish hair and ring, Yet heavy was his hand on sword, Though light ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the door shut on their retainer, and perched herself on the end of the big old-fashioned sofa drawn up at one side of the fire. She wore a loose stockinette brown dress and looked rather like a wood elf of sorts with ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... light, Where's the elf of Eldon Low? Sit with me Upon the tree; Sing our songs on ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... eleven nouns in f, change the f into v and assume es for the plural: sheaf, sheaves; leaf, leaves; loaf, loaves; leaf, beeves; thief, thieves; calf, calves; half, halves; elf, elves; shelf, shelves; self, selves; wolf, wolves. Three others in fe are similar: life, lives; knife, knives; wife, wives. These are specific exceptions to the general rule for plurals, and not a series of examples coming ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his friend of the night lounged on a heap of rock at the edge of the ledge. The strange Indian was well past middle age, tall and dignified. He was darker than Kut-le. His face was thin and aquiline. His long hair hung in elf locks over his shoulders. His toilet was elaborate compared with that of Kut-le, for he wore a pair of overalls and a dilapidated flannel shirt, unbelted and fluttering its ends in the morning breeze. As if conscious of her gaze, Kut-le turned and looked ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... baby you are, Panoria!" Eliza replied, with the superior air of one who knows all about things. "That is no oven; nor is it a black elf's house. It ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... accustomed to seeing these wild, bare-legged mountaineers breaking loose from school in a state of subdued frenzy, leaping up and down the side ditches, screaming, yelling, panting, with their elf-locks blinding their eyes, and their bare feet flashing amid the green of grasses or the brown of the ditch-mould. They might condescend to drop me a courtesy, and then—anarchy, as before. Today they moved slowly, with eyes bent modestly on the ground, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... a woman because of her clothes. Otherwise she seems to be a mixture of a boy and wood-elf. The combination appears to me to be a fascinating one. She is of good family, half Irish, speaks three languages, asks no questions, and seems to have an extraordinary capacity for holding her tongue. It is on that account that I questioned her sex. Her appearance ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... Danish legends of kindred type we find the tales of: The boy who ran off with the horn out of which an elf-maiden offered him a drink, and would not return it until she had promised to bestow upon him the strength of twelve men, with which, unluckily, went also the appetite of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... "If an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this salve, put it on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... 'parson'; 'cleft' and 'clift', now written 'cliff'; 'travel' and 'travail'; 'truth' and 'troth'; 'pennon' and 'pinion'; 'quail' and 'quell'; 'quell' and 'kill'; 'metal' and 'mettle'; 'chagrin' and 'shagreen'; 'can' and 'ken'; 'Francis' and 'Frances'{111}; 'chivalry' and 'cavalry'; 'oaf' and 'elf'; 'lose' and 'loose'; 'taint' and 'tint'. Sometimes the difference is mainly or entirely in the initial consonants, as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; 'chattel' and 'cattle'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... three great earls King Guthrum Went the rounds from fire to fire, With Harold, nephew of the King, And Ogier of the Stone and Sling, And Elf, whose gold lute had a string ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... she continued, dreamily, 'an aged woman: you have grey hair and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under Peniston Crag, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending while I am near that they are only locks of wool. That's what you'll come to fifty years hence: I know you are not so now. I'm not wandering; you're mistaken, or else I should believe you really were that withered hag, and ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes—intensely black, and deep as the depths of ocean, they seemed to fill her whole ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Irving came not into the world like the other sinful creatures of the earth, but was one of the kane-bairns of the fairies, whilk they had to pay to the enemy of man's salvation every seventh year. The poor lady-fairy—a mother's aye a mother, be she elves' flesh or Eve's flesh—hid her elf son beside the christened flesh in Marion Irving's cradle, and the auld enemy lost his prey for a time. Now, hasten on with your story, which is not a bodle the waur for me. The maiden saw the shape of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... quite ready to play the elf in the rose-garden of love," replied Heinz gaily. "Moreover, I shall soon need a T and an S embroidered on my own doublet, for——Why don't they bring the light? Another cup of wine, the note, and then with renewed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with bracken-fronds, And golden elf-locks fly above; Her eyes are bright as diamonds And bluer ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... man had looked down upon the young one, so now the young man stood looking down upon the boy, regarding him with tolerant severity. "You most mischief-full elf!" he said. "It would be treating you deservedly were I to leave you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... shadow was which fell across the edge of the chest. He looked and looked—and did not want to believe his eyes. But the thing, which at first seemed shadowy, became more and more clear to him; and soon he saw that it was something real. It was no less a thing than an elf who sat there—astride ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... facing the door, looked at her. He saw a small, elf-like girl in a very shimmery green frock. The green ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... yet pull them away," they all laughed, "and chuck them in her face! She has got you up in such a way as to make a regular old elf of you!