"Elves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fays, nor magic charm, Have pow'r, or will, to work us harm; For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the flower-bed beneath the hollyhocks I spied the tiny tailor who makes the fairies' frocks; There he sat a-stitching all the afternoon And sang a little ditty to a quaint wee tune: "Grey for the goblins, blue for the elves, Brown for the little gnomes that live by themselves, White for the pixies that dance upon the green, But where shall I find me a robe for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... There were many other elves who lived in the garden. One, who lived in a lily which made a lovely home; and a poppy elf, who was always sleepy; but the rose elf liked her own sweet smelling room, with its crimson ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... Sabine, was equally dear. Never did genius more clearly exhibit the influence of early environment. True child of Alsace, he revelled in local folklore and legend. The eerie and the fantastic had the same fascination for him as sacred story, and the lives of the saints, gnomes, elves, werewolves and sorcerers bewitched no less than ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... grass, not heeding that he had chosen his couch within a little mossy circle known as a "fairy's ring." Wild Robin knew that the country people would say the fays had pressed that green circle with their light feet. He had heard all the Scottish lore of brownies, elves, will-o'-the-wisps, and the strange water-kelpies, who shriek with eldritch laughter. He had been told that the queen of the fairies had coveted him from his birth, and would have stolen him away, only ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... be it known, To all who bend before your throne, Fays and fairies, elves and sprites, Beauteous dames and gallant knights, That we, Oberon the grand, Emperor of fairy land, King of moonshine, prince of dreams, Lord of Aganippe's streams, Baron of the dimpled isles That lie in pretty maidans' smiles, Arch-treasurer of all the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... was very soothing to the eye. All at once I saw approaching a set of the most beautiful little people, so little that they would only have reached to my knee; they looked like men and women, but they were better proportioned. They called themselves Elves, and their garments were composed of the leaves of flowers, trimmed with the wings of gnats and flies—not at all ugly. They seemed as if they were searching for something—what I did not know; but when they came a little nearer to me their leader tapped my sausage-stick, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement; they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarrelling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide themselves ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the dwarf, "that we see many strange things; but I have nothing very remarkable at present to relate, for my journey was an ordinary one but for my accident. I had to see the elves who had charge of healing herbs, and gain their permission to cull them, for they are very particular that they should be pulled in the right season, and they so cover their gardens up that one could easily think there was not a bit ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... become a mockery, and he finds that he is cavorting still outside the walls, while the good citizens inside are making sly sport of him. Who, being recently banished from Boyville, has not sought to return? In vain does he haunt the swimming hole; the water elves will have none of him. He hushes their laughter, muffles their calls, takes the essence from their fun, and leaves it ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... "My friends, pray let me die In the right way, nor shed such tears." Not at all, the consolers, With many a tear, and many a sigh, Had come resolved by him to lie; And when they left they helped themselves Upon his lands, the greedy elves! And drank from out his brook, And every one of them such suppers took, That when the stag revived, He found his meals reduced; So that while his friends had thrived, He had to fast ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... fantastic, it was like being in another world. And then the silence. That was the most compelling charm of all. It helped him to feel. And he felt that he was not alone, though he heard nothing and saw nobody. The garden was full of flower-fairies, invisible elves and sprites whose mission it was to guard the flowers, and who loved the moonlight more than they loved the day; dainty, diaphanous creatures who were wafted across the smooth lawns on summer breezes, and washed the thirsty petals ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Tokio, is said to be full of these long-nosed elves, but many other mountains are inhabited by them, for they like lonely ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... very lifeless. But the phantoms of Tasso, he would fain make realities; he works at every detail of character, history, or geography, which may make his people real; they are not, as with Spenser, elves and wizards flitting about in a nameless fairyland, characterless and passionless; they are historical creatures, captains and soldiers in a country mapped out by the geographer; but they are phantoms all the more melancholy, these beautiful and heroic Clorindas ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... recall her figure: Was it regal as Juno's own? Or only a trifle bigger Than the elves who surround the throne Of the Faery Queen, and are seen, I ween, By mortals ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the trees trimmed as carefully and precisely as the lawn, some cut in the shape of pyramids, others in the shape of green columns. There's a lovely fountain and little plaster elves and deer scattered all ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... the casement open, and lay a long time waiting and watching; then she fell asleep. She waked with a sneeze and jump and sat up in bed. Behold, on the coverlet stood her elfin friend, with a long train of other elves beside him, all clad in the beetle-wing green, and wearing little pointed caps. More were coming in at the window; outside a few were drifting about in the moon rays, which lit their sparkling robes till they ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the "ox-bow"—a bit of the meadow so smooth, so fantastic in its shape, so secluded, so adorned by its fringe of willows, clematises, grape-vines, and all our water-loving shrubs, that it suggests to every one, who ever read a fairy tale, a scene for the revels of elves and fairies. Yet no Oberon—no Titania dwelt there; but long ago, where there are now some ruinous remains of old houses, and an uncouth new one, stood the first frame house of the lower valley of the Housatonic. It was inhabited by the last Indian ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... stars shone more dimly than before. Over stream and meadow rolled the fog, in strange fantastical shapes, floating like a silver gauze among the tree-stems and foliage, till it gradually wove itself into one close and impervious veil. To such appearances as these must legends of elves and fairies owe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... poets of the Renaissance both in England and in Italy had a similar craving. But the aspect under which these ancient dreams are regarded by them is most significantly different. With Spenser and Ariosto, fairies and elves, gods and demons, are regarded in their fancied connection with man. Even in the age of Pope, when the gods and the Rosicrucian Sylphs have become alike "poetical machinery," this is their work. But among the moderns it is as connected with Nature, and giving a soul and a personality ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... them. They are not attractive from the outside to those who have no love for quaint scholarship, odd humours, and rare fancies. A lady who had been in a camp had nothing to say of them to me save that they were "dirty—dirty, and begged." But I ever think, when I see them, of Tieck's Elves, and of the Strange Valley, which was so grim and repulsive from without, but which, once entered, was ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... your watch-fire, elves, where the down with its darkening shoulder Lifts on the death of the sun, out of the valley of thyme? Dropt on the broad chalk path and, cresting the ridge of it, smoulder Crimson as blood on the white, halting my feet ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... wandering about the piney woods, near the asylum, with two beautiful elves, when I chanced to meet her. She was singing at the time. Beulah, I am glad to find you out again; and in future, when I pay the doctor long visits, I shall expect you to appear for my entertainment. Look to it, Guy, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Elves of Darkness, so says the old Iroquois grandmother, were wise and mysterious. They dwelt under the earth, where were deep forests and broad plains. There they kept captive all the evil things that wished ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, 120 Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... snowy hills and deep-blue water of the St. Lawrence Gulf seemed to rim in the splendor like a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brimmed with wine and fire. Tinkles of sleigh bells and distant laughter, that seemed like the mirth of wood elves, came from ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... its love of earth and its echoes of the sky. In winter our brook had a new charm: it ran beneath a roof of ice, often mounded with snow; its voice sounding cheerful as ever in those inscrutable caverns, as if it discoursed secret wonders of fairy-land, and carried treasures of the elves and gnomes. Zero, with his utmost rigors, could not still its speech for a day or fix his grip upon those elastic limbs. Indeed, the frosty god conspired with it for our delight; building crystal bridges, with tracery of lace delicater than Valenciennes, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of ineffable calm, a night of an all pervading quietude. A horse snorted in the stable nearby, a dog barked in the distance, but these sounds served only to render the silence the more profound, by contrast. It was, indeed, a night wherein pixies, and elves, and goblins, and fairies might weave their magic spells, a night wherein tired humanity dreamed those dreams that seem so hopelessly ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... increases. The cumbersome vapour is sopped up by the sun, and the coo-hooing of many pigeons makes proclamation of the day. Detached and erratic patches of ripples appear—tiptoe touches of sportful elves tripping from the isles to the continent, whisking merrily, the faintest flicks of dainty toes making the glad sea to smile. Parcelled into shadows, bold, yet retreating, the dimness of the night, purple on ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Danes. I had unconsciously laid myself down on haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely the elves and genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable means, with the principle of intelligence lurking within the poor uncultivated clod! Perhaps to that ethereal principle the wonders of the past, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Rowland" has also claims on our attention especially with regard to recent views on the true nature and origin of elves, trolls, and fairies. I refer to the recently published work of Mr. D. MacRitchie, "The Testimony of Tradition" (Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co.)—i.e., of tradition about the fairies and the rest. Briefly put, Mr. MacRitchie's view is that ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... as if she had been born among white flowers in the moonlight, and because the afterglow of the sunrise, from which the elves flee, crimsoned her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... give a fair and not unfavourable impression of the style, but I have reserved for separate consideration what I consider to be the most striking portions of the play. The first of these is the string of Latin songs in which the would-be elves comment on their nefarious proceedings in Jocastus' orchard. I quote certain ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and Nancy eagerly prepared herself to listen. Such a story was then poured out that it held her spell-bound. Goblins, elves, and fairies, underground glories, thrilling adventures and escapes. Was it any wonder that with such a gift for story-telling Teddy was the king of the village? It came to an end at last, and Nancy drew a long breath of relief and content when she heard the concluding sentence, ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... round. Sometimes he stopped to listen, but he understood that it was the leaves and the wind, and went on. As soon as he started on again, he heard some one come dancing on silken foot up the slope. Small feet came tripping. Elves and fairies played behind him. When he turned round, there was no one, always no one. He shook his fists at the rustling leaves and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... been oppressively lively, thanks to a visit from the Dugdale children; which little elves were sent out of the way while their mother performed the not unnecessary duty of putting her establishment in order. For Harrie was determined that her house, and none other, should have the honour of receiving Uncle Brian. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... When ye, with nicest, finest skill, had wrought This chiefest work, the choicest blessings brought And stored them at its roots, prepared each part, Matured the bud, painted the dainty bloom, Ye stood and gazed until the fruit should come. Ah, foolish elves! Look ye that yon frail flower should be sublimed To fruit commensurate with all your power And cunning art? Was it for such ye climbed The slanting sunbeams, coaxing many a shower From the coy clouds? Ye did exceed yourselves; And as ye stand and gaze, lo, instantly The whole etherealized ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... lawn a flock of turkeys were foraging among the clover-blossoms, and over the dewy grass a large brood of young guineas raced after their mother, or played hide-and-seek, like nut-brown elves, under the white and purple tufts of flowers. Save the bird-world—always abroad early—no living thing seemed astir, and the silence that reigned was broken only by the distance-softened bleating of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... squirrel told a jay, That a poor child lived in a city Not very far away, Who never at any Christmas Had a Christmas tree in her home; And the jay bird told a rabbit next, And the rabbit told a gnome. The gnome blew thrice on his fingers For half a dozen elves, And he told them the sorrowful rumor, And ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... Arthur anon, and bare him quickly, and laid him softly down, and forth they 'gan depart. Then was it accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care should be of Arthur's departure. The Britons believe yet that he is alive, and dwelleth in Avalon with the fairest of all elves; and the Britons ever yet expect when Arthur shall return. Was never the man born, of any lady chosen, that knoweth, of the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom was a sage hight Merlin; he said with words,—his sayings were sooth,—that ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and the other deities did not lose their adherents in a day, and Bede records the relapses into idolatry of Northumbria as well as the other parts of England. There can be no doubt that fairies and elves entered largely into the mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, and the firmness of the beliefs in beings of that nature can be easily understood when we realise that it required no fewer than twelve centuries of Christianity to finally destroy them ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... all that afternoon, for Psyche sat in the orchard drawing squirrels on the wall, pert robins hopping by, buttercups and mosses, elves and angels; while May lay contentedly enjoying sun and air, sisterly care, and the "pretty things" she loved so well. Psyche did not find the task a hard one; for this time her heart was in it, and if she needed any reward she surely found it; for the little ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 35 When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite, Bottom; or Hippolita's description of a chace, or Theseus's answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight: the descriptions breathe ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... band of Ryls from the Happy Valley, all merry little sprites like fairy elves. A dozen crooked Knooks followed from the great Forest of Burzee. They had long whiskers and pointed caps and curling toes, yet were no taller than Button-Bright's shoulder. With this group came a man so easy to recognize and so ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... nest, robin red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! Sing, birds, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... the boy had heard stories about elves, but he had never dreamed that they were such tiny creatures. He was no taller than a hand's breadth—this one, who sat on the edge of the chest. He had an old, wrinkled and beardless face, and was dressed in a black frock coat, ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... regret as her tender illusions, one after another faded into the chill white light of later day. Without actually deceiving her, I permitted her to believe that I too, heard the wondrous voices of Titania and her elves in convention behind the rose bush, or the whispers of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... season is now secure, it is not yet settled. No chance of a relapse into the winter's death, but plenty of change in the unfolding of the summer's life. There are still caprices and wayward turns in nature's moods; cold nights when the frost-elves are hovering in the upper air; windy mornings which shake and buffet the tree-tassels and light embroidered leaves; sudden heats of tranquil noon through which the sunlight pours like a flood of eager love, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... stories, dwarfs and elves live below the earth and deal with mines and their dark belongings; the fairies live above. So none of us are surprised to find few women in this line of exhibitors. My work as a member of the department jury confined me to one room, and to an inspection of lists submitted ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Dr. Langstaff, of Southampton, for some observations, which I have since repeated. The best plan for observing the order is to make a person first raise his eyebrows, and this produces transverse wrinkles across the forehead; and then very gradually to contract all the muscles round the elves with as much force as possible. The reader who is unacquainted with the anatomy of the face, ought to refer to p. 24, and look at the woodcuts 1 to 3. The corrugators of the brow (corrugator supercilii) seem to be the first muscles to contract; ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... I pray; Like elephants you're treading! And 'mong the elves be Puck to-day, The stoutest at ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... "faery elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... their gods when the time comes to do so, after the pattern of an Aryan patriarchal establishment, the father at the head, his sons and daughters near him, the servants in attendance, the unorganised host of spirits, nymphs and elves, outside. But to know the original character of the religion it is less important to ask how the pantheon is arranged, than what gods are worshipped, and how they are related to man. And the point which ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... elves had been hovering about the dingy hall just then, they would have seen the mother's tired face brighten beautifully when she discovered the gifts, and found that her little girls had been so kindly remembered. Something more brilliant than the mock diamonds in Miss Kent's ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... that the Society had investigated came into the discussion, and Malone heard quite a lot about the Beyond, the Great Summerland, Spirit Mediums and the hypothetical existence of fairies, goblins and elves. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a poet, is Hilda's mother. They live at Northampton, Massachusetts, in the academic atmosphere of Smith College where those who know the little girl say that she enjoys sliding down a cellar stairway quite as much as she does talking of elves and gnomes. She was born in New York State, so that she is distinctly of the East. The rhythms which she uses to express her ideas are the result both of her own moods, which are often crystal-clear in their delicate imagery, and of the fact that from time to ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... the ages' gain, the ages' loss, A wealth of wonders and so much away— When now hears one the woodland elves at play, Or angry dryads where tall tree-tops toss. No more they lightly tread the dewy moss As danced they through cool haunts in ecstasy; But rank and lost the paths in lone decay Where fairy footsteps ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... so cut, Were shaven and sheared, And mingled in with holy mead, And sent upon wide ways enow; Some abide with the Elves, Some abide with the Aesir, Or with the wise Vanir, Some still hold ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... 'Icelandic Legends': The Merman The Fisherman of Goetur The Magic Scythe The Man-Servant and the Water-Elves The Crossways ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... are bad," said Babie. "Now are they, Mr. Ogilvie? I know elder women are, and erl kings and mist widows, but poor Neck, that sat on the water and played his harp, wasn't bad, and the dear little kobolds were so kind and funny. Now are they bad elves?" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... great golden moon, shouldered over the rim of the world by the backs of the crooked elves. The horse and the two persons made a black, distorted shadow that jerked along as though it were a thing evil and persistent. Far off in the thickets of the hills an owl cried, eerie and weird like a creature in some bitter sorrow. The lane was deep with dust. The horse traveled with no sound, ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... retained its popularity. The year following he composed the overture to "The Midsummer Night's Dream," one of the most remarkable pieces of the early romantic school. In this the fairy-like music of Titania and her elves is charmingly contrasted with the folk songs and the absurd bray of the transformed Bottom. He had already written an opera "Camacho," which had been submitted to Spontini, the musical director ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... the fairies and goblins live, or the forests, which belong to the brownies and elves, or the valleys, where the sunbeams play, or the caves, where the wind-voices hide, or—I do b'lieve she's asleep. Yes, sir! Both eyes are tight shut, and she has dropped the foxglove she was ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... observed the drawing-room, so perfectly arranged that it might almost be said her presence there had driven away the fairies who were its occupants, she asked herself if the glance or gaze of those whom she had displaced—whether spirits, fairies, elves, or human creatures—had not already recognized her. To secure success, it was necessary that some steps should be seriously taken, and it was necessary also that the superintendent should comprehend the serious position ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... earth, you might, I ween, Have guessed some congregation of the elves, To sport by summer moons, had shaped ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute what they command them. The Fairies likewise are said to take young Children out of their Cradles, and to change them into Naturall Fools, which Common people do therefore call Elves, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... brown pebbles sparkling up through the water; and then it made her think of something sad—she didn't know what; perhaps it was of the babes in the wood and the robins covering them up with leaves—and then again, in a moment, it sounded as if all the merry elves and sprites that ever were heard of had escaped from fairyland, and were rolling over and over with peals of rollicking laughter. And at last, all of a sudden, the ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... day; others like elves 490 Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes Upon the sunny streams ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... mountains where only yesterday they had been digging they saw by the light of the moon a host of little men running to meet them. They were dressed all in grey, except for their caps, which were red; they had red eyes, too, and black tongues, which never ceased chattering. These were the mountain elves, and when they came near they formed themselves into a fairy ring, and sang while ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... How Glooskap made the Elves and Fairies, and then Man of an Ash-Tree, and last of all the Beasts, and of his Coming at the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Elves! who, on whings made o'leather, Still roun my poorch whiver an' whiver at night; Aw mAc naw hord-horted, unveelin disturber, DestrAcy your snug nests, an your ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... In Brittany they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence their hard doom; they are condemned to live until the Day of Judgment.[19] Many of them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the Kow-riggwans for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night round the old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes ill-humoured. But can we be surprised ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... look, look up at the skies! O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes! The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!— Ah well! it is all a ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... Of little frisking elves and apes, To earth do make their wanton 'scapes As hope of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... her head against the flower-pot, and the little elf of the rose found her asleep. Then he seated himself by her ear, talked to her of that evening in the arbor, of the sweet perfume of the rose, and the loves of the elves. Sweetly she dreamed, and while she dreamt, her life passed away calmly and gently, and her spirit was with him whom she loved, in heaven. And the jasmine opened its large white bells, and spread forth its sweet ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... pastoralist of fair Dorset, perfect within his narrower range as Herrick) to-day, it is his own native land only which he sees and paints: even the fairy world in which, at whatever inevitable interval, he is second to Shakespeare, is pure English; or rather, his elves live in an elfin county of their own, and are all but severed from humanity. Within that greater circle of Shakespeare, where Oberon and Ariel and their fellows move, aiding or injuring mankind, and reflecting human life in a kind of unconscious parody, Herrick cannot walk: and it may have been ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... for The Seven Castles Of The Diamond Lake was as brilliant and wonderful as heart could wish. But in spite of the comical red imps, sparkling elves, and the gorgeous princes and princesses, Jo's pleasure had a drop of bitterness in it. The fairy queen's yellow curls reminded her of Amy, and between the acts she amused herself with wondering what her sister would do to make her 'sorry for it'. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... out and sat with the knaves and the maids, and listened to their harp-playing, and harp they can, these Cornish, like very elves; and then I, too, sang songs and told them stories, for I can talk their tongue somewhat, till they all blest me for a right good fellow. And then I fell to praising up old ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... self-assuming elves, Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves, Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... inheritance of guilt, the shadow of guilt darkening innocent posterity. All of its sins and morbid horrors, its specters, its phantasmas, and even its hellish hopelessness play around his pages, and vanishing between the lines are the less guilty Elves of the Concord Elms, which Thoreau and Old Man Alcott may have felt, but knew not as intimately as Hawthorne. There is often a pervading melancholy about Hawthorne, as Faguet says of de Musset "without posture, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... suddenly. She was walking ahead with Alice Waite. "I can see two people. They're stooping over the fire. Why, Alice, it's two dear little brown elves." ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... wondrous night! one of those warm still nights which seem full of vague and untold possibilities! A night with magic in the air, when elves and fairies dance within their grassy rings, or biding amid the shade of trees, peep out at one between the leaves; or again, some gallant knight on mighty steed may come pacing slowly from the forest shadows, with the moonlight bright ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... was afraid of meeting fairies or elves. There are glades and hollows that used to seem very wonderful. And they still seem very wonderful, only not quite in the same way. Doesn't the world seem very wonderful to you? I'm always wondering at things. But I know I'm only a silly little girl, and yet I like to talk to you about my fancies. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... I known; Kindly hearts, they are flown; Here and there if but one Linger yet uneffaced, Imbecile tottering elves, Soon to be wreck'd on shelves, These scarce are half themselves, With age and ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... straitened; till, the signal given, Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless—like that pygmean race Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course: they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... creatures are amazingly unfamiliar. They have horns and hoofs, halos and wings, or fins and tails. An esoteric band of fabulous monsters these: harpies and vampires take tea at Sherry's; succubi and incubbi are observed buying opal rings at Tiffany's; fairies, angels, dwarfs, and elves, bearing branches of asphodel, trip lightly down Waverly Place; peris, amshaspahands, aesir, izeds, and goblins sleep at the Brevoort; seraphim and cherubim decorate drawing rooms on Irving Place; griffons, chimeras, and sphynxes take courses in philosophy at ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... brook that turns the mill; to the south the dense pine woods, peopled in our imaginations, with fairy elves, owls, and hobgoblins—now, alas, owing to the rapacity of the sawmills, naught but a howling wilderness of stumps ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Philip, or sturdy and straight like Tom; but he was a very happy little boy all the same, after a strange, quiet fashion of his own, and he liked best of all to be alone with Norah in the woods or by the river, when they would make up all sorts of fancies about queer little elves and fairies who, they said, lived in the trees or bushes, and in the ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... thousand feet high, back of the leper settlement at Molokai, is a ledge that can be reached neither from above nor below, and on it stands a temple of their construction. In Pepeeko, Hilo, the natives labored for a month in quarrying and dressing stone, but when it was ready the elves built their temple in a night. So at Kohala they formed a chain twelve miles long between the quarry and the site, and, passing the blocks from hand to hand, finished ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... house when my sister married. I was born out of wedlock, when my family were bankrupt and in mourning for an uncle who had taken his life. Now you know my family! That's the stock I come from. Once I narrowly escaped fourteen years' hard labour—so I've every reason to thank the elves, though I can't be altogether ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... the glow-worm lend thee, The shooting stars attend thee, And the elves also, Whose little eyes glow Like the sparks of ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... opens like an oven," her friend declared. "See, it has a great mouth, as if to swallow one. Perhaps some of the black elves live there, that Nurse Camilla told us of. Do you ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... the bold Sir Bedivere and spake: "O me, my King, let pass whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field; But in their stead thy name and glory cling To all high places like a golden cloud For ever: but as yet thou shalt not pass. Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... beach!" cried Cousin Frank, with a vehement show of enthusiasm. "Now, then, Aunt Melissa, prepare for the great enjoyment of the day. In a few moments we shall be of the elves ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Frazer, op. cit., p. 16, especially the references to the "devil's candle" and "the lamp of the elves".] ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... is so strange; indeed I think I ought to call it the fairy tale of all fairy tales, for by the time we get to the end of it I think it will explain to you how our forefathers got to believe in fairies, and trolls, and elves, and scratlings, and all strange little people who were said to haunt the mountains and ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... lark that o'er him sings, And, like that lark, a music brings Within him, where'er he comes or goes,— A fount that for ever flows! The world's to him like some playground, Where fairies dance their moonlight round;— If dimmed the turf where late they trod, The elves but seek some greener sod; So, when less bright his scene of glee, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... one supreme God, the author of nature, whose power, though in itself uncontrollable, was yet often exerted by the interposition of his angels and subordinate ministers, who executed his sacred purposes. But they also believed, that all nature was full of other invisible powers: fairies, goblins, elves, sprights; beings stronger and mightier than men, but much inferior to the celestial natures who surround the throne of God. Now, suppose that any one, in these ages, had denied the existence of God and of his angels, would not his impiety justly have deserved the appellation ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... shorefront in the moonlight. In these little eroded recesses, caves and grottoes one might expect to see crooked-legged gnomes, scampering to peer at the human intruder. Gnarled cedars, hanging precariously, might hide pixies and elves. A child's dream of fairyland, this reality ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... considered unlucky for weather. It is the Mohammedan Sabbath and was the day on which Adam was created. The Sabeans consecrated it to Venus or Astarte. According to mediaeval romance, on this day fairies and all the tribes of elves of every description were converted into hideous animals and remained so until Monday. In Scotland it is a great day for weddings. In England it is not. Sir William Churchill says, "Friday is my lucky day. I was born, christened, married, and knighted on that day, and all my ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair; And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, Go dancing round the china-plates that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they have done with their odours."[11] It is noteworthy, also, that the Indian belief which describes the holes in trees as doors through which the special spirits of those trees pass, reappears in the German superstition that the holes in the oak are the pathways for elves;[12] and that various diseases may be cured by contact with these holes. Hence some trees are regarded with special veneration—particularly the lime and pine[13]—and persons of a superstitious turn of mind, "may often be seen carrying sickly children to ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... been all over the world in all this time that the rolling and roaring and hissing and jangling had been about his ears; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all the tales that had been told in Yule round the fire at his grandfather's good house at Dorf, of gnomes and elves and subterranean terrors, and the Erl King riding on the black horse of night, and—and—and he began to sob and to tremble again, and this time did scream outright. But the steam was screaming itself so loudly that no one, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... whom they were in perpetual war, was Jotunheim, a distant, dark, chaotic land, of which Utgard was the chief seat. Midgard, or the earth, the abode of man, was represented as a disk in the midst of a vast ocean; its caverns and recesses were peopled with elves and dwarfs, and around it lay coiled the huge Midgard Serpent. Muspelheim, or Flameland, and Nifelheim or Mistland, lay without the organized universe, and were the material regions of light and darkness, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... what how man, loke adoun: Awake and think on Cristes passioun I crowche the from Elves and from Wightes.' There with the night-spel seyde he anon rightes On the foure halves of the hous aboute And on the threissh-fold ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... to the hall-kitchen with his tools in his hands. The cob of coal had kindled to a lively flame, which flashed and went out, and the quick black shadows of the chairs and the table and the jugs on the dresser were leaping about the room like elves. With parted lips, just breaking into a smile, Pete went down on one knee by the cradle, put the mallet under his arm, and gently raised the shawl curtain. "God bless my motherless girl," he said, in ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... me: a multitude of elves: a host supine; foes' prostration: a conflict of men on the Dodder[8]: oppression of Tara's king: in youth he was destroyed; lamentations will overcome ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; This was the olde opinion, as I rede. But now can no man see none elves mo. For now the grete charitee and prayeres Of limitours and ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... fairies. It seems as though the dark forests of Germany, the quiet valleys, and the banks of the beautiful rivers, were the natural homes of the fairy-folk, the gnomes and the elves, the water-sprites and the sylphs. Our German cousins listen with wonder and delight to the legends of fearful giants and enchanted castles, and many of the stories they know so well have been translated into other languages for ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... Rather more than a hundred years ago, for instance, a war broke out in Fairyland because the King of the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all that was a wicked ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... of fifteen years some of these circles acquire a diameter of fifteen to twenty feet or more. These are known as fairy rings. Before science dispelled the illusion they were believed to have been the work of witches, elves, or evil spirits, from ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... is, they have furnished The filling themselves, unaware. The shot they've cast, polished, and burnished, The powder were prompt to prepare. It's pitiful, quite, their position, To see, the unfortunate elves! Their carefully-stored ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... shone brightly down upon the sleeping earth, while far away from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk. Fire-flies hung in bright clusters on the dewy leaves, that waved in the cool night-wind; and the flowers stood gazing, in very wonder, at the little Elves, who lay among the fern-leaves, swung in the vine-boughs, sailed on the lake in lily cups, or danced on the mossy ground, to the music of the hare-bells, who rung out their merriest peal in honor of ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... moved solemnly along at intervals over concealed runways, stopping now and then to bow to the amused audience. Winking, gray-bearded elves bobbed up from behind canvas rocks to wave diminutive hands before popping back to their shelters. One sun-bonneted fellow in patched overalls bent spasmodically over a little wooden wash tub on a hill. Further on, a perpetual clatter drew attention to the rustic ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... a separate order of beings, living on this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their presence; known in almost all countries and ages as demons not necessarily bad, gnomes, fairies, kobolds, elves, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... must be for elves Who have to do up their clothes themselves; And the tailor fairies use Fairy Shears, Long cutting-grasses that grow by meres; And they mend their things with the Spider-stitches, Faint white flowers that you find in ditches, And Shepherd's Needle, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... yet scarcely seen Are its walls of mantling green; Not a window lets in light But through flowers clustering bright, Not a glance may wander there But it falls on something fair; Garden choice and fairy mound Only that no elves are found; Winding walk and sheltered nook For student grave and graver book, Or a bird-like bower perchance Fit ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... a brisk run, for during her adventure the night had advanced, and her imagination peopled the surrounding bush with bogeys, and imps and elves. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... thyme, and red As cherry harvest, now high fed For lust and action, on he'll go To lie with Mab, though all say no. Lust has no ears; he's sharp as thorn, And fretful, carries hay in's horn, And lightning in his eyes; and flings Among the elves, if moved, the stings Of peltish wasps; well know his guard— Kings, though they're hated, will be fear'd. Wine lead[s] him on. Thus to a grove, Sometimes devoted unto love, Tinselled with twilight, he and they, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... laid the gilding on themselves: And, if they did, I'm all the more beholden To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves, Who talk to me "in language quaint and olden" Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves, Pans with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards, And staid young goddesses ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... and the fairy elves In their robes of laughing smiles, In the forests romp 'neath the leafy trees, Through ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... this," she pushed a finger at Clara's cheek, and doated a half instant, "you have the very beauty to break in an ogre's temper. And the man is as governable as he is presentable. You have the beauty the French call—no, it's the beauty of a queen of elves: one sees them lurking about you, one here, one there. Smile—they dance: be doleful—they hang themselves. No, there's not a trace of satanic; at least, not yet. And come, come, my Middleton, the man is a man to be proud of. You can send him into Parliament ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... homely unscenic scenery—this Lincolnshire quality—that accounts for Tennyson's freshness of vision. But it is not so. Tennyson is fresh also in scenic scenery; he is fresh with the things that others have outworn; mountains, desert islands, castles, elves, what you will that is conventional. Where are there more divinely poetic lines than those, which will never be wearied with quotation, beginning, "A splendour falls"? What castle walls have stood in such a light ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... gentle lady-moon, With her coldly drooping beams, Be dancing in the ripple Of the ever-laughing streams, Where the little elves disport In the stilly noon of night, And lave their limbs of ether In the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of Versailles, outside of Paris, and the beautiful gardens of the palace, world famous for their wonderful statues and fountains, flowers and groves, presented an amazing sight on that midsummer night. A hundred elves and fairies, hobgoblins and wood-nymphs danced in and out about groups of strangely dressed grown-up people, who were neither in court costume nor in real masquerade. The older lords and ladies of the court were trying to humor ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... raven; when I bid thee croak, 'Twill be when frogs sing ditties on an oak; When hopping toads like winged skylarks fly; When limping elves ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... proudly, "I'd never go back—I might be frightened, but I'd be ashamed to run. Going to aunt Mirandy's is like going down cellar in the dark. There might be ogres and giants under the stairs,—but, as I tell Hannah, there MIGHT be elves and fairies and enchanted frogs!—Is there a main street to the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
