"Elves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his name should really be spelled, Aelfred, [Footnote: That is, the rede or councel of the elves. A great many Old-English names are called after the elves or fairies.] was the youngest son of King Aethelwulf, and was born at Wantage in Berkshire in 849. His mother was Osburh daughter of Oslac the King's cup-bearer, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... gods, all nature was peopled with divinities. There were elves of two kinds: black elves, called trolls, who were frost-spirits, and guarded treasure (seeds) in the ground; and white elves, who lived in mid-heaven, and danced on the earth in fairy rings, where a mortal entering died. Will-o'-the-wisps hovered ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... 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 of ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... must be the scales which weigh out the innumerable and delicate bits of pleasantry which give the charm to social life! The words to relate the legends connected with the knights and castles of chivalry, saints, witches, elves, spooks, and gypsies, the foreigners among us never acquire, or at least never so as to have the ready and delicate use of them in social life, until their foreign character has become quite absorbed in the fully developed American, and the taste, if not the material for picturing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... 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. ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... fays, nor magic charm, Have pow'r, or will, to work us harm; For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, wish ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... away, Elves! while the dew is sweet, Come to the dingles where fairies meet; Know that the lilies have spread their bells O'er all the pools in our forest dells; Come away, under arching bows we'll float, Making each urn a fairy boat; We'll row them with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... of a 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
... red lips were fading beneath the earth. And one day she sat and leaned her head against the flower-pot, and the little elf of the rose found her asleep. Then he seated himself by her ear, talked to her of that evening in the arbor, of the sweet perfume of the rose, and the loves of the elves. Sweetly she dreamed, and while she dreamt, her life passed away calmly and gently, and her spirit was with him whom she loved, in heaven. And the jasmine opened its large white bells, and spread forth its sweet fragrance; it had no other way of showing its grief ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of hers! Drenched irises. And they used to dance like elves of delight. And all through a foolish misunderstanding about a shark. What a tragedy misunderstandings are. That pretty romance broken and over just because Mr. Glossop would insist that it ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Peggy's heart almost stood still, realizing the peril to which the children had exposed themselves. Without doubt their immunity was due to their very audacity. Apparently the boar had not connected these fearless mites with human beings whom he knew to be vulnerable, but had fancied them sportive elves, against whom his tusks would be powerless. Peggy registered a vow not to let Dorothy out of her sight again while ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... over you, and you will go elf-wild!—so say the Danes. I had unconsciously laid myself down on haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely 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, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... In Scandinavia the dead were called elves, and lived feasting in their barrows or in hills. These became the seat of ancestral cults. The word "elf" also means any divine spirit, later a fairy. "Elf" and side may thus, like the "elf-howe" and the sid or mound, have a parallel history. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... monks and nuns paced along, on carnal thoughts intent; ancient ladies and bewigged gentlemen seemed hurrying to enjoy a social cup of tea, and groan over the tax; barrels staggered and stuck through narrow ways, as if temperance were still among the lost arts, while bears, apes, imps, and elves pattered or sparkled by, as if a second Walpurgis Night had come, and ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... factor, 'Tisn't, no 'tisn't, the sub-contractor; 'Tisn't machinery. No! In fact, What Sweating is, in a manner exact, After much thinking we cannot define. Who is to blame for it? Well, we incline To think that the Sweated (improvident elves!) Are, at the bottom, to blame themselves! They're poor of spirit, and weak of will, They marry early, have little skill; They herd together, all sexes and ages, And take too tamely starvation wages; And if they will do so, much to their shame, How can the Capitalist be to blame? Remedies? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... pace. What a gorgeous night! Dotted all round this skeleton of what was once a wood, but now merely a few sticks of charred tree trunks, and in and out as far as the eye could see, were scores of tiny fires. The flames danced up and down like elves, and crowded round the fires were groups of our boys, laughing and chatting as if there was no such thing as war. Now and then the flash of the big howitzers momentarily lighted up the whole landscape. What ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... be from me, to ape those saving Elves, Who rob God of his due, to grow richer themselves; But be mine the pursuit, which all good men approve, To strive to be rich in the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... follow me— You, fairy elves that be, Which circle on the green— Come, follow Mab, your queen! Hand in hand let's dance around, For this place ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... supposed to be water gods in the rivers and elves throughout the forest. The heavens were peopled with minor gods, as well as the great gods, and the spirits of the unseen world could make themselves visible or invisible to men ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... the fire. Fresh birch logs blistered and sputtered as creeping curls of bluish flame enwrapped them. Kindling rapidly, they threw out fantastic lights, which danced like a regiment of red elves around the old ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... 