"Mermaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... I 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 beautiful, I still behold ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... sold in 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
... the fashion in 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 ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... husband, Melusina was compelled to leave her home. She regularly returned, however, before the death of any of the lords of her family, and by her wailings foretold that event. Her history is closely interwoven with the legends of the Banshee and Mermaid.] ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... it?" she asked, with a smile that captivated Lloyd at once, flashing over the whitest of little teeth. "You're getting all sorts of titles to-night. I heard a girl speak of you as a mermaid in that pale sea-green gown and corals, but I've come over here on purpose to call you the 'Little Colonel.' You don't know how much good it does me to hear a military title once more. Out at the fort it's all majors and captains and ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 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 ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... of the landscape might be French, these flowers were unmistakably Californian. The two pools, ornamented with the Arthur Putnam fountain of the mermaid, in duplicate, decidedly French in feeling, were brilliant with the reflected coloring from both the flowers and ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... 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 ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Russian Story. To the same cycle belong the Seal-tales of the Faroe Islands (Thorpe's Northern Mythology) and the wise women or mermaids of Shetland (Hibbert). Wayland the smith captures a wife by seizing a mermaid's raiment and so did Sir Hagn by annexing the wardrobe of a Danubian water-nymph. Lettsom, the translator, mixes up this swan-raiment with that of the Valkyries or Choosers of the Slain. In real life stealing women's clothes is an old trick and has often induced them, after having ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... Agricultural Distress Domestic Poems The Green Man Hit or Miss The Forlorn Shepherd's Complaint Lieutenant Luff Morning Meditations A Plain Direction The Assistant Drapers' Petition The Bachelor's Dream Rural Felicity A Flying Visit Queen Mab To Henrietta A Parthian Glance A True Story The Mermaid of Margate A Fairy Tale Craniology The Wee Man The Progress of Art Those Evening Bells The Carelesse Nurse Mayd Domestic Asides Shooting Pains John Day Huggins and Duggins The China-Mender Domestic Didactics Lament for the Decline ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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
... all difficulties or 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 ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... impression. Not to dwell on the institutions which have made Pall Mall and its neighbourhood a conglomerate of palaces, or on such lighter affairs as "the Four-in-Hand," which the railways have left behind, or the "Alpine," whose members they carry to the field of their enjoyment: there was the Mermaid, counting among its members Shakespeare, Raleigh, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Jonson; then came the King's Head; the October; the Kit-Cat; the Beef-Steak; the Terrible Calves Head; Johnson's club, where he had Bozzy, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... through a year, at least, which he spent in the company of a naiad, more beautiful than Venus, in a palace more splendid than even Versailles. Fired by the description, Poinsinet used to dip, and dip, but he never was known to make any mermaid acquaintances, although he fully believed that one day he should ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... so that the end came as a release. True to his ruling passion, philosophy had claimed him to the last, a set of Schopenhauer's works receiving his attention when able to study; but this was varied with readings in the 'Mermaid Series' of old plays, in which he took much pleasure. His library, in addition to numerous works on philosophy and the fine arts, was composed of standard books of all classes, including, of course, a proportion of nautical literature. Especially interesting are fifteen or twenty first editions ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... upon Fu-hi as their first historical emperor; and they place his lifetime in the years 2852-2738 B.C. Some accounts represent him as a supernatural being; and we see him depicted as a human figure with a fish tail something like a mermaid. He is credited with having established social order among his people, who, before him, had lived like animals in the wilds. The social chaos out of which Chinese society arose is described as being characterized ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... foam and deep water; the blanched 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... amusement soon grew quite absorbing, and her "cubby," as she called it, rapidly became a pretty grotto, where she lived like a little mermaid, daily loving more and more the beauty of the wonderful sea. Finding the boat too sunny at times, the boys cut long willow boughs and arched them over the seats, laying hemlock branches across till a green ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... of what she had seen, but only part of it. The rest was her secret. The little mermaid's kiss had left the prince as inanimate as before; hers had ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... shrieks high overhead, and dimly to our sight The moonlit crests of foaming waves gleam towering through the night. We'll steal upon the mermaid soon, and start her from her lay, When once the sandy bar is cross'd, and we are in ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... were lost in its abundance. Peachy sat drooped over, her hand supporting her chin and her knees supporting her elbows, her eyes fixed on the horizon-line. Her hair dried, too, but she did not touch it. It flowed down her back and spread into a pool of gold on the sand. She might have been a mermaid cast up by that sea on which she gazed with such a tragic wistfulness—and forever ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... and deception were strongly contending in Lord Glenvarloch's imagination, and it required him to rouse himself from his reverie, so strange did the proposal at first sound when his companion declared King Richard should sup with them at the Mermaid. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... days of Queen Elizabeth, tea, coffee, and chocolate were unknown save to travellers and savants, and the handmaidens of the good queen drank beer with their breakfast. When Shakespeare and Ben Jonson forgathered at the Mermaid Tavern, their winged words passed over tankards of ale, but later other drinks became the usual accompaniment of news, story, and discussion. In the sixteen-sixties there were no strident newspapers to destroy one's equanimity, and the gossip of the day ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... "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 Morgan's Memoires (Delegation ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... them making a fool of you, and blinding you with some other letter which you cannot read, note the arms on the respective seals. On the first is a fish-tailed mermaid, holding a half-moon in her hand—those are the Aronffy arms:—on the second a stork, three ears of corn in its talons—those are the High Sheriff's arms: on the third a semi-circle, from which a unicorn is proceeding,—those are the Nyarady arms; the fourth is a crown ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... verdure, thou, the maker of "the Harp by lone Glenfillan's spring," art passing from the earth which thou hast "painted with delight." And such are the chances of mortal fame, our children's children may raise new idols on the site of thy holy altar, and cavil where their sires adored; but for thee the mermaid of the ocean shall wail in her coral caves, and the sprite that lives in the waterfalls shall mourn! Strange shapes shall hew thy monument in the recesses of the lonely rocks! ever by moonlight shall the fairies pause from their roundel when some wild note of their minstrelsy reminds them of thine ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and entwining cluster of sea-grass. Those, however, who dwell there are very fair and lovely to behold, and for the most part are more beautiful than human beings. Many a fisherman has been so fortunate as to surprise some tender mermaid as she rose above the waters and sang. He would tell afar of her beauty, and such wonderful beings have been given the name of Undines. You, however, are now actually beholding ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... or Phoebus? have I been Or Lusignan or Biron? By a Queen Caressed within the Mermaid's haunt I lay, And twice I crossed the unpermitted stream, And touched on Orpheus' lyre as in a dream, Sighs of a Saint, and laughter ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... cheer. It is said that Susan, in the "Village Uncle," one of the "Twice-Told Tales," is not altogether a creation of his fancy. Her father was a fisherman living in Salem, and Hawthorne was constantly telling the members of his family how charming she was, and he always spoke of her as his "mermaid." He said she had a great deal of what the French call espieglerie. There was another young beauty, living at that time in his native town, quite captivating to him, though in a different style from the mermaid. But if his head and heart were turned in his youth by ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... flutter. Starting back with a slight, "Oh!" the poor lady fell; and who shall adequately describe, or even imagine, the effects of that fall? Many a time had Miss Trim descended that stair and passage on her feet, but never until then had she done so on her back, like a mermaid or a seal! Coming to the surface immediately, she filled the house with a yell that almost choked the hearers, caused old Ravenshaw to heave the pemmican curry into the lap of Lambert, and induced Lambert himself ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... that make noses red; Th' Bore's Head in Old 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... disagreeable rarity; but one who could look his own Ego straight in the eye, and pronounce unbiased judgment, were worthy of Sir Thomas Browne's Museum. Had Cheiron written his autobiography, the consciousness of his equine crupper would have ridden him like a nightmare; should a mermaid write hers, she would sink the fish's tail, nor allow it to be put into the scales, in weighing her character. The mermaid, in truth, is the emblem of those who strive to see themselves;—her mirror is too small to reflect anything more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... 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
... in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Are you not happy in your home? Flower 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. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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, serenely contemplating them from her movable throne, crowned with pearls and phosphorescent ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mari'nus, pertaining to the sea); mar'iner; mar'itime (Lat. adj. mariti'mus mari'nus); submarine'; transmarine'; ultramarine'; mermaid (Fr. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... that if a person was to tell me that he had seen a mermaid, with the body of a woman and the scaly tail of a fish, I should at once say that I could not believe him. And why? because it is contrary to the laws of nature. The two component parts of the animal could not ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... seen!" whispered the entranced Hiram. "If a mermaid was to float up to the glass bottom of this here boat and shake a finger at me, I'd go right over the side and join ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... rises from the ocean, floats in clouds, 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 Nile from African Monsoons, 129. V. 1. Giesar, a boiling fountain in Iceland, destroyed ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... hobject!" exclaimed Joe Dumsby, a short, thickset, little Englishman, who, having been born and partly bred in London, was rather addicted to what is styled chaffing. "Was you arter a mermaid, shipmate?" ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... not leave us long in suspense, but obligingly came out, partly to comment on the low price of mutton and partly to tell the tale of the mammoth mermaid. By rights, of course, Mrs. Bruce's husband should have been the gallant captain of a bark which foundered at sea and sent every man to his grave on the ocean bed. The ship's figurehead should have been discovered by some miracle, brought to the sorrowing widow, and set up in the garden in eternal ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... 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 ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... 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 Sir Richard Greene would be there. Then he wondered who Sir ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... 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. He leads a gay life, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... her hair, long as a mermaid's. Turning her head as she arranged it she saw her own face and form in the glass. Such reflections are soberizing to plain people: their own eyes are not enchanted with the image; they are confident then that the eyes of others ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... one of the side streets, and drew rein before a small inn, The Mermaid by name. As he rode into the courtyard the host hurried forward to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... has 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 ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... perform the duties of her toilet. Now, like a naiad at a fountain, does she lave that charming face and those ductile limbs in the limpid and rose-scented waters of a portable bath, sculptured in marble and supported by four little Cupids with gilded wings; then, like the fabled mermaid, does she arrange her shining hair in that style of beautiful simplicity which is so becoming, and so seldom successfully accomplished, even by women of undoubted taste. The amorous mirror glowingly reflects her young and budding charms, as she coquettishly admires the loveliness ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... and as she propelled herself gracefully across the sparkling lake, feeling the absolute mastery of her muscles, changing regularly from left to right in her side stroke, she might have been taken for a mermaid by some Neckan of the deep. She reached Blueberry Island in good time and, climbing up on the rocky shore, sat down ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... course, too, in the traditional account of the unforgettable evenings at the Mermaid. "Many were the wit-combats," wrote Fuller of Shakespeare in his "Worthies" (1662), "betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which too I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man of war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... one of these ponds, and cooling her feet in the water, sat this lovely maiden; and she was so intent on performing her toilet that she did not perceive Pedro, who, thinking she was a mermaid, and might therefore cast a spell over him, hid behind a ledge of rocks, and was able to see and hear her without ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... glittering scales of myriads, splashed with ruby, or flecked with amethyst, reflect the colours of the gorgeously-frilled and rosetted anemones in parterres between red coral crags. Tresses of filmy green floating from the mouth of a cavern, suggest a mermaid's hair, and her visible presence would scarcely add to the wonders in this under-world of glamour and mystery. Shells, pink and pearly, brown and lilac, scarlet and cobalt, strew the flower-decked floor with ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... where he got into the same plight for want of funds; but his mother wit came to his aid again, and this time he posed before the public as a naturalist who had discovered off the coast what he pronounced could be nothing else than a "mermaid," and for the exhibition of this marine creature, which he had cleverly constructed from the head and breast of an ape and half the body of a fish, he obtained a good round sum. We hear of him next at Singapore, where he also advertised his "mermaid" as being on exhibition at a certain boarding ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... that you can only speak of them in pothouse words. It would be idle, and perhaps undesirable, to give examples; but it may be noted that the same brutal physical metaphor is used by his Caponsacchi about the people who could imagine Pompilia impure and by his Shakespeare in "At the Mermaid," about the claim of the Byronic poet to enter into the heart of humanity. In both cases Browning feels, and perhaps in a manner rightly, that the best thing we can do with a sentiment essentially base is to strip off its affectations and state it basely, and that ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... and fivepence. Giddy-go-round again, one and sixpence. 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); that's one and elevenpence. Ginger beer, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... seen below the waves—the town of Is in Armorica (Le Braz, i. p. xxxix), or the towers under Lough Neagh. In some Welsh instances a man is the culprit (Rh[^y]s, CFL i. 379). In the case of Lough Neagh the keeper of the well was Liban, who lived on in the waters as a mermaid. Later she was caught and received the baptismal name of Muirghenn, "sea-birth." Here the myth of a water-goddess, said to have been baptized, is attached to the legend of the careless guardian of a spring, with whom she is identified ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... so nearly sealed the Mermaid's fate with Captain King, we found to lie half a mile north-west from the north-east end of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... the music too," remarked Herbert, "but I suppose Cousin Ronald makes it. A mermaid's only a ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... 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
... with awful dread, The plaintive music of the dead; They leave the amber fields of day: Soft as the cadence of the wave, That murmurs round the mermaid's grave, They mingle ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the "Feejee Mermaid," which attained such lasting notoriety, was an invention of his own. It was first exhibited in London in 1822, where it was purchased by Mr. Moses Kimball, of the Boston Museum, who sold it to Barnum. The creature was really most ingeniously constructed, probably by some Japanese. It drew ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... in truth, for Frank's suggestion. The old schooner whose name they now discerned in faded gilt as "Molly M," seemed like a ghost of other days. Her outthrust bow, her up-cocked stern and the figurehead of a simpering woman that might have been mermaid originally but was now so worn as to make it almost impossible to tell the original intent, was, indeed, suggestive of galleons of ancient days. This figurehead ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... And Philip ran upstairs three at a time. He went first to the attics, and made a systematic search of every hall, room, and closet. He even peeped into the great tank, as if Patty might have been transformed into a mermaid. Then followed a thorough search of the second story, with all its rambling ells and side corridors; he tiptoed through the nursery, smiling at the sleeping baby and casting a casual glance at the still figure on the couch with the long, white ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... Dr. Todd in his book on St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, page 460, cites from 'An Irish Life of St. Brendan,' but which must evidently be the fabulous voyage, four incidents, of which one is about the finding of a dead mermaid, another about one of the voyagers being devoured alive by sea-cats, and the third about an huge sea-cat as large as an ox which swam after them to destroy them, until another sea-monster rose up and fought with the cat, and both were drowned, none of which incidents occur in ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... metis [Lat.], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid [Lat.], hermaphrodite. [Mythical animals] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary^; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk^; 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, neither fish nor fowl, neither fish flesh nor fowl nor good red herring; one in a million, one ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... gentleman rabbit, and before he could turn the spyglass the other way a lovely mermaid swam up and handed him her card, and on it was written ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... "We are dead men 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 what the ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... some 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, cut ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... something already. Dark-colored, horny, flat, oblong, each corner furnished with a wiry, thorn-like projection;—what is it? A child tells you it is a Mermaid's Purse, and, giving the empty bag a shake, you straightway conclude that the maids of the sea know "hard times," as well as those of the land. But the Purse is not always so light. Sometimes it is found to contain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Court of Seasons Arch in the Court of Seasons—George H. Kahn Court of Flowers, Detail—Pacific Photo and Art Co. "The End of the Trail"—J. L. Padilla "The Pioneer" The Court of Palms. Portal between the Courts of Palms and Seasons—Pacific Photo and Art Co. Fountain of Summer—J. L. Padilla The Mermaid Fountain Fountain of "Beauty and the Beast" The Palace of Machinery Palace of Machinery, Interior Vestibule, Palace of Machinery—Gabriel Moulin Palace of Fine Arts Open Corridor, Palace of Fine Arts Detail of Rotunda, Palace of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... 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 ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... a Judge, that the law oft obeys; K is a Key, that no secret betrays. L is a Lamb, often freaks o'er the lea; M is a Mermaid, that sings in ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... 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
... moon, On every breaker tossed. And all across from star to star, I've seen the watery sea, With not a single ship in sight, Just ocean there, and me; And heard my father snore. And once, As sure as I'm alive, Out of those wallowing, moon-flecked waves I saw a mermaid dive; Head and shoulders above the wave, Plain as I now see you, Combing her hair, now back, now front, Her two eyes peeping through; Calling me, 'Sam!' -quietlike- 'Sam!'... But me .... I never went, Making believe I kind of thought 'Twas ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... whose waves 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 rent in the darkness a ray ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... there are irrigation canals; its burrows weaken the banks of the water-channels, and cause collapses. The dugong is a sea mammal found on the north coast of Australia. It is said to be responsible for the idea of the mermaid. Rising out of the water, the dugong's figure has some resemblance to ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... have one hand in heaven, To write my happiness in leaves of stars, A wife would pluck me by the other down. This bark has thus long sailed about the world, My soul the pilot, and yet never listened To such a mermaid's song. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... him not wicked, sister: speak him fair, And look upon him with a mermaid's eye.... Request him gently, Anna, to return: I crave but this—he stay a tide or two, That I may learn to bear it patiently; If he depart thus suddenly, I die. Run, Anna, run; stay not to ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... stretching into the stream. Here the fish is excellent as at Porto cla Lenha, and we found the people catching it in large spoon-shaped basins: I enquired about the Peixe mulher (woman- fish), the French sirene, which old missioners describe as an African mermaid, not exactly as she appeared to the "lovely lord of Colonsay," and which Barbot figures with "two strutting breasts." He makes the flesh taste like pork, and tells us that the small bones of the hand were good for gravel, whilst bracelets made of the left rib were worn near ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... blond, and in a white evening gown of satin and silver sequins that made her look like a lovely and fashionable mermaid, sat in her drawing room and stretched her feet out to the flames of a gentle woodfire. It was seven o'clock of a late April night, and through an open window to her left came, from the little park beyond the house, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Plausible Grocer Husband Allow Worship Gipsy Insane Encourage Clerk Disease Astonish Clergyman Boulevard Realize Hectoring Canary Bombast Primrose Diamond Benedict Walnut Abominate Piazza Holiday Barbarous Disgust Heavy Kind Virtu Nightmare Devil Gospel Comfort Whist Mermaid Pearl Onion Enthusiasm Domino Book Fanatic Grotesque Cheat Auction Economy Illegible Quell Cheap Illegitimate Sheriff Excelsior Emasculate Danger Dunce Champion Shibboleth Calico Adieu Essay Pontiff Macadamize Wages Copy Stentorian Quarantine Puny Saturnine Buxom Caper Derrick Indifferent ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... wholly immaterial to the signification of the name whether there are many objects, or only one, to which it happens to be applicable, or whether there be any at all. God is as much a general term to the Christian or Jew as to the Polytheist; and dragon, hippogriff, chimera, mermaid, ghost, are as much so as if real objects existed, corresponding to those names. Every name the signification of which is constituted by attributes, is potentially a name of an indefinite number of objects; ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... remained. She was already placing securely the foundations of commercial wealth and civil liberty upon those shifting quicksands which the Roman doubted whether to call land or water. Her submerged deformity, as she floated, mermaid-like, upon the waves was to be forgotten in her material splendor. Enriched with the spoils of every clime, crowned with the divine jewels of science and art, she was, one day, to sing a siren song of freedom, luxury, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have been he who led the happier life, who most completely—and we must take this in the human as well as religious sense—triumphed over suffering. The second has its proof in the contempt for poetic melancholy which flashes from the supposed utterance of Shakespeare in 'At the Mermaid'; its negative justification in the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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 of the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... some resemblance with "The Water King"; one is 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
... MERMAID. A fabulous sea-creature of which the upper half was said to resemble a woman, the lower half ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... yes," said the skipper. "P'raps you've never seen a vanilla iceberg, or a mermaid a-hanging out her things to dry on the equatorial line, or the blue-winged shark what flies through the air in pursuit of his prey, or ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... 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 into ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... and county fairs one may still find among the "attractions" a mermaid, dried and stuffed, consisting of the upper half of a monkey artlessly joined to the lower half or two-thirds of a codfish, the monkey's head usually adorned with a handful of oakum or horse-hair. When this kind of thing ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... longer than we had laid out to, for our sweet Dorothy liked it there. And if she had took it into her head to set down on a lonesome rock in mid ocean, like a mermaid, for a week, there would the rest on us be sot round her till her mind changed. For the head of our party would have managed it some way so she could had her way. Not that she would do anything aginst the wishes of the rest of us, but she wuz happy there, and the ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... felt Badr and finding on him the signs of slumber said to Salih, "He is asleep; what hast thou to say and what is thine object in making sure his sleeping?" Replied he, "O my sister, know that I have bethought me of a Mermaid of the mermaids who befitteth thy son; but I fear to name her, lest he be awake and his heart be taken with her love and maybe we shall be unable to win to her; so should he and we and the Grandees of the realm be wearied in vain and trouble betide us through ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... View by Night. Hilda Van Sicklen, photo. (Frontispiece) Panorama—Exposition from Presidio Heights. W. Zenis Newton, photo Tower of Jewels—The Illumination by Night. J. L. Padilla, photo Fountain of Energy—A View in the South Gardens. W. Zenis Newton, photo Festival Hall—South Gardens and Mermaid Pool. W. Zenis Newton, photo Festival Hall—The Terrace and Colonnade. W. Zenis Newton, photo Festival Hall—Mermaid Pool in the Mist. Jesse T. Banfield, photo Palace of Horticulture—The Dome and East Entrance. W. ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... 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 and Pupil ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... the last century. "His son would not else have been so clever a youth! But here is Captain Ludlow looking at the ocean, as if he expected to see my niece rise out of the water, in the shape of a mermaid." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and we found this 'ere table in a cupboard under the stairs. A bloody fine table it was too. One of them bracket tables what you fix to the wall, without no legs. It 'ad a 'arf-round marble top to it, and underneath was a carved hoak figger, a mermaid, with 'er arms up over 'er 'ead 'oldin' up the table top—something splendid!' The man on the pail waxed enthusiastic as he thought of it. 'Must 'ave been worth at least five quid. Well, just as we pulled this 'ere table out, who should come in but Rushton, and when 'e seen it, 'e tells ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... skipper, 'I only wish that I was a young man, for the girl is said to be as handsome as a mermaid, and as for money, I s'pose she's worth devilish nigh upon two hundred ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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
... to a stately palace, 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 enemy both to her and the Yellow Dwarf; ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning and the freshness of the earth—Thomas Heywood could have written it or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the Mermaid—or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of the god Pan, who is said to have piped along the streams. I offer my credence to the earlier origin as the more pleasing. And therefore on a country walk I observe the streams if by chance any of them ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... the Magdaleine, and the Mule, those "capital caverns," celebrated in Pantagruel's conference with the Limosin student, which has conferred upon them an immortality like that of our own hostel, the Mermaid, were wholly neglected; the dice-box was laid aside for the nonce; and the well-used cards were thrust into the doublets of these ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... he alludes to the tradition that Mona, the druidic stronghold, was long covered with an enchantment of mist—work of an angry mermaid: ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... her father's arms, had taken the watch on the beach, and there the little girl remained perched upon a rock, at the foot of which the waves now only sullenly washed, for the night was beautifully calm and clear. To a passer on the ocean she might have been mistaken for a mermaid who had left her watery bower to ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Spake then 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, / ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... were a press 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 seem'd, to mock ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... new effulgence, this time in two broad rays, one a dazzling, pale azure, the other a clear, pearly white. Nelida's graceful movements grew slower and slower, till she merely seemed to sway indolently to and fro like a mermaid rocking herself to sleep on the summit of a wave, ... and then,— from among the veiling shadows of the trees, there stepped forth a man,—beautiful as a sculptured god, of magnificently moulded form and noble ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... These be the 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 ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... a truant I fear, H hand in hand, like two pillars appear. I was an Indian figure for thee: J was Jemima Mermaid, only see. ...
— Funny Alphabet - Uncle Franks' Series • Edward P. Cogger
... she left about half of herself at eighteen years of age behind, and grafted the rest on to the relict of the late Mr F.; thus making a moral mermaid of herself, which her once boy-lover contemplated with feelings wherein his sense of the sorrowful and his sense of the comical were ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... 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
... daubing of which is somewhat atoned for by the good feeling which placed them there. One of them represents the Virgin appearing to a ship in a storm, with a visage and demeanor which might as well accompany a flying mermaid; another describes a man run over by a cart, and preserved unhurt by a similar interference; a third, the recovery from a sick bed, and the joy of the friends on the occasion, whose countenances not a little reminded us of our ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... church are the by-streets of Rye, so old and simple and quiet and right; particularly perhaps Mermaid Street, with its beautiful hospital. In the High Street, which is busier, is the George Inn, the rare possessor of a large assembly room with a musicians' gallery. One only of Rye's gates is standing—the Landgate; but ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... recognizes as well as any one the value of the slapstick as a mirth-provoking instrument. (All hail to the slapstick! it was well known at the Mermaid Tavern, we'll warrant.) But he prefers the rapier. Probably his Savage Portraits, splendidly truculent and slashing sonnets, are among the finest ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... but laborious student and practitioner thereof knoweth. He could not for the life of him help admiring "Adeline," "Oriana," "Mariana," "The Ode to Memory." Yet he had nothing but scorn for the scarcely less exquisite "Mermaid" and "Sea Fairies"—though the first few lines of the latter, excluded by this and other pseudo-criticism from the knowledge of half a generation of English readers, equal almost anything that the poet has ever done. And only the lucky memory of a remark of Hartley Coleridge's ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... great throne of red gold, ornamented with graceful sea fringe, pearls and amber. From without one may gaze up to the amber-colored ceiling, or down to the pavement of lustrous pearl. It was this wondrous palace that the mermaid abandoned for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... and threaded the three little groves of oak, chestnut, and locust, in the centres of which, set in circular lawns, were the three axes of interest—the stone-edged fish-pond, the spouting fountain, and the ancient ship's figurehead—a wind-worn, sea-battered mermaid cuddling a tiny, finny sea-child between breast ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of the Company are in a shield supported by a merman and mermaid, the latter with a mirror in her hand. The Keys refer to St. Peter, the Patron Saint of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... and to 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
... commonly understood, has reference to the side turned to the public gaze. Neither could we expect one so prolific as Shakspere to find time for the criticism of the works of other men, except in such moments of relaxation as those in which the friends at the Mermaid Tavern sat silent beneath the flow of his wisdom and humour, or made the street ring with the overflow of their ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... people of Plainville would have been scandalized if they could have witnessed her shocking familiarity with a horse! She thought of an English girl who had been cut by the good society of Plainville because she dared to ride like a biped instead of a mermaid. And she laughed in a wild exultant freedom, while the wind whipped her hair about her shoulders, and she felt her mount firm beneath her as they ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Duffy, who was no respecter of names or persons, "it ain't a wreck, it's a mermaid. I've bin told they weigh over six ton when young. Look out when ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... be the mermaid's retreat of which the old captain had spoken, and of which the natives on Queen Charlotte's Island had such a strange superstition? Tite thought to himself. All the pleasant associations of home, all that he loved ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... quit this national trait. The English naval muse, which I presume must be a Mermaid, half woman and half fish, has, by her simple and half the time, nonsensical songs, done more for the British flag than all her gunnery, or naval discipline and tactics. This inspiration of the tenth muse, with libations ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... about legs, and there aren't any in the pictures." "I can't help it, Nibble!" replied Brighteyes, rather pettishly. "I can't cut off my legs, and I am going to play mermaid. I can be the queen, and queens have everything they want, I know." And she turned round, displaying to my view a superb tail of seaweed, fastened to her sash, and trailing ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... 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.... ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... heart revives: her vespers done, Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees; Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees: Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, But dares not look behind, or all the ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... (Looking down.) No! I say, do just look down here! There's the "Mermaid" walking along and chatting with him. Not with father. I wonder if those two aren't making ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... build yourself a Tudor House would be as absurd as for Ben Jonson to have planned himself a Norman Castle with a torture-chamber underneath the wine-cellar, and the fireplace in the middle of the dining-hall. His fellow cronies of the Mermaid would have thought ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... us as to its source, and were inclined to pronounce it a trick played by our fun-loving sailing-master. He, however, denied all agency in the matter, but counseled us to "keep a close look-out on the lee bow" if we wanted to see a mermaid. We had noticed a sort of thrilling motion on the lower deck, not unlike the sensation produced by the charge of an electro-galvanic battery; and this, the Parsee captain gravely assured us, was the mermaids' dance, and their efforts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... in Shropshire; Griffin dwells in Coventry (where he died, three years later). These are the men injured; and if they cannot, or will not, move in the business, Shakespeare (whose case at law would be more difficult) can hardly be expected to. So he contents himself with strong expressions at The Mermaid. But in 1612 Jaggard repeats his offence, and is indiscreet enough to add Heywood to the list of the spoiled. Heywood lives in London, on the spot; and Shakespeare, now retired to Stratford, is of more importance than he was in 1599. Armed with Shakespeare's authority Heywood goes ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... looked last Summer when she played that she was a little mermaid, and lay on the rocks looking down into the water, her long yellow hair hanging down ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... those genuinely opaque panes, and illuminate the path to the gate. Better to have an electric light than cause your guests to plunge into Perdita's border. By the side of this fortress-door hung a heavy iron bell-pull, ending in a mermaid. When first Mrs Lucas had that installed, it was a bell-pull in the sense that an extremely athletic man could, if he used both hands and planted his feet firmly, cause it to move, so that a huge bronze bell swung in the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... moment took That which so long, so charily she kept; And fain by stealth away she would have crept, 310 And to some corner secretly have gone, Leaving Leander in the bed alone. But as her naked feet were whipping out, He on the sudden cling'd her so about, That, mermaid-like, unto the floor she slid; One half appear'd, the other half was hid. Thus near the bed she blushing stood upright, And from her countenance behold ye might A kind of twilight break, which through ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... went 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
... 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 is the simple but smashing laughter of the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... walk, and then irritably took a hand-rail and hauled himself along it, with his legs trailing behind him like the tail of a swimming mermaid. He thought of the simile and was not impressed by his ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... 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
... portrait of a poet or rather of the poet of the Elizabethan period; for the specimen here represented stands as a type for all his class; and it is worth notice, for if Shakespeare himself was different, many of his associates at the "Mermaid," we may be sure, well answered the description. "I espied far off a certain kind of an overworne gentleman, attired in velvet and satin; but it was somewhat dropped and greasie, and bootes on his legges, whose soles wexed thin and seemed to complaine of their maister, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... mounted to the top, there are good views of the wild scenery of the Derbyshire hills, with the villages nestling in the glens, and of the "Kinder Fall," where much of the water from the summit pours down a cataract of some five hundred feet height, while not far away is the "Mermaid's Pool," where, if you go at the midnight hour that ushers in Easter Sunday, and look steadily into the water, you will see a mermaid. The man who ventures upon that treacherous bogland by night certainly deserves to see ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... enthusiasm of Captain Sarrasin. He liked a girl who rode, that was certain. Mrs. Sarrasin rode like that rarest of creatures, except the mermaid, a female Centaur, and if he had had a dozen daughters, they would all have been trained to ride, one better than the other. The riding, therefore, was clearly in the favour of Dolores, so far as Captain Sarrasin's estimate was concerned. But ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the old dishes vanished to? Who has ever known "A smoothening Quiddany of Quinces?" Who can tell the composition of a Tansy? These are tame days when we have forgotten how to make Cock-Ale. They drank 'Sack with Clove-gilly-flowers' at the "Mermaid," I am sure. What is Bragot? What is Stepony? And what Slipp-coat Cheese? Ask the baker for a Manchet. The old names call for a Ballade. Ou sont les mets d'antan? And, cooks, with all your exactness about pounds and ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... 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 the Bank-side—or Borough ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... wasn't suicide, But I had heard so much of those mud baths, I thought I'd try one. Ugh! it was a mess! Weeds, slime, and tangled vines! Oh, me! Had I been Annette Kellerman Or even a real mermaid, I had lived to tell the tale. But I slid down and under, And so Will Shaxpur told it for me. Just as well. But I think my death scene is unexcelled By any in cold print. It beats that scrawny, red-headed old thing of Tom Hood's ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Dick one day, as he sat contemplating the features of Miss Sally Brass. 'I suspect if I asked any questions on that head, our alliance would be at an end. I wonder whether she is a dragon by-the-bye, or something in the mermaid way. She has rather a scaly appearance. But mermaids are fond of looking at themselves in the glass, which she can't be. And they have a habit of combing their hair, which she ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she came—he thought she came—in the form of a mermaid, raising herself aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this window, and below it we saw the deep moat in ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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, ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... Britain's 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 ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and make herself a scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter—the letter A—but freshly ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the wood, Or was it mermaid in the sea, Or was it maid or lurdon auld, He'd carry an' bring ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... had many owners. As with the woman in the Sadducee's riddle, she of many husbands, seven political powers have had this mermaid as bride. Spain, the English, the Dutch, the Spaniards again, the French, the Knights of Malta, the French again, who sold her to the Guiana Company, who in 1734 passed her over to the Danes, from whom the English captured her in 1807 but ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... with a band in the furrow'—when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'— when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you— the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work passively under dictates ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 earthly music ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sea-shell, borne away Far from the ocean's pebbly shore, Still loves to hum the choral lay, The whispering mermaid taught of yore. ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... array but was worth half a lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... Zennor, about a quarter of a mile distant, lies in a wild and stony district. Within the very interesting church are some quaint bench ends, one of which depicts a mermaid, complete with comb, mirror, and fishy tail, but the carving is of a very primitive order. On Zennor Beacon is the famous Zennor Quoit or Cromlech, the largest in Cornwall, and one of the finest in the country. Between Zennor and St. Ives a wild tract of ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... Exeter are probably the earliest we have, the character of their foliage denoting the Early English period. They are thought to have been the gift of Bishop Bruere (1224-44). The complete set numbers forty-nine, and among the subjects represented are a merman and a mermaid, an elephant, and a knight ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath |
