"Elves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement: they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarreling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... and perfume and substantial feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts—from the cups of morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they inhabit everything is marvelously adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion or out of perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in their winsome way, "part pagan, part papistical;" they have their pardons and indulgences, their psalters and ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of turkeys were foraging among the clover-blossoms, and over the dewy grass a large brood of young guineas raced after their mother, or played hide-and-seek, like nut-brown elves, under the white and purple tufts of flowers. Save the bird-world—always abroad early—no living thing seemed astir, and the silence that reigned was broken only by the distance-softened bleating of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... He forebore comment, however, and presently struck down a road which wound into a little suburb peopled by Polish quarry-workers. It was essentially an alien community in whose straggling streets and lanes one heard English but seldom. Tow-headed children, shy elves peeping from odd hiding-places, swarmed a half-dozen and upward to a house. Work was the key-note of Little Poland, as it was called. While the men toiled in the sandstone quarries the women did a man's stint in the fields of the outlying farms, and bore more children. Childbirth ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... courteously in good phrases to all their questions; all fear of noble persons and their equipage had passed away from her; for when she measured these halls and forms by the wonders and the high beauty she had seen with the Elves in their hidden abode, this earthly splendor seemed but dim to her, the presence of men was almost mean. The young lords were charmed with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... all the ages' gain, the ages' loss, A wealth of wonders and so much away— When now hears one the woodland elves at play, Or angry dryads where tall tree-tops toss. No more they lightly tread the dewy moss As danced they through cool haunts in ecstasy; But rank and lost the paths in lone decay Where fairy footsteps ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... Elves of Darkness, so says the old Iroquois grandmother, were wise and mysterious. They dwelt under the earth, where were deep forests and broad plains. There they kept captive all the evil things that wished to injure human beings,—the venomous reptiles, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... kindred of Cain crushed with His vengeance; In the feud He rejoiced not, but far away drove him From kindred and kind, that crime to atone for, Meter of Justice. Thence ill-favored creatures, 60 Elves and giants, monsters of ocean, Came into being, and the giants that longtime Grappled with God; He gave ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... half-past ten the Court Astrologer, who was master of ceremonies, gave the order to form in line; and at ten minutes to eleven the splendid procession started for the church. The road was lined with the King's vassals shouting, "Hurrah, hurrah!" Countless little elves with gauzy wings watched from the branches of the trees; and the great cathedral bells went clang, bang, clang, as ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... leaves in their hands for racquets (All in a ring around Brownies and elves in their bright green jackets Watched from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... mule carriage began to recede from the fixed roller beam, and to see them at leisure, after a few seconds' exercise of their tiny fingers, to amuse themselves in any attitude they chose, till the stretch and winding on were once more completed. The work of these lively elves seemed to resemble a sport, in which habit gave them a pleasing dexterity. Conscious of their skill, they were delighted to show it off to any stranger. As to exhaustion by the day's work, they evinced no trace of it on emerging from the mill in the evening; for they immediately began ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... for The Seven Castles Of The Diamond Lake was as brilliant and wonderful as heart could wish. But in spite of the comical red imps, sparkling elves, and the gorgeous princes and princesses, Jo's pleasure had a drop of bitterness in it. The fairy queen's yellow curls reminded her of Amy, and between the acts she amused herself with wondering what her sister would do to make her 'sorry ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... halos and wings, or fins and tails. An esoteric band of fabulous monsters these: harpies and vampires take tea at Sherry's; succubi and incubbi are observed buying opal rings at Tiffany's; fairies, angels, dwarfs, and elves, bearing branches of asphodel, trip lightly down Waverly Place; peris, amshaspahands, aesir, izeds, and goblins sleep at the Brevoort; seraphim and cherubim decorate drawing rooms on Irving Place; griffons, chimeras, and sphynxes take courses in philosophy at Harvard; willis and sylphs ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... respect weakened the hold which Nature has upon our feelings. To the Greeks—to our own ancestors,—every River or Mountain or Forest had not only its own special Deity, but in some sense was itself instinct with life. They were not only peopled by Nymphs and Fauns, Elves and Kelpies, were not only the favourite abodes of Water, Forest, or Mountain Spirits, but they had a conscious existence ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... elves had been hovering about the dingy hall just then, they would have seen the mother's tired face brighten beautifully when she discovered the gifts, and found that her little girls had been so kindly remembered. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... elves who lived in the garden. One, who lived in a lily which made a lovely home; and a poppy elf, who was always sleepy; but the rose elf liked her own sweet smelling room, with its crimson curtains, best ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... Night, When Earth is bound with her silent zone, And the spangled sky seems a temple wide, Where the star-tribes kneel at the Godhead's throne; O the Night, the Night, the wizard Night, When the garish reign of day is o'er, And the myriad barques of the dream-elves come In a brightsome fleet from Slumber's shore! O the Night for me, When blithe and free, Go the zephyr-hounds on their airy chase; When the moon is high In the dewy sky, And the air is sweet as a ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... moonlight. In these little eroded recesses, caves and grottoes one might expect to see crooked-legged gnomes, scampering to peer at the human intruder. Gnarled cedars, hanging precariously, might hide pixies and elves. A child's dream of fairyland, this reality of ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... earth creatures were very fair and light and slender, kindly of heart, and full of goodwill. These the gods called Fairies or Elves, and gave to them a charming place called Elfland in which to dwell. Elfland lies between Asgard and Midgard, and since all fairies have wings they can easily flit down to the earth to play with the butterflies, teach the young birds to sing, water the flowers, or dance in ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... I take real live little girls into the kingdom of the elves and gnomes and pixies? ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... various individuals and classes in the communities is widespread both in myth and reality. We find peculiar dialects spoken by, or used in addressing, deities and evil spirits; giants, monsters; dwarfs, elves, fairies; ghosts, spirits; witches, wizards, "medicine men"; animals, birds, trees, inanimate objects. We meet also with special dialects of secret societies (both of men and of women); sacerdotal and priestly tongues; special dialects of princes, nobles, courts; women's languages, etc.; ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... hissing and jangling had been about his ears; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all the tales that had been told in Yule round the fire at his grandfather's good house at Dorf, of gnomes and elves and subterranean terrors, and the Erl King riding on the black horse of night, and—and—and he began to sob and to tremble again, and this time did scream outright. But the steam was screaming itself so loudly that no one, had there been anyone nigh, would have heard him; and ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... wonderful play, depicting Elf-land with fairies, water nymphs, elves and witches, goblins, and gnomes, with exquisite scenery, beautiful costumes, and graceful dancing that held them entranced, from the time that the curtain went up until the grand march of the ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... once, the most charming little people came marching forth. They were only tall enough to reach to my knee. They looked like men, but were better proportioned: they called themselves elves, and had delicate clothes on, of flower leaves trimmed with the wings of flies and gnats, which had a very good appearance. Directly they appeared, they seemed to be seeking for something—I know not what; but at last some of them came towards me, and the chief pointed to my sausage-peg, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... is said to be full of these long-nosed elves, but many other mountains are inhabited by them, for they like ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... of earth, you might, I ween, Have guessed some congregation of the elves, To sport by summer moons, had ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... spell Of Merlin old that ministered to fate, The tales of visiting ghosts, or fairy elves, Or witchcraft, are no fables. But his task Is ended with the night;—the thin white moon Evades the eye, the sun breaks through the trees, And the charmed wizard comes forth a mere man From out his circle. Thus it is, whate'er We know and understand hath lost the power ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... a wondrous night! one of those warm still nights which seem full of vague and untold possibilities! A night with magic in the air, when elves and fairies dance within their grassy rings, or biding amid the shade of trees, peep out at one between the leaves; or again, some gallant knight on mighty steed may come pacing slowly from the forest shadows, with the moonlight bright ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... when I bid thee croak, 'Twill be when frogs sing ditties on an oak; When hopping toads like winged skylarks fly; When limping elves ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... some observations, which I have since repeated. The best plan for observing the order is to make a person first raise his eyebrows, and this produces transverse wrinkles across the forehead; and then very gradually to contract all the muscles round the elves with as much force as possible. The reader who is unacquainted with the anatomy of the face, ought to refer to p. 24, and look at the woodcuts 1 to 3. The corrugators of the brow (corrugator supercilii) seem to be the first muscles to contract; and these draw the eyebrows ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... Buns! Hot Cross Buns! One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns! If you have no daughters, If you have no daughters, If you have no daughters, Pray give them to your sons; But if you have none of these little elves, Then you must eat ...
— The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... receipt for those high minded elves, Who've a fancy for making great lords of themselves. Follow this, young aspirer who pant'st for a peerage, Take S—m for thy model and B—z for thy steerage, Do all and much worse than old Nicholas Flam does, And—who knows ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... was indeed he, shook his head. "Nay, nay, gaffer," he answered. "I am wise; I know my business. I think I have been asleep in the green wood a thousand years and waited upon by elves and fairies and all manner of pygmies, and they taught me the speech of birds, and what the trees whisper to each other from dawn to dusk, and the war-cries of the winds, with other much delectable knowledge which would have made me wiser than the wisest—but now that I am ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hill, over dale, Through bush, through brier, Over park, over pale, Through flood, through fire, Farewell, thou wit of spirits, I'll be gone; Our queen and all her elves ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... straight like Tom; but he was a very happy little boy all the same, after a strange, quiet fashion of his own, and he liked best of all to be alone with Norah in the woods or by the river, when they would make up all sorts of fancies about queer little elves and fairies who, they said, lived in the trees or bushes, and in the ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... elves sport drearily, and soon Their hushing dances languish'd to a stand, Like midnight leaves, when, as the Zephyrs swoon, All on their drooping stems they sink unfann'd,— So into silence droop'd the fairy band, To see their empress ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... descent of Bram Stoker's infamous vampire Dracula may be traced back through centuries of legend. Hobgoblins, demons, and witches mingle grotesquely with the throng of beautiful princesses, queens in glittering raiment, fairies and elves. Without these ugly figures, folk-tales would soon lose their power to charm. All tale tellers know that fear is a potent spell. The curiosity which drove Bluebeard's wife to explore the hidden chamber lures us on to know ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged by sovran God for slaughtered Abel. Ill fared his feud, {1f} and far was he driven, for the slaughter's sake, from sight of men. Of Cain awoke all that woful breed, Etins {1g} and elves and evil-spirits, as well as the giants that warred with God weary while: but their ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... fair a night as this, methinks, the old fables and romances might well be true that tell of elves that dance on moony nights, and of shapely nymphs and lovely dryads that are the spirits of the trees. Aye, in the magic of so fair a night as this ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... eagerness that belonged to authorship, "so that there could be any amount of Scottish songs. Prospero is an old Highland chief, who has been set adrift with his daughter-Francie Vanderkist to wit-and floated up there, obtaining control over the local elves and brownies. Little Fely ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scarecrow, dare you shake, Or strike in jest, a natural man like me?— You cursed lump, you chaos of a man, To buffet one whom Heaven pronounces good! [Bells ring.] There go the bells rejoicing over you: I'll change them back to the old knell again. You marry, faugh! Beget a race of elves; Wed a she-crocodile, and keep within The limits of your nature! Here we go, Tripping along to meet our promised bride, Like ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... watch the children play, upon a wintry, snowy day; like little elves they run about, and leap and slide, and laugh and shout. This side of heaven can there be such pure and unmixed ecstacy? I lean upon ye rustic stile, and watch the children with a smile, and think upon a vanished day, when I, as joyous, ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... the hunter-star Orion (Or, it may be, Charles his Wain) Tempts the tiny elves to try on All their little tricks again; When the earth is calmly breathing Draughts of slumber undefiled, And the sire, unused to teething, Seeks ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a separate order of beings, living on this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their presence; known in almost all countries and ages as demons not necessarily bad, gnomes, fairies, kobolds, elves, goblins, Puck, &c. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... immortal youth were beginning to close against the voluminous prose romances that have sprung from modern thought, when the deliberations of the Muses were suddenly interrupted. They had disturbed the divine elements of modern society. Forth from all the recesses of the air came troops of Gothic elves, trolls, fairies, sprites, and all the other romantic beings which had inspired the modern mind to novel-writing,—marching or gambolling, pride in their port, defiance in their eye, mischief in their purpose,—and began so vigorous an attack upon their classic ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... very spot in which to read a volume of German folk-lore, and the darkening colonnades and silent nooks of the forest seemed already haunted with the voices and shadows of those charming elves and goblins. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and Elves Who slept ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... from thy nest, Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Wise hand enchasing here those warts Which we to others from ourselves Sell, and brought hither by the elves. The tempting mole, stolen from the neck Of some shy virgin, seems to deck The holy entrance; where within The room is hung with the blue skin Of shifted snake, enfriezed throughout With eyes of peacocks' trains, and trout— Flies' curious wings; and these ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was then beginning to enjoy. And even as I glide through it now, on the railroad that has laid its still depths open to the sun's glare and scared its silence with the eldritch snort and shriek of the iron team, I have visions of Undine and Sintram, the Elves, the little dog Stromian, the Wood-Witch, and all the world of supernatural beauty and terror which then peopled its recesses for me, under the influence of the German literature that I was becoming acquainted with through the medium of French and English translations, and that was carrying ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... mind at all," said Mary. "You're entirely mistaken, Ben. You are thinking of elves. The fairies are kind little people ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... they are bad," said Babie. "Now are they, Mr. Ogilvie? I know elder women are, and erl kings and mist widows, but poor Neck, that sat on the water and played his harp, wasn't bad, and the dear little kobolds were so kind and funny. Now are they bad elves?" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nest, robin red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! Sing, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... answered the Wise One, shaking his head. "Only the Elf of the Borderland can bestow this upon you, for he alone, together with his elves, possesses the secret of its making. Moreover it must be woven in the presence of him who is to wear it; otherwise it has no power. Go to him and ask it. He will not refuse you. Creeping Shadow, who knows where he is to be found, will guide you to him. Do in all things as I ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... the bold Sir Bedivere and spake: "O me, my King, let pass whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field; But in their stead thy name and glory cling To all high places like a golden cloud For ever: but as yet thou shalt not pass. Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou for dreams ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Moliere, his Le Sage. There was his last work on the easel—a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy imagined the Midsummer Night's queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glimmers on the canvas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest Bottom's grotesque head and form are indicated as reposing by the side of the consummate beauty. The darkling forest would have grown around them, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... illustrated my book and tales called "Christmas Elves." Better than "Flower Fables." Now I must try ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the mountains, where the fairies and goblins live, or the forests, which belong to the brownies and elves, or the valleys, where the sunbeams play, or the caves, where the wind-voices hide, or—I do b'lieve she's asleep. Yes, sir! Both eyes are tight shut, and she has dropped the foxglove she was ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... familiar stories from Plutarch and Chaucer and Ovid take on a new meaning; the very holly on the walls seems alive with the fairy folk, as indeed it should be, according to the pretty, old superstition that elves and fairies hover about all Christmas fetes. Hence, branches are hanging in hall and bower in order that these invisible guests may "hang in each leaf and cling on every bough." The holly, its prickly leaves symbolic of the crown of thorns, and its red berries of the blood of Christ, banishes ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... Rhine and the Black Forest and all the other haunts of elves and fairies and hobgoblins; but for good honest spooks there is no place like home. And what differentiates our spook—Spiritus Americanus—from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it responds to the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... phenomena that the Society had investigated came into the discussion, and Malone heard quite a lot about the Beyond, the Great Summerland, Spirit Mediums and the hypothetical existence of fairies, goblins and elves. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... die In the right way, nor shed such tears." Not at all, the consolers, With many a tear, and many a sigh, Had come resolved by him to lie; And when they left they helped themselves Upon his lands, the greedy elves! And drank from out his brook, And every one of them such suppers took, That when the stag revived, He found his meals reduced; So that while his friends had thrived, He had to fast or die ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... present "charme," which, evidently much corrupted by recitation, is a very singular and interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... her figure: Was it regal as Juno's own? Or only a trifle bigger Than the elves who surround the throne Of the Fairy Queen, and are seen, I ween, By ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... better that day, that the good doctor, when he came, was astonished; and when he heard that the fairies had done him the honor to take him to their Midsummer festival, he was delighted, as well as astonished, and laughingly declared that the elves had robbed him of his patient. "Why, Charley," he continued, "if the fairy Queen can put such a rosy color in your cheeks, and such a sparkle in your eyes in one night, she beats me all to pieces at doctoring. I shall have to give you up to her, and only come here every day to make a social call, ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the end of the overture, is assailed by the briefer motives of sensuous seduction and ecstasy of the middle; the quivering, tickling passages of the violins play round the sacred music of the chorale like so many seductive elves. The Venusberg music is probably the most perfect expression of pure sensuality which has ever been reached in the world of music; it is the complete translation of sensual craving and sensual rapture into the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... of elfs and fays: Who says that with the dreams of myth, These imps and elves disport themselves? Ah no, along the paths of song Do all the tiny ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... 