"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thou prince of Ganymedes? and when were cigars more justly appreciated, than as our puffs kept time with the trolling ditty, resounding through ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Ensign, Samuel Smith, and William Dunkard, A. McQuea, and William Poor, Rank as Sergeants next in order, Then J. Nicholson, D. Perkins, B. F. Smith, and William Truelove, Are the Corporals, four in number; For the Privates, see appendix, In the chorus of my ditty. Their commander's martial title, Rose to General from Captain, When the famous State militia Held its reign in all the counties. And 'twas thus with many others, Of these ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... so will the enemy. 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 suppose ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... conspicuously in his works were, besides learning, a genial though somewhat caustic humour, and a thorough contempt for effeminacy of all kinds. The fop, the epicure, the warbling poet who gargled his throat before murmuring his recondite ditty, the purist, and above all the mock-philosopher with his nostrum for purifying the world, these are all caricatured by Varro in his pithy, good-humoured way; the spirit of the Menippean satires remained, though the form was changed to one more befitting the grave old teacher of wisdom. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in parts, Back in the Dear Dead Days Beyond Recall—a mournful kind of ditty to sing under the circumstances—so mournful that we had to have a game of five ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... song," said Holmes. "How often have I heard it in days gone by. It was a favorite ditty of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran has also been known to warble it. And yet I live and keep bees upon ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... humour, in the 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 ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... lesson even from savages, as in this instance of their forebearance. For somewhat similar reasons, perhaps, married people alone are here permitted to eat ducks. They hold their corrobories, (midnight ceremonies), and sing the same melancholy ditty that breaks the stillness of night on the shores of Jervis' Bay, or on the banks of the Macquarie; and during the ceremony imitate the several birds and beasts with which they are acquainted. If these inland tribes differ in anything from those ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... 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 ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... also send a French field service card, so you now have an English and a French one. I'm afraid a Russian card is out of the question, unless I get sent near them in the Balkans; and when I think of that I also think of a ditty ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... the mellow 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 she ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... disfigured by the yellow stains of the tobacco with which it had been brought in contact. In drawing this calico slowly from his bosom inch by inch, Toby reminded me of a juggler performing the feat of the endless ribbon. The next cast was a small one, being a sailor's little 'ditty bag', containing needles, thread, and other sewing utensils, then came a razor-case, followed by two or three separate plugs of negro-head, which were fished up from the bottom of the now empty receptacle. These various matters, being inspected, I produced the few ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... squint-eyed woman had been taken ill of a fever, and removed to the town in a tilted ambulance; and as she had lain quivering and moaning on the stretcher she had seemed still to be singing her little ditty about the graveyard ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... 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 ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... first stanzas of this song are the composition of the gifted and unfortunate Robert Fergusson. It is founded on an older ditty, beginning, "I'll rowe thee o'er the lea-rig." See Johnson's "Musical Museum," vol. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... 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 ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... songs sung to the children of a half century ago was "Run Nigger Run, or the Patty Roll Will Get You." Few of the children of today have ever heard this humorous ditty, and would, perhaps, be ignorant of its meaning. To the errant negro youths of slave times, however, this tune had a significant, and sometimes tragic, meaning. The "patty rolls" were guards hired by the plantations to keep the slaves from running away. The ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... observed the monk, "has been added to the ditty by Nicholas Demdike. I heard him sing it the other day at ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille; And 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 beauty ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... Pan himself had wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 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
... of this ditty did not materially differ from those which Gilbart was in the habit of assimilating from his morning newspaper; nor were they much more fatuously expressed. Twenty-four hours ago he might even have ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wooden pail And sang a country ditty, An innocent fond lovers' tale, That was not wise nor witty, Pathetically rustical, Too pointless ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... idle chat of owls and haunted men, I'll take thee 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
... extends the other leg straight before him, raises one hand above his head, and rests the other on his hip. His heels must never touch the floor, nor may he, while bobbing thus comically up and down and trolling his lively ditty, suffer his face to relax from that expression of sober and dignified earnestness which marks the true Szekler. It is a dance and a display of great physical strength and endurance ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... before me, the servant-girl in curl-papers, who has just brought me my newly-hemmed black necktie, and asks what further orders I have ... and could you but see the highly respectable, fog-enveloped street, and hear the pitiable voice with which a beggar down there pours forth his ditty (he will soon be outscreamed by the street-sellers), and could you picture to yourselves that from here to the City is three-quarters of an hour's drive, and that in all the cross streets of which one has glimpses the noise, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... 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 ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... fast between two stones! Hang the stones!" And Naylor bursts into an old seventeenth century ditty of the days of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... column there doth stand Inamorato with folded hand; Down hangs his head, terse and polite, Some ditty sure he doth indite. His lute and books about him lie, As symptoms of his vanity. If this do not enough disclose, To paint him, take thyself by ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... mount you with the sun, Call all the winds to make you speedy wings, And to my fairest Maya see you run And weep your last while wantonly she sings; Then if you cannot move her heart to pity, Let Oh, alas, ay me be all your ditty. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... will take life seriously,' she said to her one morning after breakfast, as they were waiting for the postman in the garden, and Elfie had seated herself on the top bar of the gate, swinging herself to and fro, and trilling out an old English ditty as ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... 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, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... she could draw it like a cart. Victor filled it with apple parings, and they started forth in a procession, Nana drawing the shoe in front, followed by the whole flock, little and big, an imp about the height of a cigar box at the end. They all sang a melancholy ditty full of "ahs" and "ohs." Nana declared this to be always ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... was boiling, and it served him as a signal. In a harsh, untuneful voice he began to chant an old coon-ditty. The effect of his music was instantaneous as regards the more sensitive ears of the pup. Its eyes opened, and it lifted its head alertly. Then, with a quick wriggle, he sat up on his hind quarters, and, throwing ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Oh, there's Resentment left— why, yes faith, such a Wedding would give the Town diversion: we should have a lamentable Ditty made on it, entitled, The Captain's Wedding, with the doleful Relation of his being over-laid ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... 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 ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... my lord! Besides, I hoped to hear My ditty warbled into fairer ears, By your own lips; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... 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 hear ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... tired, went to sleep in a wee loft. I could not sleep. I was always seeing those wounded men passing, passing, and in my ear—like the maddening refrain of a musical comedy ditty—there was always murmuring—"We shall never return. It doesn't matter." Outside was the clink and clatter of the column, the pitiful curses of tired men, the groaning roar of the motor-lorries as they toiled ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... of personality is always present there. A low laugh in the gracious mouth of Chaucer, a harsh rebuke on the stern lips of Milton, a modish sneer in the smile of Pope,—it was now a stifled complaint, now an amorous ditty, and now a riotous shout with Burns, who was as much a poet through his personality as through his genius. He put his life into his song; and not to know what his life was, is not to know what his song is,—why ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... have me sing to you," said aunt Madge; and she began, in a low voice, a little ditty ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... who, however, adds in a postscript: 'The above is not my writing.' The ballad follows, and then comes a set of notes, mainly critical. The author of the Warning remarks: 'In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty, which, I am told, bears some remote and distant resemblance ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... of an Arab youth, but strictly guarded. Her married sister alone knew of their infatuation, and used to help her by keeping a look-out for him at the water-side; and when he appeared, she would return home and sing to herself (as if it were a snatch of some old ditty)—Leila, Leila, your lover comes! But the maiden understood, and swiftly, under pretence of fetching water, she would run to meet him at the well, and take her joy. The story has an air of probability; such things are done every day, at every fountain throughout the ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... long stick, pushed as if starting the boat, and then pulled as if rowing, and with every pull of the oar, the girl ran a few steps, making it appear that the boat shot forward. All the while the boy sang a boat-song or a love-ditty to his sweetheart. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... could bear 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 uncurtained ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... early bird," commented Pinac, and he went out humming the latest music-hall ditty which he was playing nightly to the patrons of the cafe. Poons went along; he had no more idea of his benefactor's condition than the man in the moon. The three men had not seen much of him lately, for they always left him to himself when he signified by ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Fairhaven; but I was very confident that the leading lady would not accompany them, and by reason of this confidence, I smiled as I strode through the city of Fairhaven, and hummed under my breath an inane ditty of an ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me A long-legged grasshopper appears to be, That springing flies, and flying springs, And in the grass the same old ditty sings. Would he still lay among the grass he grows in! Each bit of dung he seeks, to stick his ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... suggestive of the singing of hymns in church, the words of the songs are occasionally such as to correct this impression. But whether it be a patriotic song, a sentimental ballad, or a ditty of a nature that would shock the average young Englishman, all are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without a false note. At the end, the chairman calls "Prosit!" Everyone answers "Prosit!" and the next moment every glass is empty. The pianist rises and bows, and is bowed ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... The ditty always begins on a high note, and goes quavering irregularly downwards, with infinite twirls, shakes, and prolonged notes, these being sung to the exclamation "Ay!" Minor keys enter a good deal into this kind of performance, and the ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... home." Thus he spoke; but they stood off. and made way for the chariot. But when they had brought him into the illustrious palace, they laid him upon perforated beds, and placed singers beside him, leaders of the dirges, who indeed sang a mournful ditty, while the women also uttered responsive groans. And amongst them white-armed Andromache began the lamentation, holding the head of man-slaughtering ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... for one ride in the park, With Jack humming bars from a ditty; Kissing me (when it grows dark). Fy! Oh—heigho, for ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... "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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Mrs. Enderby; "it's to have your maids say 'All right' when you ask them to remove the soup. It's a bit shocking also to have your cook or housemaid going about the house singing some wretched ditty. What was that one, Charley, that Irma Maud sang till we were nearly wild (Irma Maud was my chambermaid). What was ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... was a boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Mr. Jinks, who was driving his needle as savagely as ever, and, with a tremendous frown, chaunting the then popular ditty of the "Done-over Tailor." Whether this was in gloomy satire upon his own occupation we cannot say, but certainly the lover of the divine Miss Sallianna presented an appearance very different from his former one, at the Bower of Nature. His expression was as dignified ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... 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)
... then add half a pound of sharp cheese, three or four pimentos, and a small tin of mushrooms; also add a tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce. Cook all together slowly for a while, then pour over toast or crackers. This is also called "rinktum ditty." ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... Seated a little way off on a low stool was a dingy Spaniard with a 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 stone building away up ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... hundred women clothed in red baize, while his wife was seated in front of him. Between the speeches the ladies burst forth into a sort of plaintive ditty. The party was entertained by a band of musicians, consisting of three drummers and four performers on the marimba, a species of piano. It consists of two bars of wood placed side by side; across these ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... maid with the gentle blue eye, That speaketh so softly, and looketh so shy; Who weepeth for pity, To hear a love ditty, And marketh the end with ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... word "Norn" has been lost in England and Germany, it is possibly preserved in a German folk-lore ditty, which speaks of three Sisters of Fate as "Nuns." Altogether, German folk-lore is still full of rimes about three Weird Sisters. They are sometimes called Wild Women, or Wise Women, or the Measurers (Metten)—namely, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... last him a week. With me this means coffee, tea, sugar, canned milk, dried fruit, rice, cornmeal, flour and baking powder mixture, a little bacon, butter, and seasoning. This will weigh less than ten pounds. With other minor appurtenances in the ditty bag, including an arrow-repairing kit, one's burden is less than twenty ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... rushed upon the scene, causing a general stampede among the disciples of the onion and a hasty adjournment of the festival. What law against irregular assemblages was infringed by these onion-worshipers is not clear, for one can hardly detect sedition lurking under the rustic ditty, and it is equally difficult to suspect an Orsini bomb conspiracy of being typified by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... ear to my ditty, I'll make it as short as I can. There was once—was it London?—a city Which stretched from Beersheba to Dan. Of course that is gammon and spinach, Or, to put it correctly, a joke. It extended from Richmond to Greenwich, This city of darkness ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... Ain't dey gran'? Ain't dey splendid? Goodness, lan'! Wy dey's pu'fect f'om dey fo'heads to dey feet!" An' sich steppin' to de music down de line, 'T ain't de music by itself dat meks it fine, Hit's de walkin', step by step, An' de keepin' time wid "Hep," Dat it mek a common ditty soun' divine. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... 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, imperial; vache; cage, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail, capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron de ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... noted down as they occurred; he makes his selection according to circumstances, according to the state of his own mind; not forgetting the state of mind that the children may be in, and especially the state of the weather. The following little ditty may then be repeated, the subject being On ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... their flutes in the twilight, for the place looks still so wondrous classical, that I can never persuade myself either Constantine Attila or the Popes themselves have chased them all away. I think I should have found some out, who would have fed me with milk and chestnuts, have sung me a Latian ditty, and mourned the woeful changes which have taken place, since their sacred groves were felled, and Faunus ceased to be oracular. Who can tell but they would have given me some mystic skin to sleep on, that I might ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... went along they 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 ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty after me Sing, and dance ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... accord they started softly to retrace their steps when a new sound halted them again. It was a clear, fresh young voice singing a plaintive ditty in a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... her. All of a moment his heart vented itself in a sea-ditty so loud, and clear, and mellow, that windows opened, and out came nightcapped heads to hear him carol the lusty stave, making ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... up the favourite western ditty, "Let's go to Old Kentuck," seized young De Vergennes by the arm, and dragged him through the folding-doors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... candidates. In order to shorten the programme, each was allowed to sing only one verse of a song, and their merits or faults were similarly recorded. Several of the Intermediates had entered for the competition. Rose Butler trilled forth a sentimental little ditty in a rather quavering mezzo; Annie Turner, whose compass was contralto, poured out a sea ballad—a trifle flat; Nora Cleary raised a storm of applause by a funny Irish song, and received marks for style, though her ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... not so much what we are, or where we are, but what we're doing, that makes a life of usefulness and fulness," said Madame Giche, when the ditty came to ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... the willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding through all ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... 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 out in the garb of a Junker of the middle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look. Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in that Solitary place. The weird ditty ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 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 ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... she followed him for a moment with her eyes, and then laughing merrily continued her way, swinging her satchel and humming an old ditty. We shall ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... made no answer, but, lifting his babe from its mother's lap, commenced tossing it in the air and singing a pleasant nursery ditty. Caroline sat in a moody state of mind for some minutes, and then left the room to give some directions about tea. On her return, Ellis said, in as cheerful a voice as if no unpleasant incident ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... forms and desks, listening to some simple story, which appeals to their childish fancies. How they sing! They "bring down the house" with their thumping on the wooden desks as an accompaniment to the "big bass drum," whilst a certain youngster's rendering of a juvenile ditty, known as "The Muffin Man," is calculated to make one remember his vocal efforts whenever the hot and juicy muffin is put on the breakfast table. Little Mary still trips it neatly. She can't quite forget the days and nights when she used to accompany her mother round the public-houses ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... were some of the satires and parodies poured forth on the unfortunate Lord Provost and bailies, who had robbed the town of the full glory of the Queen's arrival. The cleverest of these was an adaptation of an old Jacobite ditty, itself a cutting satire which a hundred years before had taunted the Georgian general, Sir John Cope, with the excess of caution that led him to shun an engagement, withdraw his forces over night, and leave the country open to the Pretender ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... 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
... Fer. The Ditty do's remember my drown'd father, This is no mortall busines, nor no sound That the earth owes: I heare ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... bramble bush, while my grandfather began to lilt as blithely as he could, "The Bonny Lass of Livingston," and the spring was ever after to him as a hymn of thanksgiving, but the words he then sang was an auld, ranting, godless and graceless ditty of the grooms and serving-men that sorned about his father's smiddy, and the closer that the horsemen came he was strengthened to sing ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... night. From all parts of the town people came to stare up at the bedroom window and wonder with a foolish face of horror. The pavement was often blocked for hours together, and itinerant vendors of refreshment made it a new market centre, while vocalists hastened thither to sing the delectable ditty of the deed without having any voice in the matter. It was a pity the Government did not erect a toll-gate at either end of the street. But Chancellors of the Exchequer rarely avail themselves of the more obvious expedients for paying off ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen 10 The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such as did once the Poet bless, [1] Who murmuring here a later [C] ditty, [2] Could find no refuge from distress 15 But in the milder ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... saying a word, 'Frisco Kid went below and struck a light. Joe could hear him fumbling about, and a little later heard his own name called softly. On going into the cabin, he saw 'Frisco Kid sitting on the edge of the bunk, a sailor's ditty-box on his knees, and in his hand a carefully folded page from ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... she assures her audience, in Spanish verse, that there is no place like Cuba, and no country more fertile and picturesque than the Pearl of the Antilles. This favourite ditty is called a Melopea, or words without a melody—the words being simply 'spoken,' and closely followed on the piano ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... peg, assumed the costume of a cavalier, and went to a ball given by a lady friend of mine and to which I knew my man was invited. It was in the Rue des France-Bourgeois, close to La Force. As I expected, my officer was there. I went up to him as he was singing a love ditty and looking tenderly at a lady, and interrupted him exactly in the middle of the second couplet. 'Monsieur,' said I, 'does it still displease you that I should frequent a certain house of La Rue Payenne? And would you still cane me if I took it into my head to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give vent to such sturdy bacchanalian ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... and completely ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper of his wife; and he was given the government of Canada to deliver him from her, and afford him some means of living." A more scandalous report of the motive which sent Frontenac to Quebec is to be found in a whimsical ditty which gained quiet ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... poemes in variable measures, & coupled a short verse with a long to serue that purpose the better, and we our selues who compiled this treatise haue written for pleasure a litle brief Romance or historicall ditty in the English tong of the Isle of great Britaine in short and long meetres, and by breaches or diuisions to be more commodiously song to the harpe in places of assembly, where the company shalbe desirous to heare of old aduentures & valiaunces of noble knights in times ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... Oh, the dirty animals, they have hair on their feet"—a catch phrase which, some years ago, added greatly to the gaiety of Paris, but in which I must confess to seeing no gleam of wit—became the historic property of the school. He recited to them, till they were word-perfect, a music-hall ditty of the early 'eighties—Sur le bi, sur le banc, sur le bi du bout du banc, and delighted them with dissertations on Mme. Yvette Guilbert's earlier repertoire. But for him they would have gone to their lives' end without knowing that pognon ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... hang my self, my friends will look for't. Eating and sleeping, I do despise you both now: I will run mad first, and if that get not pitty, I'le drown my self, to a most dismal ditty. [Exit Savil. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... sang the gorgio to his fair, And thus his ditty ran:— 'Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come, And not the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... letters, but all the while was thinking of her conversation with her uncle as well as something else suggested by the newcomer and his ditty. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... advance; 'Twas he that caught a flame at every glance That met his eye, with him who shared his name. Join'd with an Arnald of inferior fame.— Next either Rambold in procession trod, No easy conquest to the winged god. The pride of Montferrat (a peerless dame) In many a ditty sung, announced his flame; And Genoa's bard, who left his native coast, And on Marsilia's towers the memory lost Of his first time, when Salem's sacred flame Taught him a nobler heritage to claim,— Gerard and Peter, both of Gallic blood, And tuneful ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... her seat, and asked him whether, in his country, they did not do service and devoir to the divine Dame Musica? And whereas he replied that verily they did, that in his own land he had heard many a sweet ditty sung by noble ladies to the harp and lute, that the children would ever sing at their sports, and that he, too, had oftentimes uplifted his voice in singing of madrigals, she besought him that he would make ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Go, by all means. I will make myself jolly until you return," said Cloudy, walking up and down the floor whistling a love ditty, and thinking of little Jacko. He always thought of her with tenfold intensity whenever he returned home and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... picked up the banjo. He placed a foot on the chair seat, slid the banjo to rest on his thigh, swept the strings, and broke into "Inchin' Along". Which ditty made her laugh. For it is a funny song, and he sang ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... love it: at certain passages to which he attached the most ridiculous meanings the tears would come into his eyes. But after having been moved by a scene from Wagner, he would strum out a gallop of Offenbach, or sing some music-hall ditty after the Ode to Joy. Then Christophe would bob about and roar with rage. But the worst of all to bear was not when Sylvain Kohn was absurd so much as when he was trying to be profound and subtle, when he was trying to impress Christophe, when it was Hamilton speaking, and not Sylvain Kohn. Then ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... and deep Through the noisome and smoke-grimed city, Turning the wheels and the spindles, And the great looms that have no pity,— Weight, and pulley, and windlass, And steel that flashes and kindles, And hears no forest-learnt ditty, Not even ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... on both sides of them. It was another crevasse, but not a long one. Presently the child came to a halt because the way ended and they could proceed no farther. He leaned against the rock and in a high-pitched, sweet voice sang part of a Sicilian ditty, neither starting the verse nor ending it, but merely ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... sideways on his mule, who seems to listen with infinite gravity, and to keep time, with his paces, to the tune. The couplets thus chanted, are often old traditional romances about the Moors, or some legend of a saint, or some love-ditty; or what is still more frequent, some ballad about a bold contrabandista, or hardy bandolero, for the smuggler and the robber are poetical heroes among the common people of Spain. Often the song of the muleteer is composed at the instant, and relates to some local scenes or some incident ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... 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 the speech?' ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... romance of the open 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 her mother was ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... 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 ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale?[60] Ah! such, alas! the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.[bw] Pride! bend thine eye from Heaven to thine estate, See ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... measured sweep the burden bore, In 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
... at what he had, been writing, "poetry, I protest!—Ay, I know this poor fellow's in love; and every man who is in love is a poet, 'with a woeful ditty to his mistress's eyebrow.' Pray what colour may Miss Sidney's eyebrows be?—she is really a pretty girl—I think I remember seeing her at some races.—Why does she never come to town?—But of course she is not to blame for that, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan |
