"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... just left it," answered the monk, "and you may thank me if the storm is averted for the moment, although it must burst erelong. Before the ambassador could obtain his audience, I hurried to the archduke, and chanted the old ditty; told him you were the Maccabees of the century—the bulwarks of Christendom: that without you the Turks would long since have been in Gradiska—that the Venetians, through fear and lust of gain, were hand and glove with the followers of Mahomet—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... to this appeal, so Tom himself at once began shouting a no very melodious ditty. First one man joined in, then another and another, until the whole of the boats' crews were singing at the top of their voices. It appeared to me that the vessel was moving somewhat faster than before through the water, but looking towards the wall of foam that ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... of finally "having something really on the plate" moved her to alert appreciation, and she proceeded to eat her dinner with an expression of artless and whole-souled relief. She was able to point out to Henry, as a bit of prandial small-talk, that the orchestra was playing "Nancy Brown"—a classic ditty whose notes had reached even Clayton Centre. It was at this stimulating point of the dinner, also, that she felt privileged for the first time to remove her gloves, glance at the other tables and the clothes of the women, and talk freely ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... sitting under midnight's misty moon, Lo I see the spirits flitting o'er the waters one by one! Slumber wraps the silent city, and the droning mills are dumb; One lone whippowil's shrill ditty calls her mate that ne'er will come. Sadly moans the mighty river, foaming down the fettered falls, Where of old he thundered ever o'er abrupt and lofty walls. Great Unktehee—god of waters—lifts no more his mighty head; Fled ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... hang my self, my friends will look for't. Eating and sleeping, I do despise you both now: I will run mad first, and if that get not pitty, I'le drown my self, to a most dismal ditty. [Exit Savil. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Francis Hopkinson, Barry's accuser of want of respect for him made the event memorable by a humorous ditty reflecting upon ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... the cottage sat the grandmother knitting and nodding, with white hair shining under her snowy cap-border; and while the carpenter carved and whistled an old-fashioned ditty, "Meet me by moonlight alone," the girl in a quavering voice ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... this ditty to you, In my necktie of red and my jacket of blue; I'm sure you'll prefer the song that was mine And smile your approval on ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... So, this is the Gate, and most invitingly open: If there shou'd be a Blunderbuss here now, what a dreadful Ditty wou'd my Fall make for Fools; and what a Jest for the Wits; how my Name wou'd be roar'd about Streets. Well ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... longer, I was about to speak, when suddenly, from the floor beneath us, one long-sustained note swelled upon the air and died away again, and immediately after, to the cheerful sounds of a guitar, we heard the husky voice of our Portuguese guide indulging himself in a love-ditty. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... grim road, the road from Mons to Wipers (I've 'ammered out this ditty with me bruised and bleedin' feet); Tramp, tramp, the dim road—we didn't 'ave no pipers, And bellies that was 'oller was the drums we 'ad to beat. Tramp, tramp, the bad road, the bits o' kiddies cryin' there, The fell birds a-flyin' there, the 'ouses all aflame; Tramp, tramp, the sad road, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... tangled and twisted the course of true love This ditty explains, No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve If the Lover ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... respectable-looking man drinking his glass of beer from the counter. One of the habitues of the place suddenly addressed him, and demanded with an oath whether he had ever heard so good a song as the low ditty which had just been screamed out by a painted woman on the stage. The stranger remarked quietly that it "wasn't a bad song, but he had certainly heard better ones," when the bully in front without any warning struck him a violent blow in the face, ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... parts, Back in the Dear Dead Days Beyond Recall—a mournful kind of ditty to sing under the circumstances—so mournful that we had to have a game of five hundred ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... that this simple story, told by a country parson, is worth whole pages of learned arguments against Disestablishment? {57} Anyhow, to support such arguments, I will here cite an ancient ditty of my father's. He had got it from "a true East Anglian, of Norfolk lineage and breeding," but the exegesis is wholly ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... were full of Folly, When in the Praise of Dolly, You wrote your am'rous Ditty, Which sure deserves her Pity, Since plainly it doth prove, Your Brain is crack'd with Love; Who else would talk of giving An Empire for a —— When Twenty will down } Each for a Silver Crown, } And thank ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... the great sycamore trees. Through open doorways she would catch glimpses of picturesque groups of eager card-players, crowded round a flickering candle. From the darkness there would steal the sound of flute or zither, of voices singing. Occasionally it would be some strident ditty of the Paris music-halls, but more often it was sad and plaintive. But early in October the rains commenced and the stream became a roaring torrent, and a clammy mist lay like a white river ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... faces within a wreath of oak-leaves with floriated spandrels.[44] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman's house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:— ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Marian stood still at a very short distance from the grave. Steenie was humming a plaintive ditty, or rather dirge; for it partook of a double character, something between an alehouse roundelay and a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... gossip. Sit you there And hide the hour-glass. There was a time In early boyhood, when a thing like thee Seemed horrible, but now my mouth is dry With other terror. Thou art a cap and bells: Play me a ditty on a tambourine. [Starting up.] Who goes there? [Rushes to Smith, who enters.] Tell me ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... deep sea,' in his deep deep voice; and then we drank to Procter, who wrote the said song; also Sir J. Wilson's good health, and Cruikshank's, and Ainsworth's: and a Manchester friend of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have been not composed, but manufactured. Jerdan, as Jerdanish as usual on such occasions—you know how paradoxically he is QUITE AT HOME in DINING OUT. As to myself, I had to make my SECOND MAIDEN SPEECH, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his foot, which was inclined to swell and give him pain; and another request which he made was, that they would repair a gun, which had been deprived of its stock by fire. He then sung them a doleful ditty, not in praise of female beauty, as is the practice with the songsters of England, but it was in praise of elephants and their teeth, in which he was assisted by his cane bearer, and afterwards took his leave. They received little presents of goora nuts, salt, honey, mi-cadamia, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... I was there, listening to him as he twanged the strings of the instrument and struck up that 'tink-a-tink a tong-tong' accompaniment familiar to all acquainted with the Christy Minstrels, the cook also humming away serenely to himself an old ditty dear to the darkey's heart, and which I had heard the negroes often sing when I was over in New York, on the previous voyage I had taken a few months before, to which I have already alluded—when I ran away to sea, and shipped as a cabin boy on board one of the Liverpool liners, occupying ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had finished playing a melancholy air, exclaimed, "That was but a melancholy ditty, miss—we'll try a merrier." And ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire. In what other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into the street? But affliction heightens love; and we shall never know we are Englishmen until we have lost India. Independent America is still the cross of my existence; I cannot think of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... overhead, bounded to the half-open window, moving quite as easily on the injured foot as on the other. Eagerly she listened; and soon was rewarded by hearing Lyle's voice carolling pathetically down the road, the ditty, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... "What shall become of me?" And desolate, my desolations pity, Thou in thy beauty's carack sitt'st to see My tragic downfall, and my funeral ditty. No timbrel, but my heart thou play'st upon, Whose strings are stretched unto the highest key; The diapason, love; love is the unison; In love my life and labours waste away. Only regardless to the world thou leav'st me, Whilst slain ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... family had been christened in it. The eldest sister had been married in it. Generations of ancestry mouldered under the chancel-floor. Christmas decorations were an occasion of much innocent merriment, and a little ditty high in favour in Tractarian homes warned ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... ditty was being sung with great gusto by King and Marjorie, while Kitty, her mood divided between smiles and ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... my tongue might betray me, I muttered back an indistinct response. The Scot was either suspicious, or offended by my churlishness. I slipped off quickly to a dark corner, but I saw him eying me closely. A youth brushed past humming a ditty, which seemed strangely out of place in those surroundings. He stood an elbow's length from me and kicked moccasined heels against the floor in the way of light-headed lads. Both the air and figure of the young fellow vaguely recalled somebody, but his back was towards me. I was measuring ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Matters fare no better with his companions, who on their parts renew an old acquaintance with the princess's attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest: every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and rallies the king and the two ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Shepherd, then in his full tide of song and story; but nearer and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!— your "Braes of Balquidder," and "Yon Burnside," and "Gloomy Winter," and the "Minstrel's" wailing ditty, and the noble "Gleneiffer." Oh! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles! Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... neighbouring gardens, through which the towers of the cathedral are seen like phantoms; it is then that the peasants light their torches, and both priests and people wander in procession through the fields, singing in a loud, but mournful tone, a strange and quaint ditty. Thus their fields and the crops (which they are about to sow) will be productive, and a good harvest bless ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... jokes, and drinking, to pay much attention to their young host's behaviour. Mr. Braddock loved a song after dinner, and Mr. Danvers, his aide-de-camp, who had a fine tenor voice, was delighting his General with the latest ditty from Marybone Gardens, when George Warrington, jumping up, ran towards the window, and then returned and pulled his brother Harry by the sleeve, who sate with his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... until this foolish, ranting ditty seemed to mock me, my breath came and went to it, my heart beat to it; yet even so, I was praying passionately and this my prayer, viz: That whoso was waiting above us for my death-cry should not again lift the scuttle lest I be discovered to this man-thing that crept ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... had vanished, and then the gorge became wilder and sterner; but just as I thought the sentiment of desolation perfect, a little goatherd, who had climbed high up the rocks somewhere with his equally sure-footed companions, began to sing, not a pastoral ditty in the Southern dialect, but the 'Marseillaise,' thus recalling with shocking incongruity impressions of screaming barrel-organs at the fete ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... love, Turn'd her into the pied-plum'd Psittacus, That now the Parrot is surnam'd by us, Who still with counterfeit confusion prates Naught but news common to the common'st mates.— This told, strange Teras touch'd her lute, and sung This ditty, that ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Treaty of Utrecht, concluded in 1718, shows that each side was too strong as yet to be crushed. In dismissing Marlborough, Great Britain had lost one of her chief assets. His name had become a terror to France. To this day, both in France and in French Canada, is sung the popular ditty "Monsieur Malbrouck est mort," a song of delight at a report that Marlborough was dead. When in place of Marlborough leaders of the type of General Hill were appointed to high command, France could not be finally beaten. The Treaty of Utrecht was the outcome of war-weariness. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side A pleasanter spot you never spied; But when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... sure, have heard speak of an old Man, who walks about the City, and that part of the Suburbs which lies beyond the Tower, performing the Office of a Day-Watchman, followed by a Goose, which bears the Bob of his Ditty, and confirms what he says with a Quack, Quack. I gave little heed to the mention of this known Circumstance, till, being the other day in those Quarters, I passed by a decrepit old Fellow with a Pole in his Hand, who just then was bawling out, Half an Hour after one a-Clock, and immediately ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... prospects bloom, And toil rebuilds what fires consume! Eat we and drink we, be our ditty, "Joy to the managing committee!" Eat we and drink we, join to rum Roast beef and pudding of the plum! Forth from thy nook, John Horner, come, With bread of ginger brown thy thumb, For this is Drury's gay day: Roll, roll thy hoop, and twirl thy tops, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... the kettle was boiling, and it served him as a signal. In a harsh, untuneful voice he began to chant an old coon-ditty. The effect of his music was instantaneous as regards the more sensitive ears of the pup. Its eyes opened, and it lifted its head alertly. Then, with a quick wriggle, he sat up on his hind quarters, and, throwing his lean, half-grown muzzle in the air, set up such a howl of dismay that ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... bit of his own composition, "Old Aegina's Rock," or "Cockle-hat and Staff"; his cousin's Scotch ballads or Christy Minstrel songs; and if you can sing a new ditty, fresh from London, now is your chance. You are surprised to see the Prophet clapping his hands to "Camptown Races," or the "Hundred Pipers"—chorus given with the whole strength of the company; but you are in a house of ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... rather when the first interval of repose occurred, Mokompa, who was an obliging and hearty little fellow, was called on for a song. Nothing loath, he seized his sansa and began a ditty, of which the following, given by Antonio, may be regarded as a remarkably free, not to ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... dark, would have the most of my attention. It was pleasant to find here two comparatively rare warblers, of whom I had before had only casual glimpses,—the mourning warbler and the bay-breasted. The former was singing his loud but commonplace ditty within a few rods of the piazza on one side of the house, while his congener, the Maryland yellow-throat, was to be heard on the other side, along with the black-cap (Dendroeca striata), the black-and-yellow, and the Canadian flycatcher. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... is a merry thrill in the notes of the amphibian which are entirely wanting in the song. If it were not for the light-hearted tremolo of the chewink thrown in now and then, and the loud, cheery ditty of the summer yellow-bird, who begins soon after the pewee, one would be almost superstitious about so unnatural a greeting to the new day. The evening call of the bird is different. He will sit far up on a dead twig of an old pine-tree, and utter a series of four notes, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... is sweet and pleasing. It begins to sing from its first appearance in May and continues to repeat its brief refrain at intervals almost until its departure in August and September. At first it is a monotonous ditty, says Nuttall, uttered in a strong but shrill and filing tone. These notes, as the season advances, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... coat with bright buttons, a closely fitting waistcoat, and a frilled shirt with a diamond breast-pin, his comely iron-grey hair slightly powdered and curled. Perhaps, too, he would be humming some French ditty of questionable propriety, thinking of the gallantries of his youth; and as he stepped daintily forward with his shapely legs, he would sometimes indulge in a hope that knee breeches would again ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Renfro, next as Ensign, Samuel Smith, and William Dunkard, A. McQuea, and William Poor, Rank as Sergeants next in order, Then J. Nicholson, D. Perkins, B. F. Smith, and William Truelove, Are the Corporals, four in number; For the Privates, see appendix, In the chorus of my ditty. Their commander's martial title, Rose to General from Captain, When the famous State militia Held its reign in all the counties. And 'twas thus with many others, Of ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... in his stockinged-feet. He had been playing a doleful ditty on a mouth-organ. Caught so unexpectedly, he blushed a beautiful brick ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... her sequestered haunts, By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell, Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, And Health, and Peace, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to tip him a kiss;" "pingue ingenium" is a circumlocution for "a blockhead;" ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Hale's health; everybody here is young and well, and our skies are always blue, and our sun always shines, and the band plays deliciously from morning till night; and, to come back to the burden of my ditty, my baby always smiles. I am constantly wanting you to draw him for me, Margaret. It does not signify what he is doing; that very thing is prettiest, gracefulest, best. I think I love him a great deal better than my husband, who is getting stout, and grumpy,—what he calls "busy." ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... whose sword interested her to be an Amazon, and following her warily to a fine close arbour, he heard her sing, with a voice no less beautiful to his ears than her goodliness was full of harmony to his sight. The ditty gave him suspicion, and the voice gave him assurance who the singer was, and entering boldly he perceived it was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... A simple ditty Private Smithy sang for me, Entitled "Beans."... The tune was not a joy; The words were commonplace as they could be, But just to hear his earnest ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... the autumn was fairly over they had begun to sing their famous refrain, 'Spring Soon,' and kept it up with good heart more or less all through the winter's direst storms, till at length the waning of the Hungry Moon, our February, seemed really to lend some point to the ditty, and they redoubled their optimistic announcement to the world in an 'I-told-you-so' mood. Soon good support was found, for the sun gained strength and melted the snow from the southern slope of Castle Frank Hill, and exposed great banks of fragrant ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... letters, but all the while was thinking of her conversation with her uncle as well as something else suggested by the newcomer and his ditty. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... wooden pail And sang a country ditty, An innocent fond lovers' tale, That was not wise nor witty, Pathetically rustical, Too ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Kegs! That I can, my boy. But read the song," replied old Harmar. His son then read the following facetious ditty: ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... man, wearing a red chiton. A little lamp hanging from the ceiling threw a dull light on him and on the lute he was playing. To the faint sound of the instrument, which was rather a large one, and which he had propped on the pillow by his side, he was singing, or rather murmuring a long ditty. Twice, thrice, four times he repeated it in the same way. Now and again he suddenly let his voice sound more loudly—and though his hair was quite grey his voice was not unpleasing—and sang a few phrases full of expression and with artistic delivery; and then, when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... assisting us, and his agility, that he possessed qualities more useful than the Arcadian accomplishment, the want of which had annoyed me as we came, and I forgave him for being unable to sing the praises of La Plus Charmante Anesquette, the words of which ditty he nevertheless repeated, with surprise and pleasure at finding they were ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... will begin by singing us a fashionable ditty," remarked Ferdishenko, and looked at the mistress of the house, to see ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rival now!— But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate, Some good survivor with his flute would go, Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate; And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow, And relax Pluto's brow, And make leap up with joy the beauteous head Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair Are flowers first open'd on Sicilian air, And flute his friend, like Orpheus, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... attention. It is impossible to report in writing even the heads of this discourse, pervading as it did the atmosphere of Brook Farm as currents of electricity pervade the air in breaths. In a college-student's ditty is a strain conveying some hint of ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... verse," observed the monk, "has been added to the ditty by Nicholas Demdike. I heard him sing it the other day ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... extreme, till I was ready to ask whether this world was not created to exhibit every possible combination of wretchedness. I asked these questions of a heart writhing with anguish, whilst I listened to a melancholy ditty sung by this poor girl. It was too early for thee to be abandoned, thought I, and I hastened out of the house to take my solitary evening's walk. And here I am again to talk of anything but the pangs arising from the discovery of estranged affection and the lonely ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... calls it Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me A long-legged grasshopper appears to be, That springing flies, and flying springs, And in the grass the same old ditty sings. Would he still lay among the grass he grows in! Each bit of dung he seeks, to stick his ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... first note of the king of singers all other birds were not mute. But evidently the birds have not enthroned this thrush. Possibly, even, they do not share human admiration for his song. The redstart goes on jerking out his monotonous ditty; chippy irreverently mounts a perch and trills out his inane apology for a song; the vireo in yonder tree spares us not one of his never-ending platitudes. But the hermit thrush goes on with sublime indifference to the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... solicitation, and with none of the coyness common to amateurs, she seated herself at the instrument, quietly pulled off her gloves, and dashed without more ado into a rollicking Irish ditty. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring, Every thing did banish moan Save the Nightingale alone. She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sung the dolefullest ditty, That to hear it was great pity. Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry; Tereu, tereu, by and by: That to hear her so complain Scarce I could from tears refrain; For her griefs so lively shown Made me think upon mine own. —Ah! thought I, thou ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... rate he had it in his possession right then, and being able to play a little, he put it to his lips and trilled a few bars of a ditty that sounded like a queer sort of a waltz. And to the utter amazement of his companions the bear immediately started to tread a lively measure with his two hind feet, extending his shorter forepaws ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... thoughts, and mount you with the sun, Call all the winds to make you speedy wings, And to my fairest Maya see you run And weep your last while wantonly she sings; Then if you cannot move her heart to pity, Let Oh, alas, ay me be all your ditty. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... thou not given him a gleam of heavenly light; Reason, he names it, and doth so Use it, than brutes more brutish still to grow. With deference to your grace, he seems to me Like any long-legged grasshopper to be, Which ever flies, and flying springs, And in the grass its ancient ditty sings. Would he but always in the grass repose! In every heap of dung he thrusts ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Dousty-poll!" &c.—I am told by a neighbour of a cruel custom among the children in Somersetshire, who, when they have caught a certain kind of large white moth, which they call a miller, chant over it this uncouth ditty:— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... thither, determined there to present himself. Although the great plain was dying steadily, a new race of wild birds establishing itself there, as he knew enough of their habits to understand, and the idle contadino, with his never-ending ditty of decay and death, replacing the lusty Roman labourer, never had that poetic region between Rome and the sea more deeply impressed him than on this sunless day of early autumn, under which all that fell within ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... and sing songs, and sech. He had a powerful, sweet v'ice, and it allers 'peared to me as ef every kind of a livin' thing hushed up and listened, when he sung o' nights. He could reel off most anything you can think on. There was one kind of a mournful ditty he sung, and once in a while he brung in a chorus,—cawcawee! cawcawee,—jest like what them ducks say, only, the way he made it seound, was soft and meller and doleful-like. I liked to hear him sing that, only he was so solemn arter it, and would set and ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... doors, rubbing their hands in their aprons; and the village loafers were all turned towards where a solemn procession was moving through the street. First came a gang of youngsters, singing, "Sure, We're the Boys of Wexford," then a popular ditty; then came two laborers, dragging along a ladder with as much show of expended energy as if it were a piece of heavy ordnance; then the cart on which the ladder was placed; then two more laborers behind, making desperate efforts to second the arduous endeavors of their mates ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... in curl-papers, who has just brought me my newly-hemmed black necktie, and asks what further orders I have ... and could you but see the highly respectable, fog-enveloped street, and hear the pitiable voice with which a beggar down there pours forth his ditty (he will soon be outscreamed by the street-sellers), and could you picture to yourselves that from here to the City is three-quarters of an hour's drive, and that in all the cross streets of which one has glimpses the noise, clamour, and bustle ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... or Spenser's eulogy on him, was printed, Ralegh had acquired the reputation at Court of a poet. Puttenham, a critic of high repute, had, in The Art of English Poesy, printed in 1589, pronounced 'for ditty and amorous ode, Sir Walter Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate.' By 'insolent,' not 'condolent,' as Anthony Wood quotes, Puttenham meant original. His first public appearance as a poet was in 1576, when in grave and sounding lines he maintained Gascoigne's merits ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... and oft-repeated charge. Cheer after cheer follows; and, as we approach the thin column of smoke curling over the trees between us, Styles bestrides the prostrate form of the still sleeping professor and makes the calliope yell and shriek that classic ditty, "Old Gray Horse, come out of the Wilderness!" at ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... some surprise to Russell that a Spanish chieftain should speak English with the Irish accent; but now to find one who claimed to be the King of Spain lightly trolling an Irish ditty to a rollicking tune was, to say the least, just a little unusual. It occurred to him, however, that "His Majesty" must have learned his English from an Irishman; and further thought showed him that such a fact was perfectly natural, since, being a Catholic, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... the castle of Trifels, in which Richard Coeur-de-Lion was imprisoned by the Archduke of Austria, his deadly enemy, the plaintive notes of a familiar lay fell on their ears. The singer was a young shepherd, and one of the knights, a troubadour, asked him to repeat his ditty. The youth complied, and the knight accompanied him as he sang, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... pound of sharp cheese, three or four pimentos, and a small tin of mushrooms; also add a tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce. Cook all together slowly for a while, then pour over toast or crackers. This is also called "rinktum ditty." ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... after the manner of AARON's Rod, when it was transformed into a serpent, appears to possess the faculty of swallowing to a very considerable extent. Knowing brokers, if consulted, would not have sung to unwary clients the popular ditty "Keep your Aarons," but would have recommended them, being in, to be out again in double-quick time, if there were any chance of an immediate though small ready-money profit to be made, before one could ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... pressure, and the cook is ready to receive the gear. Sleeping-bags, "computation bag," hypsometer, "meat block" (a three-inch-square paper pad on which meteorological notes were taken); clothes-bag opened, three ditty-bags passed in and bag retied; a final temperature taken and aneroid read; sledge anchored securely by tow-rope to the ice-axe, and a final look round to see all gear is safely strapped ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Ucalegon the wise, All, elders of the people; warriors erst, But idle now through age, yet of a voice Still indefatigable as the fly's[10] 175 Which perch'd among the boughs sends forth at noon Through all the grove his slender ditty sweet. Such sat those Trojan leaders on the tower, Who, soon as Helen on the steps they saw, In accents quick, but whisper'd, thus remark'd. 180 Trojans and Grecians wage, with fair excuse, Long war for ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... merry party of guests were congregated in the great hall at Perrythorpe Court, having tea. One of them—a young soldier-cousin of the Studleys—was singing a sentimental ditty at a piano to which no one was listening; and the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... were all seated in the boat, Peter played a doleful ditty, which I have no doubt expressed the grief of his heart. But I am sorry to say it was not much appreciated on board of the "Black Hawk." By the time they reached the shore, the anchor was up, the sails trimmed, and we were ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... which he attached the most ridiculous meanings the tears would come into his eyes. But after having been moved by a scene from Wagner, he would strum out a gallop of Offenbach, or sing some music-hall ditty after the Ode to Joy. Then Christophe would bob about and roar with rage. But the worst of all to bear was not when Sylvain Kohn was absurd so much as when he was trying to be profound and subtle, when he was trying to impress Christophe, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... cartoon a third time, by Mr. Sambourne's pencil, of "Nana would not give me a bow-wow!—A Pretty Little Song for Pettish Little Emperors," as the latest Teutonic version of the music-hall ditty then in vogue. And later on there was Sir John Tenniel's contribution to the pretty little quarrel, in which in "Alexander and Diogenes" (October, 1893) the Emperor asks, "Is there anything I can do for you? Castle? or anything of that sort?" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... tea-masters in producing these effects of serenity and purity. The nature of the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed with different tea-masters. Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained in the ancient ditty: ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... no one in sight, but Aggo heard the words quite plainly, and as he suspected the ditty to be the work of his enemies, the buffalos, he hopped home as fast as his one leg ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... felt no great delight, as may be supposed, in the falconer's satire, considering its subject, began to snatch up his mantle, and fling it around his shoulders, an action which instantly interrupted the ditty of Adam Woodcock. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... what might be the consequences of irritating her friend, and trembling with the fear of doing so, poor Nell sang him some little ditty which she had learned in happier times, and which was so agreeable to his ear, that on its conclusion he in the same peremptory manner requested to be favoured with another, to which he was so obliging as ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the 'lamentable lay' to which reference had just been made—the piece in praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spenser's pastoral, the speaker is persuaded by Thestylis (Lodovick Bryskett) to explain what ditty that was that the Shepherd of the Ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, but in terms which are scarcely critical, that Raleigh's poem was written in love and praise, but also in pathetic ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... of us this time. More applause. Say this guy can fiddle, he can. Come on, baron, another tune. The tired faces yammer for another ditty. "Traeumerei." All right, let her go, Paganini. And after that the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the "Bibliotheque Universelle," of a spaniel, who, if he heard any one play or sing a certain air, "L'ane de notre moulin est mort, la pauvre bete," &c., which is a lamentable ditty, in the minor key, the dog looked very pitifully, then gaped repeatedly, showing increasing signs of impatience and uneasiness. He would then sit upright on his hind-legs, and begin to howl louder and louder till the music stopped. No other ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the Nimphs to open laughter fell, Amongst the rest the beauteous Florimel, (Pleasd with the spell from Claia that came, A mirthfull Gerle and giuen to sport and game) As gamesome growes as any of them all, And to this ditty ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... pole, held high—there is silence but for the bells—the bowman's pole is lowered—as with one stroke out sweep the paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the chapel spire gleams—it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive ditty,—the voyageur's song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,—and the adventurers are ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... to wear! Now, as this is a true ditty, I do not assert—this, you know, is between us— That she's in a state of absolute nudity, Like Powers's Greek Slave or the Medici Venus; But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Which cost five hundred dollars, and not a cent less, And jewelry ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... woe! woe! woe! unto Jerusalem, hindering them in their work about the Temple. Some stones were thrown, but enough life was left in him to crawl away, and as soon as he recovered from his wounds he was about again, singing his melancholy ditty (he knows but one). He was told if he did not cease he would be beaten with rods, but he could not cease it, and started his ditty again as soon as he could bear a shirt on his back; and then he ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... was made aware that his guest was awake, "by sundry grunts and ejaculations, which ended in a series of long and doleful whistles, and then broke out into a song. So he went up, and found the stranger sitting upright in bed, combing his curls with his fingers, and chaunting unto himself a cheerful ditty. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of these pigeons is the bird named the “Culver,” in old writings, as Spencer sings in romantic ditty:— ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... to evening he sang his plaintive and aimless ditty; at night, when his poor mother gathered up her little wares to return home, so deplorable did his defects appear, that while she carried her table on her head, her stock of little merchandize in her lap, and her stool in one hand, she was obliged to lead him by the other. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... new "relief" is called and the night guard changed. Round and round all night ride the guards, jingling their spurs and droning some low monotonous song, recounting through endless stanzas the fearless deeds of some frontier hero, or humming some love ditty rather too ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering when her husband would ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... our foreign relations. It must be maintained. But in maintaining it we must not be forgetful that a great change has taken place. We are no longer a weak Nation, thinking mainly of defense, dreading foreign imposition. We are great and powerful. New powers bring new responsibilities. Our ditty then was to protect ourselves. Added to that, our duty now is to help give stability to the world. We want idealism. We want that vision which lifts men and nations above themselves. These are virtues by reason of their own merit. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a copy of the ballad, which was about a recent double suicide: "The sorrowful ditty of Tamayone and Takejiro,— composed by Tabenaka Yone of Number Fourteen of the Fourth Ward of Nippon-bashi in the South District of the City of Osaka." It had evidently been printed from a wooden block; and there were two little pictures. One showed a girl and boy sorrowing ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Rover' and I will sing 'The Man with the Coat of Green,'" said she, with the generosity of one with many gifts. And she started upon her ditty. She had a voice that as yet was only in its making; it was but a promise of the future splendour, yet to Gilian, the hearer, it brought a new and potent joy. With 'The Rover' he lived in the woods, and set foot upon foreign wharves; 'The Man with the Coat of Green' ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... it, blue hose with red clocks, high-heeled shoes with silver buckles, a nosegay in the tucker, and a fly-way hat perched in this case on the top of black curls, which gave additional archness to Dolly's face as she entered, singing that famous ditty. ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... to look for it when there are new birds to be found. Still, it's singular," I continued, "that the house wren should dwell in such secluded places. It would seem that his name is a misnomer—at least, in a good many instances." Several times I stopped to listen more intently to the rolling ditty. "There's something odd about that wren's song," I repeated. "Does the house wren always close its song with the rising inflection, as if it ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Every body begins to feal the trip now, geting tiresome now. since they have taken all of our ditty Boxes and benches and all extra mess chests and stored them away, we have no place to sit down except on deck and let our feet hang over. then the men forward cant get enough water to keep themselves clean. I am more lucky ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... ventricle, crop, craw, maw, gizzard, breadbasket; mouth. pocket, pouch, fob, sheath, scabbard, socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, valise; grip, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cheek With watery floods is overcast.— Fair maid, we talk of times long past; A friend we often mourn in vain— A knight in distant battle slain, Whose bones had moulder'd in the earth Full many a year before thy birth. He fed our ears with songs of old, And one was of a heart of gold,— A native ditty I would fain, But never yet could hear again. It spoke of friendship like his own, Once only in existence known. My prime of life the blessing crost, And with it life's first charm ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... was neither musical nor inspiring, but Billy had somehow adopted the ditty and made it his own, so far as eternally singing it could do so, and his comrades had found it not unpleasant; for the voice of Billy was youthful, and had a melodious smoothness that atoned for much in the way of imbecile ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... in respect of his accusations, for there shall be nothing read in thy ditty, but that which shall be found written either in one leaf of thy conscience or other; there the sins of thy conception, there the sins of thy youth, there the sins of thy ignorance, there the sins against the light of thy conscience, and there the sins against the law, and there the ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... all familiar with that John Brown whom the minstrel has immortalized as being the possessor of a diminutive youth of the aboriginal American race, who, in the course of the ditty, is multiplied from "one little Injun" into "ten little Injuns," and who, in a succeeding stanza, by an ingenious amphisbaenic process, is again reduced to the singular number. As far as we are aware, the author of this "genuine autobiography" claims no relationship with the famous owner of tender ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Gunpowder Plot, are of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Great Rebellion supplies "Hector Protector" and "The Parliament soldiers are gone to the king;" "Over the water and over the sea" (or lee) is a parody of a Jacobite ditty of 1748, and refers genially to that love of ale and wine which Prince Charles displayed as early as he showed military courage, at the age of fourteen, when he distinguished himself at the siege of Gaeta. His grandfather, ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... be it known unto you, That my neighbour's daughter Dority Was a maid of restority; Fair, fresh, and fine As a merry cup of wine; Her eyes like two potch'd eggs, Great and goodly her legs; But mark my doleful ditty, Alas! for woe and pity! A soldier of your's Upon a bed of flowers Gave her such a fall, As she lost maidenhead and all. And thus in very good time ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... ascended to her chamber, while he disdaining to be frightened away by sound, moved to his former position below the alder tree. Seating himself at its root, with his eyes fixed on the window, in a voice low but distinct, he sang to one of the sweet sad lays of long ago, a ditty to his mistress, of which the following paraphrase ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... very astounding prophecy. If the numbers mentioned at the beginning of the oracular ditty be added together without using the ace, they make the year 1776. Now the value of an ace in Seven-up (and seven is the uppermost word in the line in which our ace occurs) is four. So four, added to the former sum, makes the year 1780. But even ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... is that lovely ditty "Gala Water," which I always sing in honor of my young host, who is a sort of Laird of Galashiel. The whole place is full of such charming suggestions and associations. The Leader, a lovely, clear, rapid, shallow, sparkling trout-stream, makes a sudden ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... anxious to ascertain who was the author of the above ditty; it was very popular in Aberdeenshire about the beginning of this century. The scene, if I remember rightly, is laid in the parish of Forgue, in Aberdeenshire. Possibly some of the members of the Spalding Club may be able to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... Tim had a song about a lost child travelling in the snow; the miner sang a Christmas song—'it had been a very old song when he was a boy,' while the man in the lighthouse (C.C.) consoled himself in his solitude with a 'sturdy' ditty. What was John Browdie's north-country song? (N.N.). All we are told is that he took some time to consider the words, in which operation his wife assisted ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... a ditty sung at a pantomime or some such entertainment when I was at Haileybury—music-halls were less numerous and less aristocratic in those days than they are now—of which the refrain was to the effect that one must meet with the most unheard-of experiences ere one would ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Shanks bellowed into my ear, loud enough to bring the dead out of the grave-mounds on the surrounding hill-sides, "Puh p'a teh, pub p'a teh"; then, raising his carrying-pole to the correct angle on the hump on his back, went merrily forward, warbling some squealing Chinese ditty. But Shanks was the songster of the party. He often madly disturbed the silence of middle night by a sudden outburst inte song, and when shouted down by others who lay around, or kicked by the man who shared his bed, and whose choral propensities ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... learning, a genial though somewhat caustic humour, and a thorough contempt for effeminacy of all kinds. The fop, the epicure, the warbling poet who gargled his throat before murmuring his recondite ditty, the purist, and above all the mock-philosopher with his nostrum for purifying the world, these are all caricatured by Varro in his pithy, good-humoured way; the spirit of the Menippean satires remained, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the early days, expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty, either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire checked ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... of my days. Meanwhile, I must not omit the stimulant. In a short time I may not require it." Draining the bottle to the last drop, he flung it from him, and commenced chanting, in a high key and cracked voice, a wild ditty, the words ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... author whose conception he embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal Hole."[177] The encores were frequent, and for the most part the little fellow responded to them; but the misplaced enthusiasm that took similar form at the heroic intensity with which he stabbed Dollalolla, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... out his store of facts which he has noted down as they occurred; he makes his selection according to circumstances, according to the state of his own mind; not forgetting the state of mind that the children may be in, and especially the state of the weather. The following little ditty may then be repeated, the subject being ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other uncalledfor expressions. He was ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... fallen over land and sea; not a sound was heard save occasionally the distant barking of a dog from the shore, or some plaintive Genoese ditty, which arose from a neighbouring bark. The town seemed buried in silence and gloom, no light, not even that of a taper, could be descried. Turning our eyes in the direction of Spain, however, we perceived a magnificent conflagration seemingly enveloping the side and head of one of the lofty ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... a piano playing an air from a comic opera floated cheerily forth into the magic silence of the Simla pines, and abruptly, almost spasmodically, a cracked voice began to sing. It was a sentimental ditty treated jocosely, and its frivolity rippled out into the mid-day silence with something of the effect of a monkey's chatter. The khitmutgar on the verandah would have looked scandalised or at best contemptuous ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... clean all about it. Some of his nearest of Kin brings all the temporal Estate he was possess'd of at his Death, as Guns, Bows, and Arrows, Beads, Feathers, Match-coat, &c. This Relation is the chief Mourner, being clad in Moss, and a Stick in his Hand, keeping a mournful Ditty for three or four Days, his Face being black with the Smoak of Pitch, Pine, mingl'd with Bear's Oil. All the while he tells the dead Man's Relations, and the rest of the Spectators, who that dead Person was, and of the great Feats perform'd ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Mr. Price was able to start for Harwich, via Brampton, very early the next morning. He was driving along through Northcutt's woods with one leg hanging over the wheel, humming through his nose what we may suppose to have been a love-ditty, and letting his imagination run riot about the lady in question, when he nearly fell out of his wagon. The cause of this was the sight of fat Tom coming around a corner, with Jethro Bass behind him. Lem Hallowell and the storekeeper had kept their secret so well that Sam, if he was thinking about ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... namely, acting his song; they all do it, and cannot help themselves. But this boy had a peculiarly roguish way of pausing and crying forth a plaintive "Ah!" before he added "Che bella cosa," etc., which gave point and piquancy to his absurd ditty. He was evidently brimful of mischief—his expression betokened it; no doubt he was one of the most thorough little scamps that ever played at "morra," but there was a charm about his handsome dirty ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Lage Ulfson had been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two adjoining rye-fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to listen, and soon recognized Aasa's yellow hair over the tops the rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father's countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; then again paused, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... observation and opening science in the Letter, as well as of sweet old literature, and still sweeter old religion, to make it a classic to every well-read doctor in the language. 'To be dissolved and to be with Christ was his dying ditty. He esteemed it enough to approach the years of his Saviour, who so ordered His own human state, as not to be old upon earth. He that early arriveth into the parts and prudence of age is happily old without the uncomfortable attendants of it. And 'tis superfluous to live unto grey hairs, when ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... other singers, not even Cutts himself, as that high-minded man owned, could stand up before the Snatcher, and he commonly used to retire to Mrs. Cutts's private apartments, or into the bar, before that fatal song extinguished him. Poor Cos's ditty, 'The Little Doodeen,' which Bows accompanied charmingly on the piano, was sung but to a few admirers, who might choose to remain after the tremendous resurrectionist chant. The room was commonly emptied after that, or only left ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the young girl, she followed him for a moment with her eyes, and then laughing merrily continued her way, swinging her satchel and humming an old ditty. We shall meet with ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... smacked their legs, and twirled their merry Swiss girls about, until vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jodeling refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seek admiration by vauntingly telling Of drawing and painting, and musical skill; But give me the fair one, in country or city, Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart, Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty, While plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... brook, These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove unalarmed Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach. Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, The ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... reach of where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail, capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron de ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... officer, at the same time casting his glance rapidly over the group of Indians, who were amusing themselves at various athletic games. "I can see nothing of him. Your evident displeasure," he added playfully, "has destroyed his peace, as indeed you might have known from that plaintive ditty. However, dearest girl, I shall see him soon, and make him promise to be present this evening at the nuptials of his friend and sister. Nay, if I had not engaged Elmsley, I should insist on his being ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... observes that he has committed only one plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth sweetly ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Duteous to the lunar will, But some discord stealthily Vexes the world-ditty still, And the bird that caws and caws Clasps creation with ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... The Ditty do's remember my drown'd father, This is no mortall busines, nor no sound That the earth owes: I heare ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... all means. I will make myself jolly until you return," said Cloudy, walking up and down the floor whistling a love ditty, and thinking of little Jacko. He always thought of her with tenfold intensity whenever he returned home ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth |
