"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bristles," Fred announced, as he touched this small pouch which, in the woods among old hunters would probably be called a "ditty-bag," and contain all manner of little odds and ends likely to be needed from time ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... filed off by night, in silence, leaving behind its munitions and its tents just as they stood, "driven away, almost, by the chastisement of Heaven," says the contemporary chronicler Rabutin, "with but two shots by way of signal." The ditty of the soldier ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Tom. "That must be a second cousin to the ditty entitled ''Tis Well to Meet Her at ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... 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 ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... thus onloaded, reetires to the r'ar, coverin' his chagrin by hummin' a stanzy or two from the well-known ditty, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... toward the coming judgment; and as he stood thinking of the awfulness of this critical moment, the exercises of the Adventists grated on the deep peacefulness of his spirit, for from singing their more beautiful hymns, they had passed to an excited shouting of the old camp-meeting ditty whose refrain is: ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Alcyon bent to mourn, Though fit to frame an everlasting ditty. Whose gentle sprite for Daphne's death doth turn Sweet lays of love to endless plaints ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... change seemed to be that now they faced the brilliant northern lights flashing up the sky, and that either this appearance or some of the whaling narrations of Kinraid had stirred up Daniel Robson's recollections of a sea ditty, which he kept singing to himself in a low, unmusical voice, the burden of which was, 'for I loves the tossin' say!' Bell met them at ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... boatman, bending to his oar, With measured sweep the burden bore, In such wild cadence, as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allan know, 395 "Roderick Vich Alpine, ho! iro!" And near, and nearer as they rowed, Distinct the martial ditty flowed. ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... that that rascally ostler had made poor old Jack drunk too," explained Drysdale, "and he wouldn't be lifted straight. However we got off at last, and hadn't gone a mile before the help (who was maundering away some cursed sentimental ditty or other behind), lurched more heavily than usual, and pitched off into the night somewhere. Blake looked for him for half-an-hour, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Seated a little way off on a low stool was a dingy Spaniard with a telescope laid across his knees, which every little while he would raise to his eye and take a steady glance around the horizon to seaward. At other times he would roll and light a paper cigar, murmuring some low ditty to himself as he sent the smoke in volumes through his nose. A small brass bell hung beside the shed near the battery, together with a telegraphic card, which was connected by a wire strung on low posts, or hooked from rock to rock to the stone ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... the 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
... went below to the officers' corridor. Now and then, through the quiet, a mandolin or guitar could be heard far off twanging some sentimental island ditty; and beneath these sweeter sounds ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited the cause of his calamity. Dot-and-go-One disencumbered himself of his timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing chorus. By the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch, that everybody joined in and sang it clear through from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unhusked rice—called Mopunga here and paddy in India—is poured in, and the three heavy pestles worked in exact time; each jerks up her body as she lifts the pestle and strikes it into the mortar with all her might, lightening the labour with some wild ditty the while, though one hears by the strained voice that she is nearly out of breath. When the husks are pretty well loosened, the grain is put into a large plate-shaped basket and tossed so as to bring the chaff to one side, the vessel is then heaved downwards and a little horizontal motion given ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... land have we reached, and fat is it about the paunch." Then the One-footer leapt away again northwards. They chased after him, and saw him occasionally, but it seemed as if he would escape them. He disappeared at a certain creek. Then they turned back, and one man spake this ditty:— ...
— Eirik the Red's Saga • Anonymous
... no, my lord! Besides, I hoped to hear My ditty warbled into fairer ears, By your own lips; to better ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... 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
... the others thereupon raised a raucous voice and commenced a ditty of the deep sea which was quite unquotable. Weston silenced him with some difficulty and turned ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... one or other of them, and if she did not make up her mind, and give them an answer that very day, she was to be killed and eaten by both of them. In order the more strongly to impress the audience with her forlorn condition, Whackinta sang a tender and touching ditty, composed by herself expressly for the occasion, and sang it so well ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... the course of true love This ditty explains, No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... leave Fairhaven; but I was very confident that the leading lady would not accompany them, and by reason of this confidence, I smiled as I strode through the city of Fairhaven, and hummed under my breath an inane ditty of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... which I showed with unmaidenly frankness, I became the special pet of the sailors. They taught me to sing their songs as they hauled on their ropes, and I recall, as if I had learned it yesterday, one pleasing ditty: ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... piano and hummed to himself in the raucous voice peculiar to most churchmen. Judy in the kitchen meditatively crooned to her maids an ancient lamentation, and out on the lawn, Arthur sang to his mother an amorous ditty in compliment to her youthful appearance. Honora, the song-bird, silent, heard with amusement this sudden lifting up of voices, each unconscious of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... is the way to Boston town? One foot up, the other foot down, That is the way to Boston town. Boston town's changed into a city, But I've no room to change my ditty. ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... "A vulgar ditty, by my faith," said the exquisite, "in the true English style, all fol de rol, and a vile chorus to split the tympanum of one's auricular organs: do, for heaven's sake, Echo, let us have some divertissement of a ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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
... 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 ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... (who lived above an hundred Years ago) in the third Part of his Treatise, pag. 179, speaking of Motetts or Anthems, complains thus:—'But I see not what Passions or Motions it can stir up, being as most Men doe commonlie Sing,—leaving out the Ditty—as it were a Musick made onely for Instruments, which will indeed shew the Nature of the Musick, but never carry the Spirit and (as it were) that lively Soule which the Ditty giveth; but of this enough. And to return to the expressing of the Ditty, the Matter is now ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... the tax in the commons. It was defended by Grenville, who in the course of his speech constantly demanded where another tax could be laid. Mimicking his querulous tone, Pitt repeated aloud the words of an old ditty, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where". The nickname, Gentle shepherd, stuck by Grenville. The bill passed the commons and was sent up to the lords. For the first time since the revolution the lords divided on a money-bill, and voted 49 against, to 83 ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Heathcote; Heathcote looked at Dick; Duffield hummed a ditty. How could he do such a thing at such a time, and in such a place? Oh, had he been only in the Mountjoy waggonette on a lonely road, what a business meeting they could have held! As it was, there was only time to crush the debtor's hat down over his ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... bore in fact the name of the illustrious 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
... 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
... Mrs. Boz, and the Chairman, and Vice, and the Traditional Priest sang the 'Deep 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, for Mr. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... note of personality is always present there. A low laugh in the gracious mouth of Chaucer, a harsh rebuke on the stern lips of Milton, a modish sneer in the smile of Pope,—it was now a stifled complaint, now an amorous ditty, and now a riotous shout with Burns, who was as much a poet through his personality as through his genius. He put his life into his song; and not to know what his life was, is not to know what his song is,—why it was a consolation to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... know "The Oldham Weaver?" Not unless you are Lancashire born and bred, for it is a complete Lancashire ditty. I will ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fascination, and he wore a loose-caped cloak over garments of closely-fitting black, which opened in front to display a mass of crumpled white, amidst which scintillated an enormous jewel. In his hand he held a curious black disc, with which he beat time to a ditty, of which Mr. Punch only succeeded in catching the ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... mother was wont to sing it to the virginals. 'Cold to bosom,'" he reiterated with a plangent cadence; "I remember them all, sir; from the cradle I had a gift for music." And then, with an ample flirt of his bow, he broke, all beams and smiles, into this ingenuous ditty: ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... the house, he went splashing down the road with a very elastic tread, springing over the starlit puddles, and trolling out some sentimental ditty. He reached the inn, and went up to his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... spell of foul weather to men that have sailed the salt seas! Haul forward your stools, mates, and we'll have a concert and make all snug. I warrant some of you can troll a ditty, though ye be too modest to own it; and not being plagued wi' modesty myself, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the Penygwryd A sweet little maiden is hid. She's so rosy and pretty I write her this ditty ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... fire sparkling beneath the bank of evergreen, and making the roses come into the fair singer's cheeks, and warming the golden sheen of her hair, had much to do with it. When she came to "Ben Bolt," that old ditty that has all the pathos of our lost youth in it, there was a tiny quiver in her voice; and when she finished, had he been near he would have seen the glint of two unshed tears in her eyes, for the song carried her thoughts to where her mother was ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... the "Ecclesiastical History" contain a letter by one Cuthbert to his fellow-student Cuthwine, describing the manner of Bede's death. In this letter is contained a pious ditty in the vernacular, which Bede, who was "learned in our native songs," composed at the time when he was contemplating the approach ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... straight before him, raises one hand above his head, and rests the other on his hip. His heels must never touch the floor, nor may he, while bobbing thus comically up and down and trolling his lively ditty, suffer his face to relax from that expression of sober and dignified earnestness which marks the true Szekler. It is a dance and a display of great physical strength and endurance at the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... cannot express a joy that shall be full and pure; for to keep the purity nothing would have to be named which carried the least suggestion of sadness with it, and, in the world that human language refers to, such a condition would exclude every situation possible. "O joy, O joy," would be the whole ditty: hence some dialecticians, whose experience is largely verbal, think ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... proceed to the southward, off the coast. Thorhall prepared for his voyage out below the island, having only nine men in his party, for all of the remainder of the company went with Karlsefni. And one day when Thorhall was carrying water aboard his ship, and was drinking, he recited this ditty:[35-1] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... down on the bench in front of the yurta, and I could distinctly hear every word of a sentimental, gently melancholy little ditty which had once been ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... told you now the origin of this most lively ditty, Which Johnny Bull dislikes as "dull and stupid"—what a pity! With "Hail Columbia" it is sung, in chorus full and hearty— On land and main we breathe the strain John made for his tea party, No matter how we rhyme the words, the music speaks them handy, And where's the fair can't ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... the city He carols wild and free Some sweet unmeaning ditty In many a changing key; And each succeeding verse is Commingled with the curses Of those whose sleep ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... 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
... Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its walls 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 From vermin was ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and the chase gave life a colour; but they are dead. A cart comes slowly down the road, and the labourer with it sings as he jogs along; but, if you listen, it tells you nothing of wheat, or hay, or flocks and herds, nothing of the old gods and heroes. It is a street ditty such as you may hear the gutter arabs yelling in London, and ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... till 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 ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... trusting that the sinuosities of the ground, broken as it was into knells and sand-pits, would permit me to obtain a sight of the musicians before I should be observed by them. As I advanced, the old ditty was again raised. The voices seemed those of a man and two boys; they were rough, but kept good time, and were managed with too much skill to belong to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... like to have me sing to you," said aunt Madge; and she began, in a low voice, a little ditty ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... slender youth crowned the swiftest workwoman with field flowers, withering in the nearest swathe. All wove garlands, then made for the shade of the trees and shared a low basket of golden apples. One had a lute and another sang a love ditty with ethereal passion. They were in Arcadia,—silken shepherdesses, slim princes in disguise,—and they breathed the sweetness, the innocent yet lofty grace which ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... made no answer, but, lifting his babe from its mother's lap, commenced tossing it in the air and singing a pleasant nursery ditty. Caroline sat in a moody state of mind for some minutes, and then left the room to give some directions about tea. On her return, Ellis said, in as cheerful a voice as if ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... when once more his persecutor was commencing his childish ditty, he felt as if, from the top of a mountain a hundred miles away, a cold cloud came journeying through the sky, and descended upon him. He opened his eyes: there was Joan, and the cold cloud was her soft cool hand on his forehead. The next thing he knew was that she was feeding him like a child. But ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... [CH] 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 he with the timid otters?