"Mermaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw the girls' clothes on the beach, and so looked out for the wearers. They found them in the water, and pursued them, and tried to capture them, but they were so slimy that it was impossible to take them, till one, catching hold of a mermaid by her long ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... then." And Philip ran upstairs three at a time. He went first to the attics, and made a systematic search of every hall, room, and closet. He even peeped into the great tank, as if Patty might have been transformed into a mermaid. Then followed a thorough search of the second story, with all its rambling ells and side corridors; he tiptoed through the nursery, smiling at the sleeping baby and casting a casual glance at the still ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... his father's (the Bishop's) house was his home. That he may have resorted to the Golden Lion, and there have met with Shakespeare, is, therefore, quite as probable as that our great dramatist associated with Fletcher at the Falcon or the Mermaid, if good cause can only be shown for Shakespeare's having had as much reason to frequent Fulham as the ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... She will fix you with eyes utterly devoid of a twinkle and answer: "I? I am part Scotch terrier, and part Spanish mongrel, but mostly mermaid!" ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... It is not altogether a luxurious position to find yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant things are expected of you, which you neglect at your peril. It is like the old fable of the mermaid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order that she might win his affection, she prayed that she might have the limbs and feet of a human maiden. Her prayer was answered, and she met her prince; but every step she took was as if she trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... to Britain's pride Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died, With the gallant good Riou: Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave; While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the souls Of ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... a sorceress, married to Basa-Jaun, a sort of vampire. Basa-Andre sometimes is a sort of land mermaid (a beautiful lady who sits in a cave combing her locks with a golden comb). She hates ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... portrait of a poet or rather of the poet of the Elizabethan period; for the specimen here represented stands as a type for all his class; and it is worth notice, for if Shakespeare himself was different, many of his associates at the "Mermaid," we may be sure, well answered the description. "I espied far off a certain kind of an overworne gentleman, attired in velvet and satin; but it was somewhat dropped and greasie, and bootes on his legges, whose soles wexed thin and seemed to complaine of their maister, which ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... little water-creatures as fairy tenants; she had friends and playmates among the gulls and peeps, and learned curious things by watching crabs, horse-shoes, and jelly-fishes; and every day she looked for a mermaid. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... moment took That which so long, so charily she kept; And fain by stealth away she would have crept, 310 And to some corner secretly have gone, Leaving Leander in the bed alone. But as her naked feet were whipping out, He on the sudden cling'd her so about, That, mermaid-like, unto the floor she slid; One half appear'd, the other half was hid. Thus near the bed she blushing stood upright, And from her countenance behold ye might A kind of twilight break, which through the air,[39] As from an orient cloud, glimps'd[40] here and there; 320 And round ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... sits by haunted well Is subject to the Nixie's spell; He who walks on lonely beach To the mermaid's charmed speech; He who walks round ring of green ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from the fiery globe shot forth a new effulgence, this time in two broad rays, one a dazzling, pale azure, the other a clear, pearly white. Nelida's graceful movements grew slower and slower, till she merely seemed to sway indolently to and fro like a mermaid rocking herself to sleep on the summit of a wave, ... and then,— from among the veiling shadows of the trees, there stepped forth a man,—beautiful as a sculptured god, of magnificently moulded form and noble stature, clothed from chest to knee in a close fitting garb of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... town-house of Elizabeth, belonged to Sir Walter Raleigh, by whom it was held on leave from the queen. Raleigh, a friend of William Shakespeare and the players, was also a friend of Francis Bacon and the philosophers. Raleigh is said to have founded the Mermaid Club; and it is certain that he numbered friends among the poets and players. The proofs of his having known Shakespeare, though indirect, are strong. Of his long intercourse with Bacon every one is aware. Thus it requires no effort of the fancy to picture these three men as lounging in a window ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... used to fancy Russia as a giant devil-fish, whose arms extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Then I would think of my native land as a beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has been so often erroneously ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... angel with book; (2) angel with shield bearing date 1489; (3) lion versus griffin; (4) griffin devouring human leg; (5) owl; (6) mermaid with mirror and hair-brush; (7) two pigs dancing to bagpipe played by a third; (8) Jonah thrown to the whale; (9) man wheeling another who holds a reed and a bag; (10) fox caught carrying off goose by dog and by woman with distaff; (11) winged ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... replied she; 'it might have been in danger when you were trusting to the frail works of men, which the waves love to rend to fragments—your good ships, as you call them, which but float about upon sufferance; but where can be the danger when in a mermaid's shell, which the mountain wave respects, and upon which the cresting surge dare not throw its spray? Philip Vanderdecken, you have come to seek ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... continued, "a twentieth-century writer, to build yourself a Tudor House would be as absurd as for Ben Jonson to have planned himself a Norman Castle with a torture-chamber underneath the wine-cellar, and the fireplace in the middle of the dining-hall. His fellow cronies of the Mermaid would have thought him stark, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... mermaid's retreat of which the old captain had spoken, and of which the natives on Queen Charlotte's Island had such a strange superstition? Tite thought to himself. All the pleasant associations of home, all that he loved there, and all that he had hoped for, now rose up ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... of the Mermaid Tavern are twinkling like so many stars in the chill December air of London. It is the last meeting of the Mermaid Club for the year 1596, and not a member is absent. As they drop in by twos and threes and gather in groups ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... responded the landlady, "and where be you a-g'win to with this here angel? Takin' her to sea to make a mermaid of her?" ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... 'O father, father, draw your dam!' Binnorie, O Binnorie! 'There's either a mermaid or a milk-white swan,' By the ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Cheape; and then the Bull Head, And many like places that make noses red; Th' Bore's Head in Old Fish Street, Three Crowns in the Vintry, And now, of late, St. Martin's in the Sentree; The Windmill in Lothbury; the Ship at th' Exchange, King's Head in New Fish Street, where roysters do range; The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand, Three Tuns, Newgate Market; Old Fish Street, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... pressed and dried, still kept their wonderful colors. Among these valuable water plants, I noted various seaweed: some Cladostephus verticillatus, peacock's tails, fig-leafed caulerpa, grain-bearing beauty bushes, delicate rosetangle tinted scarlet, sea colander arranged into fan shapes, mermaid's cups that looked like the caps of squat mushrooms and for years had been classified among the zoophytes; in short, a complete series ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Lushington. Mr. Walker, our Surgeon. Mr. Powell, Surgeon. Corporal R. Auger, Corporal John Coles, and Private Mustard of the Corps of Sappers and Miners. J.C. Cox, a Stock-Keeper. Thomas Ruston, a Sailor who had been on the coast of Australia in the Mermaid with Captain King. Evan Edwards, a Sailor. Henry Williams ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... that these fabulous beings frequented the sea-coasts of Wales to the great danger of the inhabitants. The description of the Welsh mermaid was just as it is all over the world; she is depicted as being above the waist a most lovely young woman, whilst below she is like a fish with fins and spreading tail. Both mermen and mermaids were fond, it is said, of combing their long hair, and the siren-like ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... restiveness. He had been thoroughly frightened, and such terror is not easily forgotten. They stayed in a farmhouse, where he was at his best with the simple folk, and his best could be charming. He was always trying to get his "mermaid," as he took to calling Gyp, away from the baby, getting her away to himself, along the grassy cliffs and among the rocks and yellow sands of that free coast. His delight was to find every day some new nook where they ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... look upon Fu-hi as their first historical emperor; and they place his lifetime in the years 2852-2738 B.C. Some accounts represent him as a supernatural being; and we see him depicted as a human figure with a fish tail something like a mermaid. He is credited with having established social order among his people, who, before him, had lived like animals in the wilds. The social chaos out of which Chinese society arose is described as being characterized by the absence of family life; for "children knew ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... English tree, from which dangles a whole world, of lianes, matapalos, orchids, wild pines with long air-roots or gray beards; and last, but not least, that strange and lovely parasite, the Rhipsalis cassytha, which you mistake first for a plume of green sea-weed, or a tress of Mermaid's hair which has got up there by mischance, and then for some delicate kind of pendent mistletoe; till you are told, to your astonishment, that it is an abnormal form of Cactus—a family which it resembles, save in its tiny flowers and fruit, no more than it resembles the Ceiba-tree ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... this, the wicked step-mother sprang to her, and thrust her on a sudden overboard. The young girl was carried away by the blue waves, and came to the mermaid who rules over all those who are drowned in ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... Distress Domestic Poems The Green Man Hit or Miss The Forlorn Shepherd's Complaint Lieutenant Luff Morning Meditations A Plain Direction The Assistant Drapers' Petition The Bachelor's Dream Rural Felicity A Flying Visit Queen Mab To Henrietta A Parthian Glance A True Story The Mermaid of Margate A Fairy Tale Craniology The Wee Man The Progress of Art Those Evening Bells The Carelesse Nurse Mayd Domestic Asides Shooting Pains John Day Huggins and Duggins The China-Mender Domestic Didactics Lament for the Decline of Chivalry Playing at Soldiers ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... as I can. Ah, here's my horse, under this birch tree. Well, good-bye, Amiria. Thank you for taking charge of me to-day. My word, how you can swim: like a mermaid." ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... A gleam of amusement flitted through the mind of Caius at the thought of the sidelight this threw on Jim's character. For Jim was not incapable of casting stones at even so rare a curiosity as a mermaid. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the Irish text must present considerable variants, as Dr. Todd in his book on St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, page 460, cites from 'An Irish Life of St. Brendan,' but which must evidently be the fabulous voyage, four incidents, of which one is about the finding of a dead mermaid, another about one of the voyagers being devoured alive by sea-cats, and the third about an huge sea-cat as large as an ox which swam after them to destroy them, until another sea-monster rose up and fought with the ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... these treasures Clytie should have been happy, but she was not. She had once heard a mermaid sing of a glorious light which shone on the ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; tertium quid[Lat], hermaphrodite. [mythical animal] phoenix, chimera, hydra, sphinx, minotaur; griffin, griffon; centaur; saggittary[obs3]; kraken, cockatrice, wyvern, roc, dragon, sea serpent; mermaid, merman, merfolk[obs3]; unicorn; Cyclops, "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" [Othello]; teratology. [unconformable to the surroundings] fish out of water; neither one thing nor another, neither fish nor fowl, neither fish flesh nor fowl nor good red herring; one in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have been scandalized if they could have witnessed her shocking familiarity with a horse! She thought of an English girl who had been cut by the good society of Plainville because she dared to ride like a biped instead of a mermaid. And she laughed in a wild exultant freedom, while the wind whipped her hair about her shoulders, and she felt her mount firm beneath her as they cantered across the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... house in Stratford; and later on he acquired other large property rights there. How often he may have visited Stratford in the twenty-five years of his career in London we have no information; but however enjoyable London life and the society of the writers at the 'Mermaid' Tavern may have been to him, he probably always looked forward to ending his life as the chief country gentleman of his native village. Thither he retired about 1610 or 1612, and there he died prematurely in 1616, just as he was completing ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... to look puzzled, as if she were trying to understand what he meant, but could not—revealing a notion that he meant something. But as soon as ever she left the lake, she was so altered, that the prince said to himself, "If I marry her, I see no help for it: we must turn merman and mermaid, and go ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... strange mixture of the useful with the ridiculously ornamental. Here were the beautiful banks of a lake and Nature's embellishment of reeds and water plants, which, for a wonder, were left to grow in their native luxuriance, and in the midst a huge pasteboard or wooden swan, and a wooden mermaid of tasteless proportions blowing from a conchshell. In another part was a cottage with puppets the size of life moving by clock-work; a peasant smoking and turning a reel to wind off the thread which his 'goed vrow' is spinning upon a wheel, while a most sheep-like dog ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... grew quite absorbing, and her "cubby," as she called it, rapidly became a pretty grotto, where she lived like a little mermaid, daily loving more and more the beauty of the wonderful sea. Finding the boat too sunny at times, the boys cut long willow boughs and arched them over the seats, laying hemlock branches across till a green roof made ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... see,' laying his left hand on the wrist that hung over the edge of the sofa. 'Ay, I hope that wicked little siren has done no great damage. Pulled you below, true mermaid fashion—eh?' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first intention and conciliate him; for, remember, he has us in the hollow of his hand. Bestow the picture, by all means, and just as many smiles and compliments as he can stand, or you can afford to squander; for you are worse than a mermaid, Miss Harz, for fascination, all the gentlemen say so; and, as ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... sunshine of luxury and love and happiness. One day she was lying on her back on the heather of the Peel hill, with her head on her arms, thinking of a story that Aunt Rachel had told her. It was of a mermaid who had only to slip up out of the sea and say to any man, "Come," and he came—he left everything and followed her. Suddenly the cold nose of a pointer rubbed against her forehead, a strong voice cried, "Down, sir!" and a young man of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... plight for want of funds; but his mother wit came to his aid again, and this time he posed before the public as a naturalist who had discovered off the coast what he pronounced could be nothing else than a "mermaid," and for the exhibition of this marine creature, which he had cleverly constructed from the head and breast of an ape and half the body of a fish, he obtained a good round sum. We hear of him next at Singapore, where he also advertised his "mermaid" as being on exhibition at a certain ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... know it was one o' them shows where they hev pictures behind a piece o' calico, Paul Pry with his umbrella, Daniel i' th' lions' den, ducks swimming across a river, a giantess who was a man shaved and dressed in women's clothes, a dog wi' five legs, and a stuffed mermaid—just what little lads would like. There was a man, besides, who played on a flute, and another singing funny songs. When I went outside into the street there was little Billy Yates, as used to play with Bobby, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... turned so that he could gaze through the open port-hole at the glorious, glistening sea, and as the doctor very softly pushed the door a little open there came clearly to the listeners' ears a scrap of the old sea song, "The Mermaid":— ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... chosen yet? Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law Not only limn the truths no others saw But also, lord not slave of written word, Lend ear to what no other poet heard And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack Who brought ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... use of the verb ( allure, entice); as in C. of E. iii. 2. 45: "O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note;" Scott's Lay, iii. 146: "He thought to train him to the wood," etc. James was much given to gallantry, and many of his travels in disguise were on adventures of this kind. See on i. 409 above and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and county fairs one may still find among the "attractions" a mermaid, dried and stuffed, consisting of the upper half of a monkey artlessly joined to the lower half or two-thirds of a codfish, the monkey's head usually adorned with a handful of oakum or horse-hair. When this kind of thing was first exhibited by the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... characteristic dialect; but that is very different from continually letting out his ruling passion. This brings me, Sir, to the alteration you offer in the personage of Mrs. Winter, whom you wittily propose -to turn into a mermaid. I approve the idea much: I like too the restoration of Mrs. Vernon to a plain reasonable woman. She will be a contrast to the bad characters, and but a gradation to produce Barbara, without making her too glaringly bright without any intermediate shade. In ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... reminiscences, opinions, affections, and enmities. And we hear, too, of valorous potations; but in the words of Herrick addressed to his master, Jonson, at the Devil Tavern, as at the Dog, the Triple Tun, and at the Mermaid, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... about like a maelstroem with the remaining one, and Mrs. McLean with her two hands grasping Helen's garments, while the latter half stood in the boat and half lay recumbent on the lake, tipping, slipping, dipping, till her head resembled a mermaid's; while they all three filled the air with more exclaim, shrieking, and laughter than could have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... feebler. And did he communicate his views of Mackarel Lane? I saw him regarding, me as a species of mermaid or syren, evidently thinking it a great shame that I have not a burnt face. If he ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Epoch. Such a picture is really just as absurd, or, to speak more correctly, a thousand times absurder, than if one were to speak of those grand old times when Homer and Virgil smoked their pipes together in the Mermaid Tavern, while Shakespeare and Moliere, crowned with summer roses, sipped their Falernian at their ease beneath the whispering palmwoods of the Nevsky Prospect, and discussed the details of the play they were to ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot; Teach me to hear mermaid's singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... my dreams I hear the mermaid singing; The mermaid music at its portal ringing; The mermaid song, that hinged with gold its door, And, whispering evermore, Hushed the ponderous hurl and roar And vast aeolian thunder Of the chained ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... of Galileo's death Newton was born, and the subsequent sections carry the story on to the modern observatory again. The form I have adopted is a development from that of an earlier book, "Tales of the Mermaid Tavern" where certain poets and discoverers of another kind were brought together round a central idea, and their stories told in a combination of narrative and lyrical verse. "The Torch-Bearers" flowed all the more naturally into a similar form in view of the fact that Tycho ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... Grettir and pointed finger, and wagged head at him, and called him mermaid's son, and many ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... somewhat dashed the enthusiasm of Captain Sarrasin. He liked a girl who rode, that was certain. Mrs. Sarrasin rode like that rarest of creatures, except the mermaid, a female Centaur, and if he had had a dozen daughters, they would all have been trained to ride, one better than the other. The riding, therefore, was clearly in the favour of Dolores, so far as Captain Sarrasin's estimate was concerned. But then the idea of a hotel-keeper's daughter ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... dishes vanished to? Who has ever known "A smoothening Quiddany of Quinces?" Who can tell the composition of a Tansy? These are tame days when we have forgotten how to make Cock-Ale. They drank 'Sack with Clove-gilly-flowers' at the "Mermaid," I am sure. What is Bragot? What is Stepony? And what Slipp-coat Cheese? Ask the baker for a Manchet. The old names call for a Ballade. Ou sont les mets d'antan? And, cooks, with all your exactness ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... look like, Maida?" Rosie said once. Before Maida could answer, she went on. "You look like that little mermaid princess in Anderson's fairy tales—the one who had to suffer so to get legs ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... hobject!" exclaimed Joe Dumsby, a short, thickset, little Englishman, who, having been born and partly bred in London, was rather addicted to what is styled chaffing. "Was you arter a mermaid, shipmate?" ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... than a baby to dress yourself, Miss Esther," said the good old creature, in a vexed voice. "And to think of drowning all this beautiful hair. Why, there is seaweed in it I do declare, like a mermaid." ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his house close to the Abbey. Dickens was a Cockney; he said he could not think without the London streets. The London taverns heard always the quaintest conversation, whether it was Ben Johnson's at the Mermaid or Sam Johnson's at the Cock. Even in our own time it may be noted that the most vital and genuine humour is still written about London. Of this type is the mild and humane irony which marks Mr. Pett Ridge's studies of the small grey ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... call them. There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes; As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indu'd Unto that element: but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... were a press of gaping faces, Which seem'd to swallow up his sound advice; All jointly listening, but with several graces, As if some mermaid did their ears entice, Some high, some low, the painter was so nice; The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... of James I. and the siren or mermaid of Lady Frazer, who is said to have worked her own golden hair in the heart of a Tudor rose on a book cover for ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... mermaid haunts yon water," said Mrs Harrington; "I have heard many marvellous tales of her, a few years ago. Strange enough, last night I dreamed she took away our little girl, and plunged with her into the water. But ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... had lived among loose companions, and the tavern in Eastcheap came in to fill out his picture; although Mrs. Quickly and Falstaff, and Poins and Bardolph were more likely to have been fallen in with by Shakespeare himself at the Mermaid, than to have been comrades of the true Prince Henry. It was enough for Shakespeare to draw real men, and the situation, whatever it might be, would sit easy on them. In this sense only it is that Poetry is truer ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the spots that we most frequented in our walks, such as "The Mermaid's Ford," and "St. Nicholas." The latter covered a space including several fields and a clear stream, and over this locality she certainly reigned supreme; our gathering of violets and cowslips, or of hips and haws for jam, and our digging of earth-nuts were limited by ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... cowslips, and, above all, orchises. But the pond was no ordinary one. It was always called the 'S pond,' being shaped like that letter. I suspect, too, that it was a pond of ill repute—perhaps connected with heathen worship—for we were warned never to go near its edge, lest the Mermaid should come and crome us in. Crome, as all East Anglians know, means 'crook'; and in later years I remember a Suffolk boy at Norwich school translated a passage from the 'Hecuba' of Euripides, in which the aged queen is described as 'leaning upon ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... Sylvia and her sister had to go. They had to go and be the most striking figures there: Celeste, slim and pale from sorrow, virginal, in clinging white chiffon; and Sylvia, regal and splendid, shimmering like a mermaid in a ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... continued Bob; 'that can truly be said—a real charmer, you know—a nice good comely young woman, a miracle of genteel breeding, you know, and all that. She can throw her hair into the nicest curls, and she's got splendid gowns and headclothes. In short, you might call her a land mermaid. She'll make such a first-rate wife as there ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... swim when Dor smiled, and he began to be interested in living again in spite of himself. The girl, he thought, was somehow radiant—really lovely, in spite of her scales and fins. It was peculiar; he'd never liked women at all, and had certainly never thought he'd like a mermaid, but.... ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... Palace of Food Products (in the distance). Bliss and Faville, Architects Colonnade, Palace of Fine Arts. Bernard R. Maybeck, Architect The Setting Sun. Adolph A. Weinman, Sculptor The Nations of the West. A. Stirling Calder, Frederick C. R. Roth, Leo Lentelli, Sculptors The Mermaid. Arthur Putnam, Sculptor The Adventurous Bowman Supported by Frieze of Toilers Details from the Column of Progress. Hermon A. MacNeil, Sculptor The End of the Trail. James Earl Fraser, Sculptor Autumn, in the Court of the Four ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... at all funny to the child, she always laughed gleefully, because he was so seldom moved to mirth that any such demonstration delighted her and she took the credit of it entirely to herself Her own inclination had been for serious stories, with sad endings, like the Little Mermaid, which he had once told her in an unguarded moment when she had a cold, and was put to bed early on her birthday night and cried because she could not have her party. But he highly disapproved of this preference, and had called it a morbid taste, and always shook his finger ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Nation in 1848, to displace this traditional figure in favour of a more earnest and tragical national type. But a single quotation will illustrate the natural magic of which Arnold speaks: "The Merrow (mermaid) put the comb in her pocket, and then bent down her head and whispered some words to the water that was close to the foot of the rock. Dick saw the murmur of the words upon the top of the sea, going out towards the wide ocean, just ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... branches from several parts, to various of the suburbs:—1st, by way of Pershore Street, Moat Row, Bradford Street, and Moseley Road, to Moseley; 2nd, by way of Deritend, Bordesley, Camp Hill, along Stratford Road, to Sparkhill; 3rd, leaving Stratford Road (at the Mermaid) and along Warwick Road, to Acock's Green; 4th, striking off at Bordesley, along the Coventry Road to the far side of Small Heath Park; 5th, from Moat Row, by way of Smithfield Street to Park Street, Duddeston Row, Curzon Street, Vauxhall Road, to Nechells Park ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... said the other day, "we won't be satisfied till we get it." If the rebellion of our women doesn't come, I prophesy that in a couple of thousand years, when the supermen inhabit the earth, they will find a sort of land mermaid with an expressionless face, perpetually going through the motion of dealing cards or drinking tea. Then some old fogy will spend ten years in research, and pronounce her an excellent example of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... gathered from the poetry of his day, and from his intercourse with classical scholars, such as Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and others of those who formed the unique assemblage wont to meet together at the old Mermaid Tavern in London. That a diamond could cost 2000 ducats ($5000), a very large sum in Shakespeare's time, is noted in one of his earliest plays, the Merchant of Venice (Act iii, sc. 1), and the following injunction emphasizes the great ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... protested her inability to leave him, and went, appearing torn away. As well bid healthy children lie abed on a bright summer morning, as think of holding this fair young woman bound to the circle of safety when she has her view of pleasure sparkling like the shore-sea mermaid's mirror. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and it cleared off, the moderator was standin' there shaking my hand and tellin' me what a speech it was. It was a speech that had to be made. They had to be bluffed. But as to knowin' a word of what I said, why, I might jest as well try to tell you what the mermaid said when the feller brought her ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... much time for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of the lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted blooms gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms of mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite flower—blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple fringed with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white, with the faintest possible rose tinge in the centre of each section of the corolla, a just perceptible blush, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... fountaine of all mercies, it pleased his diuine maiestie to moue my heart to prosecute that which I hope shall be to his glory, and to the contentation of euery Christian minde. Whereupon falling into consideration that the Mermaid, albeit a very strong and sufficient ship, yet by reason of her burthen was not so conuenient and nimble as a smaller bark, especially in such desperate hazzards; further hauing in account her great charge to the aduenturers being at 100. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... cocke's wordes, and not mine; I can no harm of no woman divine.* *conjecture, imagine Fair in the sand, to bathe* her merrily, *bask Lies Partelote, and all her sisters by, Against the sun, and Chanticleer so free Sang merrier than the mermaid in the sea; For Physiologus saith sickerly,* *certainly How that they singe well and merrily. And so befell that, as he cast his eye Among the wortes,* on a butterfly, *cabbages He was ware of this fox that lay full low. Nothing *ne list him thenne* for to crow, *he had no ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... sea-gull. It grew and grew, From the pine-trees gathering a sombre hue, Till it seems a mere murmur out of the vast Norwegian forests of the past; 10 And it grew itself like a true Northern pine, First a little slender line, Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then anon A stem that a tower might rest upon, Standing spear-straight in the waist-deep moss, Its bony roots clutching around and across, As if they would tear up earth's heart in their grasp Ere the storm should uproot them or make them unclasp; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Drama. A miracle play, such as Noah, may be read in Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakespearean Drama (Ginn and Company). Marlowe's plays in Everyman's Library; his Edward II in Holt's English Readings; his Faustus in Temple Dramatists, and in Mermaid Series. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to the mermaids. But the mermaids haven't any hearts, Trot, no more'n a fish has; so they laughs when the poor people drown an' don't care a fig. That's why I says, an' I says it true, that nobody never sawr a mermaid an' ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... looked last Summer when she played that she was a little mermaid, and lay on the rocks looking down into the water, her long yellow hair hanging down over ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... wind, indeed! Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my cloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Jane: both your cheek and hand are burning hot. I ask again, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... captain went to see the bear-baiting in the bear-pit hard by, but the two young people preferred a trip on the river as far as Chelsea. This was a very busy and momentous day, for in the evening Master Jeffreys took Morgan down to the "Mermaid Tavern" between Wood Street and Milk Street, where Raleigh was presiding over a gathering of the "Mermaid Club," and there the young countryman found himself in a very nest of poets—Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, Sidney, and Raleigh ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... artistic was probably the little silver tankard which she did for the Tiffany Company, a bit of modelling which involves the figures of a fisher-boy and a mermaid. The figure of Athena is large and correct; those of the fisher-boy and mermaid poetic and impassioned.... The boy kisses the maid when the lid is lifted. He is always looking over the edge, as if yearning for ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... literature, and had to devote evenings to the wits. To him has been ascribed the institution, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of the Mermaid Tavern meetings in Bread Street, Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Selden's, Cotton's, Camden's, and Donne's club. It is very likely; so likely that the intrinsic probability of the fact might be a motive for a fiction. Whether as founder or guest it is more than likely he ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... power I'll yield. 40 But if that I am I, then well I know Your weeping sister is no wife of mine, Nor to her bed no homage do I owe: Far more, far more to you do I decline. O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, 45 To drown me in thy sister flood of tears: Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote: Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed I'll take them, and there lie; And, in that glorious supposition, think 50 He gains by death that hath such means to die: ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... of forty minutes, not winks, had been like the turning of a new leaf; and she was fortified, woman-wise, with the knowledge that she looked her best. Over her shoulders there clung a shimmering scarf, a pretty trifle all made of the scales of a silver mermaid. It was observed, however, that the gray crepe-de-chine quite justified ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... mermaid, came to land with a grin. Under one arm a pasty sack of flour was tucked, under the other a smoked venison haunch. "An' I took a bath ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... thought; and this was another bond between us. His Radicalism was not very formidable; it amounted to little more, indeed, than a turn for humorous paradox. Our discussion reminded me of Fuller's description of the wit-combats between Ben Jonson and Shakespeare at the "Mermaid." I was the Spanish galleon, my Fascinating Friend was the English man-of-war, ready "to take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." An hour sped away delightfully, the only thing I did not greatly enjoy being the cigarette, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... he shook his head and tapped his forehead significantly; after which he resumed his mermaid task. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... if a person was to tell me that he had seen a mermaid, with the body of a woman and the scaly tail of a fish, I should at once say that I could not believe him. And why? because it is contrary to the laws of nature. The two component parts of the animal could not be combined, as the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... and her irritation vanished like magic. Water was Sahwah's element, and as she propelled herself gracefully across the sparkling lake, feeling the absolute mastery of her muscles, changing regularly from left to right in her side stroke, she might have been taken for a mermaid by some Neckan of the deep. She reached Blueberry Island in good time and, climbing up on the rocky shore, sat down in the sun ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... to Liberty," he alludes to the tradition that Mona, the druidic stronghold, was long covered with an enchantment of mist—work of an angry mermaid: ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... modern convenience, for no lamp nurtured on oil would pierce those genuinely opaque panes, and illuminate the path to the gate. Better to have an electric light than cause your guests to plunge into Perdita's border. By the side of this fortress-door hung a heavy iron bell-pull, ending in a mermaid. When first Mrs Lucas had that installed, it was a bell-pull in the sense that an extremely athletic man could, if he used both hands and planted his feet firmly, cause it to move, so that a huge bronze bell swung in the servants' ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... p. 327.).—Johnson's definition of club, as "an assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions," will apply to a meeting held two centuries earlier than that established by Sir Walter Raleigh at the Mermaid, in Friday Street. In the reign of Henry IV., there was a Club called "La Court de bone Compagnie," of which Occleve was a member, and probably Chaucer. In the works of the former are two ballads, written ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... cognizance of their distress. — I snatched out my sister by the hair of the head, and, dragging her to the bank, recollected that my uncle had, not yet appeared — Rushing again into the stream, I met Clinker hauling ashore Mrs Jenkins, who looked like a mermaid with her hair dishevelled about her ears; but, when I asked if his master was safe, he forthwith shook her from him, and she must have gone to pot, if a miller had not seasonably come to her relief. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and the Mermaid were celebrated taverns, which the poets, wits, and gallants were accustomed to visit. Mr. Thorpe, the enterprising bookseller of Bedford Street, is in possession of a manuscript full of songs and poems, in the handwriting of a person ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... about town hath or had its club. The Mermaid Tavern is immortalized as the house resorted to by Shakspeare, Jonson, Fletcher, and Beaumont; the Devil—which, Pennant informs us, stood on the site of Child's-place, Temple Bar—was the scene of many a merry meeting of the choice spirits in old days; at Will's Coffee-house, in the Augustan age ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... place, with its black shadowy niches and caves at the surface of the water, had a strange fascination for him. In fact, with its solemn twilight and irregular crag, arch and hollow, it looked quite an ideal entrance to some mermaid city such as is described by the poets ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... a glass of champagne with the foam on't, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the heat of the moment. * * * * * He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the 'Mermaid,' Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,— The topmost bright bubble on the wave of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the hulk, and Lord Vernon came out of the conflict minus a leg and an arm.'—'Who had you there?' 'Upon my honour I hardly know. I was so busy paying my devoirs to Lady Graham; she looked for all the world like a mermaid, as she stood by the bows and christened the vessel. Her hair hung down as straight as the lower rigging when first put over the mast heads.'—'I wish I had such a beautiful mermaid for a wife,' replied H——, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... doomed to failure and returned with even less to show than on the previous voyage. He did, however, bring back a curious tale that added to the superstitious sea lore of those times, for two of his sailors one morning when looking over the side of the vessel beheld what they declared was a mermaid—with a white skin and a tail like a mackerel, long, black hair, and a back and breast like a woman's. For a long time, these mendacious mariners insisted, the mermaid (who is believed to have been a seal) swam beside the vessel looking earnestly ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... in their buttonholes. Then the girls presented the gifts they had made for the beloved uncle; Margaret's book, a fine old copy of the "Colloquies of Erasmus," bound by her own hands in gold-stamped brown leather, Peggy's mermaid-penwiper, with a long tail of sea-green sewing silk, and the pincushion on which Jean had spent many painful hours in her efforts to make the ferns look like ferns instead of like green hen feathers. Grace had woven a basket of sweet rushes, of quaint and graceful ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... Glenfillan's spring," art passing from the earth which thou hast "painted with delight." And such are the chances of mortal fame, our children's children may raise new idols on the site of thy holy altar, and cavil where their sires adored; but for thee the mermaid of the ocean shall wail in her coral caves, and the sprite that lives in the waterfalls shall mourn! Strange shapes shall hew thy monument in the recesses of the lonely rocks! ever by moonlight shall the fairies pause from their roundel when some wild note of their minstrelsy ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... landscape might be French, these flowers were unmistakably Californian. The two pools, ornamented with the Arthur Putnam fountain of the mermaid, in duplicate, decidedly French in feeling, were brilliant with the reflected coloring from both the ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... an enormous whale showed a back so broad and motionless that it looked like an island. Alcina had fixed her eyes on me, and planned to get me into her power. Addressing us, she said: 'This is the hour when the prettiest mermaid in the sea comes regularly every day to the shore of yonder island. She sings so sweetly that the very waves flow smoother at the sound. If you wish to hear her come with me to her resort.' So saying, Alcina pointed to the fish, which we all ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the Restoration. He was the last of the Elizabethans. He had possibly seen Shakspere, as on his visits to London after his retirement to Stratford the playwright passed along Bread Street to his wit combats at the Mermaid. He had been the contemporary of Webster and Massinger, of Herrick and Crashaw. His "Comus" and "Arcades" had rivalled the masques of Ben Jonson. It was with a reverence drawn from thoughts like these that men ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... whom we knew in Siegfried's younger days. But, be this as it may, he was at this time the master of all smiths, and no one ever wrought more cunningly. And men say that his grandfather was Vilkinus, the first king of that land; and that his grandmother, Wachitu, was a fair mermaid, who lived in the deep green sea; and that his father, Wada, had carried him, when a child, upon his shoulders through water five fathoms deep, to apprentice him to the cunning dwarfs, from whom he learned his trade. And if this story is true, he could not have been Veliant. He was wedded to ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... my sister, whether thy son be asleep or no." So she felt Badr and finding on him the signs of slumber said to Salih, "He is asleep; what hast thou to say and what is thine object in making sure his sleeping?" Replied he, "O my sister, know that I have bethought me of a Mermaid of the mermaids who befitteth thy son; but I fear to name her, lest he be awake and his heart be taken with her love and maybe we shall be unable to win to her; so should he and we and the Grandees of the realm be wearied in vain and trouble betide us through this; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... he would catch me a Little mermaid, Some island where he lands, With her dripping curls, And her crown of pearls, And the looking-glass in her hands! Hail! Ho! Sail! Ho! Sail far o'er the fabulous main! And if I were a sailor, I'd sail with you, Though I ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... flecked with amethyst, reflect the colours of the gorgeously-frilled and rosetted anemones in parterres between red coral crags. Tresses of filmy green floating from the mouth of a cavern, suggest a mermaid's hair, and her visible presence would scarcely add to the wonders in this under-world of glamour and mystery. Shells, pink and pearly, brown and lilac, scarlet and cobalt, strew the flower-decked floor with infinite variety, concave and spiral, ribbed and fluted, fretted ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings |