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... not to heed— You, as though you would inquire "Can I trust them?" . . . then a jerk, And you'd skipped three branches higher, Jaws again at work; Like a little clock-work elf, With all the forest ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... own, my winsome elf, Some day a pet just like thyself, Her sanguine thoughts to borrow; Content to use her brighter eyes, Accept her childish ecstacies, And, ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... were in the "town" and rode away on them. They found the stud-horses between two brooks. Skarphedinn caught sight of them, for Sigmund was in bright clothing. Skarphedinn said, "See you now the red elf yonder, lads?" They looked that way, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... all deserve the name of "bugges" for no elf or hobgoblin was ever more bizarre. Their legs and heads and bodies are small and aphid-like, but aloft there spring minarets and handles and towers and thorns and groups of hairy balls, out of all ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... household elf, believed in Scotland to render obliging services to good housewives, and his presence an evidence that the internal economies were approved of, as he favoured good husbandry, and was partial to houses where it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "A wildwood elf of scarlet and brown!" thought Philip and hospitably flicked away a twig or so with his handkerchief ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight 660 As fills a father's eyes with light; And pleasures flow in ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... To that fair Elf-child other summers came; But Lilith walked, heart-hungered, filled with shame, Naught comforted. And in that shadow-land She sorrowing bore, in after-time, a band Of elfin babes, that waked dim echoes long Forgotten there, and ghastly bursts of song. Then Lilith saddened more, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... chambers, on stones forming the sides of KISTVAENS, accompanied in many instances with radiated circles, which do not, however, help us to understand them better. In Scandinavia they are known as ELFEN STENAVS, or elf stones, and the inhabitants come and place offerings on them for the LITTLE PEOPLE. According to a touching tradition, these little people are souls awaiting the time of their being clothed once more in human flesh. In Belgium these strangely decorated stones are attributed to the NUTONS, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... without a trace of conceit, gifted with a keen sense of humour and evidently as full of the joy of living as a school-boy. He thought her laugh delightfully musical, and it was frequently and readily evoked by Burke's droll remarks or the quaint oracular sayings from the self-possessed elf on Wargrave's knee. Her admiration of and genuine affection for Mrs. Dermot was very evident when Noreen joined ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... over, and tumble off the limb, so that I might run and catch him in my apron. Do you think I would give him to our matron to make a pie? No, you might take off my fingers first!" And the little elf snapped them emphatically ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... all Kit Rhodes was only twenty-three and all of life ahead of him for dreams! He was wondering what he could fetch back from the East that would be acceptable to a witchy elf of a butterfly girl who already had, to his simple estimate, all the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... when with joy You hailed your father's safe return to home From his long mountain toils; for when he came He ever brought some little present with him. A lovely Alpine flower—a curious bird— Or elf-boat found by wanderers on the hills. But now he goes in quest of other game: In the wild pass he sits, and broods on murder; And watches for the life-blood of his foe, But still his thoughts are fixed on you alone, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... had come to an end. Sometimes it seemed to her as if this solemn-eyed child purposely misunderstood, and mocked at her attempts to lead unwilling feet along the path of learning, and she was at a loss to know how to deal with the sprightly elf who danced and flitted about like an elusive will-o'-wisp. The fact that she was the University President's granddaughter was the only thing that had saved her thus far from utter disfavor in the eyes of her teacher; but now even that fact was lost sight of in face of the child's repeated ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Cador's son. I give thee here my kingdom, and defend thou my Britons ever in thy life, and maintain them all the laws that have stood in my days, and all the good laws that in Uther's days stood. And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons ...
— Brut • Layamon
... to his favorite winter nook, a thicket of black alders freighted with a wealth of berries. How crimson they were amid the white quiet of the garden! And the brightly colored fruit of the barberry flamed forth from a snowy bush like the cheerful elf-lamps of a wood-gnome. ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... where a purple haze hung over the deep ravine, we faintly heard the answering hounds. In their voices we caught the dog's response to his master and friend. It said, "We have him. Come! Come!" We blew the horns again. The elf-land notes returned again and again, and with them came the call of the faithful hound, "We are here. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... discovered, to his great delight and astonishment, that, in consequence of its having touched the lips of a goddess, it played of itself in the most charming manner. Marsyas, who was a great lover of music, and much beloved on this account by all the elf-like denizens of the woods and glens, was so intoxicated with joy at this discovery, that he foolishly challenged Apollo to compete with him in a musical contest. The challenge being accepted, the Muses were ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Of men I serve no more, The groaning of the old great wheels Thickened to a throttled roar; All buried things broke upwards; And peered from its retreat, Ugly and silent, like an elf, The secret of ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... he seen so lovely an elf. A sunbeam had made its home in each lock of her tumbled hair. Her little brown face had the soft bloom of a ripe nectarine; her eyes, the timid ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... himself to wait. Several times, passionately insistent, he shook his head, and it was as if the refusal were being made to an invisible presence. Suddenly he lifted his face as the sound of a weird, wild wail was borne to him, mingling with the elf-like moaning of the wind. He leaned forward slightly, listening intently. From somewhere above him pleading notes from a violin were making the night even more mournful. A change ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... the old cailleach. 'Bring him to me, ye hounds, before I put a curse on ye,' and she tore her coorie from her head, and the wind tore through the strands of her white hair, and they rose like elf-locks. High above her head she threw her arm, her fingers stiff and pointing, there on the quay-head, an awesome sight in the mirk ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... pervaded me might originate. Who can lie down on Elvir Hill without experiencing something of the sorcery of the place? Flee from Elvir Hill, young swain, or the maids of Elle will have power over you, and you will go elf-wild!—so say the Danes. I had unconsciously laid myself down on haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... to dislocate his worthless neck: For lo! of old, he boasts an honour'd wound; Behold that broken wing that trails the ground! Thus fools and bravoes kindred pranks pursue; As savage quite, and oft as fatal too. Happy the man that foils an envious elf, Using the darts of spleen to serve himself. As when by turns the strolling Swine engage The utmost efforts of the bully's rage, Whose nibbling warfare on the grunter's side Is welcome pleasure to his oristly hide; Gently he stoops, or strecht at ease along, Enjoys ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... adoption of pagan beliefs, not the uprooting of them. If the Roman Jupiter was a Christian daemon, his existence at all events was recognised. But even this negative way of adopting the old beliefs gave way as the Church spread further. The tribe of daemons soon included the popular fairy, elf, and goblin. And then came the positive adoption of pagan customs. Gibbon describes how the early Christians refused to decorate their doors with garlands and lamps, and to take part in the ceremonial of lifting the bride over the threshold of the house.[464] Both these customs ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... sobriquet could better express her personality: She was little—a dainty, elf-like littleness, with tiny feet and wee hands; she was gray—a soft, silver gray—too gray for her forty years (and this fragment begins when she was forty); and she was a lady in every beat of her warm heart; ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 'tis there—the same; The shadow in her eyes' deep mirror sleeping, The roguish elf about her lips ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... conquest in his face. And that dear little elf of a boy-what a voice! So bright and so arch too. Then the Miranda- she took all by surprise. I believe half the spectators took ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him,—the pot calling the kettle black. Etta Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It pleased her to do that with Jack ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... use the contemptible it,) a short-lived tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom, (which he doubtless would keep to himself): Domitian says that nothing is more grateful, (not even killing flies); Aristotle affirms that beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... out enough about us to show her that we were at least presentable, she inaugurated an acquaintance with us by sending a little box to myself, which proved to contain, on being opened, something in the nature of a valentine. It contained a spray of mimosa packed in cotton wool, and lying like an elf among the petals was a little sleeping bat. Lady Wilton a week before had appeared as the Evening Star at a fancy ball at Nice. In return for her valentine I bought a microscopic puppy, which, packed in cotton wool and inclosed in a box as the bat was, was ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... invisible, but they are invariably "little people," from three to four feet high. It may be that the Gael's conception of humanised spirits may not have been uninfluenced by the traditions of that earlier diminutive race whose arrow-heads of flint were so long regarded as "elf-bolts." The fairies dwelt only in grassy knolls, on the summits of high hills, and inside cliffs. Although capable of living for several centuries, they were not immortal. They required food, and borrowed meal and cooking ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... Although he was a priest, Thought it no sacramental sin—to feast. I can't say much for his morality: But for his immortality, Good luck! Why he's bound in calf, and squeezed in boards, And scarcely a good library's shelf But boasts acquaintance with the elf. But now I'll tell you what I should have told before, A grievous illness brought him nigh Death's door. Who, bony wight, Enjoyed the sight— And grinn'd as he thought of the fun there'd be When the jester ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... attention, giv —, look out, take notice. akt|a (-ade, -at), to consider worthy, respect, notice; — sig, beware. akt|giva (-gav, -givit), to notice, pay attention. aktning (-en), respect. al (-en, -ar) alder. aldrig, never. alf (-en, -er), elf. all, (allt, alla), all. allena, (allen), alone. allenast, only. Allfader (-n), Father of All, Oden. alltfr, altogether too. alltid, always, forever. alltren, already. alltjmt, all the time, always. allts, thus. alltnog, enough. alltsedan, ever since. allvar (-et), seriousness. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... transliteration of the French Auberon in the romance of Huon of Bordeaux, and Auberon is probably merely the French counterpart of Alberich or Albrich, a dwarf occurring in the German Nibelungenlied and other works. Etymologically Alberich is composed of alb elf and rich king. The name Oberon appears first in English literature in Lord Berners' translation of Huon of Bordeaux (c. 1534), and afterwards in Spenser[27] and in Robert Greene's play James IV, which was acted in 1589.[28] But ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Tim had him fast in his fist, and fast he held him, till the elf showed him where ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... out of the wood on to the shore of the unruffled pond. Here a man might well pause and take no further step lest he fall into the blue depths of space. The moon hangs like a great shield in a sky of soft sapphire, piled with luminous figures. Within the wood are fairy and elf, goblin and gnome, half seen in the filmy light. Here giant genie stand revealed, passing in the dim perspective of mighty distances or leaning portentously from the radiant sky. In the mirror-like pond I see all these things repeated in an underworld that is as distinct and clear, yet ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... tangled elf-locks, still peer out of the drifting sand—the twisted bodies in their sea armour, lie half surrounded by the green waters; but the log hut, and Atven have vanished into the misty shadows of the past. They, and the good old priest, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... events truer than any Egyptian.) There was a chair by the table, on which was an empty bowl and some broken bread; but the wise woman sat in the chimney corner, bending over the hearth, though the fire had burnt out, and not an ember glowed. And a strange little elf she looked, being very wizen and small, with one shoulder higher than the other, and a face ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... brother. Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief, Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears, Thy sorrow rich with the repining years, My sorrow frail as childhood, and as brief." Who art thou, haunting boy, nocturnal elf? "I am the Dead; the Dead that was thyself." Then falls a darkness on that starless shore. Afar I hear the ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations of those masters. This is not to speak of tricks and manners which lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a certain individual way of seeing and feeling. A young poet once said of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice." And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Noble Heart, a Bohemian Legend; The Monk of Swinstead Abbey, a Ballad Chronicle of the Death of King John; The Three Knights of Camelott, a Fairy Tale; The Ballad of Delora, or the Passion of Andrea Como; Red Gelert, a Welsh Legend; Ben Capstan, a Ballad of the Night Watch; The Elf of the Woodlands, a Child's Story. Fcap. 8vo. elegantly printed and bound in cloth, ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... the little one he felt the world was his. He forgot Waldstricker, forgot Madelene, forgot everything, but his elf-like son within his cuddling grasp. He touched his lips ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... quiet but composed interest. It never occurred to her that she could have any individual concern in the contents of the parcels. She was a tall girl who had outgrown all her frocks, or rather did outgrow them periodically, with dark elf locks about her shoulders, which would not curl or creper, or do anything that hair ought to do. She had her thoughts always in the clouds, forming all sorts of impossible plans, as was natural to her age, and was just the kind of angular, jerky school-girl, very well intentioned, but very maladroit, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... more into the long hall with the windows and the mirrors, yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowy banks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon his dwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evil fairyland crossed the priest's mind again like a little grey cloud. "I wish Flambeau were ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Inge go? She sank into the moor ground, and went down to the moor woman, who is always brewing there. The moor woman is cousin to the elf maidens, who are well enough known, of whom songs are sung, and whose pictures are painted; but concerning the moor woman it is only known that when the meadows steam in summer-time it is because she is brewing. Into the moor woman's brewery did Inge sink down; and no ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old, Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps. ("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.") With tear-burned face, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... creature, grave and gay, silent but ready, respectful yet confident, how could he follow her? The visit came to an end, but was repeated again and again by Danby, and each time with new astonishment, new delight. She had the coquetry of a dozen women, yet her eyes looked so true. She was a perfect elf for pranks and jokes, yet demure as a nun. When he tried to awe her with his learning, she was saucy; if he was serious, she was gay; if he wished to teach, she rebelled. She was self-willed as a changeling, refractory yet gentle, seditious but just,—only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... in the meaning of "mirage," and also as another name for H[o]rai, the Elf-land of Far Eastern fable. Various beings in Japanese myth are credited with power to delude mortals by creating a mirage of H[o]rai. In old pictures one may see a toad represented in the act of exhaling from its mouth a vapor that shapes ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... about us," she said. "Countless pink campions and buttercups, with an elf in each. They will feel your giant feet, but they will know you are a mortal and cannot help your ways, because, you poor, blind ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... which he himself knew to be puppets tricked up for the entertainment of an idle hour. We are told by Lockhart, that the old man who told the story of Gilpin Horner to Lady Dalkeith bona fide believed the existence of the elf. Lady Dalkeith repeated the tale to Walter Scott, who worked it up with consummate skill into the Lay of the Last Minstrel. This is a case of a really believed legend of diablerie becoming the source of a literary fiction. Scott ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... was playing beside a stream, when one of the little elf men came along in his canoe. The boy had his bow and arrow with him; so had the little ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... zigzag or lightning marks are added to the shafts of arrows. A chapter might be written concerning this idea, which may possibly help to explain the Celtic, Scandinavian, and Japanese beliefs concerning "elf-shafts," ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... brutal, bestial, and if one comes to think of it, grotesque! ... Oh! My poor child, what joking elf, what perverse sprite could have prompted the concluding words of your letter to me? I have made a collection of them, but out of love for you, I will not show them ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... than in England, let apothecaries and druggists say what they will." It is a tall, stout, downy plant, from three to five feet high, of the Composite order, with broad leaves, and bright, yellow flowers. Campania is the original source of the plant (Enula campana), which is called also Elf-wort, and Elf-dock. Its botanical title is Helenium inula, to commemorate Helen of Troy, from whose tears the herb was thought to have sprung, or whose hands were full of the leaves when Paris carried her off from Menelaus. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... than superstitious or religious? The hamper of ropes that clung round the mainmast seemed to gibber like a man in fever as the gale threaded the mazes; the hollow down-draught from the foresail cried in boding tones; it seemed like some malignant elf calling "Woe to you! Woe for ever! Darkness is coming, and I and Death await you with cold arms." Every timber complained with whining iteration, and the boom of the full, falling seas tolled as a bell tolls that beats out the last minutes ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... with several others at a school. This one saw two men dressed in white come in at the window, who cut off his hair as he slept, and then went out by the same window: on awaking, he found his hair scattered about on the floor. To what can these things be attributed, if not to an elf? ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... wisp of humanity, a starved, slender elf with a freckled face, wizened and peaked, which at times looked a thousand years old. It reminded you of the face of one of those preternaturally aged monkeys that sit motionless in a dark corner of the cage, oppressed with the sins and ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... quickly Teddy set to work, but when he had once passed the line round the farmer's body and the tree, he had no difficulty in finishing the work he had begun. Dancing like an elf with the line in his hand, he spun round and round the tree till the line was wound round to its very last extremity, and the farmer looked like some big bluebottle fly entangled in the fine meshes of a spider's ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... pretty blonde, sweet, serious, timid and a little slow, and Dorothy Rose—a sparkling brunette, quick, elf-like, high tempered, full of mischief and always getting ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... tall collar. The Reverend Gabriel's wrist brushed against them; he felt of them inquiringly; then he deliberately took off his hat to show the top of his head shorn of the glory of his curl, and the long ends of hair hanging in elf-locks about his face. ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... and the big robber-flies or devil's dykes—no name is bad enough for them—of the family Asilidaa. During these peaceful gnatless days, if a person thrusts himself into the bushes or herbage in some dark sheltered place, he will soon begin to hear the thin familiar sounds, as of "horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and presently, from the ground and the under surface of every leaf, the ghost-like withered little starvelings will appear in scores and in hundreds to settle on him, fear not having blunted ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... locks—distressingly shaggy and unkempt—he wore no hat, and he looked like a brownie, grotesque, though somewhat sad. But even more did he resemble an ape—or say the missing link—and only his eyes seemed human. These were large, dark and brilliant, sparkling like jewels under his elf-locks. He sat cross-legged on the sward and hugged a fiddle, as though he were nursing a baby. And, no doubt, he was as attached to his instrument as any mother could be to her child. It was not difficult for Miss Greeby ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... ambrosial oils, till she revived, And underwent a quick immortal change, Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve Visits the herds along the twilight meadows, Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, Which she with precious vialed liquors heals: For which the shepherds, at their festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... sings the self-same tune Underneath an older moon. Life to him is, plain enough, Still a game of blind man's buff. If we listen we may hear Puckish laughter always near, And the elf's apostrophe, "Lord, ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... uselessness of further words. How expect understanding of a common human hurt from this being, who alternately appeared in the guise of a god and a gamin? She remembered the old tale of the maiden wedded to the beautiful and strange elf-king. Was the legend symbolic of that mysterious thread—call it genius or what you will—that runs its erratic course through humanity's woof, marring yet illuminating the staid design, never straightened with its fellow-threads, never tied, and never to be followed to its source? ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances they were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!) simply produced so many apples and cherries: or it didn't, when the failures of Nature were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never set foot within fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... on, cursed spirit! replied Maimoune, go on, and fear nothing. Dost thou think I am as perfidious an elf as thyself, and that I am capable of breaking the serious oath I have made? No, you may depend on my promise: but be sure you tell nothing but what is true, or I shall clip your wings, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... tholde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, All was this land fulfild of fairye. The elf queene with hir joly compaignye Daunced ful ofte in many a greene mede. This was the olde opinion as I rede,— I speke of manye hundred yeres ago,— But now kan no man se none elves mo, For now the grete charitee and prayeres Of lymtours, and othere hooly freres, That serchen ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... "Yes, Sal's Kid—a wild-eyed, elf-locked, olive-skinned little imp, nameless, but nicknamed Sal's Kid, who lived in a gutter called Rat Alley, down by the water-side in New York. I used to be fond of the child when I was cook's galley-boy, and our ship was ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... as, from a little elf, I've had a high opinion of myself, Though sickly, slender, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... pencil and book they sat by and took Each action, if false, or if true. White marks for the deeds done for others— Black marks for the deeds done for self. And nobody hid what he said or he did, For no one, of course, sees an elf. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and he knows it, and does as she tells him most faithfully and gratefully. They are pattern-folk from top to toe, and so is the boy. But the girl! He would have his way, and named her Phyllis—Fly he calls her. She is a little skittish elf—Rotherwood himself all over; and doesn't he worship her! and doesn't he think it a holiday to carry her off to play pranks with! and isn't he happy to get amongst a good lot of us, and ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the kindred of Cain the Lord living ever Awreaked the murder of the slaying of Abel. In that feud he rejoic'd not, but afar him He banish'd, The Maker, from mankind for the crime he had wrought. 110 But offspring uncouth thence were they awoken Eotens and elf-wights, and ogres of ocean, And therewith the Giants, who won war against God A long while; but He ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... glimmering light; By the dead and drowsy fire, Every elf and fairy sprite, Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty after me, Sing and dance it trippingly. First rehearse this song by rote, To each word a warbling note, Hand in hand, with fairy grace, We will sing, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... street, certain forms he did meet, But scarce might behold their faces; From matted elf-locks eyes stared like an ox, And shambling were ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... added Hannekin, "the elf lock came out of my hair this very morn, I having, as you bade me, combed it each morn with the ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... imprisonment could take from him—not even the ban of Canaan! Unforewarned, music sounded in his ears again; but he did not shrink from it now; this was not the circus band he had heard as he left the Square, but a melody like a far-away serenade at night, as of "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and he closed his eyes ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... be a little lithe lad. Then it was that in every pickle of mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes and curly auburn hair, was to be found. So maddening indeed were his naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him, as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a young thing that had no right ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... speeding onward fast, with the Taf at some distance on my right, when I saw a strange-looking woman advancing towards me. She seemed between forty and fifty, was bare-footed and bare-headed, with grizzled hair hanging in elf locks, and was dressed in rags and tatters. When about ten yards from me, she pitched forward, gave three or four grotesque tumbles, heels over head, then standing bolt upright, about a yard before me, raised her right arm, and shouted in a most discordant voice—"Give ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... me, because I'm little! For though I am an elf o' mettle, An' can, like ony wabster's shuttle, Jink there or here, Yet, scarce as lang's a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... thrilled at intervals, and the jays were chattering incessantly in the cherry-trees by the fence. The dew was still on the grass that lay in the parallelogram of shade made by the Sears' dwelling, and in the twilight of grass-land all the elf-people were whispering and tittering and scampering about in surreptitious revel. The breeze of dawn, tired and worn out, was sinking to a fitful doze in the cottonwood foliage near by. In the lattice of the kitchen ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... carpeted with powdered pearls, and kept in place by a thousand dewy strands, hanging from above like the chains of a lamp, and supporting them from below like the anchors of a vessel. These little airy edifices had all the fantastic lightness of the elf-world, and all the vaporous freshness of dawn. They recalled to me the poetry of the North, wafting to me a breath from Caledonia or Iceland or Sweden, Frithjof and the Edda, Ossian and the Hebrides. All that world of cold and mist, of genius and of reverie, where warmth ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Oberon, or the Elf King's Oath," a romantic and fairy opera in three acts, words by J.R. Planche, was first produced at Covent Garden, London, April 12, 1826, in English. Its first Italian performance was given in the same city, July 3, 1860, the recitatives being supplied by Benedict, who ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... big, covered wagon, of the prairie-schooner type, were from ten to a dozen wild-looking Mexicans, their straggling elf-locks crowned by high-peaked sombreros, and their serapes streaming out wildly about them, whipped into loose folds by the pace at which they rode. As Coyote Pete had said, there was little difficulty for any one who had seen him once, in recognizing Black Ramon de Barros. His magnificent ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... Peregrine Oakshott," said Lucy passionately. "He had a cord across the Slype to trip us up. I heard him laughing like a hobgoblin, and saw him too, grinning over a tombstone like the malicious elf ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little mouse had finished repeating what the elf had said she laid her staff against the king's breast, and sure enough there sprang forth from it the loveliest flowers. They yielded so strong a perfume that the king commanded that the mice who stood nearest the chimney should stick their tails in the fire, in order that ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... tell him that no maid will stay with her? That she shows no desire to improve? That she mimics and angers her teachers, refuses to study and plays impish tricks like some mischievous little elf? Am ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... to herself, "that is a fairy tent, and in it I may find a baby elf sick with whooping-cough or scarlet-fever. How splendid it would be! only I could never nurse such ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... and was predestined to marry some large, good-natured man who would imagine that she would make a nice little pet, a household fairy, but who might learn to his dismay that the fairy could be a tormenting elf. She would not marry the young gentleman with whom her name was at present associated by the gossips, and who had driven over that morning to help her entertain the expected guests. Mr. Harcourt and Miss Marchmont understood each other. He was ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... famous echo-rock near St. Goar, with which locality he became thoroughly familiar during the years 1780-89. No romanticist knew the Rhine better or loved it more than Brentano. "Lore" means[31] a small, squinting elf; and is connected with the verb "lauern." The oldest form of the word is found in the Codex Annales Fuldenses, which goes back to the year 858, and was first applied to the region around the modern Kempten near Bingen. "Lei" means a rock; "Loreley" means then "Elbfels." And what Brentano ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... thought, I'm in a moment gone, Nor can I ever be alone: All things on earth I imitate Faster than nature can create; Sometimes imperial robes I wear, Anon in beggar's rags appear; A giant now, and straight an elf, I'm every one, but ne'er myself; Ne'er sad I mourn, ne'er glad rejoice, I move my lips, but want a voice; I ne'er was born, nor e'er can die, Then, pr'ythee, tell ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... tale of elf and fairy did she tell the dying child, Till his eyes lost half their anguish, and his worn, wan features smiled; Tales herself had heard haphazard, caught amid the Babel roar, Lisped about by tiny gossips playing round their ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... thought—or should die soon!—supposing it were a sign of death! The nearer I got to the house the more agitated I grew; and on catching sight of it I trembled in every limb. The apparition had outstripped me: it stood looking through the gate. That was my first idea on observing an elf-locked, brown-eyed boy setting his ruddy countenance against the bars. Further reflection suggested this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... 'You wicked elf,' said Miss Mary, 'to inveigle people into predicaments, and then go shouting ho! ho! ho! like ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... accounts concur in expressing (with as much admiration as is possible to naturalists) the kindly and frank disposition of this bird; which for the rest is almost a central type of all bird power with elf gifts added: it flies like a lark, trips on water-lily leaves like a fairy, swims like a duck, and roves like a sea-gull, having been seen sixty miles from land: and, finally, though living chiefly in Lapland and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... elf! (But stop, first let me kiss away that tear,) Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite, With spirits feather light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin— (Good heavens! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... cottages harbored Maya for the night; and then her way at dawn lay through a vast forest, where the dim tree-trunks stretched far away till they grew undefined as a gray cloud, and only here and there the sunshine strewed its elf-gold on ferns and mosses, feathery and soft as strange plumage and costly velvet. Sometimes a little brook with bubbling laughter crept across her path and slid over the black rocks, gurgling and dimpling in the shadow or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... kind of wilderness, studded with oases of a more curious character still. In one of them Rabelais was born, and found Quintessence, and of that finding—more fortunate than the result of True Thomas finding the Elf Queen—was born Pantagruelism. In another came Lesage, and though his work was scarcely original, it was consummate. None of these happy sojourns produced a Don Quixote or a Tom Jones, but divers smaller things resulted. And again and again, as had happened in the Middle ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the meadows, The weird, capricious elf! The buds unfold their perfumed cups For love of her sweet self; And silver-throated birds begin to tune their lyres, While wind-harps lend their ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... art a strange little elf, but I know how to tell if thou art mortal. Wilt thou have thy supper?" and he held out a spoonful of the bread and milk to the dancing figure. The child immediately stopped his whirling, and running to Crescimir, eagerly ate the food, ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... distinguish—1, The active presence of the Sprites in a human habitation. 2, Their masquerading. 3, Their dispatch of human victuals. 4, The liability of Elfin limbs to human casualties. 5, The personality of that saucy Puck, our tiny ambassador elf. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... spirit-elf, Rise up and bless. Help us to cleanse in holiness Show how to dress in saintliness Our weary selves, Expurge our deeds of earthiness Expunge desires of selfliness Rise up and bless ... This strong Soul dying in ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... days of King Arthur all the land was filled with fairies, and the elf queen and her merry company held many a dance in the green meadows where now you will see never one of them. But that was many hundred ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... children, were your father out, There was a merriment at his return; For still, on coming home, he brought you somewhat, Might be an Alpine flower, rare bird, or elf-bolt, Such as the wand'rer finds upon the mountains: Now he is gone in quest of other spoil On the wild way he sits with thoughts of murder: 'Tis for his enemy's life he lies in wait And yet on you, dear children, you alone He thinks as then: for your sake is he here; To ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... what her joy was, when, one day as she wandered alone, gazing on gorgeous blossoms rich in brilliant colours, down at her feet she spied, waving its delicate-tinted elf-bells in the warm, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... five years, which only a vigorous hate had kept going. Marked with the characteristics of the cat, velvety to eye and touch, insolent and elusive in her glance, undisciplined, she could act a part for a time. To Horace Endicott she had played the role of a child of light, an elf, a goddess, for which nature had dressed her with golden hair, melting eyes of celestial ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... pinafore, his yellow hair flying in the breeze, his chin up, his black eyes wide open, with slate in one hand, his pencil in the other, and the sandy kitten clinging to his shoulder (for Jan never lowered his chin to help her to balance herself), he looked more like some elf than a ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... same hour when the tumult in Strasburg being abated for that night,—the Strasburgers had all got quietly into their beds—but not like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or bodies; queen Mab, like an elf as she was, had taken the stranger's nose, and without reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, as there were heads in Strasburg ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... any earthly thing, until there came, added to her own, a young, new life. When her beautiful babe, half-elf, half-mortal, nestled in her woman's breast, it wakened there the fountain of human love, and of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... gallery, for Cornelia was so essentially a creature of to-day that he felt more in sympathy with her in the air and the sunshine, with the echo of the great city rising to their ears. They stood side by side, while the breeze blew elf-like tendrils of hair round the girl's face. The gentle expression of half an hour ago had departed, and she looked a creature of steel and flame; a vital, indomitable being, tingling with energy and joy. At ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... For fairy natures are compounded all Of whimsies and of freaks fantastical, And what the best of fairies loves the best (Except pure kindness) is an artless jest. And so wise men have argued, on the whole, That the misguided creatures have no soul; But as for me, if the bright fairy elf Has none, I'll get along without, myself! These fairies laughed and danced and sang sweet songs, And did all else that to their craft belongs,— All tricks and pranks of whole-souled jollity That make life merry 'neath the greenwood tree. The youngest of them childishly ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... Meanwhile the carles fell to speech freely with the wayfarers, and told them much concerning their little land, were it hearsay, or stark sooth: such as tales of the wights that dwelt in the wood, wodehouses, and elf-women, and dwarfs, and such like, and how fearful it were to deal with such creatures. Amongst other matters they told how a hermit, a holy man, had come to dwell in the wood, in a clearing but a little way thence toward the north-west. ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... she hardly affected one like a child, I remember. Do you know," exclaimed Mr Powell, who clearly must have been, like many seamen, an industrious reader, "do you know what she looked like to me with those big eyes and something appealing in her whole expression. She looked like a forsaken elf. Captain Anthony had moved towards her to keep her away from my end of the table, where the tray was. I had never seen them so near to each other before, and it made a great contrast. It was wonderful, for, with his beard ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... [Footnote 3] thy shore I climb'd at last, And, thy shady region pass'd, Upon another shore I stood, And look'd upon another flood; [Footnote 4] Great Ocean's self! ('Tis He, who fills That vast and awful depth of hills;) Where many an elf was playing round, Who treads unshod his classic ground; And speaks, his native rocks among, As FINGAL spoke, and OSSIAN sung. Night fell; and dark and darker grew That narrow sea, that narrow sky, As o'er the glimmering waves we flew. The sea-bird rustling, wailing by. ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... his reindeer. It bounded forward and struck down an elf who stood in its road. Then his brothers stood in its path, and stopped ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... children, in spite of a certain elf-like disobedience which possessed them like a disease. It was quite enough to tell them not to do a thing for them to be eaten up with a desire to do it forthwith. Christine had discovered this, and had learned to manage them in other ways ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... him. thing in the world to him. Only while she passed did he see her as a gleam of colour, a gypsy elf poorly clad, her bare feet flashing beneath a short green skirt, a twig of rowan berries stuck carelessly into her black hair. Her face was pale. She had an angel's ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... you out of window?" said a girl's voice; and there behind her, in a half-timid attitude, stood Betty Macdonald, a vision of white muslin, its frills and capes a little tossed by the wind, the pointed face and golden hair showing small and elf-like under the big ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the whistle again and again. "You may not believe it," he said between calls, "but the hunter who taught me this, told me never to use it unless I was in dire need. Then help of some sort would surely come. It is called the Elf's Horn." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... night—a night in March—people who had stayed up late by their firesides, talking of their sons at the front or dozing over the Temps, heard a queer music in the streets below, like the horns of elf-land blowing. It came closer and louder, with a strange sing-song note in which there was ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... elf, Who hails thee, emblem of himself. The book of life, which I have traced, Has been, like thee, a motley waste Of follies scribbled o'er and o'er, One folly bringing hundreds more. Some have indeed been writ so neat, In characters so fair, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... and advanced towards them. The garb of the newcomer somewhat resembled that of a forester; but his arms and lower limbs were destitute of covering, and appeared singularly muscular, while his skin was swarthy as that of a gipsy. His jet-black hair hung in elf-locks over his ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the lulls between customers at the wicket, Vaniman had had a succession of run-ins with the demon of drowsiness—a particularly mischievous elf, sometimes, in business hours. Whenever he caught himself snapping back into wakefulness he found Vona's twinkle of amusement ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... not slow to recognize a geist; his knees shook, and he dared not utter a word. The elf looked down upon him half displeased, ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn [Scot.], little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling^; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker^, callant^, whipster^, whippersnapper, whiffet [U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bishops here, And there a chancellor in embryo, Or bard sublime, if bard may e'er be so, As Milton, Shakespeare, names that ne'er shall die! Though now he crawl along the ground so low, Nor weeting how the muse should soar on high, Wisheth, poor starveling elf! his ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... around her for a little stream where she might wash her face and hands; suddenly she remembered that face and hands were dyed, and that she would do best to leave them alone. She smoothed out as best she could the ragged elf-locks which the gypsy maid had left on her curly head, and then covering her face with her hands, said simply ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... knew the girl well enough—too well for her, not well enough yet for himself. It was precisely to win the woeful beauty of her that he had set his snares and unleashed his dogs. Did the Abbot know anything? Impossible; his reference forbad the fear. Was the girl something more than a dark woodland elf, a fairy, haggard and dishevelled, whose white shape shining through rags had made his blood stir? The mask of his face safeguarded him through this maze of surmise; nothing out of the depths of him was ever let to ruffle that dead surface. He commanded his voice to ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett |