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 ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... sound of leaves, Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs, Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as spring Flowers in veins of trees; bringing such peace As comes to seamen when they dream of seas. "O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight! Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moon To thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail, Above that mountain—arch your green benediction Once more over my heart. Muffle the sound of bells, Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley; Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water: Take ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... much 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 ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... be known that in those days the Northmen believed in dreams and omens and warnings—indeed, they were altogether a very superstitious people, having perfect faith in giants, good and bad; elves, dark and bright; wraiths, and fetches, and guardian spirits— insomuch that there was scarcely one among the grown-up people who had not seen some of these fabulous creatures, or who had not seen some other people who had either seen them themselves ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... spot before, but around them lay the flood of sunshine shimmering like golden water; and beyond the red line of the fence at the end of the garden, where the rich pomegranate bloom tried to blush the roses down, the hot air danced merrily above the rough stone wall like a million microscopic elves at play. Peace! everywhere was peace! and in it the full heart of Nature beat out in radiant life. Peace in the voice of the turtle-doves among the willows! peace in the play of the sunshine and the murmur of the wind! peace in the growing flowers and hovering butterfly! Jess looked out at the ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... one laugh with him, though one could not quite tell why. We lads of the harbour loved him very much, for his good-humour and for his tenderness—never more so, however, than when, by night, in the glow of the fire, he told us long tales of the fairies and wicked elves he had dealt with in his time, twinkling with every word, so that we were sorely puzzled to know whether to take him in jest ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle streams from crystal ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Elves and Fairies, and then Man of an Ash-Tree, and last of all the Beasts, and of his ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... goblin of darkness. The heart of Edwin, which no human terror could appal, sunk within him; his nerves trembled, and the objects that surrounded him, swam in confusion before his eyes. But it is not for virtue to tremble; it is not for conscious innocence to fear the power of elves and goblins. Edwin presently recollected himself, and a gloomy kind of tranquility assumed the empire of his heart. He was more watchful than ever for his beloved Imogen; he gazed with threefold earnestness ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... of this class which we have selected, "The Wood of Tontla,"[135] is specially interesting from its resemblance to Tieck's well-known German story of "The Elves," which must originally have been derived from the same source as ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... sleeping earth, while far away from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk. Fire-flies hung in bright clusters on the dewy leaves, that waved in the cool night-wind; and the flowers stood gazing, in very wonder, at the little Elves, who lay among the fern-leaves, swung in the vine-boughs, sailed on the lake in lily cups, or danced on the mossy ground, to the music of the hare-bells, who rung out their merriest peal in honor ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... hand he held a pipe, and a crooked stick in his right. His forces consisted also wholly of satyrs, aegipanes, agripanes, sylvans, fauns, lemures, lares, elves, and hobgoblins, and their number was seventy-eight thousand one hundred and fourteen. The signal or word common to all the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the mysterious whispering echo, they repudiated all talk of acoustics. It was for them an eerie thing, like the laughter of elves or the shriek ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... she had been born among white flowers in the moonlight, and because the afterglow of the sunrise, from which the elves flee, crimsoned her cheeks when I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to my cabin in the woods," she said, solemnly, and with her finger up, "I shall whistle all the fairy folk into a ring, all the elves and the pixies, and the little brown gnomes who burrow in the leaves and look for all the world like pine cones, and I shall tell them what you did, and to-night they will come to your cabin, and will pinch you black and blue, and stick thorns into you, and rub you with ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... have The tale of Goody Cutpurse? Alice.—Nay now, nay; Those stories are too childish, Uncle John, Too childish even for little Willy here, And I am older, two good years, than he; No, let us have a tale of elves that ride, By night, with jingling reins, or gnomes of the mine, Or water-fairies, such as you know how To spin, till Willy's eyes forget to wink, And good Aunt Mary, busy as she is, Lays down her knitting. Uncle John.—Listen to ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... 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 once ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... 