—lies he in the cavern dead? Hark!—the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... melodies are by no means uniformly sad, some ditty of the joyousness of springtime or ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... best to keep the party amused, and got Paul Lizard, who could sing a good song, to strike up a merry stave; and Paul, once set going, was generally loath to stop. His full manly voice trolled forth many a ditty, sounding above the whistling of the storm and the roar of the waves. Then adventures and stories were told, and yarn after yarn was spun, most of which were no novelties to the hearers. The boatswain, who seldom condescended ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... LYKKE. Alas, it is women of twenty and thereabouts that ditty speaks of. Lady Inger Gyldenlove is nigh on fifty, and wily to boot beyond all women. It will be no light matter to overcome her. But it must be done—at any cost. If I succeed in winning certain advantages over her that the King has ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... guessed that all was well with the claims, and the assurance served to lighten his spirits. Soon he heard Andy singing at the top of his voice, and his own thoughts fell into accord with the words of the ditty. He began to sing also, whenever he knew the words. Farther back, Pink took it up, and then the others joined in, until all unconsciously they had turned the monotonous drive into a ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... advantage of his absence, the soldier not on guard went to the forecastle to hear the prisoners singing. He found the ten together, in high good humour, listening to a "shanty" sung by three of their number. The voices were melodious enough, and the words of the ditty—chanted by many stout fellows in many a forecastle before and since—of that character which pleases the soldier nature. Private Grimes forgot all about the unprotected state of the deck, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... singer, who imitated the gramophone in utilizing a big megaphone, to make up for the deficiencies of his voice — according to his own statement. He hid behind the curtain of Captain Nilsen's cabin, and through the megaphone came a ditty intended to describe life on the Barrier from its humorous side. It was completely successful, and we again had a laugh that did us good. Performances of this kind, of course, only have a value to those who have taken part in or are acquainted with the events to which they refer. In ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... put 'em where the regular train for Wallace could pick 'em up. Burke is seven miles up the canon from Wallace and the grade drops two hundred and thirty-five feet to the mile, being a masterpiece of engineering. Ed gets his two cars to the main line, all right, whistling a careless ditty. Then when they should of stopped they did not. They kept sneaking and creaking along on him. He couldn't get the brake of the forward car up very tight, and in setting the brake of the rear car, with a brakeman's stick for a lever, he broke the chain. Then his two cars really started ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... this? A close palkee, with a passenger; the bearers, with elbows sharply crooked, and calves all varicose, trotting to a monotonous, jerking ditty, which the sirdar, or leader, is impudently improvising, to the refrain of Putterum, ("Easy now!") at the expense of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... sense of "oils are spotty"; I know the height of Siniolchum's peak; I know that some may think my ditty dotty; But I cannot tell a bubble from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... 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. ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... songs muttered over to get them by heart: Nay, the Mavis at once sung aloud in his glee, And looked for a spot where love's dwelling should be; And ever since then, both in garden and grove, The Mavis tunes first a short ditty to love, While all the young gentlemen birds that were near Fell to trimming their jackets anew for the year: One and all they determined to seek for a mate, And thought it a folly for seasons to wait, So even agreed, before Valentine's day, To join hearts in love; but the ladies said, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... are actually being offered a premium of three hundred pounds to remove their sons from Osborne. On the other hand promotion from the lower deck was to be encouraged, and in future every youngster entering the Navy would metaphorically carry a broad-pennant in his ditty-box. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... entered the saloon where Manley was still drinking heavily, his face crimson and blear-eyed and brutalized, his speech thickened disgustingly. He was sprawled in an armchair, waving an empty glass in an erratic attempt to mark the time of a college ditty six or seven years out of date, which he was trying to sing. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... gentle motion and the lulling song. They sang and rocked till the lids came creeping down, and hid the great blue eyes; but still they sang and rocked, lulling the boy, and gladdening their own hearts; for the quaint old Breton ditty was tunable as the lark that carols over the green wheat in April; and the words so simple and motherly, that a nation had taken them to heart. Such songs bind ages together and make the lofty and the low akin by the great ties of music and the heart. Many a Breton peasant's bosom in the olden time ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Johnson, Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled The Window, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by Strahan in December 1870. "A puppet," Tennyson called the song-book, "whose only merit ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... army and betook himself to the Middle Temple, where possibly he spent more time over lyrics than over the law, for a biographer, describing this period of his life, passes over his legal acquirements, but says that 'his vein for ditty and amorous ode was esteemed most lofty, insolent, and passionate.' He and Spenser were very congenial companions, and later Spenser, speaking of their great friendship, said: 'He pip'd, I sang, and when he ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... brings all the temporal estate he was possessed of at his death, as guns, bows and arrows, beads, feathers, match coat etc. This relation is the chief mourner, being clad in moss, with a stick in his hand, keeping a mournful ditty for three or four days, his face being black with the smoke of pitch pine mixed with bear's oil. All the while he tells the dead mans relations and the rest of the spectators who that dead person was, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... the room. A broad flood of moonlight came in through the curtainless window; everything was as I had last seen it; and though the domestic squabble in the back lane was, unhappily for me, allayed, I yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing, on his way home, the then popular comic ditty called, 'Murphy Delany.' Taking advantage of this diversion I lay down again, with my face towards the fireplace, and closing my eyes, did my best to think of nothing else but the song, which was every moment growing fainter ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... silent and deep Through the noisome and smoke-grimed city, Turning the wheels and the spindles, And the great looms that have no pity,— Weight, and pulley, and windlass, And steel that flashes and kindles, And hears no forest-learnt ditty, Not ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... over the rough floor brings indolent, half-indifferent guessing as to which of the lesser four-foots they belonged. The whippoorwills down in the river woods call until they drop off, one by one, and the timid ditty of a singing mouse that lives under the floor by my cot is the last message the sandman sends to close our eyes before sleep. And such sleep! That first steel-blue starlit night in the open we said that we meant to sleep and sleep it out, even if we lost a whole day by it. It seemed but ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... side 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. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... acquaintance of her father's clerk, and so brought them no more together. But Christine was pained by Dennis's icy manner, and saw that she was thoroughly misunderstood. When asked to sing, she chose a rather significant ditty: ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... took her hollow lute,— Tumultuous,—and, in chords that tenderest be, He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, In Provence called "La belle dame sans mercy": Close to her ear touching the melody;— Wherewith disturbed, she uttered a soft moan: He ceased—she panted quick—and suddenly Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone: Upon his knees ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... time whereof thou weetest well— The melancholy morning of the World— He mopes or mumbles, sleeps or shouts for glee, And shakes his sides—a cavern-hutted King! But when the ouzel in the gaps at eve Doth pipe her dreary ditty to the surge All tumbling in the soft green level light, He sits as quiet as a thick-mossed rock, And dreameth in his cold old savage way Of gliding barges on the wine-dark waves, And glowing shapes, and sweeter ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... on singing, and Roaring Billy insisted on bawling out at the top of his stentorian lungs the doleful ditty of "Lord Bateman and his Daughters," which ran to thirty verses, and lasted half-an-hour. Hardly were the last words out of his mouth, when an impatient wight struck up the "Leathern Bottel," and heartily did they all ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Gibson but known it. Osborne and Roger knowing that the wife of the former was a Frenchwoman, and, conscious of each other's knowledge, felt doubly awkward, while Molly was as much confused as though she herself were secretly married. However, Cynthia carolled the saucy ditty out, and her mother smiled at it, in total ignorance of any application it might have. Osborne had instinctively gone to stand behind Cynthia, as she sate at the piano, so as to be ready to turn over the leaves of her music if she required it. He kept his hands in his ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and Loaysa sang a sprightly ditty with such good effect, that the negro was in ecstacies, and felt as if the time for opening ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... taffeta very fine, bearing in their hands two vast silver salvers full of divers fruits, such as the season yielded, and set them on the table before the King. Which done, they withdrew a little space and fell a singing to music a ditty, of which the opening ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... by native dancers. Two at a time—a young man and woman—stand vis-a-vis and alternately sing a love ditty, the burthen of the theme usually opening by the regret of the young man that his amorous overtures have been disregarded. Explanations follow, in the poetic dialogue, as the parties dance around each other, keeping a slow step to the plaintive ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... list to me, I'll sing a mournful ditty About a poor young serving-gal, What lived ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... sweetly-worded. 'Ditty' (Lat. dictatum) strictly denotes the words of a song as distinct from the musical accompaniment; it is now applied to any little piece intended to be sung: comp. Lyc. 32. For a similar panegyric on Lawes' musical genius compare Son. xiii. The musical alliteration ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... has it come to this pass?" Said the Little Peetookle. "Dear me! It certainly seems your horrible screams Intended for music must be!" The Mastodon stopped, his ditty he dropped, And murmured, "Good morning, my dear! I never will sing to a sensitive thing That shatters ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... at full 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 down ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... on, sunk in that thoughtful melancholy, with which twilight and solitude impress the mind. Michael had now ended his ditty, and nothing was heard but the drowsy murmur of the breeze among the woods, and its light flutter, as it blew freshly into the carriage. They were at length roused by the sound of fire-arms. St. Aubert ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... mellow wedding bells— Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtledove that listens while she gloats On ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... comic ditty of a convivial order. She put into it much vivacity, appealing to the audience to join in the chorus with a pleading, "Now all together, boys." She had tripping steps and dainty kicks that went well with the melody. When she went off half a dozen men rose in their places, and aimed nuggets at ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... (who was a shipwright) sang one of his national songs to an accompaniment of thumb-snapping (to imitate castanets), at which he was very expert. He had a fine baritone voice, and his song was full of fire, being a famous bull-fighting ditty, in which El Toro came ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... sing for her also, albeit tunelessly, and as he sat blond and roseate and gay, warbling after his fashion on the hearth, her clouded old eyes were relumed with a radiance that came from within and was independent of the prosaic light of day. His favorite ditty was an old nursery rhyme in which the name "Pretty Polly Hopkins" occurs with flattering iteration, and he began to apply it to her, for he had come to think her very beautiful—such is the gracious power of ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... mountains seek, O stranger from the city? Is it perhaps some foolish freak Of thine, to put the words I speak Into a plaintive ditty? ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... her head approvingly when Ward took up the ditty where she left off and sang it with the rollicking enthusiasm which only a man who has soothed restless cattle on a stormy night ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... by unseen hands, evidently appertaining to aforesaid legs, were being dropped into the laps of several girls perched like a flock of white birds on the railing below; while a manly voice 'fell like a falling star', as it sung this pensive ditty to ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... soul! new 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, And buy, to glad thy smiling chops, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... 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
... ditty, and not too nice in its sentiments, as, indeed, why should it be, to please its hearers? There was a lilt in its chorus which even Stefan's unmusical voice could not hide, and it set the men's heads nodding in time as they roared it out together, waking the echoes with the declaration that—"The ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... condescended to chant this ditty to his loving subjects, was a monstrously fat old man, with only one eye; and a nose which bore evidence to the frequency, strength, and depth of his potations. He wore a murrey-coloured plush jerkin, stained with the overflowings of the tankard, and much the worse for wear, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... wondered that at the 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 voices ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... intervening space and be the first to touch their comrade. What visions of early days come back to us—days when we clasped hands in a circle and danced about one or two children placed in the centre of the ring, and chanted in unison some refrain, upon reading in the same commentator to Horace a ditty which runs:[79] ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... whooped, and 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 in the corridors of the hotel. All went well up to the last verse. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I'll court in her sequester'd haunts, By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell, Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, And Health, and Peace, and Contemplation dwell. There Study shall with Solitude recline, And Friendship pledge me to his fellow swains, 110 And Toil and Temperance sedately twine The slender ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... excelling In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille; And 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 beauty ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... very original. Then there were her 'Songs for Little People,' at once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's Porgie,' and that ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the coming Imperial spirit, entitled 'Black Him In ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... scuppers, for it was still early morning, and under the directions of Hayton, the bo'sun, the swabbers were at work in the waist and forecastle. Despite the heat and the stagnant air, one of the toilers found breath to croak a ribald buccaneering ditty: ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... on their feet"—a catch phrase which, some years ago, added greatly to the gaiety of Paris, but in which I must confess to seeing no gleam of wit—became the historic property of the school. He recited to them, till they were word-perfect, a music-hall ditty of the early 'eighties—Sur le bi, sur le banc, sur le bi du bout du banc, and delighted them with dissertations on Mme. Yvette Guilbert's earlier repertoire. But for him they would have gone to their lives' end without knowing that pognon ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... 