"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observes that he has committed only one plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth sweetly and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... gorgio to his fair, And thus his ditty ran:— 'Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come, And not ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... early days expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire checked the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... A simple ditty Private Smithy sang for me, Entitled "Beans."... The tune was not a joy; The words were commonplace as they could be, But just to ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... and, having the entire confidence of the commandant, was in a position to do much good without being suspected. Pete was an original character, of a jovial nature, and, when intending some serious adventure, would appear very solemn, and usually singing a doleful ditty, often the following, which was ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... studied than they deserve, although replete with grace, melody, and humour, we stumbled upon a ballad which we at once recognised as an old acquaintance. Some of our readers may happen to recollect the very witty and popular ditty called "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship," a peculiar favourite amongst the lower orders in Scotland, but not, so far as we knew, transplanted from its native soil. Our surprise, therefore, was great when we discovered Captain Wedderburn dressed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... to tread upon the air, Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart Only to meet again more close, and share The inward fragrance of each other's heart. She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair Sang, of delicious love and honey'd dart; He with light steps went up a western hill, And bade the sun farewell, and joy'd ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side A pleasanter spot you never spied; But when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, what ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... in a tipsy, disconnected way the senseless ditty, swaying back and forth to the imaginary music. Beautiful as a dream, with dark hair, and great melting eyes, her skin was like lilies, and each cheek a luscious peach. Her tall, graceful figure, clad in long, sweeping black draperies, with white jeweled ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... absence, the soldier not on guard went to the forecastle to hear the prisoners singing. He found the ten together, in high good humour, listening to a "shanty" sung by three of their number. The voices were melodious enough, and the words of the ditty—chanted by many stout fellows in many a forecastle before and since—of that character which pleases the soldier nature. Private Grimes forgot all about the unprotected state of the deck, and sat down ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... to chant this ditty to his loving subjects, was a monstrously fat old man, with only one eye; and a nose which bore evidence to the frequency, strength, and depth of his potations. He wore a murrey-coloured plush jerkin, stained with the overflowings ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... king to an old emperor." His army filed off by night, in silence, leaving behind its munitions and its tents just as they stood, "driven away, almost, by the chastisement of Heaven," says the contemporary chronicler Rabutin, "with but two shots by way of signal." The ditty of the soldier just ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... possible grace—for there was patronage in that too, and a kind of implication that she had a discerning taste in such matters, and was something of a critic—John Browdie proceeded to consider the words of some north-country ditty, and to take his wife's recollection respecting the same. This done, he made divers ungainly movements in his chair, and singling out one particular fly on the ceiling from the other flies there asleep, fixed his eyes upon him, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... oak-leaves with floriated spandrels.[44] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman's house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:— ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... until this foolish, ranting ditty seemed to mock me, my breath came and went to it, my heart beat to it; yet even so, I was praying passionately and this my prayer, viz: That whoso was waiting above us for my death-cry should not again lift the scuttle lest I be discovered to this man-thing ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... glance at mademoiselle; but when I did dare, to my amazement, she was smiling good-humoredly, and I saw the words meant nothing to her. But the chorus was interrupted at that moment by a single voice which I recognized at once as Josef Papin's, singing a ditty about doves and cuckoos and nightingales, and winding up by declaring that he was dying for the soft eyes of his mistress. I saw that mademoiselle recognized the voice, too, and I was vexed to see the bright color and downcast ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... faintly recall a saccharine tune sung by someone who strode stiffly to and fro in a glare of amber footlights—wasn't there a song about: "And I lo-ong to settle down, in that old Long Island town!" Wasn't there such a ditty? It came softly back, unbidden, to the sentimental attic of our memory as we passed along that fine avenue of trees and revisited, for the first time since we moved away, the wide space of those Long Island fields and the row of frame cottages. There was the little house, rather ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Swiss girls about, until vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jodeling refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep in the corridors of the hotel. All went well up to the last verse. Promptly and truly ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now living ever saw ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... accompany M. du Bartas on the piano while he mangled the great solo from Figaro; and the way being opened to music, the audience, as in duty bound listened while Chatelet in turn sang one of Chateaubriand's ballads, a chivalrous ditty made in the time of the Empire. Duets followed, of the kind usually left to boarding-school misses, and rescued from the schoolroom by Mme. du Brossard, who meant to make a brilliant display of her dear Camille's talents ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... telescope laid across his knees, which every little while he would raise to his eye and take a steady glance around the horizon to seaward. At other times he would roll and light a paper cigar, murmuring some low ditty to himself as he sent the smoke in volumes through his nose. A small brass bell hung beside the shed near the battery, together with a telegraphic card, which was connected by a wire strung on low posts, or hooked from rock to rock to the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... together, plunged recklessly into the following appropriate ditty; which, failing its proper tune, he manfully set at the top of his voice, and with all the energy he was capable of, to the air of ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... surprise they found Ross there. He was sitting at the piano strumming a music-hall ditty. As the door opened be shuffled to his feet, shook hands distantly with Auntie Nan, and nodded his ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... I cried, Dare I woo and wed a bride? I, like thee, have no home-nest; And the twin notes thus tuned their ditty, - 'Love can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... our attention. It was a child singing a merry, lightsome air; there was no other sound. We had traversed London from Hyde Park even to where we now were in the Minories, and had met no person, heard no voice nor footstep. The singing was interrupted by laughing and talking; never was merry ditty so sadly timed, never laughter more akin to tears. The door of the house from which these sounds proceeded was open, the upper rooms were illuminated as for a feast. It was a large magnificent house, in which doubtless some rich merchant had lived. The singing ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Listen, Monsieur Chameau, to something more in their line." He inflated his huge lungs and burst into a ditty of his own: ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that runs in the blood held these cut-throats profoundly silent in their boats, as at home I could imagine a party of smugglers (they would not stick at a murder or two, either) listening, with pensive faces, to a sentimental ditty of some "sweet Nancy," howled dismally within the walls of a wayside taproom in the smoke of pipes. I seemed to understand profoundly the difference of races that brings with it the feeling of romance or awakens hate. My gorge rose at Manuel's song. I hated his lamentations. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... seek admiration by vauntingly telling Of drawing and painting, and musical skill; But give me the fair one, in country or city, Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart, Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty, While plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... for a gossip. Sit you there And hide the hour-glass. There was a time In early boyhood, when a thing like thee Seemed horrible, but now my mouth is dry With other terror. Thou art a cap and bells: Play me a ditty on a tambourine. [Starting up.] Who goes there? [Rushes to Smith, who enters.] Tell me ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... not thus. Give me that wild love-ditty thou knowest so well. I did use to bid thee be silent when thou wouldest have worried mine ears with it. But in sooth the morning looks so languishing and tender that it constrains the bosom, I verily think, to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... not of the sweetest, for to Vijil he had expressed himself in forcible Mexican—which is supposed to be Spanish and often isn't—condemning the luck by which the cinch had gone bad at the wrong time, and as he tinkered he sang softly an old southern ditty: ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the master and the overseers, O Lord! so runs our chaplain's weekly ditty; Unreasonable prayers God never hears, He knows that they're supported by ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of our foreign relations. It must be maintained. But in maintaining it we must not be forgetful that a great change has taken place. We are no longer a weak Nation, thinking mainly of defense, dreading foreign imposition. We are great and powerful. New powers bring new responsibilities. Our ditty then was to protect ourselves. Added to that, our duty now is to help give stability to the world. We want idealism. We want that vision which lifts men and nations above themselves. These are virtues by reason of their own merit. But they must not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... an Act of Parliament, with all its whereases, and be it enacteds, and hereby repealeds, creates, it is said, quite as much emotion in them as the most brilliant burst of the fashionable poet of the day. They will set you up a psalm or a blasphemous ditty with the same equanimity, not retaining in their minds any clear distinction between them. Your writing must be something very wonderful indeed, before they distinguish it from other "copy," except by the goodness or badness of the hand. A State paper which all the world is mad ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring, Every thing did banish moan Save the Nightingale alone. She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sung the dolefullest ditty, That to hear it was great pity. Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry; Tereu, tereu, by and by: That to hear her so complain Scarce I could from tears refrain; For her griefs so lively shown Made me think upon mine own. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Spenser's eulogy on him, was printed, Ralegh had acquired the reputation at Court of a poet. Puttenham, a critic of high repute, had, in The Art of English Poesy, printed in 1589, pronounced 'for ditty and amorous ode, Sir Walter Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate.' By 'insolent,' not 'condolent,' as Anthony Wood quotes, Puttenham meant original. His first public appearance as a poet was in 1576, when in ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... hastily to a position on the main drive, and began in a deep roar, coupled with an unsteady gait, the following ditty: ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... all familiar with that John Brown whom the minstrel has immortalized as being the possessor of a diminutive youth of the aboriginal American race, who, in the course of the ditty, is multiplied from "one little Injun" into "ten little Injuns," and who, in a succeeding stanza, by an ingenious amphisbaenic process, is again reduced to the singular number. As far as we are aware, the author of this "genuine autobiography" claims no relationship with the famous owner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretell: Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats, To the turtle-dove that listens, while ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... stomach, paunch, venter, ventricle, crop, craw, maw, gizzard, breadbasket; mouth. pocket, pouch, fob, sheath, scabbard, socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, valise; grip, grip sack [U.S.]; skippet, vasculum; boot, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pressure, and the cook is ready to receive the gear. Sleeping-bags, "computation bag," hypsometer, "meat block" (a three-inch-square paper pad on which meteorological notes were taken); clothes-bag opened, three ditty-bags passed in and bag retied; a final temperature taken and aneroid read; sledge anchored securely by tow-rope to the ice-axe, and a final look round to see all gear is safely ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... sing 'The Rover' and I will sing 'The Man with the Coat of Green,'" said she, with the generosity of one with many gifts. And she started upon her ditty. She had a voice that as yet was only in its making; it was but a promise of the future splendour, yet to Gilian, the hearer, it brought a new and potent joy. With 'The Rover' he lived in the woods, and set foot upon foreign wharves; 'The ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the raw material, beneath the touch of Charley's wise hands, emerged a wondrous cosmos of biscuits, light as the heart of a boy. And Frank, singing a French ditty, created wheat cakes. His method struck me as poetic. He scorned the ordinary uninspired cook's manner of turning the half-baked cake. One side being done, he waited until the ditty reached a certain lilting upward leap in the refrain, when, with a dexterous movement ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... handsome, but something that resembled a compound of both, where the simplicity of the fool was mixed with the extravagance of a crazed imagination. He sung with great earnestness, and not without some taste, a fragment of an old Scottish ditty:— ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... intervals of the stanzas of this ditty, the good-natured personage addressed as Mamma by the singer, and whose large whiskers appeared under her cap, seemed very anxious to exhibit her maternal affection by embracing the innocent creature who performed the daughter's part. Every ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin redbreast" in The White Devil, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's Fourth Song,—"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative genius of English poetry, recently delivered ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... lord! Besides, I hoped to hear My ditty warbled into fairer ears, By your own lips; to ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... turns round and winks so pretty, Little, sharp round eyes; Beppo sings a jolly ditty, Quite to our surprise. Then we mount, and off we go, up and down the mall, Never do they careless ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... So, this is the Gate, and most invitingly open: If there shou'd be a Blunderbuss here now, what a dreadful Ditty wou'd my Fall make for Fools; and what a Jest for the Wits; how my Name wou'd be roar'd about Streets. ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... the linnet had ended his evensong, And the lark dropt down from his last wild ditty And ruffled his wings and his speckled breast Blossomwise over his June-sweet nest; While winging wistfully into the West As a fallen petal is wafted along The last white sea-mew sought for rest; And, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... scuppers, for it was still early morning, and under the directions of Hayton, the bo'sun, the swabbers were at work in the waist and forecastle. Despite the heat and the stagnant air, one of the toilers found breath to croak a ribald buccaneering ditty: ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... workmen. They had been to see some tragic melodrama performed by some players in a booth at the fair. A very slow, doleful, but catching air was played, which so laid hold of the tailors' fancy that for some time after they were found slowly whistling or humming the doleful ditty, the movement of their needles keeping time to it; the result was that the clothing that should have been sent home on Saturday was not finished until the Wednesday following. The music had done it! The master tailor, being something of a philosopher, sent his men to the play again; but ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... felt no great delight, as may be supposed, in the falconer's satire, considering its subject, began to snatch up his mantle, and fling it around his shoulders, an action which instantly interrupted the ditty of Adam Woodcock. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the "Ecclesiastical History" contain a letter by one Cuthbert to his fellow-student Cuthwine, describing the manner of Bede's death. In this letter is contained a pious ditty in the vernacular, which Bede, who was "learned in our native songs," composed at the time when he was contemplating the approach ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... praise thee, oh, thou human race. God's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking! Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show; The name of one is man, the other's woman! Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty, 'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat. Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast Is Cain's foul mark upon ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... passed a battalion of the 113th Regiment of the Line, heavy with their knapsacks, their red trousers dusty, returning from the long morning march, and singing as they went that very old regimental ditty which every soldier of France ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... for her friend and never gave way till Kurt had promised not to go on with his ditty. But her mother wanted to know now what had given Mea such red eyes. So she told them that she had followed Loneli in order to comfort her, for she was still crying. Loneli had told her then about being caught at chattering. ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... said, rising. "Speak no more. I am tired of the burden of the ditty, dear; and it may do you such injury yet that already I hate it. Come out again into our garden with me. Dismiss these cares, these burning pains and rankling wounds. Be soothed by the cool evening air, taste the gorgeous quiet of sunset, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Mrs. McChesney sat absolutely expressionless while a shrill blonde lady and a nasal dark gentleman went through what the program ironically called a "comedy sketch," followed by a chummy person who came out in evening dress to sing a sentimental ditty, shed the evening dress to reappear in an ankle- length fluffy pink affair; shucked the fluffy pink affair for a child's pinafore, sash, and bare knees; discarded the kiddie frock, disclosing a bathing-suit; left the bathing-suit behind the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... my mournful ditty To a merry measure; 20 Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... blond and roseate and gay, warbling after his fashion on the hearth, her clouded old eyes were relumed with a radiance that came from within and was independent of the prosaic light of day. His favorite ditty was an old nursery rhyme in which the name "Pretty Polly Hopkins" occurs with flattering iteration, and he began to apply it to her, for he had come to think her very beautiful—such is the gracious ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... I said. You and a million others recite that ditty, or variations of it every day of the week. It all adds up to the fact that the world is full of small-egged animals who for ten years have done nothing but just scream that we're about to be attacked by the ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... freed of fever, woke one glorious afternoon, and heard a bird-like voice humming a quaint old ditty, and saw a field of golden wheat through an open window, and seated at that window the mellow songstress, Mercy Vint, plying her needle, with lowered lashes but beaming face, a picture of health and quiet womanly happiness. Things were going to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... sure were full of Folly, When in the Praise of Dolly, You wrote your am'rous Ditty, Which sure deserves her Pity, Since plainly it doth prove, Your Brain is crack'd with Love; Who else would talk of giving An Empire for a —— When Twenty will down } Each for a Silver Crown, } And thank you ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... stage. In one of his scenes, Rice introduced a negro boot-blacking establishment. Gosling was too "wide awake" to let such an opportunity pass unimproved, and Rice was paid for singing an original black Gosling ditty, while a score of placards bearing the inscription, "Use Gosling's Blacking," were suspended at different points in this negro boot polishing hall. Everybody tried "Gosling's Blacking;" and as it was a really good article, his sales in city and country soon became immense; ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... hastened to admit the eunuch, who entered; and when he saw the Commander of the Faithful, he saluted not neither kissed the earth, but said, 'Quick, quick! Arise in haste! My lady Tuhfeh sitteth in her chamber, singing a goodly ditty. Come to her in haste and see all that I say to thee! Hasten! She sitteth [in her chamber].' The Khalif was amazed at his speech and said to him, 'What sayst thou?' 'Didst thou not hear the first of ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... childlike and bland; moreover, she sings charmingly; while of Mr. DAVID JAMES as the pastor Jackson it may be said, "Sure such a pere was never seen!" The Irishman, Mr. CHAUNCEY OLCOTT, has a mighty purty voice, and gains a hearty encore for a ditty of which the music is not particularly striking. Mr. PERCY REEVE has written words which go glibly to AUDRAN's music, and fit the situations. The piece is capitally played and sung all round; and marvellous is Miss VICTOR as the Spanish mother. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... such wild cadence, as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allan know, 395 "Roderick Vich Alpine, ho! iro!" And near, and nearer as they rowed, Distinct the martial ditty flowed. ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,—it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end,—the lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... their wrinkled clothing was begun. Harriet and Jane handled the irons. Miss Elting took down the curtains, which also were sadly in need of ironing, while Margery and Hazel prepared the noon meal. Tommy perched herself on the rail of the upper deck, and caroled forth a lisping ditty. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... but for the bells—the bowman's pole is lowered—as with one stroke out sweep the paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the chapel spire gleams—it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive ditty,—the voyageur's song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,—and the adventurers are launched ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... but at that moment the sweet notes of a long narrative ballad began to sound to the accompaniment of a harp, and he stood motionless while the wild mournful ditty told of the cruelty of the Lady ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down the garden, and up to where the sloping glass structure stood against the wall, from out of which came the sound of the Colonel's manly voice, as he trolled out a warlike ditty in French, with a chorus of "Marchons! Marchons!" and at every word grapeshot fell to the ground, for the Colonel, in spite of the suggestions of war, was peacefully engaged, being seated on the top of a pair of steps thinning out the grapes ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... me! Miss Kitty, This is a pity; But I guess the cause of your change of ditty. What has become of the beautiful thrush That built her nest in the heap of brush? A brace of young robins as good as the best; A round little, brown little, snug little nest; Four little eggs all green and gay, Four little birds all bare and gray, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... chorus rings out in the city, A jubilant ditty, And every guitar Vibrates to the names of Pedro and Pilar; And the strings and voices are soulless and dull That sound not the name ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... of spirits, possibly from the tot of rum Tim Rooney had given him after his soup, to "pull him together," as the boatswain said; for, ere I left the precincts of the forecastle he volunteered to sing a song, and as I made my way aft I heard the beginning of some plaintive ditty concerning a "may-i-den of Manches-teer," followed by a rousing chorus from the crew, which had little or nothing to do with the main burden of the ballad, the men's refrain being only a "Yo, heave ho, it's ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... victim of some strong disease, to imitate which no healthy or sane person would, could, or durst attempt. James Montgomery will live by his smaller poems—his larger are long lyrics—and when was a long lyric any other than tedious? Hunt has sung many a joyous carol, and many a pathetic ditty, but produced no high or lasting poem. Pollok has aimed at a higher object than almost any poet of his day; he has sought, like Milton, to enshrine religion in poetic form, and to attract to it poetic ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... ditty with the glorious tale? Ah! such, alas, the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date. Pride! bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate, See how the mighty shrink into a song! Can volume, pillar, pile, preserve ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... what art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not die now-a-days, either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them. And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, too. "Revenge" was ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... indict, dictionary, dictation, jurisdiction, vindictive, contradiction, benediction, ditto, condition; (2) abdicate, adjudicate, juridical, diction, dictum, dictator, dictaphone, dictograph, edict, interdict, valedictory, malediction, ditty, indite, ipse ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... who were the companions of his sports, and who were wont, in his own phrase, to fear neither dog nor devil; he looked at the priming of his piece, and, like the clown in Hallowe'en, whistled up the warlike ditty of Jock of the Side, as a general causes his drums be beat to inspirit the doubtful ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... and advance, but deemed it only good manners to give some intimation of his approach. He was now within about twenty yards from them, and made an attempt at a comic song, which, however, quivered off into as dismal and cowardly a ditty as ever proceeded from human lips. Harry and the Spectre, both startled by the voice, turned round to observe his approach, when, to his utter consternation, the Shan-dhinne-dhuv sank, as it were, into the earth and disappeared. The hair rose upon ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in safety or in doubt, Always keep a safe lookout; Strive to keep a level head, Mind your lights and mind your lead. —Pilot-house Ditty. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to sing it to the virginals. 'Cold to bosom,'" he reiterated with a plangent cadence; "I remember them all, sir; from the cradle I had a gift for music." And then, with an ample flirt of his bow, he broke, all beams and smiles, into this ingenuous ditty: ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... falls, too, and it should not be ignored just because it is small. Having seen the Madonnas by Raphael, shall we now ignore the works of Powers? Or having seen the Rose of Sharon, shall we cease to admire the humbler flowers of spring? The wood thrush's song today is divine, yet, the simpler ditty of the wren has a sweetness not found in the larger minstrel's song. Here one is not bored with the "ohs" and "ahs" of gasping tourists, who scream their delights in tones that drown the voice of the falls. You can at least grow intimate with them, and their beauty although ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... bad dog," she cried merrily, "how I will punish you!" and she stooped and picked a couple of mushrooms, quite happy again, and even sang a scrap of a country ditty in a pretty bird-like voice as she came to a bramble clump, and ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... he took her hollow lute,— Tumultuous,—and, in chords that tenderest be, He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, In Provence called "La belle dame sans mercy": Close to her ear touching the melody;— Wherewith disturbed, she uttered a soft moan: He ceased—she panted quick—and suddenly Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone: Upon his knees ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... made to the Evening Public Ledger of Philadelphia for permission to reprint the ditty included in ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... time whereof thou weetest well— The melancholy morning of the World— He mopes or mumbles, sleeps or shouts for glee, And shakes his sides—a cavern-hutted King! But when the ouzel in the gaps at eve Doth pipe her dreary ditty to the surge All tumbling in the soft green level light, He sits as quiet as a thick-mossed rock, And dreameth in his cold old savage way Of gliding barges on the wine-dark waves, And glowing shapes, and sweeter things than sleep, But chiefly, while the restless twofold bat Goes ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... through which that old sing-song ran like the murmur of bees, made Grandma Padgett propitious, and she laid her gracious commands on Zene first, and J. D. Matthews afterwards. So that not only "Barb'ry Allen" was sung, but J. D.'s ditty, into which he plunged with nasal ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... becometh those of high regard; Regard with clemency a poor man's blindness; Blindness provokes to pity when it crieth; It crieth "Give!" Dear lady, shew some pity! Pity or let him die that daily dieth; Dieth he not oft who often sings this ditty? This ditty pleaseth me although it choke me; Methinks dame Echo weepeth at my moaning, Moaning the woes that to complain provoke me. Provoke me now no more, but hear my groaning, Groaning both day and night doth tear ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... I've told them it was none of their business what you folks did; that you could afford to hunt for buried treasure, or buried beans, or buried anything else, if you wanted to. And if you'll report one of them even winking disrespectful, or showing the trace of a grin, I'll set him and his ditty bag ashore so quick—" ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... poems thus read by Raleigh to Spenser at Kilcolman was the 'lamentable lay' to which reference had just been made—the piece in praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spenser's pastoral, the speaker is persuaded by Thestylis (Lodovick Bryskett) to explain what ditty that was that the Shepherd of the Ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, but in terms which are scarcely critical, that Raleigh's poem was written in love and praise, but also in ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... marred the dark, Oriental beauty of his face, and was humming a love song. Lindley's comely Irish face was slightly flushed, and he was keeping time on the white table with the tip of his sword to the ditty that floated from Lord Farquhart's lips. Treadway, London's dapperest beau, was smirking at his own reflection in a small hand mirror he carried, while Ashley, who had drunk more heavily than any of the others, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... some lonely maiden meet the gaze; Or when, in silence of the summer night, My wandering steps arresting, I before The houses of the village pause, to gaze Upon the lonely scene, and hear the voice, So clear and cheerful, of the maiden, who, Her ditty chanting, in her quiet room, Her daily task protracts into the night, Ah, then this stony heart will throb once more; But soon, alas, its lethargy returns, For all things sweet are strangers ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... looms—mill-girls always are—and their young souls took courage from the familiar sound of one another's voices. They sang the hymns and songs which they had learned in the schools and churches. No classical strains, no 'music for music's sake,' ascended from that furnace; no ditty of love or frolic, but the plain, religious outcries of the people: Heaven is my Home, Jesus, Lover of my Soul, and Shall we Gather at the River? Voice after voice dropped. The fire raced on. A ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and investing him with sword, helmet, shield, and spurs; then ANTONIO, the DUCHESS and their children, having presented themselves at the shrine, are, by a form of banishment in dumb-show expressed towards them by the CARDINAL and the state of Ancona, banished: during all which ceremony, this ditty is sung, to very solemn music, by divers churchmen: and then exeunt [all except the] ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... the monk, "has been added to the ditty by Nicholas Demdike. I heard him sing it the other day at the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fire sparkling beneath the bank of evergreen, and making the roses come into the fair singer's cheeks, and warming the golden sheen of her hair, had much to do with it. When she came to "Ben Bolt," that old ditty that has all the pathos of our lost youth in it, there was a tiny quiver in her voice; and when she finished, had he been near he would have seen the glint of two unshed tears in her eyes, for the song carried her thoughts to where ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Kegs! That I can, my boy. But read the song," replied old Harmar. His son then read the following facetious ditty: ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... them on the third day. Tim was working hard and silently, when he suddenly leaped to his feet, flung down his pick, and hurling his cap in the air, began dancing a jig and singing an Irish ditty. The boys looked at him in amazement, wondering whether he had ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... (to share) disdoni. District kvartalo. Distrust malfidi. Distrust malfido. Distrustful malfidema. Disturb interrompi. Disturbance tumulto. Disunite disigi. Disunion disigxo. Ditch defluilo. Ditto sama, idemo. Ditty kanteto. Dive subakvigxi. Diver (bird) kolimbo. Diverge malkonvergi. Divers (various) diversa. Diverse diversa. Diversity diverseco. Divert amuzi. Divest senvestigi. Divide dividi. Dividend (finance) rento. Dividend (arith.) dividato. Divider ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... good-night, the Christmas bough Bends to the rocking wind, and thou To mother's ditty ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... that all was well with the claims, and the assurance served to lighten his spirits. Soon he heard Andy singing at the top of his voice, and his own thoughts fell into accord with the words of the ditty. He began to sing also, whenever he knew the words. Farther back, Pink took it up, and then the others joined in, until all unconsciously they had turned the monotonous ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... for a calf. From Traquair to Murder Cairn, the hill rung with the discordant attempts of the Saxon upon the unmanageable monosyllable, and the heartfelt laugh which followed every failure. They had, however, better modes of awakening the echoes; for Wakefield could sing many a ditty to the praise of Moll, Susan, and Cicely, and Robin Oig had a particular gift at whistling interminable pibrochs through all their involutions, and what was more agreeable to his companion's southern ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering when her husband would come and rescue her from these beasts. Watching for him she could see through the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... passed the entrance, it ceased playing, and the men, catching sight of Barry and the smiling group at the window above him, broke softly into a rather suggestive music hall ditty, at that time popular with ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... p'licemen, list to me, I'll sing a mournful ditty About a poor young serving-gal, What lived in ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... on the rocky shore. Harry did his best to keep the party amused, and got Paul Lizard, who could sing a good song, to strike up a merry stave; and Paul, once set going, was generally loath to stop. His full manly voice trolled forth many a ditty, sounding above the whistling of the storm and the roar of the waves. Then adventures and stories were told, and yarn after yarn was spun, most of which were no novelties to the hearers. The boatswain, who seldom condescended to tell his adventures ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... vulnerable knob of the human vertebrae. The knapsack sits easy and does not chafe. The one shown in the engraving is of good form; and the original—which I have carried for years—is satisfactory in every respect. It holds over half a bushel, carries blanket-bag, shelter-tent, hatchet, ditty-bag, tinware, fishing tackle, clothes and two days' rations. It ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... salutations in kind which is singularly taking and grateful to the ear. They are as much better than an ordinary "good day" or a flat "how are you?" as a folk-song of Scotland or the Tyrol is better than the futile love-ditty of the drawing-room. They have a spicy and rememberable flavour. They speak to the imagination and point the way ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... stirring ditty at the top of her voice, a very sweet voice when not overtaxed, but Dilsey, the cook, put both hands to her ears and vowed cooking school would close at once if that "yapping" was not stopped; she could not for the life of her see why Miss Lena would ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Well, I always thought that there was no need of killin' people. Let them alone, and they will all die themselves; and as for the enemy, let them alone, and they will come home waggin' their tails behind them, as the ditty says. Well, I must tell ye. Abe's been to war. He didn't see the enemy, nor fight, nor nothin'. But a wild Indian came right into his camp, and the soldiers started up to kill him, and what do ye ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... rude ditty, made very likely by some clumsy, big-headed Galloway herd, full of the real stuff of love? He does not go off upon her eyebrows, or even her eyes; he does not sit down, and in a genteel way announce that "love in thine eyes forever sits," ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and hear a friend Trill forth harmonious ditty, Strange things I'll tell which late befell In ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... AARON's Rod, when it was transformed into a serpent, appears to possess the faculty of swallowing to a very considerable extent. Knowing brokers, if consulted, would not have sung to unwary clients the popular ditty "Keep your Aarons," but would have recommended them, being in, to be out again in double-quick time, if there were any chance of an immediate though small ready-money profit to be made, before one ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... o'clock the band began to play. Whenever the musicians launched into a popular baseball ditty the crowd joined with ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... singing us a fashionable ditty," remarked Ferdishenko, and looked at the mistress of the house, to see ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... faggot-cutting, and the bunches lay piled amidships, while fore and aft they plied their oars, and sang. The gloaming hid all but sound and sex, and threw its veil of romance over the trollers, who sent their hearts out thus across the twilight sea. The song, no doubt some common ditty, gathered a pathos over the water through the night. It swept from one side of us to the other, softened with distance, lingered in detached strains, and then was hushed, leaving us once more ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... women, clothed in their best, which happened to be a profusion of red baize. The chief wife of Shinte, one of the Matebele or Zulus, sat in front with a curious red cap on her head. During the intervals between the speeches, these ladies burst forth into a sort of plaintive ditty; but it was impossible for any of us to catch whether it was in praise of the speaker, of Shinte, or of themselves. This was the first time I had ever seen females present in a public assembly. In the south the women are not permitted to enter the kotla; and even when invited to come to a ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... decorated staffs, ever and anon indicating with a touch of the wand persons of the opposite sex, who under the rules must pay the forfeit demanded of them. The kissing, of course, goes by favor. The wand-bearers, as they move along, troll an amorous ditty: ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... horse had been "stun lame" the night before, Mr. Price was able to start for Harwich, via Brampton, very early the next morning. He was driving along through Northcutt's woods with one leg hanging over the wheel, humming through his nose what we may suppose to have been a love-ditty, and letting his imagination run riot about the lady in question, when he nearly fell out of his wagon. The cause of this was the sight of fat Tom coming around a corner, with Jethro Bass behind him. Lem Hallowell and the storekeeper had kept their secret so well that Sam, if he was thinking ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ago) in the third Part of his Treatise, pag. 179, speaking of Motetts or Anthems, complains thus:—'But I see not what Passions or Motions it can stir up, being as most Men doe commonlie Sing,—leaving out the Ditty—as it were a Musick made onely for Instruments, which will indeed shew the Nature of the Musick, but never carry the Spirit and (as it were) that lively Soule which the Ditty giveth; but of this enough. And to return ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... curses and revolutionary songs. The airs and the words that had made Paris tremble to her very centre during the Reign of Terror—the "Marseillaise," the "Carmagnole," the "Jour du depart," the execrable ditty, the burden of which is, "And with the entrails of the last of the priests let us strangle the last of the kings," were all roared out in fearful chorus by a drunken, filthy, and furious mob. Many a day had elapsed since they ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fascination, and he wore a loose-caped cloak over garments of closely-fitting black, which opened in front to display a mass of crumpled white, amidst which scintillated an enormous jewel. In his hand he held a curious black disc, with which he beat time to a ditty, of which Mr. Punch only succeeded in catching ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... popular superstition, lingering in the minds of some of the more ignorant class, that Corey's ghost haunted the grounds where this barbarous deed was done; and that boys, as they sported in the vicinity, were in the habit of singing a ditty ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the lonesome plain, As yet poor Edwin never knew your lore, Save when against the winter's drenching rain, And driving snow, the cottage shut the door. Then, as instructed by tradition hoar, Her legends when the Beldam 'gan impart, Or chant the old heroic ditty o'er, Wonder and joy ran thrilling to his heart; Much he the tale admired, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... in producing these effects of serenity and purity. The nature of the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed with different tea-masters. Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained in the ancient ditty: ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... it is women of twenty and thereabouts that ditty speaks of. Lady Inger Gyldenlove is nigh on fifty, and wily to boot beyond all women. It will be no light matter to overcome her. But it must be done—at any cost. If I succeed in winning certain advantages ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... jolly song, your Honor," continued Pothier, waving one hand in cadence to a ditty in praise of wine, which a loud voice was heard singing in the Chateau, accompanied by a rousing chorus which startled the very pigeons on the roof and chimney-stacks. Colonel Philibert recognized the song as one he had heard in the Quartier Latin, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby |
