"Mermaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in her arms and we broke into merry laughter. Then to please her I said that I would gather flowers for her hair—and she would be the stranded mermaid and I the fisherman whom she besought to put her back in the sea and rewarded with three wishes—and I sought flowers everywhere in the hollows and crevices of the bald old Watchman, where, through years, some soil had gathered, but found only whisps ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... at night shed pale its light, The billows are gently swelling; See a mermaid merge from the briny surge, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... Moryson is thorough, Coryat is not. Moryson is often dull, Coryat seldom. Moryson was a student, Coryat a cockscomb. Moryson was a plain man, Coryat a euphuist of the first water. I haven't the least doubt but that Shakespeare met him at the Mermaid—he called himself a friend of Ben Jonson's—and took the best of him. You will find him in Love's Labour's Lost as well as in All's Well. For a foretaste of his quality take a small portion of his first sentence, the whole of which fills a page: "I was imbarked at Dover, about tenne of the ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... were waiting for Pip's "Mermaid" to make a landing at the pier at Rose Acres. A man-servant with their bags stood near, and Marie-Louise's maid was coated and hatted to accompany her mistress. "It will be like watching a play," Marie-Louise repeated. "The eternal trio. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the extent to which one is aware of this object of consciousness, he is said to recognize, or to know it. A state of consciousness is always, therefore, a state of knowledge, or of intelligence. Thus, whether we perceive this chair, imagine a mermaid, recall the looks of an absent friend, experience the toothache, judge the weight of this book, or become angry, our conscious state is ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... believe that certain snakes milk cows, and that mermen are possible. I stood in a tent last summer at Atlantic City—a large seaside resort—and watched a line of middle-class people passing to see a "Chinese mermaid," of the kind the Japanese manufacture so cleverly. It was to be seen on the water. All, so far as I could judge, accepted it as real. So much for the influence of the American public school, where physiology ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... now so industriously engaged washing for us in New Jersey, and again, making our shoes in Massachusetts, and who proposes to be our dairymaid, our chambermaid, our barmaid, and, if BARNUM will go into the humbug business again, our mermaid, brought the queue on the back of his head when he crossed the Pacific Ocean, and landed on the coast of California. Thence he conveyed it across the Plains, and now our mothers are going back to two queues such as those they wore when the roses which bloomed upon their cheeks ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... reminiscences, opinions, affections, and enmities. And we hear, too, of valorous potations; but in the words of Herrick addressed to his master, Jonson, at the Devil Tavern, as at the Dog, the Triple Tun, and at the Mermaid, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... or shopping The coatee must be flopping Through a belt that's sagging downward to the thighs. But the evening toilette scheme Shows the opposite extreme, And, when for dance or dinner you're equipped, A clinging "mermaid's tail" The nether limbs must veil, While the corsage is the only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... cocke's wordes, and not mine; I can no harm of no woman divine.* *conjecture, imagine Fair in the sand, to bathe* her merrily, *bask Lies Partelote, and all her sisters by, Against the sun, and Chanticleer so free Sang merrier than the mermaid in the sea; For Physiologus saith sickerly,* *certainly How that they singe well and merrily. And so befell that, as he cast his eye Among the wortes,* on a butterfly, *cabbages He was ware of this fox that lay full low. Nothing *ne list ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... gaze through the open port-hole at the glorious, glistening sea, and as the doctor very softly pushed the door a little open there came clearly to the listeners' ears a scrap of the old sea song, "The Mermaid":— ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... to the other side of the fairgrounds and sat down. That was all I had to do now—just go, sit down. I couldn't see the mermaid now or get ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... the course of the evening." Lamb was undoubtedly "matchless as a fireside companion," inimitable as a table-talker, "great at the midnight hour." The "wit-combats" at his Wednesday-evening parties were waged with scarcely inferior skill and ability to those fought at the old Mermaid tavern between Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. Hazlitt, in his delightful essay intituled "Persons One would Wish to have Seen," gives a masterly report of the sayings and doings at one of these parties. It is to be regretted that he did not report the conversation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... verses to the great realist's play of 'The Fox,' it is fair to assume that through him they were brought together, and that both belonged to that brilliant circle of wits, poets, and dramatists who made famous the gatherings at the Mermaid Inn. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... called "May Colvin," and relates the story of a king's daughter who was beguiled from her father's house by a false Sir John; the other, intitled "Clerk Colvil," treats of a young man who fell into the snares of a false mermaid; the latter, indeed, bears a still stranger resemblance to the Danish tradition of "The Erl-King's Daughter." The fragment of "The Water King" may be found ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... on, about Admiral Van Tromp, "a drunken greazy Dutchman," whom Speed, of St. John's, conquered in boozing; of the disputes about races in Port Meadow; of the breaking into the Mermaid Tavern. "We Christ Church men bear the blame of it, our ticks, as the noise of the town will have it, amounting to 1,500 pounds." Thus Christ Church had little cause to throw the first stone at Balliol. Prideaux ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... him he was afraid of being like the fisherman who wedded a mermaid, and made Ellen tell the story in her own pretty way; but while we were laughing over it, I saw my mother steal her hand into my father's and give it a strong grasp. Such gestures, which she denominated pawing, when she witnessed them in Emily, were so alien to her in general ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with its black shadowy niches and caves at the surface of the water, had a strange fascination for him. In fact, with its solemn twilight and irregular crag, arch and hollow, it looked quite an ideal entrance to some mermaid city such as is described by the poets who ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... rest. They were about to abandon the attempt, when she lifted her voice and began to sing. She sang as she did in the meeting-house at South Bradfield, and her voice seemed to fill all the hollow height and distance; it rang far off like a mermaid's singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter, hearing ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... myself, Or hew my way out with a bloody axe. Why, I can smile, and murther while I smile, And cry 'Content!' to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall, I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk; I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could, And like a Sinon take another Troy. I can add colours to the chameleon, Change shapes with Protheus for advantages, And set the ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... the early thirties. One was short and stocky, his face slightly pock-marked. Pictures of a mermaid and anchor clumsily tattooed in indigo on his wrist showed him to be a sailor. In fact, Dick Hickey, boatswain on H. H. S. Tartar, having taken French leave of his ship, as she lay in Cape Town Harbor, ran a very good chance of being taken back to England in irons as a deserter. Just now he ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... now see how the Khasi clan (kur or jaid) grew out of the Khasi family (iing). Let us take the example of the great Diengdoh clan of Cherra. Disregarding the myth that the Diengdohs are descended from a mermaid, it may be stated that there seems to be a fairly general belief amongst the Diengdohs that their first ancestress or kiaw came from the country beyond the Kopili river (some go so far as to say that she came from the Assam Valley), to the Jaintia ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... Major?" Lord Haverley asked. "The general opinion is that your record is better than that of the Phantom. She has done well in the two or three races she has sailed, but she certainly did not beat the Lesbia or the Mermaid by ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... fenced on one side by walls of emeralds, and on the other by a boisterous sea. The king, by pretending an attachment to the fairy, obtained the liberty to walk by himself on the shore. There, one day, he heard a voice, and presently after was surprised by the appearance of a mermaid, who, swimming up to him with a pleasing smile, spoke to this effect:—"O King of the Golden Mines, I well know all that has befallen you and the Princess All-Fair. Do not suspect this to be a contrivance of the fairy to try you, for I am an inveterate ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... washroom, discreetly off the innermost of his official suite of offices, was a dream of gleaming black porcelain and solid gold. Each spout, each faucet, was a gracefully stylized mermaid, the combination stall shower-steam room a marvel of hydraulic comfort and decor with variable lighting plotted to give the user every sort of beneficial ray, from ultraviolet to ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... light, And the many colored star lights, Blended in a great profusion, To the limits of our world, Which we best can know and search in. First, unto the boundless ocean, By the billow which returneth Echo to great Neptune's call, Where the mermaid host sojourneth In his ancient rocky hall; Where Leviathan, the mighty Keeper of all Neptune's treasure, Roams around the rocky caverns In majestic state, exploring. Let us see these mighty waters When they rise in foaming billows, Swallowing towns, and ships, and people, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... colors. Among these valuable water plants, I noted various seaweed: some Cladostephus verticillatus, peacock's tails, fig-leafed caulerpa, grain-bearing beauty bushes, delicate rosetangle tinted scarlet, sea colander arranged into fan shapes, mermaid's cups that looked like the caps of squat mushrooms and for years had been classified among the zoophytes; in short, a ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... dealing as it does with the fortunes and misfortunes of the various "freaks" to be found in a Dime Museum. It relates the woes of the original Wild Man of Borneo, tells how the Fat Woman tried to elope, of the marvelous mechanical tail the dwarf invented, of how the Mermaid boiled her tail, and of a thrilling plot hatched out by the Giant and others. Full of telling illustrations. Easily one of the best works this ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... up to Grettir and pointed finger, and wagged head at him, and called him mermaid's son, and many ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... that period of his life, his father's (the Bishop's) house was his home. That he may have resorted to the Golden Lion, and there have met with Shakespeare, is, therefore, quite as probable as that our great dramatist associated with Fletcher at the Falcon or the Mermaid, if good cause can only be shown for Shakespeare's having had as much reason to frequent Fulham as ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... protector had need of rest. Ben would not be angry to be awaked; but the sailor would be sure to laugh at him if he were to say he had heard a little girl talking at that time of night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps Ben might say it was a mermaid, and mock him in that ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... device of James I. and the siren or mermaid of Lady Frazer, who is said to have worked her own golden hair in the heart of a Tudor rose on a ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... weeds growing in all forms and positions, while further away in the deeper water rose up great feathery fronds and waving arms, like the tentacles of some giant octopus feeling for its prey. This bed of snake-like brown arms was a weird spot, which only wanted a mermaid or two to make it complete; but I, as a mere man, could only complete the picture by magnifying in my mind's eye the innumerable fishes which swam in and out among the luxuriance of marine vegetation, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... thought to be followed by the fish, which was said to swallow it, and carry it safely through the under world. The sun thus came to be represented as the body of a woman with the tail of a fish, and so the mermaid was born. Another strange thing is that all the sun gods were born near Christmas. The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known among the Aztecs. The myth of eucharist came from the story of Ceres and Bacchus. When the cakes made by the product of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... should have been happy, but she was not. She had once heard a mermaid sing of a glorious light which shone on ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" [Othello]; teratology. [unconformable to the surroundings] fish out of water; neither one thing nor another, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... seemed gathering upward to descend and crush the house he loved. As the hurrying waves rolled nearer and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a pale, starry face looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady, transformed into a mermaid, beckoning his uncle to destruction. Beyond that rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the blackest ink, more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer's eye; but as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm-clouds slowly parted, and from a narrow ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the month we spoke his Majesty's ship Mermaid, with a convoy from England to New York. On the 15th the Orpheus took a schooner from Martinique, with a cargo of claret, so that with another sloop she had taken she had now five prizes. It was not, however, till the 26th of the month that a boat boarded me from the ship, with ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... than warm. The combination was designed to be worn without the muff on an ocean boardwalk about sunset, when the wind dies down. Cosy comfort was to be supplied by the muff on a windy day, for only a real mermaid could wear a plain fish net in all kinds ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... doubt desiring that at high water she would be seen no more. However, it so chanced that her cries, 'piercing the night's dull ear,' were heard by some passing fishermen, who, subduing their fear of water-witches, or perhaps thinking that they had at last caught a mermaid, secured the fair one, and conveyed her away to her own people, to whom, of course, she told her own version of the story. We forget what legal steps were taken, (a sheriff's warrant probably passed for little in those days, at least in Mull,) but considerable feudal disorders ensued in consequence, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... weep, O mother, because thou hast promised me to the aged Wainamoinen, to be his comforter and caretaker in his old age. Far better if thou hadst sent me to the bottom of the sea, to live with the fishes and to become a mermaid and ride on the waves. This had been far better than to be an ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... sigh the winds of Heaven O'er your grave! While the billow mournful rolls And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing—glory to the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... college or a seaman, has a characteristic dialect; but that is very different from continually letting out his ruling passion. This brings me, Sir, to the alteration you offer in the personage of Mrs. Winter, whom you wittily propose -to turn into a mermaid. I approve the idea much: I like too the restoration of Mrs. Vernon to a plain reasonable woman. She will be a contrast to the bad characters, and but a gradation to produce Barbara, without making ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Galileo's death Newton was born, and the subsequent sections carry the story on to the modern observatory again. The form I have adopted is a development from that of an earlier book, "Tales of the Mermaid Tavern" where certain poets and discoverers of another kind were brought together round a central idea, and their stories told in a combination of narrative and lyrical verse. "The Torch-Bearers" flowed all the more naturally into a similar form in view of the fact ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... of champagne with the foam on't, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the heat of the moment. * * * * * He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the 'Mermaid,' Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,— The topmost bright bubble on the wave ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... which these suggestions are put and enforced. As to the use of the trumpet, how many advertising tailors and pill-makers could testify to the soundness of Ellesmere's principle? And beyond the Atlantic it finds special favor. When Barnum exhibited his mermaid, and stuck up outside his show-room a picture of three beautiful mermaids, of human size, with flowing hair, basking upon a summer sea, while inside the show-room he had the hideous little contorted figure made of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... ye whalebone." Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Mount Ararat. I feel as if I'd been afloat for forty days and nights. Land sakes alive!" as another gust shot and beat its accompanying cloudburst through and between the carriage curtains; "right in my face and eyes! I don't wonder that boy wished he was a duck. I'd like to be a fish—or a mermaid. I couldn't be much wetter if I was either one, and I'd have gills so I could breathe under water. I SUPPOSE mermaids have gills, I ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... services without afterthought on the occasion of the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not too tall, lithe and slim and sinuous as a mermaid, yet well enough rounded to make each delicate curve a charm, not merely of promise but of fulfilment. She wore a flowing morning-gown that made negligee seem to the suddenly intoxicated secretary the glorified costume for a woman. It was a richly embroidered thing from China and on her ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can truly be called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian makara, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of Aphrodite," and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," pp. 382 et seq. and 399 et seq.; and especially the detailed reports in de ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... all mercies, it pleased his diuine maiestie to moue my heart to prosecute that which I hope shall be to his glory, and to the contentation of euery Christian minde. Whereupon falling into consideration that the Mermaid, albeit a very strong and sufficient ship, yet by reason of her burthen was not so conuenient and nimble as a smaller bark, especially in such desperate hazzards; further hauing in account her great charge to the aduenturers being at 100. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... House in the Wood Uraschimataro and the Turtle The Slaying of the Tanuki The Flying Trunk The Snow Man. The Shirt-Collar The Princess in the Chest The Three Brothers The Snow-queen The Fir-Tree Hans, the Mermaid's Son Peter Bull The Bird 'Grip' Snowflake I know what I have learned The Cunning Shoemaker The King who would have a Beautiful Wife Catherine and her Destiny How the Hermit helped to win the King's Daughter The Water of Life The Wounded Lion The Man without a Heart The Two Brothers Master ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... a debating society for the dissemination of republican opinions. It was preceded only, in the reign of Henry IV, by the club called La Court de Bone Compagnie; by Sir Walter Raleigh's Friday Street, or Bread Street, club; the club at the Mermaid tavern in Bread Street, of which Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Raleigh, Selden, Donne, et al., were members; and "rare" Ben Jonson's Devil tavern club, between Middle ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Fish Street, Three Crowns in the Vintry, And now, of late, St. Martin's in the Sentree; The Windmill in Lothbury; the Ship at th' Exchange, King's Head in New Fish Street, where roysters do range; The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand, Three Tuns, Newgate Market; Old Fish Street, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... dangers the thought of her would be a polar star, high up in the heavens, and so on, and so on; for with all a lover's quickness of imagination and triteness of fancy, he called her a star, a flower, a nymph, a witch, an angel, or a mermaid, a nightingale, a siren, as one or another of her attributes rose up ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in there, mother, if you like," suggested Archie, "and get the mermaid dried off, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... wild pines with long air-roots or gray beards; and last, but not least, that strange and lovely parasite, the Rhipsalis cassytha, which you mistake first for a plume of green sea-weed, or a tress of Mermaid's hair which has got up there by mischance, and then for some delicate kind of pendent mistletoe; till you are told, to your astonishment, that it is an abnormal form of Cactus—a family which it resembles, save in its tiny flowers and fruit, no more than it resembles ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... cornice was adorned with shell- shaped ornaments, and there were white mouldings like dolphins in the ceiling-angles. Even that one touch of colour visible in the red satin pincushion bore affinity to coral; even that dark, shining glass might have mirrored a mermaid. When I closed my eyes, I heard a gale, subsiding at last, bearing upon the house-front like a settling swell upon a rock-base. I heard it drawn and withdrawn far, far off, like a tide retiring from a shore of the upper world—a world so high above that the rush of its largest waves, the dash of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and later on he acquired other large property rights there. How often he may have visited Stratford in the twenty-five years of his career in London we have no information; but however enjoyable London life and the society of the writers at the 'Mermaid' Tavern may have been to him, he probably always looked forward to ending his life as the chief country gentleman of his native village. Thither he retired about 1610 or 1612, and there he died prematurely in 1616, just as he ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Thus a Mermaid, or a Whale, may be made to float on the Water, but then the Figure must be fixed on a convenient piece of Board, with two fire Wheels fixed on an Axle, run through the poised part of the Body, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... mermaid haunts yon water," said Mrs Harrington; "I have heard many marvellous tales of her, a few years ago. Strange enough, last night I dreamed she took away our little girl, and plunged with her into the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... not Beauty I demand, A crystal brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair: ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... first intention and conciliate him; for, remember, he has us in the hollow of his hand. Bestow the picture, by all means, and just as many smiles and compliments as he can stand, or you can afford to squander; for you are worse than a mermaid, Miss Harz, for fascination, all the gentlemen say so; ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... off with a run and a leap, and for fifteen minutes or more she was over and under and up and down on the waves like a snowy mermaid. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... pride, Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died With the gallant, good Riou— Soft sigh the winds of Heaven o'er their grave: While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... most decorous crew, but the next morning something in the air seemed to cause a general overflow of spirits, and they went up the river like a party of children on a merry-making. Sylvia decorated herself with garlands till she looked like a mermaid; Mark, as skipper, issued his orders with the true Marblehead twang; Moor kept up a fire of pun-provoking raillery; Warwick sung like a jovial giant; while the Kelpie danced over the water as if inspired with the universal gayety, and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... rivers; lakes unmapped, links and chains of lakes by which you can go from the Saskatchewan to the Arctic without once lifting your canoe; quaking muskegs—areas of amber stagnant water full of what the Indians call mermaid's hair, lined by ridges of moss and sand overgrown with coarse goose grass and "the reed that grows like a tree," muskrat reed, a tasseled corn-like tufted growth sixteen feet high—areas of such muskeg mile upon mile. I traversed one such region above Cumberland ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... catch me a Little mermaid, Some island where he lands, With her dripping curls, And her crown of pearls, And the looking-glass in her hands! Hail! Ho! Sail! Ho! Sail far o'er the fabulous main! And if I were a sailor, I'd sail with you, Though I ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... shining leaves of the young corn threw off the sunlight like polished steel, and Helen thought she had never seen anything so beautiful in all her life. She stopped and pulled off the soft, tender, green silken tassels, hanging them over her ears, and twisting some in her hair, as if she were a mermaid, her "sea-green ringlets braiding." Then springing from hillock to hillock, she reached the end of the field, and jumped over a fence that skirted a meadow, along which a clear, blue stream glided like an azure serpent in glittering coils, under the shade of innumerable hickory trees. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Hilda, with a little laugh. Indeed, they were both streaming with water, and looked like a merman and mermaid very ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... of literature, and had to devote evenings to the wits. To him has been ascribed the institution, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of the Mermaid Tavern meetings in Bread Street, Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Selden's, Cotton's, Camden's, and Donne's club. It is very likely; so likely that the intrinsic probability of the fact might be a motive for a fiction. Whether as founder ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... her sister had to go. They had to go and be the most striking figures there: Celeste, slim and pale from sorrow, virginal, in clinging white chiffon; and Sylvia, regal and splendid, shimmering like a mermaid in a gown of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... prosperity and power already turned his head? Or could it be that the young woman he had found on the wreck was a fairy of some kind, and had bewitched him with the glance of her sea-eyes? Or perhaps she was a mermaid? Or perhaps she was nothing but a human who had been born on an Easter Sunday—an Easter child. Strange and potent gifts of entrancing, and of looking into the future, are bestowed upon Easter children ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... nationality. She will fix you with eyes utterly devoid of a twinkle and answer: "I? I am part Scotch terrier, and part Spanish mongrel, but mostly mermaid!" ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Morales which were rather popular, and display qualities useful in appreciating the novel itself; a poem in octosyllables, usually and perhaps naturally called "La Sireine," but really entitled in the masculine, and having nothing to do with a mermaid; a curious thing, semi-dramatic in form and in irregular blank verse, entitled Silvanire ou La Morte Vive, which was rehandled soon after his death by Corneille's most dangerous rival Mairet; and an epic called La Savoisiade, which seems to have no merit, and all but ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... forgotten," said Robin, mildly surprised. "They're all the people who're intellectual in Pendragon. If you live in Fallacy Street you're one of the wits. It's like belonging to the 'Mermaid' used to be, you know, in Shakespeare's time. They're really awfully clever—some of them—the Miss Ponsonbys and Mrs. le Terry—Aunt Clare thinks no end of Mrs. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... satisfied." The author adds: "The merchant took the pearl, gave him what he considered its value—at all events enough to make Sulu ring with his generosity—and sent the pearl to China; but what became of it afterwards I could never distinctly trace; but I learned that a pearl in Bengal called 'The Mermaid' originally came from China, and as the one found in Sulu was said to be shaped like a woman's bust, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... families at Walmer, and there, the shock of bathing nearly took out of her all the little life there was. I believe she would have gone into fits if mother had not heard her screams, and dashed on the nurse like a vindictive mermaid, and then made uncle Robert believe her. My aunt trusts the nurse, you must know, and lets her ride rough-shod over every one in the nursery. The poor little thing was always whining and fretting whenever she was not in Essie's arms or the Monk's, till the Monk declared she had a spine, and ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of note about town hath or had its club. The Mermaid Tavern is immortalized as the house resorted to by Shakspeare, Jonson, Fletcher, and Beaumont; the Devil—which, Pennant informs us, stood on the site of Child's-place, Temple Bar—was the scene of many a merry meeting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my cloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Jane: both your cheek and hand are burning hot. I ask again, is there ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... been made whether Shakespeare was a member of the celebrated convivial club established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and which held its meetings at the Mermaid tavern. We have nothing that directly certifies his membership of that choice institution; but there are several things inferring it so strongly as to leave no reasonable doubt on the subject. His conversations certainly ran in that circle of wits some of whom are directly known to have belonged ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... little water-creatures as fairy tenants; she had friends and playmates among the gulls and peeps, and learned curious things by watching crabs, horse-shoes, and jelly-fishes; and every day she looked for a mermaid. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... from the strange mixture of the useful with the ridiculously ornamental. Here were the beautiful banks of a lake and Nature's embellishment of reeds and water plants, which, for a wonder, were left to grow in their native luxuriance, and in the midst a huge pasteboard or wooden swan, and a wooden mermaid of tasteless proportions blowing from a conchshell. In another part was a cottage with puppets the size of life moving by clock-work; a peasant smoking and turning a reel to wind off the thread which his 'goed vrow' is spinning upon a wheel, while ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... cowardly among the forest tribes; nor has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful, is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,) nobody would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c. The mermaid has been discredited ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... curious sentiment relating to some visionary world where young girls were held aloft in the sunshine of luxury and love and happiness. One day she was lying on her back on the heather of the Peel hill, with her head on her arms, thinking of a story that Aunt Rachel had told her. It was of a mermaid who had only to slip up out of the sea and say to any man, "Come," and he came—he left everything and followed her. Suddenly the cold nose of a pointer rubbed against her forehead, a strong voice cried, "Down, sir!" and a young man of two and twenty, in leggings and a shooting-jacket, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the other mermaid, / Siegelind that hight: "I warn thee, son of Aldrian, / Hagen valiant knight, 'Twas but to gain her clothing / my cousin falsely said, For, comest thou to Hunland, / sorely ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... stoopid, for it has,' replied Louie, triumphantly. 'It's t' Mermaid Pool. Theer wor a Manchester mon at Wigsons' last week, telling aw maks o' tales. Theer's a mermaid lives in 't—a woman, I tell tha, wi' a fish's tail—it's in a book, an he read it out, soa theer—an on Easter Eve neet she cooms out, and walks about t' Scout, combin her hair—an if onybody sees her an wishes for soomthin, they get it, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... again irresolute and unschooled. Not too sure of instrumentalism, oft the note was hesitating, soliciting a compliant ear as became a modest wooer of the muses, polishing his unceremonious serenade to some, shy mermaid, or ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... "We've taken a mermaid aboard, sir," said the sailing-master. "Nothing else, they say, sings after that fashion, and the men are on the lookout ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... as the authorities at Halifax were informed of Allan's expedition and of what was going on at the River St. John they sent the warship "Mermaid" and the sloops "Vulture" and "Hope" with a detachment of troops under Major Studholme to put a stop to the proceedings. Allan's force at the mouth of the river consisted of about sixty men under command of Captains West and Dyer. The ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... the sun. One sister promised the other to tell her what she saw, and what most pleased her the first day. Perhaps he will forgive you. She did not believe her own ears. He did not know that he had (has) to thank her [for] his life. She saved his life. The witch cut off the tongue of the mermaid. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... and Rhea, who flourished at about the same time as Plato. Pluto was a brother of Jupiter and Neptune, and when the estate of Saturn was wound up, Jupiter wanted the earth, and he got it. Neptune wanted the codfish conservatory and the mermaid's home, so he took the deep, deep sea, and even yet he rides around in a gold spangled stone boat on the pale green billows of the summer sea, jabbing a pickerel ever and anon with a three pronged fork. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... at bed-time. "I recognize you here," she said as she passed. But she came back in a few moments in a wrapper, with a comb in her hand, and stood on the hearth combing her hair, which was longer than a mermaid's. The fire was grateful to her, and I believe that she was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... of gaping faces, Which seem'd to swallow up his sound advice; All jointly listening, but with several graces, As if some mermaid did their ears entice, Some high, some low, the painter was so nice; The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... himself amends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pearl was her chariot and six dolphins harnessed with purpling coral used to draw it along. The tritons, her sons, handled the reins. The Naiads, their sisters, lashed the sea with their scaly tails, lifting their mermaid bodies wrapped in the magnificence of their sea-green tresses between whose ringlets might be seen their heaving bosoms. White seagulls, cooing like the doves of Aphrodite, fluttered around their nude sea-queen, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... chosen favourites, for the most part literary men. Here Page's sheer brilliancy of conversation showed at its best. Lord Bryce, Sir John Simon, John Morley, the inevitable companions, Henry James and John Sargent—"What things have I seen done at the Mermaid"; and certainly these gatherings of wits and savants furnished as near an approach to its Elizabethan prototype as London could ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... to Leicester I was carried up a prisoner by Captain Drury, one of the Protector's life-guards, who brought me to London and lodged me at the Mermaid, over against the Mews at Charing Cross. And I was moved of the Lord to write a paper to Oliver Cromwell, wherein I declared against all violence, and that I was sent of God to bring the people from the causes of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... not know of, That will the pastry, not my paper, show of. Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will be; But that which most doth take my muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich canary wine, Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine: Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted. Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring, Are all but Luther's beer, to this I sing. Of this ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... of John Milton might have known Shakespeare—might have dined with him at the "Mermaid," played skittles with him on Hampstead Heath, fished with him from the same boat in the river at Richmond; and then John Milton, the lawyer, might have discreetly schemed for passes to the "Globe" and gone with his boy John, Junior, to see "As You Like It" played, with the Master himself in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... you hear a mermaid sing so sweet, That the rude sea grows civil at her song, Wont at this hour her music to repeat, (With that she showed the monster huge and long — I said it seemed an island — as her seat) Pass with me where she sings the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... of the waters, Where the wave hath no strife, Where the Wind is a stranger, And the Sea-snake hath life, Where the Mermaid is decking 80 Her green hair with shells, Like the storm on the surface Came the sound of thy spells; O'er my calm Hall of Coral The deep Echo rolled— To the Spirit ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... indulged in an abnormal use of perfumes and cosmetics, but was incessantly to be seen combing his scented tresses by the aid of a hand mirror, till it was suggested that one of his Royal ancestors must have formed a mesalliance with the mermaid who most appropriately figured in his armorial bearings, similarly employed. The extreme slimness of his figure was accentuated by a coat which he made as famous as Lord Petersham did the garment called after his name; and Byron added to the fame of the beau by ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... MERMAID. A fabulous sea-creature of which the upper half was said to resemble a woman, the lower ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... you rowed me over here, my good fellow, but no fair lady accompanied me, unless it might have been some mermaid. I hope you are satisfied,' said he, turning to my companions, 'that the man who has brought you here has played you ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... of nature created around him, working in him as it worked abroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such men as he saw and knew; the words they utter were such as he heard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, and at a thousand un-named English firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... this time a young beginner, thought what he got for the preceding time to be very well, and in a few days after this arrived at Windsor, where he stayed one night, and there being a gentleman's family bound for London, that lay that night at the Mermaid Inn in the town, he changed his lodging and removed to the inn; and having stayed there that night, he minded where they put their valuable baggage up. The next morning he paid his reckoning and came ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... assume a virtue which she cannot assimilate, still it is like a foreigner who speaks your language to perfection in all but accent, and whom you long to hear in his own tongue. Put her back in her Welsh castle, and the scales would fall from her as from a mermaid who loves. If she returns to her father at the end of the season, I think I will call upon her six months later. She should go now, though; scales are apt to corrode. But what is the mystery about the mother? Did she elope with the coachman? But, no; that is strictly a modern ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and the ridiculed spellers sought their seats with hanging heads. By and by, however, the failures were not all at the bottom of the class; here and there such lists as "inane, profane, humane, insane, mundane, urbane," or, "staid, unlaid, mermaid, prayed, weighed, portrayed" began to pick out uncertain ones the ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... Lawrence [1], hired to grace [ii] His costly canvas with each flattered face, Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush, Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush? Or, should some limner join, for show or sale, A Maid of Honour to a Mermaid's tail? [iii] Or low Dubost [2]—as once the world has seen— Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen? Not all that forced politeness, which defends Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends. 10 Believe me, Moschus, like that ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... was thawing. The bailiff struck in: 'Are ye mad, sirs, and you, Master Block, save your breath, and spare your money; and if this worshipful gentleman must become innkeeper at any price, let him have the place in the Devil's name, and I will give thee the Mermaid, at Bridport, with a snug parlour, and ten times ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... studious, and caused him to stand meditating on river-stairs and causeways, and to go lurking about in boats, putting this and that together. But, according to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination. And Mr Inspector could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid, which no Judge and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to the house one is derogatory of the wit of its patrons, the other laudatory of the readiness of its service. "A pox o' these pretenders to wit!" runs the first passage. "Your Three Cranes, Mitre, and Mermaid men! Not a corn of true salt, not a grain of right mustard amongst them all." And here is the other side of the shield, credited to Iniquity in "The Devil ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... ears—the nose slightly aquiline—the large, dark, and beautiful eye which stood the sternest human gaze, gave to the expression of her countenance such dignity and variety that we all agreed that it really was super-animal. The Scandinavian Scald, with such a mermaid before him, would find in her eye a metaphor so emphatic that he would have no reason to borrow the favourite oriental image of the gazelles from his ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... left hand on the wrist that hung over the edge of the sofa. 'Ay, I hope that wicked little siren has done no great damage. Pulled you below, true mermaid fashion—eh?' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visible in the marvellously clear water. There were beautiful green plants that spread their flat fingers over the silver-white sands; and huge rolls of purple and sombre brown; and long strings that came up to the surface—the traceries and decorations of these haunts of the mermaid. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... now," he muttered; for, not many feet below him, seated on the crest of a massive wave, he saw the form of a beautiful woman, with a cruel face and long fair hair, which floated like a veil on the top of the water. 'Twas a mermaid, and he knew ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Boswell as we may, he was a spiritual phenomenon quite as rare as Johnson. More than most he deserves our gratitude. Let us hope that when next Heaven sends England a man like Johnson, a companion and listener like Boswell will be provided. The Literary Club sits forever. What if the Mermaid were in like eternal session, with Shakspeare's laughter ringing through the fire ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... not much time for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of the lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted blooms gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms of mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite flower—blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple fringed with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white, with the faintest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Indians saw the girls' clothes on the beach, and so looked out for the wearers. They found them in the water, and pursued them, and tried to capture them, but they were so slimy that it was impossible to take them, till one, catching hold of a mermaid by her long black hair, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. Third ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... for white men; This sailor knows of wondrous lands afar, More rich than Spain, when the Phoenicians shipped Silver for common ballast, and they saw Horses at silver mangers eating grain; This man has seen the wind blow up a mermaid's hair Which, like a golden serpent, reared and stretched To feel the air away beyond her head. He begged my pennies, which I gave with joy— He will most certainly return some time A self-made king of some new land, and rich. Alas that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... vessel's waist, I tried the difficult trick of scooping up a pail of water while the boat was in motion, and while so engaged my watch slipped out of my pocket, and into the water. We were then just below Fort Carroll, mid-stream. The watch is there yet, unless some mermaid has carried it off. I would not have lost it had I not divested it of the chain, to help appearances. On these trips one could not discover that we were not ordinary helpers ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... out here to see me off," he said, with a not unmusical laugh that was very infectious, "but Ned there, who carried me downstairs, wanted to tote me round the house in his arms like a baby to say ta-ta to you all. Excuse my not rising, but I feel as uncertain below as a mermaid, and as out of my element," he added, with a mischievous glance at his friend. "Ned concluded I must go on. But I must say good-by to the old lady first. Ah! here ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... first touch of Neptune's hand. Only the professional mermaid can look well at sea. The other women either lie on deck in pale green rows and live throughout the voyage on sea biscuits and sherry, or, giving up completely, seek burrows in the ship and hibernate like animals awaiting spring. Yes, even now I think I recognise the ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... he had been born in the wrong century. He could imagine himself at the Mermaid Tavern, hob-nobbing with Shakespeare and all the rest of them. He wondered if Richard Greene would be there. Then he wondered who Richard ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... say, in the Monologue entitled 'At the Mermaid', he could say, with perhaps greater truth, in his own person, than ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... is also happy to add the expression of his approbation of the liberal and judicious assistance rendered to Mr. Oxley, by Lieutenant King, commander of His Majesty's colonial cutter, Mermaid, whose exertions are so justly appreciated by Mr. Oxley, in the following report; and his excellency desires both those gentlemen to accept his thanks for the service thus rendered by their ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... Shooting-gallery, one and sevenpence. Treating Tony, and then he wouldn't shoot, so I did, one and eightpence. Living Skeleton, a penny—no, Tony treated me, the Living Skeleton doesn't count. Skittles, a penny, one and ninepence. Mermaid (but when we got inside she was dead), a penny, one and tenpence. Theater, a penny (Priscilla Partington, or the Green Lane Murder. A beautiful young lady, sir, with pink cheeks and a real pistol); ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... intelligent companion. He was all life and vivacity; it was quite a pleasure to be with him. Being new to the sea, he didn't know the names of the commonest things on the shore, and if you had seen his face light up as he kept picking up whelk's eggs, and mermaid's purses, and zoophytes, and hermit-crabs, and bits of plocamium or coralline, and asking me all I could tell him about them, you would not have thought him ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... ear!—the river's near, And if you think I'm shammin' now, To end my grief I'll seek relief Among the trout and salmon, now; For shrimps and sharks to make their marks, And other watery vermin there; Unless a mermaid saves my life,— My wife, and me her merman there. From top to toe, where'er you go, The loveliest girl of any, O,— Mavrone! your mind I find unkind, Sweet Kate ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... A miracle play, such as Noah, may be read in Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakespearean Drama (Ginn and Company). Marlowe's plays in Everyman's Library; his Edward II in Holt's English Readings; his Faustus in Temple Dramatists, and in Mermaid Series. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... there was a youngster in Zennor who was all'ys geekin'[B] into matters that warn't no use in the world. Some do say 'a was cliver, too, weth it all, an' cut out that there mermaid in the church[C] what the folks do come from miles round to see. Anyway, 'a warn't like 'es brawthers an' sesters, an' 'es folks dedn' knaw what ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... for him; she was a clever woman, but so proud of her noble birth that she wore twelve oysters on her tail, while the other grandees were only allowed six. Otherwise she was worthy of all praise, especially because she was so fond of the little mermaid princesses, her grandchildren. They were six beautiful children, but the youngest was the prettiest of all; her skin was as soft and delicate as a roseleaf, her eyes as blue as the deepest sea, but like all the others she had ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... flagon toward him, tilted it, and found it empty. His rueful face made me laugh. My lord laughed too,—somewhat loudly,—but ordered no more wine. "I would I were at the Mermaid again," lamented the now drunken Secretary. "There we did n't split a flagon in three parts.... The Tsar of Muscovy drinks me down a quartern of aqua vitae at a gulp,—I've seen him do it....I would I were the Bacchus on this cup, with the purple grapes adangle above me.... Wine ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... he awoke, and saw that the sunbeams were running over the wet skerry, and the Mermaid was still sitting by his side. But presently the whole thing changed before his eyes. It was the sun shining through the window-panes, on a bed in the Finn's hut, and by his side sat the Finn girl supporting his back, for they ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... were appointed and a vote taken. The Prophet received a majority of seventy-five, out of one hundred and twenty-five votes polled. This created a tremendous laugh, and we kept it up till we got to St. Louis. Here the most of us took the steamer Mermaid. ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... and I are two mermen — doing what? Waiting for mother mermaid to give us our dinner. I am getting hungry. But it will be a long time before a mermaid gets up here, I ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... pleasure," she whispered, "that I want to send some down to the 'Mermaid's Cave.' I'll begin to-day to work for ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... face? Maid-of-the-Mist. Who is the sad lady? Ane-mone. What lady weeps for her love? Mourning-bride. Who is the bell of the family? Bell-Flower. What untruthful lady shuns the land? False-Mermaid. What young lady is still the baby of the family? Virginia Creeper. What lady comes from the land where ladies bind their feet? Rose-of-China. Who is the neat ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... he, Flucker, had seen her perched on a rock, like a mermaid, watching their progress, which had been slow, because the skipper, infatuated with so sudden a passion, had made a ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... 'mid breakers wild and strong, Its veering helm should stray Where syrens wake the mermaid song, Guide ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... feel cheery again, "it seems to me that we have got into a mermaid's cave, for there is nothing but water all round us; and as for earth or sky, they are ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... like the Nereids, So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield. 40 But if that I am I, then well I know Your weeping sister is no wife of mine, Nor to her bed no homage do I owe: Far more, far more to you do I decline. O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, 45 To drown me in thy sister flood of tears: Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote: Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed I'll take them, and there lie; And, in that glorious supposition, think 50 He gains by death that hath such means to die: Let Love, ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... said the sly little Goblin, "I was about to go to the Fairy Queen and tell her one of her fairies was being carried off, but of course I shall not do so now. I see whom she is with. I thought it was old Neptune himself and he might change her into a mermaid." ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... pray for a happy deliverance," said the mate, "but if we make Charleston with her, it'll be a luck that man nor mermaid ever thought of. I hearn a good deal o' tell about Charleston, and the Keys. That isn't one of the places our stewards are so 'fraid of, and where owners don't like to send their ships when they can find freight in ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... best humour that exists in our language is Cockney humour. Chaucer was a Cockney; he had his house close to the Abbey. Dickens was a Cockney; he said he could not think without the London streets. The London taverns heard always the quaintest conversation, whether it was Ben Johnson's at the Mermaid or Sam Johnson's at the Cock. Even in our own time it may be noted that the most vital and genuine humour is still written about London. Of this type is the mild and humane irony which marks Mr. Pett Ridge's studies of the small grey streets. Of this type ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... in existence even at this time, however. See Ben Jonson, Essay on Donne.] A good deal of nineteenth century verse shows the author enviously dwelling upon the ideal comradeship of Elizabethan poets.[Footnote: Keats' Lines on the Mermaid Tavern, Browning's At the Mermaid, Watts-Dunton's Christmas at the Mermaid, E. A. Robinson's Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford, Josephine Preston Peabody's Marlowe, and Alfred Noyes' Tales of the Mermaid Inn all present fondly imagined accounts ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... order to buy the bare necessities of life. Knowing that his death would leave Isabella quite alone in the world and practically penniless, her father brought her up more like a boy than a girl; she could ride a horse as gracefully as an Amazon, she could swim like a born mermaid, and even outdo her father in his favorite sport of fencing. Yet so sweet was the gentle nature which the girl had inherited from her mother, that this strange upbringing never ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... of these lovers gave occasion to various fictions and conjectures. Some are of opinion, that they were changed into stars; others imagine, that Anningait was seized in his passage by the genius of the rocks, and that Ajut was transformed into a mermaid, and still continues to seek her lover in the deserts of the sea. But the general persuasion is, that they are both in that part of the land of souls where the sun never sets, where oil is always fresh, and provisions always warm. The virgins sometimes throw ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... fell on the Indians, the silence of breathless excitement. The red-coat they had heard of, and in a general way they knew what he signified; but a white woman to them was as fabulous a creature as a mermaid or a hamadryad. Their eyes were saved for Clare. They fixed on her as hard, bright, and unwinking as jet buttons. They conveyed nothing but an animal curiosity. Clare nodded and smiled to them in her own way, but no ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... shows at the mop, and the Cheap Jack's wife saw them all. The travelling wax-works; the menagerie with a very mangy lion in an appallingly rickety cage; the fat Scotchman, a monster made more horrible to view by a dress of royal Stuart tartan; the penny theatre, and a mermaid in a pickling-tub. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... London,—till I can find congenial spirits, and take my rightful place in the great parliament of mind. I am Pegasus in harness, here!" cried the vain, discontented youth. "Let me but once get there,—amid art, civilisation, intellect, and the company of men like that old Mermaid Club, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... flowers—primroses, cowslips, and, above all, orchises. But the pond was no ordinary one. It was always called the 'S pond,' being shaped like that letter. I suspect, too, that it was a pond of ill repute—perhaps connected with heathen worship—for we were warned never to go near its edge, lest the Mermaid should come and crome us in. Crome, as all East Anglians know, means 'crook'; and in later years I remember a Suffolk boy at Norwich school translated a passage from the 'Hecuba' of Euripides, in which the aged queen is described as 'leaning upon a crooked staff,' by 'leaning upon ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... descends in rain and dew, or is condensed on hills, produces springs, and rivers, and returns to the sea. So the blood circulates through the body and returns to the heart. 11. II. 1. Tides, 57. 2. Echinus, nautilus, pinna, cancer. Grotto of a mermaid. 65. 3. Oil stills the waves. Coral rocks. Ship-worm, or Teredo. Maelstrome, a whirlpool on the coast of Norway. 85. III. Rivers from beneath the snows on the Alps. The Tiber. 103. IV. Overflowing of ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the ears of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his senses that missing the door he threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, threw a net over him, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Party which gathered about the Nation in 1848, to displace this traditional figure in favour of a more earnest and tragical national type. But a single quotation will illustrate the natural magic of which Arnold speaks: "The Merrow (mermaid) put the comb in her pocket, and then bent down her head and whispered some words to the water that was close to the foot of the rock. Dick saw the murmur of the words upon the top of the sea, going out towards ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... hear the mermaid singing; The mermaid music at its portal ringing; The mermaid song, that hinged with gold its door, And, whispering evermore, Hushed the ponderous hurl and roar And vast aeolian thunder Of the chained tempests under The frozen cataracts that were its floor.— And, blinding ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... place. It is not altogether a luxurious position to find yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant things are expected of you, which you neglect at your peril. It is like the old fable of the mermaid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order that she might win his affection, she prayed that she might have the limbs and feet of a human maiden. Her prayer was answered, and she met her prince; but every step she took was as if she trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtile flame As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolved to live a fool the rest ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... MERMAID'S PURSE. The oblong horny cases with long filiform appendages developed from each of the four corners, found on the sea-shore, being the outer covering of the eggs of several species of rays and sharks. Also, the hollow root ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... messenger will bestow. Be not deterred if thy gorge at first rises against it, for, when thou art wonted, it is a balm for all sorrows and griefs, and as a dream of Paradise. And now, my sweet Will, whom my soul loveth, why comest thou not as of yore to the "Mermaid," that I may have speech with thee? Thou knowest that from my youth up I have adventured all for the welfare and glory of our Queen Elizabeth. On sea and on land and in many climes have I fought ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head |