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 the elves and genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable means, with the principle of intelligence lurking within the poor uncultivated clod! Perhaps to that ethereal principle the wonders of the past, as connected with that stream, the glories of the present, and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the long wooded hill clattering like a troop of the queen's cavalry, and turned down toward the great level bow which the road makes before it crosses the Gauley. There was a dim light rising beyond the flat lands where the crooked elves toiled with their backs against the golden moon. But they were under the world yet, with only the yellow haze shining through the door. This was the acre of ghosts. Tale after tale I had heard, sitting on the knee of the old grey negro Clabe, about the horrors of this haunted ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... particularly grand and solemn amongst the towering cliffs, had a rude stone table and seat placed in it, that might have served for a Druid's haunt, whilst a placid stream below enlivened the flowers on its margin, where light-footed elves would gladly have ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... children. The wind came, and they were full and kicking as if five fat imps had sprung into them; and far down in her oppressed subconscious she half-remembered those coarse comedies of her fathers when the elves still dwelt in the homes of men. Many an unnoticed girl in a dank walled garden had tossed herself into the hammock with the same intolerant gesture with which she might have tossed herself into the Thames; and that wind rent the waving wall of woods and lifted the hammock ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... rustle and flutter, as when a covey of wild pigeons has been started; and all the little elves who rejoice in the name of "says he" and "says I" and "do tell" and "have you heard" were speedily flying through the consecrated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... tingled a chime, sweet almost playful music for the elves of midnight and a challenge to baser intruders. Jane must have dozed when she suddenly became conscious ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... under an elder-tree, and I, poor desolate mother! was terrified into giving my babe that name. Great Hyldemoer, be propitiated! Holy Virgin!" and the widow's prayer became a curious mingling of superstition and piety, "Blessed Mary! let not the elves have power over my child! Have I not kept her heart from evil? does not the holy cross lie on her pure breast day and night? Do I not lead her every Sunday, winter and summer, in storm, sunshine, or snow, to the chapel ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... boy had heard stories about elves, but he had never dreamed that they were such tiny creatures. He was no taller than a hand's breadth—this one, who sat on the edge of the chest. He had an old, wrinkled and beardless face, and was dressed in a black frock coat, knee-breeches ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Tailor" and "The Elves," are from Grimms Household Tales, translated by Margaret Hunt (George Bell & Sons, London, 1913). The two volumes of Miss Hunt's translation are, together with her notes and Andrew Lang's introduction, an important contribution to the folklore of the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... best tales; and when at last the child lay down under her lace curtains, her head was full of a curious jumble of Christmas elves, poor children, snow-storms, sugarplums, and surprises. So it is no wonder that she dreamed all night; and this was the dream, ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... present satisfaction, and I shamelessly acknowledge that I experienced keen pangs of regret as her tender illusions, one after another faded into the chill white light of later day. Without actually deceiving her, I permitted her to believe that I too, heard the wondrous voices of Titania and her elves in convention behind the rose bush, or the whispers of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... black braced helmlets For the wild elves' heads of the wild waves wrought. As flowers on the sea are her small green realmlets, Like heavens made out of a child's heart's thought; But these as thorns of her desolate places, Strong fangs that fasten and hold lives fast: And the vizors are framed as for formless ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that he be alive, and dwelling in Avalon with the fairest of all elves: still look the Britons for the day of ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... himself was brought up, so to speak, that he is perhaps most vivid and enthralling. The folk-lore of those lonely sub-arctic tracts is in keeping with the savagery of nature. We rarely, if ever, hear of friendly elves or companionable gnomes there. The supernatural beings that haunt those shores and seas are, for the most part, malignant and malefic. They seem to hate man. They love to mock his toils, and sport with his despair. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair; And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite, Bottom; or Hippolita's description of a chace, or Theseus's answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Miracles, and Traditions, and Abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute what they command them. The Fairies likewise are said to take young Children out of their Cradles, and to change them into Naturall Fools, which Common people do therefore call Elves, and ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... brother of the hills, stood the village of Allathurion; and there was peace between the people of that village and all the folk who walked in the dark ways of the wood, whether they were human or of the tribes of the beasts or of the race of the fairies and the elves and the little sacred spirits of trees and streams. Moreover, the village people had peace among themselves and between them and their lord, Lorendiac. In front of the village was a wide and grassy space, and beyond this ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... thoughts could have never," he falter'd, "I know, Reach'd the heart of Matilda." "Matilda? oh no! But reflect! when such thoughts do not come of themselves To the heart of a woman neglected, like elves That seek lonely places,—there rarely is wanting Some voice at her side, with an evil enchanting To conjure them to her." "O lady, beware! At this moment, around me I search everywhere For a clew to your words"— "You mistake them," she said, Half ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... known, To all who bend before your throne, Fays and fairies, elves and sprites, Beauteous dames and gallant knights, That we, Oberon the grand, Emperor of fairy land, King of moonshine, prince of dreams, Lord of Aganippe's streams, Baron of the dimpled isles That lie in pretty maidans' smiles, Arch-treasurer of all the graces Dispersed ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... circle; at the end of fifteen years some of these circles acquire a diameter of fifteen to twenty feet or more. These are known as fairy rings. Before science dispelled the illusion they were believed to have been the work of witches, elves, or evil spirits, from ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... appear in the names of the days of the week,—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Sunday is the day of the sun, and Monday the day of the moon. Saturday alone is a name of Latin origin. Among the minor beings in the German mythology were fairies, elves, giants, and dwarfs. There were festivals to the gods. Their images were preserved in groves. Lofty trees were held sacred to divinities. The oak and the red ash were consecrated to Donar. Sacrifices, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know. There are a few typical errors; and a "said he," or a "said she," would sometimes make the dialogue more immediately clear; but "I do not write for such dull elves" as have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves. The second volume is shorter than I could wish, but the difference is not so much in reality as in look, there being a larger proportion of narrative in that part. I have lop't and crop't so successfully, however, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... an only son of a physician. His father, a learned man, with the utmost care, taught his little boy history, literature, geography, languages, even music. Hector was a most romantic, impressionable child, who peopled nature with fairies and elves, as he lay under great trees and dreamed fantastic day dreams. Poetry and romantic tales were his delight and he found much to feed his imagination in ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... first thing that suggested itself. If Miss Matty could teach children anything, it would throw her among the little elves in whom her soul delighted. I ran over her accomplishments. Once upon a time I had heard her say she could play "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman?" on the piano, but that was long, long ago; that faint shadow of musical acquirement had died out years before. She ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... note of us, and that may prove an ill beginning of our journey. I had not cared a spark from anvil about the matter had we been further advanced on our way. But this Berkshire has been notoriously haunted, ever since I knew the country, with that sort of malicious elves who sit up late and rise early for no other purpose than to pry into other folk's affairs. I have been endangered by them ere now. But do not fear," he added, "good madam; for wit, meeting with opportunity, will not miss to find ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Those wonderful little elves, the humming-birds, are frequent visitors to those honeysuckles, under which I have placed my reader to be a listener. How many vibrations those little wings make in a minute, how so long a bill can have subtractive force sufficient to get anything from the flower, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the "ox-bow"—a bit of the meadow so smooth, so fantastic in its shape, so secluded, so adorned by its fringe of willows, clematises, grape-vines, and all our water-loving shrubs, that it suggests to every one, who ever read a fairy tale, a scene for the revels of elves and fairies. Yet no Oberon—no Titania dwelt there; but long ago, where there are now some ruinous remains of old houses, and an uncouth new one, stood the first frame house of the lower valley of the Housatonic. It was inhabited by the last Indian who maintained the dignity of a ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... and gnomes and elves, but in all his wanderings over the Lazybones estate in the brightness of noon, the dewy dawn, or dusky eve, or later when the moon bathed every shrub in silver, he had never so much as caught a glimpse of ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... sat with the knaves and the maids, and listened to their harp-playing, and harp they can, these Cornish, like very elves; and then I, too, sang songs and told them stories, for I can talk their tongue somewhat, till they all blest me for a right good fellow. And then I fell to praising up old ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the glow-worm lend thee, The shooting stars attend thee; And the elves also, Whose little eyes glow, Like the sparks ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... supreme God, the author of nature, whose power, though in itself uncontrollable, was yet often exerted by the interposition of his angels and subordinate ministers, who executed his sacred purposes. But they also believed, that all nature was full of other invisible powers: fairies, goblins, elves, sprights; beings stronger and mightier than men, but much inferior to the celestial natures who surround the throne of God. Now, suppose that any one, in these ages, had denied the existence of God and of his angels, would ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Fairies is "Ellyll," an elf, a demon, a goblin. This name conveys these beings to the land of spirits, and makes them resemble the oriental Genii, and Shakespeare's sportive elves. It agrees, likewise, with the modern popular creed ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... Asia to north-western Europe, and since all the pedigrees of their chieftains were traced back to Woden, it is not improbable that he may have been really a deified ancestor of the principal Germanic families. The popular creed, however, was mainly one of lesser gods, such as elves, ogres, giants, and monsters, inhabitants of the mark and fen, stories of whom still survive in English villages as folk-lore or fairy tales. A few legends of the pagan time are preserved for us in Christian books. Beowulf is rich in allusions to these ancient superstitions. If we ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... more freely as he descended the stairs. "Before I would call that gray carle my father, or his child my wife, may I feel all the hammers of the elves and sprites he keeps tortured within that ugly little prison-house playing a death's march on my body! Holy Saint Dunstan, the timbrel-girls came in time! They say these wizards always have fair daughters, and their love ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those who live in water, air or ether. In mediaeval literature, these earth-spirits are often called gnomes, while the water-spirits are spoken of as undines, the air-spirits as sylphs, and the ether-spirits as salamanders. In popular language they are known by many names—fairies, pixies, elves, brownies, peris, djinns, trolls, satyrs, fauns, kobolds, imps, goblins, good people, etc.—some of these titles being applied only to one variety, and others indiscriminately to all. Their forms are many and various, but most frequently human in shape ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... before she began her work, she found a letter, and as she could not read, she laid her broom in the corner, and took the letter to her master and mistress, to see what it was about; and it was an invitation from the elves, who wished the maid to come and stand godmother to one of their children. The maid did not know what to do; and as she was told that no one ought to refuse the elves anything, she made up her mind to go. So there came three little elves, who conducted her into the middle of a high mountain, where ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... on the dewy ground, The quivering moonbeams stray; And the light and shade, By the branches made, Give motion and life to the silent glade, Like fairy elves at play. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... first of these Christian elements [in Bewulf] is the sense of a fairer, softer world than that in which the Northern warriors lived.... Another Christian passage (ll. 107, 1262) derives all the demons, eotens, elves, and dreadful sea-beasts from the race of Cain. The folly of sacrificing to the heathen gods is spoken of (l. 175).... The other point is the belief in ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... it: As I told you, my name is Mogarzea, and my father is an emperor. I was on my way to the Sweet Milk Lake, which lies not far from here, to marry one of the three fairies who have made the lake their home. But on the road three wicked elves fell on me, and robbed me of my soul, so that ever since I have stayed in this spot watching my sheep without wishing for anything different, without having felt one moment's joy, or ever once being able to laugh. And the horrible elves are so ill-natured that ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... hills; a faint tinge of dawn lights the eastern sky; loud and shrill rings out the awakening shout of chanticleer; the grey dawn comes on apace; a hundred birds salute the cheerful morn, and the night-world hurries to its gloomy dens and hiding-places, like the sprites and fairy elves of ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... trifling, self-assuming elves, Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves, Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... them, and lo, the games become a mockery, and he finds that he is cavorting still outside the walls, while the good citizens inside are making sly sport of him. Who, being recently banished from Boyville, has not sought to return? In vain does he haunt the swimming hole; the water elves will have none of him. He hushes their laughter, muffles their calls, takes the essence from their fun, and leaves ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... his physical fears—greater even than that of drowning which sometimes whelmed him in dreams and on ships—was the dread of empty space; a touch of vertigo seized him; the enemy gathered round the torch beneath suddenly seemed elves, puny impossible things far off, and he almost slipped into their midst. But he dragged back his senses. "We must all die," he gasped, "but we need not be precipitate about the business," and shut his eyes as he stood up, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... if ever you are in danger the cat will come and tell us—only elves and pigeons, which fly round your window, know where to ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... and white, yet scarcely seen Are its walls of mantling green; Not a window lets in light But through flowers clustering bright, Not a glance may wander there But it falls on something fair; Garden choice and fairy mound Only that no elves are found; Winding walk and sheltered nook For student grave and graver book, Or a bird-like bower perchance Fit ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... thrush, in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, Sing my fair love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Castle, elves, within and out; Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room; That it may stand till the perpetual doom, In state as wholesome, as in state 'tis fit, Worthy the owner, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various |