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 sins ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... frog, the wool of a bat, an adder's tongue, an owl's wing, and many other things, of which you will find the list in Shakspeare. Now and then they walked around the pot, repeating a very sensible ditty:— ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... 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
... foundations of 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the pleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which the improvvisatori produced on the children of the desert. "When the bard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement was almost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild tribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by their self-taught poets, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... easy-chair, I had found one of the new chairs exactly suited to my sensibilities, and should be secretly pleased if the old one were to softly and suddenly vanish away during our absence at the sea-side, after the manner of the Boojum of ditty. I have really no adequate reason to give why I delayed to make this amiable confession. It was the consciousness, however, that I had it to make which had prompted me to help my darling out of her quandary ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... first time that Talbot had seen this warlike ditty. Its intention was to guard soldiers from saying too much in front of strangers. Talbot vowed, however, to apply its moral to himself at all times and ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... had finished playing a melancholy air, exclaimed, "That was but a melancholy ditty, miss—we'll try a ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... causing a general stampede among the disciples of the onion and a hasty adjournment of the festival. What law against irregular assemblages was infringed by these onion-worshipers is not clear, for one can hardly detect sedition lurking under the rustic ditty, and it is equally difficult to suspect an Orsini bomb conspiracy of being typified by the conjuring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin redbreast" in The White Devil, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's Fourth Song,—"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Ferd. The ditty does remember my drown'd father. This is no mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes.[389-102] I hear ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale?[60] Ah! such, alas! the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.[bw] Pride! bend thine eye from Heaven to thine estate, See how the Mighty shrink into a song! Can ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... master and the overseers, O Lord! so runs our chaplain's weekly ditty; Unreasonable prayers God never hears, He knows that they're ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... or girl has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now living ever saw ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... Well, I always thought that there was no need of killin' people. Let them alone, and they will all die themselves; and as for the enemy, let them alone, and they will come home waggin' their tails behind them, as the ditty says. Well, I must tell ye. Abe's been to war. He didn't see the enemy, nor fight, nor nothin'. But a wild Indian came right into his camp, and the soldiers started up to kill him, and what do ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... yet be as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such heart did once the poet bless, Who, pouring here a[3] later ditty, Could find no refuge from distress, But in the milder grief ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... ditty did not materially differ from those which Gilbart was in the habit of assimilating from his morning newspaper; nor were they much more fatuously expressed. Twenty-four hours ago he might even have applauded them as noisily ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of her companions, remembering the physician's instructions, endeavoured to lull her by singing, in a low voice, a tender little air, which was a particular favourite of Annette's. Probably it had some connexion in her mind with her own story; for every fond girl has some ditty of the kind, linked in her thoughts ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... heed her. All of a moment his heart vented itself in a sea-ditty so loud, and clear, and mellow, that windows opened, and out came nightcapped heads to hear him carol the lusty stave, making ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... troop off down the dark narrow stairs for the triumphal entry. The splendour of this parade may not be marred by any clown costumes, so the two novices are left upstairs, peering through holes in the dressing-room wall. The big arena is all an expanse of eager faces. The band strikes up a stirring ditty. A wave of excitement sweeps through the dingy quarters of the Garden. The show is on, and how ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... by singing us a fashionable ditty," remarked Ferdishenko, and looked at the mistress of the house, to ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... blankets warm She blinkit on her sodger; An' aye he gies the tozie drab The tither skelpin' kiss, While she held up her greedy gab, Just like an aumous dish; Ilk smack still, did crack still, Just like a cadger's whip; Then staggering an' swaggering He roar'd this ditty up— ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... uncontrollable regret that he had not been born a "swain" (as he put it). Suddenly, however, one of his roulades ceased with more abruptness than usual and the enchanted Tristram waited in vain for the ditty to be resumed. The fact was that Captain Salt had glanced out of the window and seen at a stable door across the court a man stooping with his back to the inn and washing down the legs of a dark ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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
... governor of Keeshee begged the favour of a little rum and medicine to heal 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. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... cuckoo is heard for the first time yearly about the same place, and the hill tops not far from the abodes of man are its favourite resort. Thus we have the ditty:— ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... remained pink, and flushed not thistle purple like the rest of her countenance. Even the serving-man smiled to himself, a mocking smile, and hummed in a low voice, as he continued to lay the blows thickly on Miles, a ditty having this refrain— ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... was groping inside the biscuit-box. He pulled out a little ditty-bag and carefully extracted a ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... her to her seat, and asked him whether, in his country, they did not do service and devoir to the divine Dame Musica? And whereas he replied that verily they did, that in his own land he had heard many a sweet ditty sung by noble ladies to the harp and lute, that the children would ever sing at their sports, and that he, too, had oftentimes uplifted his voice in singing of madrigals, she besought him that he would make proof of some ballad or song. The rest of the company joining ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... form and style of Meleager Moore could not pretend; but as these are rather songs on Greek motives than translations from the Greek, the slackness and dilution matter less. But the strictly miscellaneous division holds some of the best work. We could no doubt dispense with the well-known ditty (for once very nearly the "rubbish" with which Moore is so often and so unjustly charged) where Posada rhymes of necessity to Granada, and where, quite against the author's habit, the ridiculous term "Sultana" is fished ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... The weather still remained cold. When Gudrun dismounted before the house at Holl, there was no one outside to greet her or announce her arrival, and so she entered, going straight into the bastofa. There she found her father sitting on his bed, knitting a seaman's mitten, crooning an old ditty ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... song that," a seargeant said; "But where's poor Pansy? gone, I fear" "Ay, mustered out at Ashby's Gap" "I see; now for a live man's song; Ditty for ditty—prepare to cheer. My bluebirds, you can fling ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... into silence again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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
... Simon was called on for a good old Christmas song. He bethought himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye, and a voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it ran occasionally into a falsetto, like the notes of a split reed, he quavered forth a quaint old ditty,— ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... drank deeply of the sea-water. "Ha! ha!" he laughed, tossing his arms wildly in the air, and gazing at Gaff with the glaring eyes of a maniac, "that's the nectar for me. Come, boys, I'll sing you a ditty." ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... success at the Theater Lyrique under the patronage of Madame Miolan-Carvalho. One day I said to her: "The time may come when you will be giving concerts." She was indignant. "Nevertheless," I continued, "let me teach you a sure encore." I played her Stephen Foster's immortal ditty. She was delighted. The sequel was that it served her even a better turn than ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... malignance by the way. Then Chatelet was called upon to accompany M. du Bartas on the piano while he mangled the great solo from Figaro; and the way being opened to music, the audience, as in duty bound listened while Chatelet in turn sang one of Chateaubriand's ballads, a chivalrous ditty made in the time of the Empire. Duets followed, of the kind usually left to boarding-school misses, and rescued from the schoolroom by Mme. du Brossard, who meant to make a brilliant display of her dear Camille's talents for M. de ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... as in this instance of their forebearance. For somewhat similar reasons, perhaps, married people alone are here permitted to eat ducks. They hold their corrobories, (midnight ceremonies), and sing the same melancholy ditty that breaks the stillness of night on the shores of Jervis' Bay, or on the banks of the Macquarie; and during the ceremony imitate the several birds and beasts with which they are acquainted. If these inland tribes differ in anything from those ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring, Everything did banish moan, Save the nightingale alone; She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, That to hear it was great pity.... Ah, thought I, thou mourn'st in vain, None takes pity on thy pain. Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee; Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee; King Pandion he is dead, All thy friends are lapp'd in lead[112]; All thy ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg |