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, ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... bright of eye, Who the wildflowers' warders are: Ouphes, that chase the firefly; Elves, that ride the shooting-star: Fays, who in a cobweb lie, Swinging on a moonbeam bar; Or who harness bumblebees, Grumbling on the clover leas, To a blossom or a breeze— That's their faery car. If you care, you too may see There are ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... continued the dwarf, "that we see many strange things; but I have nothing very remarkable at present to relate, for my journey was an ordinary one but for my accident. I had to see the elves who had charge of healing herbs, and gain their permission to cull them, for they are very particular that they should be pulled in the right season, and they so cover their gardens up that one could easily think ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... look, look up at the skies! O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes! The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!— Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... behave so insolently as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence their hard doom; they are condemned to live until the Day of Judgment.[19] Many of them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the Kow-riggwans for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night round the old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes ill-humoured. But can we be surprised at them, remembering their ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... say, He set out to see what people were kind, Before he took presents their way. 'This year I will give but to givers, To those who make presents themselves,' With a nod of his head old Santa Claus said To his band of bright officer-elves. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... How could I take real live little girls into the kingdom of the elves and gnomes and pixies? I shouldn't ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... mountain near Tokio, is said to be full of these long-nosed elves, but many other mountains are inhabited by them, for they like lonely places ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 Over us;—we are ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Alice, and received a note of thanks from her, and also a letter from her mother, in which she said that the book had taught the Princess to like reading, and to do it out of lesson-time. To the Duke he gave a copy of a book entitled "The Merry Elves." In his little note of thanks for this gift, the boy said, "Alice and I want you to love us both." Mr. Dodgson sent Princess Alice a puzzle, promising that if she found it out, he would give her a "golden chair ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... high, back of the leper settlement at Molokai, is a ledge that can be reached neither from above nor below, and on it stands a temple of their construction. In Pepeeko, Hilo, the natives labored for a month in quarrying and dressing stone, but when it was ready the elves built their temple in a night. So at Kohala they formed a chain twelve miles long between the quarry and the site, and, passing the blocks from hand to hand, finished ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... of year When the heavens were crystal clear, And the skylark's singing sweet Close against the sun did beat,— All the sylphs of all the streams, All the fairies born in dreams, All the elves with wings of flame, Trooping forth from Cloudland came To the wooing ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... from lonely places of the sea. They filled huge haliotis shells with pearls and laid them there beside her, they brought her emeralds which she set to flash among the tresses of her long black hair, they brought her threaded sapphires for her cloak: all this the princes of fable did and the elves and the gnomes of myth. And partly she still lived, and partly she was one with long-ago and with those sacred tales that nurses tell, when all their children are good, and evening has come, and the fire is burning well, and the soft pat-pat of the snowflakes ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... Nicholas, what how man, loke adoun: Awake and think on Cristes passioun I crowche the from Elves and from Wightes.' There with the night-spel seyde he anon rightes On the foure halves of the hous aboute And on the threissh-fold of the ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... was deserted all that afternoon, for Psyche sat in the orchard drawing squirrels on the wall, pert robins hopping by, buttercups and mosses, elves and angels; while May lay contentedly enjoying sun and air, sisterly care, and the "pretty things" she loved so well. Psyche did not find the task a hard one; for this time her heart was in it, and if she needed any reward she surely found it; for the little ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... such lively accounts of the green nooks where jacks-in-the-pulpit preached their little sermons, brooks beside which grew blue violets and lovely ferns, rocks round which danced the columbines like rosy elves, or the trees where birds built, squirrels chattered and woodchucks burrowed, that Thorny was seized with a desire to go and see these beauties for himself. So Jack was saddled and went, plodding, scrambling and wandering into all manner of pleasant places, always bringing home a stronger, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... limp ungainly things that would rouse disdain and laughter and even pity, at anything at once so weak and so malevolent. But they are not like the demons of sin that can hamper and wound; they are just little gnomes and elves that can make a noise, and their strength is a spiteful ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... king and 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 ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came back as soon as she could, but on her way back she was frightened to see some old elves of the blue petticoat crossing her path though it was midday. She rushed home, but found her two little ones in the cradle and everything ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... was of solid gold, heavy and massive; carved upon it in bold relief was a group of figures representing a host of little elves at a banquet. So exquisitely were they engraved that they appeared actually to move, and it seemed as though one could almost hear their laughter and talk. A glittering, carved golden snake, curled around the brim of the cup, served ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... other 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
... with brilliant white, green, red, and blue enamels, and the figure of Christ was discovered to be hollow, and to contain two ancient parchments, written in monkish Latin and scarcely legible. One of them was a charm, addressed to 'ye elves, and demons and all kind of apparition,' who were called upon in the name of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, Martyrs, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, and the elect generally, to 'hurt not this servant of ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... 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 ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... they would repeat the plots current in other countries, and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world (see "The Lyke-wake Dirge"), the same ghostly superstitions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... know what to tell you," I answered. "I was hoping that you would tell me one of yours, all about the fairies and the elves in the park, as you used to when ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... day when the elves were away from home, a giant came into the glen. He was seeking just such a cool place ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... instead of sighing after them as something gone for ever, he would say to himself, "what matter they are gone? In the heavenly kingdom my own mother is waiting me, fairer and stronger and real. I imagined the elves; God imagined my mother." ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... thine own soul, and surprise The password of the unwary elves; Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies; Unsought, they ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Was it regal as Juno's own? Or only a trifle bigger Than the elves who surround the throne Of the Faery Queen, and are seen, I ween, By mortals in ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and Elves Who slept in buds ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... 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 had ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the Sov'reigns then that we must own, Must we before their Golden Calves bow down, Forgive us Heav'n, if we renounce the Elves, And make a Common-wealth among our Selves, Whereby the Laws that we shall there Ordain. We'll make it Capital to mention Man, Man! we'll for ever banish from our sight, Not talk by Day, nor think of them by Night, We'll shun their ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... going to have at her house in honour of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, her elderly patron, and she also gave me back the manuscript of Lohengrin, with the assurance that it had appealed to her very much, and that while she was reading it she had often seen the little fairies and elves dancing about in front of her. As in the old days I had been heartily encouraged by the warm and friendly sympathy of this naturally cultured woman, I now felt as if cold water had been suddenly poured down my back. I soon took my leave, and never saw her again. Indeed, I had no particular object ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "The Valiant Little 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 ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... nature-mythology of Greece, the old fairy legends of the Middle Age. The great poets of the Renaissance both in England and in Italy had a similar craving. But the aspect under which these ancient dreams are regarded by them is most significantly different. With Spenser and Ariosto, fairies and elves, gods and demons, are regarded in their fancied connection with man. Even in the age of Pope, when the gods and the Rosicrucian Sylphs have become alike "poetical machinery," this is their work. But among the moderns it is as connected with Nature, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... ever being able to secure the wolf with any chain of their own making. All-father, however, sent Skirnir, the messenger of the god Frey, into the country of the Black Elves, to the dwarfs, to ask them to make a chain to bind Fenris with. This chain was composed of six things—the noise made by the fall of a cat's foot, the hair of a woman's beard, the roots of stones, the nerves of bears, the breath of fish, and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... 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 ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... digging they saw by the light of the moon a host of little men running to meet them. They were dressed all in grey, except for their caps, which were red; they had red eyes, too, and black tongues, which never ceased chattering. These were the mountain elves, and when they came near they formed themselves into a fairy ring, and sang while they ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... 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 for ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... movement,—such sensitive teeth and fingers and wheels and points of steel,—such fairy knives of sapphire, with which King Oberon the first might have been beheaded, had he insisted upon levying dew-taxes upon primroses without the authority of his elves,—such smooth cylinders, and flying points so rapidly revolving that they seem perfectly still.—such dainty oscillations of parts with the air of intelligent consciousness of movement,—that a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 in another minute ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Castle, elves, within, without, 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 the owner it. The several chairs of order, look ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "The elves of light were his messengers, and he sent them flying about all day,—shaking pollen out of the willow tassels, filling the flower-cups with nectar, sowing the seeds, and threading the ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... as dainty and airy as if the elves themselves had led her to their bowers and discovered to her their secrets; and this is truly what her poetic sense has done, for the poet is a seer and singer ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... tummy ache your arnium fishing bumps. Got them us elves. Tooking longthier, more hurtful, but can. Few don't gives high dragon bump tweddy ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... 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 American sense of humor. Take Irving's stories, for example. The ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the city. And with the coming of the light, more strange sounds woke the people of the city. A wondrous sight met their gaze in the market place. It was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of the queerest creatures they had ever seen, goblins and brownies, demons and fairies. Dainty little elves ran about the square to the delight of the children, and quaint sprites clambered up the lamposts and squatted on the gables of the council house. On the steps of that building was a glittering array of fairies and attendant genii, and in their midst stood the princess, a dazzling vision, ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... beneath the sun Who has nothing else to do? What's the use of such a one? I know not—pray do you? Skies are not aflame for him; He converses not with elves; Primroses on river's brim ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... spun the wool of the last clipping. She was a fair woman out of the Western Isles, all brown and golden as it seemed to him, and her voice was softer than the hard ringing speech of the Wick folk. She told him island stories about gentle fairies and good-humoured elves who lived in a green windy country by summer seas, and her air would be wistful as if she thought of her lost home. And she sang him to sleep with crooning songs which had the sweetness of the west wind in them. But her maids were a rougher stock, and they stuck to the Wicking lullaby which ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... these presents be it known, To all who bend before our 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 maidens' smiles, Arch-treasurer ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... before him, lest, on perusal, conviction should compel him to retract the ungracious thought. To be plain, he is not desirous of any higher honorary distinction than the good opinion of his readers. And now, sons and daughters of Fashion! ye cameleon race of giddy elves, who flutter on the margin of the whirlpool, or float upon the surface of the silvery stream, and, hurried forwards by the impetus of the current, leave yourselves but little time for reflection, one glance will convince you that you are ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... affairs. Rather more than a hundred years ago, for instance, a war broke out in Fairyland because the King of the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never to be asked out, because they were trollish. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... cruel thorns; the third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and the wild fruit; the second, haggish, full of witches whose finger-nails had never been clipped; the third, queenly, as ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... that, toiling With wild white roses' bloom— No printers' vats a-boiling Nor labour of the loom— With fern and foxglove chalice On tiny feet or wings Titania's elves made sallies, And that's how Lady Alice Had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... assigned peculiar employments. The chief of these were the Fairies, concerning whom the reader will find a long dissertation, in Volume Second. The Brownie formed a class of beings, distinct in habit and disposition from the freakish and mischievous elves. He was meagre, shaggy, and wild in his appearance. Thus, Cleland, in his satire against the Highlanders, compares ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... these sights and sounds were all about the natural and not the supernatural. For instance, I did not see the visage of a grinning goblin just within a little chink of The Rock, as I ought to have seen. I did not see "faëry elves" dancing in the moonlit beams, as I ought to have seen. Then boldly I took a direct course from the mountain over the plain, believing I should intercept our encampment. I continued this line for two hours, or not quite so much, but I found myself a long way east over ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... there," cried Betty suddenly. She was walking ahead with Alice Waite. "I can see two people. They're stooping over the fire. Why, Alice, it's two dear little brown elves." ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... heard them gladly, And if I could, would turn them all to elves, That if they cannot live ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... Then the terrible scene changes; the wild beast suddenly disappears and encircled by a soft light two beautiful fairies come forward to teach the new Ala the occult science of his chosen ministry including cabalistic words and medical art. The two elves then become the familiar spirits of the sorcerer who is in this ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... holds forego, Nor trust such cunning elves; These artful emblems tend to show Their ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... been considerably distorted during the course of years but the fun it affords the young folks in its present manner of keeping cannot be gainsaid and needs no changing. Halloween is the night when a magic spell enthrals the earth. Witches, bogies, brownies and elves are all abroad to use their power. Superstition proves true, witchery is recognized and the future may be read in a hundred and ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... word. For he who will himself not to yield to irritability, can hardly avoid paying attention to the subject, and thinking thereon, check himself when vexed. And as I have said, what we summon by Will ere long remains as Habit, even as the Elves, called by a spell, remain in ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... dearly loved fairy tales, and on stormy days, with Sir Mortimer purring in her lap, would sit for hours reading stories of elves, and ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... spirit," he replied. "I was one of the large company of the Men of the Sun who used to inhabit the Earth under the names of oracles, nymphs, woodland elves, and fairies. But we abandoned our world in the reign of the Emperor Augustus; your people then became so gross and stupid that we could no longer delight in their society. Since then I have stayed on the Moon. I find its inhabitants ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of every-day life adhere to the stern, the strong boughs with flowers and leaves spread themselves out, whilst the sun of poetry shall shine among them, and show the colors, odor, and singing-birds. But the tree of reality cannot shoot up so soon as that of fancy, like the enchantment in Tieck's "Elves." We must seek our type in nature. Often may there be an appearance of cessation; but that is not the case. It is even so with our story; whilst our characters, by mutual discourse, make themselves worthy of contemplation, there ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... feet, He saw them—headland after headland flame Far on into the rich heart of the west: And in the light the white mermaiden swam, And strong man-breasted things stood from the sea, And sent a deep sea-voice through all the land, To which the little elves of chasm and cleft Made answer, sounding like a distant horn. So said my father—yea, and furthermore, Next morning, while he past the dim-lit woods, Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... "The small brown elves actually remember that I fed them the other day," again soliloquized Louis. "They want some more biscuit. To-day I forgot to save a fragment. Eager little sprites, I have not a crumb ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... I have already told you, is Mogarzea; I am a prince, and set out to go to the Sweet-milk Lake, which is not far from here, to marry a fairy. I had heard that three fairies lived there. But Fortune did not smile upon me; wicked elves attacked me and took away my soul. Since that time I have settled here to dwell with my sheep on this little patch of land, without being able to take pleasure in any thing, without having a moment's happiness, or even once ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ELVES. In Teutonic mythology, diminutive spirits; the fairy race of Celtic countries may have been confused ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... put amongst the number of elves the spirits which are seen, they say, in mines and mountain caves. They appear clad like the miners, run here and there, appear in haste as if to work and seek the veins of mineral ore, lay it in heaps, draw it out, turning the wheel of the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... primroses will be coming out in woods wherever they have been sheltered from the north. They will grow bolder as the days go by, and spread and come all down the slopes of sunny hills. Then the anemones will come, like a shy pale people, one of the tribes of the elves, who dare not leave the innermost deeps of the wood: in those days all the trees will be in leaf, the bluebells will follow, and certain fortunate woods will shelter such myriads of them that the bright fresh green of the beech trees will flash between two blues, the blue of the sky ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... elves, gnomes, bull-beggars, fiends, an' devils is debarred the Bloo Grass Country," says Squar' Alexanders, speakin' for himse'f an' his fellow selectmen, "an' they're not goin' to be allowed to hold their black an' sulphurous ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... 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 ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... said Saint Nick, "and nicely prepare All a little girl wants where money is rare." Then, oh, what a scene there was in that room! Away went the elves, but down from the gloom Of the sooty old chimney came tumbling low A child's whole wardrobe, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... not, but cheered himself as he rode on by calling to mind some of the beautiful stories of the old religion of his land. He thought of the elves and fairies who were said to dwell in these very forests, and at midnight to creep up from their hiding-places and gambol and play tricks among the flowers and dewdrops with the wild bees and the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... If any 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. Something more brilliant than the mock diamonds in Miss Kent's best earrings ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... with his tools in his hands. The cob of coal had kindled to a lively flame, which flashed and went out, and the quick black shadows of the chairs and the table and the jugs on the dresser were leaping about the room like elves. With parted lips, just breaking into a smile, Pete went down on one knee by the cradle, put the mallet under his arm, and gently raised the shawl curtain. "God bless my motherless girl," he said, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... telling you of these singers of the air, read "The Return of The Birds," written in the early spring of 1864, when, as you know, the country was in great trouble, and the birds saw many a sorry sight. If you like a beautiful fairy-tale in verse, all about children and the elves or sprites that children love, read his "Little People of The Snow." There also is the pretty legend of "The White-footed Deer"; or if you bigger boys and girls wish something more weird and exciting, read his tragic story of "The Strange Lady." Then, on some lovely ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • 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 fairies ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... and deformed; these the gods called gnomes or dwarfs, and to them they gave homes underground, with power over all that was hidden in the earth. But for the beautiful, fair creatures whom they called elves and fairies, the gods made a home somewhat above the earth, where they might live always among ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... idle shapes, Of little frisking elves and apes To earth do make their wanton scapes, As hope of pastime hastes them; Which maids think on the hearth they see When fires well-nigh consumed be, There dancing hays by two and three, {98} Just as their ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... corruption of Elbkoenig, i.e., the king of the elves. Notice the difference in the speeches of the three characters: the calm assuaging tone of the father, whose senses seem dead to the supernatural; the luring song of the Erlkoenig, that changes abruptly to an impetuous demand; the ever ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... elves, Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves, Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 35 When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... lark that o'er him sings, And, like that lark, a music brings Within him, where'er he comes or goes,— A fount that for ever flows! The world's to him like some playground, Where fairies dance their moonlight round;— If dimmed the turf where late they trod, The elves but seek some greener sod; So, when less bright his scene of glee, To another away ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... starry quire, Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The 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 with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... downstairs, Picotee of necessity following. Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from their shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill—sometimes doing heavy work, sometimes none; teasing and worrying with impish laughter half suppressed, and vanishing directly mortal eyes were bent on them. Separate and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... there many a time for company, being much alone. An Indian would have told me that it was the Un a games- suk—the spirit-fairies of the rock and stream. These beings enter far more largely, deeply, and socially into their life or faith than elves or fairies ever did into those of the Aryan races, and I might well have been their protege, for there could have been few little boys living, so fond as I was of sitting all alone by rock and river, hill and greenwood tree. There are yet in existence on some of this land which ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... had hitherto formed the centre for the religious rites of the Anglo-Saxons. Woden or Odin, Thor and the other deities did not lose their adherents in a day, and Bede records the relapses into idolatry of Northumbria as well as the other parts of England. There can be no doubt that fairies and elves entered largely into the mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, and the firmness of the beliefs in beings of that nature can be easily understood when we realise that it required no fewer than twelve centuries of Christianity to finally destroy them among the people of Yorkshire. ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... done with their odours."[11] It is noteworthy, also, that the Indian belief which describes the holes in trees as doors through which the special spirits of those trees pass, reappears in the German superstition that the holes in the oak are the pathways for elves;[12] and that various diseases may be cured by contact with these holes. Hence some trees are regarded with special veneration—particularly the lime and pine[13]—and persons of a superstitious turn of mind, "may often be seen carrying sickly children to a forest for the purpose ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... was wandering about the piney woods, near the asylum, with two beautiful elves, when I chanced to meet her. She was singing at the time. Beulah, I am glad to find you out again; and in future, when I pay the doctor long visits, I shall expect you to appear for my entertainment. Look to it, Guy, that ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the world that smoky mist of magic were elves, and they did so because Conaire's tabus ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours: I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll begone; Our queen and all our elves come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... rehashed, and hashed again, Garnished—from another brain, Seasoned—from another cruet, You may roast, or boil, or stew it O'er and o'er, year in year out, As you perorate about, Seek, when weary,—o'ertasked elves! "Inspiration" from your shelves. Salt it here, and sauce it there, Saying nothing, since none care To make question, taking pay, Yes, and praise upon your way, For—well, ere the thing is through, What is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... one melted like flakes of snow In the moonbeams. Then came a rushing sound, Like countless wings of bees, or butterflies; And suddenly, as far as eye might view, The coast was peopled with a world of elves, Who in fantastic ringlets danced around, With antic gestures, and wild beckoning motion, Aimed at the moon. White was their snowy vesture, And shining as the Alps, when that the sun Gems their pale robes with diamonds. On their heads Were wreaths of crimson ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... all the trees trimmed as carefully and precisely as the lawn, some cut in the shape of pyramids, others in the shape of green columns. There's a lovely fountain and little plaster elves and deer scattered all around ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... happened. There had been a busy time in the North Pole workshop of Santa Claus that day, for it was getting near to Christmas. The little men, like elves, who built the Noah's Arks, the toy animals, the dolls, and the other playthings, had been ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... I call it a fairy tale, because it is so strange; indeed I think I ought to call it the fairy tale of all fairy tales, for by the time we get to the end of it I think it will explain to you how our forefathers got to believe in fairies, and trolls, and elves, and scratlings, and all strange little people who were said to haunt the mountains ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... argue for an origin similar to that of a spring; as if strongly moisture-laden air welled up from underground, condensing its steam as it got chilled. It is these strange phenomena that are familiar, too, in the northern plains of Europe which must have given rise to the belief in elves and other weird creations of the brain—"the earth has bubbles as the water has"—not half as weird, though, as some realities are in the ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... to speak for themselves, And are wielding the tongue and the pen; They've mounted the rostrum; the termagant elves, And—oh horrid!—are talking to men! With faces unblanched in our presence they come To harangue us, they say, in behalf ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 it dust ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... Stephen and Philip, or sturdy and 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 sticklebacks' ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... 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
... 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 and a broad-brimmed black hat. He was ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... moon shone out from behind the clouds above the dark forest. There was a fragrance of lilies all about her, and a gossamer gown floated around her, whiter than the whiteness of the fairest lily. It was fine, like the finest lace that the frost-elves weave, and softer than the softest ermine of the snow. On her long golden hair gleamed a coronet ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... my book and tales called "Christmas Elves." Better than "Flower Fables." Now I must ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... them fall. He stood quite still, clinging to the rock and unable to move either forward or backward. It seemed like the climax of a bad dream. Suddenly he saw a bright cloud approaching him, and the air was full of a multitude of tiny elves. They seized hold of him by his coat and knickers and boots and even by his curly hair, and bore ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... her sleep like a dormouse through prayers, sermon, and all at Pont de Dronne. Follette is she be, she belongs to the white elves ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who has displayed a like sensitiveness to the finer stuff of romance. He has chosen more than occasionally to employ, in the accomplishment of his purposes, what seems at first to be precisely the magical apparatus so necessary to the older Romanticism. Dryads and elves are his intimate companions, and he dwells at times under fairy boughs and in enchanted woods; but for him, as for the poets of the Celtic tradition, these things are but the manifest images of an interior passion and delight. Seen in the transfiguring mirror of his music, the moods and events of ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... too I saw some mighty pretty shows; A revolution, without blood or blows, For, as I understood, the cunning elves, The people all ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... 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. ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... of the grim tales on which he 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. In his very ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... of such stature as we will. But the elves grow small, not large, when they would ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... evanescent types Which sages banish from Utopia. "Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend! I worship in the temple with the rest; But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves Who stitched and hammered for the weary man In days of old. And in that piety I clothe ungainly forms inherited From toiling generations, daily bent At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, In pioneering ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... openly flouts it. Boldly flung out of the window, it creeps back into the cellar and vexes the soul with petty tricks played on the subterranean consciousness. The man who expels his good angel is haunted by imps and elves. He who will not believe in God and despises truth succumbs to the message ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... what their names may have meant; but they had names, one sounding like a grunt, the other a hiss. Better call them Umpl and Sptz, which is as near as I can come to it. Of course Sptz was the girl; and they both believed most firmly in hobgoblins, evil spirits, wicked elves, that were ever on the watch for them in the dark; and when they heard the long cre-ak of a tree branch rubbing on another branch in the night as the wind arose, their ears told them that it was a branch, but their fears said it was a goblin, ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... that Rousseau, in his masterly work on education, the "Emile," reprobates the custom as promotive of superstition) in early infancy by our parents and nurses with their stories of nymphs, fairies, elves, dwarfs, giants, witches, hobgoblins, and the like fabulous beings, and, as soon as we are able to read, by the tales of genii, sorcerers, demons, ghouls, enchanted caves and castles, and monsters and monstrosities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... should be low and soft, while in other parts it should be loud and gruff or harsh. The words of the princess should not sound like those of the old witch or the soldier. The daintiness and grace of elves and fairies should be indicated in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... do fly, Drenched across yon rainy sky, With the vex'd moon-mother'd elves, And the clouds do ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... allied. Provided that his clerk was good, What though he nothing understood? 70 In church and state, the sorry race Grew more conspicuous fools in place. Such heads, as then a treaty made, Had bungled in the cobbler's trade. Consider, patrons, that such elves, Expose your folly with themselves. 'Tis yours, as 'tis the parent's care, To fix each genius in its sphere. Your partial hand can wealth dispense, But never give a blockhead sense. 80 An owl of magisterial air, Of solemn voice, of brow austere, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the little mare went into it. They went through the cave. Then Svadilfare caught up on the little mare and the two went wandering together, the little mare telling Svadilfare stories of the Dwarfs and the Elves. ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... and 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 ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... always abounded with mountain spirits, mermaids, giants, dwarfs, dragons, elves and mandrakes. These reappear in the songs of the Crusades, and are elements of the old Northern and Persian superstitions. All that the East contributed to the song of the chivalric period was a Southern magic, and a brilliance of Oriental fancy with which ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis |
