"Mistletoe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... given is, I am confident, absolutely free from every source of error. I do not remember that Mr. Rathbone had communicated with me since he sent me a plentiful supply of mistletoe a year ago last Christmas. The account I received from him was cut out of "The Sporting Times" of March 5, 1887. My own knowledge of the case came from "Kirby's Wonderful Museum," a work presented to me at least thirty years ago. I had not looked at the account, spoken of it, nor thought of it for ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... celebrated at Mrs. Blodgett's, after the fashion of a second-rate English house of entertainment. The servants hung mistletoe about in various places, and woe to the unlucky wight that was caught under it. Hawthorne presents an amusing picture of his boy Julian, nine years old, struggling against the endearments of a chamber-maid, and believes that he himself was the only male person in the house that escaped. [Footnote: ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... from the middle bark of most parasitic plants, that is to say, those that grow like mistletoe, out of the boughs of other trees. Holly and young elder shoots also afford it. The bark is boiled for seven or eight hours, till quite soft, and is then drained of its water and laid in heaps, in pits dug in the ground, where it is covered with stones and left for two or three weeks ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Christmas Days of her life. Easy to-day to sit for a laughing hour with poor Mary Lord, to go to late service, and dream through a long sermon, with the odor of incense and spicy evergreen sweet all about her, to set tables, to dust the parlor, to be kissed by Loretta's little doctor under the mistletoe, to sweep up tissue- paper and red ribbon and nutshells and tinsel, to hook Mary Lou's best gown, and accompany Virginia to evening service, and to lend Georgie her best gloves. Susan had not had many Christmas presents: cologne and handkerchiefs and calendars ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... it was also looked upon with some suspicion, perhaps also arising from its use by our heathen ancestors, so that, though admitted into houses, it was not (or very seldom) admitted into churches. And this character so far still attaches to the Mistletoe, that it is never allowed with the Holly and Ivy and Box to decorate the churches, and Gay's lines ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... ever was such a ham? or ever such a wonderful man as Mine Host? or ever such a fortunate woman as the missus? Had any other woman such a ham or such a friend in need? And bubbling over with affection for the whole world, he sent Jackeroo off for mistletoe, and presently the ham, all brave in Christmas finery, was hanging like a gay wedding-bell in the kitchen doorway. Then the kitchen had to be decorated, also in mistletoe, to make a fitting setting for the ham, and after that the fiat went ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the dear old country 'tis Christ- mas, and to-night I'm thinking of the mistletoe and holly berries bright. The smoke above our chimbley pots I'd dearly love to see, And those dear folks down in Devon, how they'll ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... to mistletoe, Which has no root, and cannot grow Or prosper, but by that same tree It clings about: so I by thee. What need I then to fear at all So long as I about thee crawl? But if that tree should fall and die, Tumble shall heaven, and ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel very gallantly sent me over a huge turkey, an eighteen-pounder, and to-morrow I have to go into Buckhorn for my mail-order shipments. We have decorated the house with a whole box of holly from Victoria and I've hung a sprig of mistletoe in the living-room doorway. The children, of course, are on tiptoe with expectation. But I can't escape the impression that I'm merely acting a part, that I'm a Pagliacci in petticoats. Heaven knows I clown enough; no one can accuse me of not going through ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... If the ice on the creek had been free from snow, they would have skated for hours, and she thought as long as that sport had been spoiled, they ought to do something to make up for it. Gay had never gathered any mistletoe. She thought it would be fun for them all to go around by Stone Hollow, and get some off the big trees that grew ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... should," said Ambrose. "I remember best how he used to carry me on his shoulder to cull mistletoe for Christmas." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... these celestial branches. Out of this as the race grew came also many another romantic symbolism of cherished belief. Among the glowing sunset clouds was hung the golden fleece of the Cholchis. The golden apples of the Hesperides grew there. The very lightning flash was but a celestial mistletoe growing mysteriously upon the limbs of this flame tree as it grows on the oaks in the forests beneath which they hunted. Secure in our better beliefs, we call their worship superstition, but it is well that they had it. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... In common with the mistletoe and vervain the Druids held the Selago and Samolus as sacred plants, and never approached them but in the most devout and reverential manner. When they were gathered for religious purposes the greatest care was taken lest they ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... till I'm ninety,—an' that's drawin' it mild, for my father lived till a 'underd, an' then on'y went through slippin' on a wet stone an' breakin' a bone in 'is back; an' my grandfather saw 'is larst Christmas at a 'underd an' ten, an' was up to kissin' a wench under the mistletoe, 'e was sich a chirpin' old gamecock. 'E didn't look no older'n you do now, an' you're a chicken compared to 'im. You've wore badly like, not knowin' the use ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... great; and, descending with a rapidity to which we had long been strangers, to our great pleasure oak trees appeared on the ridge, and soon became very frequent; on these I remarked unusually great quantities of mistletoe. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected. from them so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... road, by the garden walls over which, at this season, no scent of flowers came, or blossomed branches hung forth. There were red holly-berries visible, and upon one mossy old tree a gray bunch of mistletoe could be seen on the other side of the street. But how quiet it was! They scarcely met a dozen people between the station ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... dinner. They always dined out. They strayed from the chop-house to chop-sueydom, from terrace to table d'hote, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from cafe to casino, from Maria's to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic life in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates. Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the wedding march you now hear only "Come with the Gypsy Bride." You rarely dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and, besides, you want to give them time ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... a primitive ladder. This was the favourite sitting-room of the girls by day, and served for Pancho's bedroom at night. It was beautiful enough to be fit shelter for all the woodland nymphs, with its festoons of mistletoe and wild grape-vines; but Pancho was rather an unappreciative tenant, even going so far as to snore in ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ten years ago—and your grandfather had a party for you. There was mistletoe in the hall, and we danced and stopped ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... once was a Willow, and he was very old, And all his leaves fell off from him, and left him in the cold; But ere the rude winter could buffet him with snow, There grew upon his hoary head a crop of Mistletoe. ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is always a thing forgotten When all the world goes well; A thing forgotten, as long ago, When the gods forgot the mistletoe, And soundless as an arrow of snow The arrow ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... with merry laugh, With a merry laugh and a joyful shout, And the tidings are flung with an iron tongue From a thousand steeples pealing out; Hang up the holly—the mistletoe hang; Bedeck every nook round the old fireside; Make bright every hearth—let the joy-bells clang With a warm-hearted ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... that we took led to some rice plantations ten miles out of the city. Our path was ornamented by the live-oaks, cedar trees, the dogwood, and occasionally the mistletoe, and enlivened sometimes by the whistle of the mocking-bird. Down low by the wheels grew the wild azalea and the jessamine. Above our heads the Spanish moss hung from the trees ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... the mountain," Mary remarked to her lodger as Susan deposited her burden, "the mountain had to come to Mahomet. And here's a bit of mistletoe for your door, and of ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... of the literary pawnbroker comes to me from the (unpublished) letters of John Mistletoe, author of the "Dictionary of Deplorable Facts," that wayward and perverse genius who wandered the Third Avenue saloons when he might have been feted by the Authors' League had he lived a few years longer. Some day, I hope, the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars; and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the mistletoe is a climber that has discovered large opportunities of theft in ascending the stem of a supporting plant. On this continent the mistletoe scales a wide variety of trees and shrubs, preferring poplars and apple trees, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... wisdom, counseled the Birds that when the acorn first began to sprout, to pull it all up out of the ground and not allow it to grow. She said acorns would produce mistletoe, from which an irremediable poison, the bird-lime, would be extracted and by which they would be captured. The Owl next advised them to pluck up the seed of the flax, which men had sown, as it was a plant which boded no good to them. And, lastly, the Owl, seeing an ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... bells were rung; On Christmas Eve the Mass was sung; That only night in all the year Saw the staled priest the chalice rear. The damsel donn'd her kirtle sheen; The hall was dressed with holly green; Forth to the wood did merry men go, To gather in the mistletoe. Then open wide the baron's hall, To vassal, tenant, serf, and all; Power laid his rod of rule aside, And Ceremony doft'd his pride. The heir with roses in his shoes, That night might village partner choose; The lord, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... beautiful white strings of pop-corn to hang over it like wreaths of snow," he said, "so I am going down the lane for some mistletoe that grows in one of the highest trees. The berries are like lovely ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... remind the reader, that the chorus of "derry down" is supposed to be as ancient, not only as the times of the Heptarchy, but as those of the Druids, and to have furnished the chorus to the hymns of those venerable persons when they went to the wood to gather mistletoe.] ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the flowers regularly: having effected this, he might wish, if it profited the plant, to render abortive the stamens and pistils in different flowers, which he could do by continued selection. By such steps he might aim at making a plant as wonderfully related to other organic beings as is the mistletoe, whose existence absolutely depends on certain insects for impregnation, certain birds for transportal, and certain trees for growth. Furthermore, if the insect which had been induced regularly to visit this hypothetical plant profited much by it, our same Being might wish ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... "I know foreign custom. I know everything. Mistletoe! Mistletoe! A kiss for the mistletoe, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... respect, and some approaches to good-will; and Sir Duncan Yordas, being skillfully removed, spent his Christmas (without knowing much about it) in the best and warmest bedroom in the rectory. But Mordacks returned, as an honest man should do, to put the laurel and the mistletoe on his proper household gods. And where can this be better done than in that grand old city, York? But before leaving Flamborough, he settled the claims of business and charity, so far as he could see them, and so far as the state ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... My father was in the highest of spirits, and would have the house decorated with holly and mistletoe. He went out to a few parties, but he was always unwilling to leave my mother, though she wished him to go; then, when we were quite alone, the wind wailing, the snow falling and beating up against the windows, she would ask me to read ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... river-bottoms and low grounds the sycamore is found as clean-limbed, tall and stately as elsewhere. The cottonwood, too, is common, though generally dwarfed, scraggy and full of dead limbs. A willow still more scraggy, and having many limbs destroyed with mistletoe, is often found in the same places. The elder rises above the dignity of a shrub, or under-shrub, but can hardly be found a respectable tree. Two varieties of oak are common, and the alder forms here a fine tree along ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... she nothing spoke, The sighs she heaved were soft and low, And naught was green upon the oak But moss and rarest mistletoe: She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 35 And in ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this in life, (I am now an old and experienced rat,) I have seen a mean race following and flattering their superiors, ready to lick the dust from their feet, not from real admiration or attachment, but, like a mistletoe upon a forest tree, because they had no proper footing of their own, and liked to be raised on the credit of another. It is easier to them to fawn than to work, to flatter the great than ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... white lilies bore the inscription, "For the Mother Superior." Last week a barrel of apples and another of oranges appeared mysteriously, and to-day comes a note, written in a hand we do not recognise, saying we are not to buy holly, mistletoe, evergreens, Christmas tree, or baubles of any kind, as they will be sent to us on December 22. We have inquired of our friends, but have no clue as yet, further than it must be somebody who knows our needs and desires very thoroughly. We have certainly entertained an angel unawares, but which ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... could possibly be thought of the architectural line, to make a convent picturesque. It is built of graystone; but it is only once in a while that you can see the graystone, for the walls are almost completely covered with mistletoe and ivy and evergreen. There are the most delicious little arched windows with diamond panes peeping out from the mistletoe and evergreen, and always at all times of the year, a little Christmas wreath of ivy ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... a rich widow to wed, to say nothing of expectations; it would be a marriage into the family of Negrepelisse, and for him this meant a family connection with the Marquise d'Espard, and a political career in Paris. Here was a fair tree to cultivate in spite of the ill-omened, unsightly mistletoe that grew thick upon it; he would hang his fortunes upon it, and prune it, and wait till he could gather its ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... left, was decked with bunches of holly and other evergreens, and from the middle of the beam bisecting the ceiling hung the mistletoe, of a size out of all proportion to the room, and extending so low that it became necessary for a full-grown person to walk round it in passing, or run the risk of entangling his hair. This apartment contained Mrs. Dewy the tranter's wife, and the four remaining children, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... "everything has sworn except one little shrub which is called Mistletoe, and grows on the eastern side of Valhal. I did not take an oath from that because I thought ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of folly; What might be!—speech for a fool; With mistletoe round me, and holly, Scarlet and green, at Yule. With the elm in the place of the wattle, And in lieu of the gum, the oak, Years back I believed a little, And ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of mistletoe, tender and fair, grew high above the field," and such a little thing it was, with its dainty green leaves and waxen white berries, nestling for protection under the strong arm of a great oak, that the goddess passed ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... the snow just as I did," said Amy, fastening a spray of mistletoe that a friend had sent her from England to the chandelier; "and the same old warm welcome ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... an ancient account of Balder, the sun-god, who was slain because of the jealousy of Loki (fire). Loki knew that everything in nature except the mistletoe had promised not to injure the great god Balder. So he searched for the mistletoe until he found it growing on an oak-tree "on the eastern slope of Valhalla." He cut it off and returned to the place where the gods were amusing themselves by using Balder as a target, hurling stones ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... sideboard was filled with all sorts of utensils, plates, pitchers, tin bowls, wolf-traps. The children laughed when they saw a huge syringe. There was not a tree in the yard that did not have mushrooms growing around its foot, or a bunch of mistletoe hanging in its branches. Several of the trees had been blown down, but they had started to grow in the middle and all were laden with quantities of apples. The thatched roofs, which were of unequal thickness, looked ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... no one else seemed capable of attendance, and Mellicent laid her head on her mother's lap, and never ceased crying, except for one brief interval, when she darted upstairs to peep inside the old oak chest, prompted thereto by a sudden reminiscence of the bride of the "Mistletoe Bough." There was no Peggy inside the chest, however; only a few blankets, and a very strong smell of camphor; so Mellicent crept back to her footstool, and cried with redoubled energy. In the kitchen the fat old cook sat with a hand planted on either knee, and thrilled ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... that his dramas are the book of human life. He was an accurate observer of Nature: he notes the markings of the violet and the daisy; the haunts of the honeysuckle, the mistletoe, and the woodbine. He marks the fealty of the marigold to its god the sun, and even touches the freaks of fashion, condemning in some woman of his time an usage, long obsolete, in accordance with which she adorned her head ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... all his tenants and domestics, and Captain Fitzchrome. The hall was spacious and lofty; and with its tall fluted pillars and pointed arches, its windows of stained glass, its display of arms and banners intermingled with holly and mistletoe, its blazing cressets and torches, and a stupendous fire in the centre, on which blocks of pine were flaming and crackling, had a striking effect on eyes unaccustomed to such a dining-room. The fire was open on all sides, and the smoke was caught ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... of holly. In the time of the 'Spectator'[1020] and of Gay,[1021] and later still,[1022] rosemary was also used, doubtless by old tradition, as referring in its name to the Mother of the Lord. Nor was mistletoe excluded.[1023] In connection with this plant, Stanley says a curious custom was kept up at York, which in 1754 had not long been discontinued. 'On the eve of Christmas Day they carried mistletoe to the high altar ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... with the unfading evergreen, their tall stems in the air. The live-oak, the sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the holly, and the persimmon—gaily festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves upturned to the sun—flung their broad arms over the road, forming an archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove for the greatest ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... crossbones, sometimes skeletons or skeleton-like figures, are not uncommon among the sepulchral embellishments of an earlier period. Where one of these figures is found, the forty-day-fast story is likely to grow out of it, as the mistletoe springs from the oak or ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Before his father's effigy in church; Of one who then used often come to hall, Ever at Yule-tide, when the great log flamed In chimney-place, and laugh and jest went round, And maidens strayed beneath the mistletoe, Making believe not see it, so got kissed— Of one that joined not in the morrice-dance, But in her sea-green kirtle stood at gaze, A timid little creature that was scared By dead men's armor. Nought there suffered change, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... paused in a spot where a forest of trees with whorled tops were slowly being strangled to death by immense orchids of every conceivable shape and color, and by a kind of creeping mistletoe which grew almost as they watched. Here also, the ground was covered with fluffy, grey-green moss which seethed constantly as if it were a carpet of maggots. Both Ivana and Nini warned Kirby on his life not to touch or go near ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... hang this mistletoe up over the folding doors," commanded the corporal, handing him a bamboo shoot, and pointing to the tent door. "Now when she comes asailin' in to dinner, all unaware of your presence, smack her a good one, right ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... custom-house, where two painted sentry-boxes leaned, past a squalid barnyard full of amber-coloured, unsavoury puddles and gaunt poultry, up to the thatched stone house where Grahame stood waiting. Over the door hung a withered branch of mistletoe, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Brittany, the Guaisnics are neither Frenchmen nor Gauls,—they are Bretons; or, to be more exact, they are Celts. Formerly, they must have been Druids, gathering mistletoe in the sacred forests and sacrificing men upon their dolmens. Useless to say what they were! To-day this race, equal to the Rohans without having deigned to make themselves princes, a race which was powerful before the ancestors of Hugues Capet were ever ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... "Never mind that, it's mistletoe, and anyone who stands under it will get kissed whether they like it or not. Now's your time, ladies," answered the saucy Prince, keeping his place and looking sentimentally at the girls, who retired precipitately from ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... of Balder, personified pure and tender love. Balder was the fair god who loved light and lived a life of purity and innocence. The evil Loke induced Balder's blind brother, der, to throw an arrow of mistletoe at him and he fell dead. When Nanna saw the body of her dead husband carried out to the funeral pyre, her heart burst ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... expensive and tedious, this meant more than it does to-day. The visitors received a joyous welcome, not a sort of empty every-day one. Plum pudding, roast beef, and mince pies and nuts were the order of the day, for beverage various kinds of drinks. Holly and mistletoe and evergreens obtained in nearly every house; in fact it was a joyous day from morn till night. Games of various kinds were played. Toys for children, rudimentary toys and picture books, cheap, and such as ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... Mexican vaquero. Her white garments fluttered famously against the other's costume of yellow and black. She had let down her abundant dark hair and then carelessly caught it up again and woven into it a garland of mistletoe. She smiled on Abner with a plaintive, weary lifting of her eyebrows; she appeared to be "creating atmosphere" again, just as on the afternoon when he had first seen her pouring tea. She seemed a long way off. The occasion itself removed her one stage from him, and her costume another, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... gifts out of paper and cardboard and paste; no one was forgotten. Mrs. Lynch declared herself "as rich as rich" with bracelets and a necklace made of red berries. Mrs. Budge, forgetting, when Robin held a sprig of mistletoe over her head and daringly kissed her wrinkled cheek, that "things was going to sixes and sevens," laughed until her sides ached at Harkness in his silly clown's cap. Robin and Beryl, with much solemnity, exchanged purchases each had secretly made at the village store and Robin could not resist ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... Doctor's going to help run the thing, and Rena Jackson and Lea Adams are in it—and Annie Pilgreen. Her and Happy are down on the program for 'Under the Mistletoe', a tableau—the ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... place it never comes, and that is here. Here, in these pages no good wishes spring, No well-worn greetings tediously ring— For Christmas greetings are like pots of ore: The hollower they are they ring the more. Here shall no holly cast a spiny shade, Nor mistletoe my solitude invade, No trinket-laden vegetable come, No jorum steam with Sheolate of rum. No shrilling children shall their voices rear. Hurrah for ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... (eucalypti), with their evergreen, mistletoe-looking leaves, standing apart from each other, impressed us most. It seemed to us as if we were walking through a large park, with wide open spaces and clumps of trees here and there; only the leaves of the trees hung down long and thin, with their edges upwards, and the ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mrs. Channing, who lived here with her son, William Henry Channing, the well-known anti-slavery orator. Here Higginson, as a youth, used to listen with keenest pleasure, to the singing of his cousin, Lucy Channing, especially when the song she chose was, "The Mistletoe Hung on the Castle Wall," the story of a bride shut up in a chest. "I used firmly to believe," the genial colonel confessed to the Radcliffe girls, in reviving for them his memories of the house, "that there was a bride shut up in the walls of this ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... The bronze mistletoe branches with their orange-red flowers are said to be the disappointed babies whose wailing in vain for mothers has wearied the spirits who transform them into these bunches, the red flowers being formed from their baby blood. The spirits ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... from his childhood up. I took nonce that whenever he got into a fight with the other lads he always beat them; so, every time that he came to the castle, I kept stirring him up to difficult feats. He succeeded in everything, whether he set out to dislodge the doves from the tower, or to pluck the mistletoe from the oak, or to tear down a crow's nest from the highest pine: he was equal to anything. I thought to myself—that boy was born under a happy star; too bad that he is a Soplica! Who would have guessed that in him I was to greet ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... mistletoe was also sacred especially when entwining the oak. Together they represented the Tree of Life, or the two generating agencies throughout Nature. Of the species of it which grows on the oak, Borlaise says that they deified the mistletoe ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... is frequently mentioned in the religions of antiquity. We are told that the mystic powers of the mistletoe comes from the fact that it grows on the oak, a once sacred tree. The pine of the North, the palm and the fig tree of the South, were sacred trees at one time. John Newton made a study of tree worship, especially ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the river bank, of which the Blue Cock was directly under the widow's great dwelling. From the town came sounds of revelry and wassail, of singing and quarrel, and from the church on Sand Hook softer chanting, where the women were twining holly and laurel and mistletoe. Nanking lay flat on the roof, with his face turned toward the sky. The moon went down ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... oil, but instead of secreting nectar in its leaves it harbors a small insect (coccus), whose sweet secretion is much relished by the ants. Dr. Beccari mentions an epiphytal plant growing on trees in Borneo, the seeds of which germinate, like those of the mistletoe, on the branches of the tree; and the seedling stem, crowned by the cotyledons, grows to about an inch in length, remaining in that condition until a certain species of ant bites a hole in the stem, which then produces a gall-like growth ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... thus related in the Edda, or sacred books. The god Balder, the son of Odin, having dreamed that he was in some great danger of life, his mother, Friga, exacted an oath from all the creatures of the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, that they would do no harm to her son. The mistletoe, contemptible from its size and weakness, was alone neglected, and of it no oath of immunity was demanded. Lok, the evil genius, or god of Darkness, becoming acquainted with this fact, placed an arrow made of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ornamented ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... custom, if connected popularly with Christian worship, has at its roots an older, sterner, and perhaps bloody origin. For, searching back into the mists of antiquity, we find that those early and mysterious peoples whose priests we call the "Druids," to whom the mistletoe was sacred (and with which we decorate our houses at Christmas, the festival of "peace and good-will"), offered human sacrifices to their dark gods on high mountains and at the hour ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... and Cape Hatteras, we find a low level region known as the Atlantic plain, running parallel to the coast, on which the long-leaved or peach-pines flourish. This region is generally called the Pine Barrens. Wild vines encircle the trees, and among them are seen the white berries of the mistletoe. In winter these Pine Barrens retain much of their verdure, and constitute one of the marked features of the country. Amid them are numerous swamps or morasses. One of great size, extending to not less than forty miles from north to south, and twenty-five in its greatest width, is called ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Youth. " Blue First emotions of love. Lily, Water Eloquence. May Flower Welcome. Marigold Sacred affection. Marigold and Cypress Despair. Mandrake Rarity. Mignonette Your qualities surpass your charms. Morning Glory Coquetry, Affectation. Mock Orange Counterfeit. Myrtle Love in absence. Mistletoe Insurmountable. Narcissus Egotism. Nasturtium Patriotism. Oxalis Reverie. Orange Blossom Purity. Olive Peace. Oleander Beware. Primrose Modest worth. Pink, White Pure love. " Red Devoted love. Phlox Our hearts are united. Periwinkle Sweet ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... 'tis Yule! all eyes are bright, And joyous songs abound; Our log burns high, but it glows less bright Than the eyes which sparkle round. The merry laugh, and the jocund tale, And the kiss 'neath the mistletoe, Make care fly as fast as the blustering gale That wreaths the new fallen snow. 'Tis Yule! 'tis Yule! all eyes are bright, And joyous thoughts abound; The log burns high, but it glows less bright Than ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... doth bestow, The kernel of the mistletoe; And here and there as Puck should go, With terror to affright him, She nightshade straws to work him ill, Therewith her vervain and her dill, That hindreth witches of their will, Of ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... looked like cranes standing on one leg with their heads slanted in pensive contemplation. There were no vineyards, but orchards aplenty near the farmhouses, and all about there were other trees pollarded to the quick and tufted with mistletoe, not only the stout oaks, but the slim poplars trimmed up into tall plumes like the poplars in southern France. The houses, when they did not stand apart like our own farmhouses, gathered into gray-brown villages around some high-shouldered church with a bell-tower in front or at one ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... unornamented, and in the latter period of its history this became the ruling type. It will not have been forgotten that it was in an old oak chest that the real or mythical heroine of the pathetic ballad of "The Mistletoe Bough" concealed herself, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... during the Christmas festivities at Manor Farm, after a certain amount of kissing had taken place under the mistletoe, Mr. Pickwick was "standing under the mistletoe, looking with a very pleased countenance on all that was passing round him, when the young lady with the black eyes, after a little whispering with the other young ladies, made a sudden dart forward, and putting her arm round Mr. Pickwick's ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... everything was done conformably to ancient usage. Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... jingled toy harnesses, shouted the prices of bright truck for tree ornaments, and pushed through the crowd, offering holly and mistletoe. Circles formed around men exhibiting mechanical turtles or boxing monkeys. From a furry sledge above a shop door, Santa Claus bowed and gesticulated, shaking the lines above his prancing reindeer. I had ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... did neither, was due to a divine inspiration which made me suddenly think of a device that I had once seen on a Druidical stone in Brittany—the sun, a hand with the index and little fingers pointing downwards, and a sprig of mistletoe. The instant I saw them in my mind's eye, the cords that held me ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... glad we worked out that mistletoe design for the pottery and the holly for the little white rugs," she said; "it makes the ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... form of a female, resplendent in that delicate species of beauty which attends the fairest complexion. It was, she thought, the Britoness Vanda; but her countenance was no longer resentful—her long yellow hair flew not loose on her shoulders, but was mysteriously braided with oak and mistletoe; above all, her right hand was gracefully disposed of under her mantle; and it was an unmutilated, unspotted, and beautifully formed hand which crossed the brow of Eveline. Yet, under these assurances of favour, a ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Norwood, belonging to the archbishops, wherein was anciently a tree called the vicar's oak, where four parishes met, as it were in a point. It is said to have consisted wholly of oaks, and among them was one that bore mistletoe, which some persons were so hardy as to cut for the gain of selling it to the apothecaries of London, leaving a branch of it to sprout out; but they proved unfortunate after it, for one of them fell lame, and others lost an eye. At length in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... not make me give in," he said, "but I've had to make a complete surrender to the Little Colonel." That Christmas there was such a celebration at Locust that May Lilly and Henry Clay nearly went wild in the general excitement of the preparation. Walker hung up cedar and holly and mistletoe till the big house looked like a bower. Maria bustled about, airing rooms and bringing out stores ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... gay donkey-drives to visit a solemn dolmen in a gloomy pine-wood, with mistletoe hanging from the trees, and the ghosts of ancient Druids haunting the spot. The cavalcade on such occasions was an imposing spectacle. Matilda being fond of horses likewise affected donkeys (or thought she did, till she tried to drive one), and usually ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... It brings the schoolboy home from school. [N.B.—Vulgarly pronounced 'schule' in the West of England.] Puddings and mistletoe and holly, With other contrivances for banishing melancholy: Boar's head, for instance—of which I have never partaken, But the name has associations denied to ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Christmas Ending.—And so, linked hand in hand, father and mother, son and daughter, husband and wife, nephew and niece, bowed their heads beneath the holly and mistletoe, and wished one another, with a heartiness that told volumes, "A Merry Christmas ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... effect that seldom was a hint dropped from any source that Richard Perry Stanlock was entitled to the slightest credit for these magnificent doings. He spent Christmas at home in a quiet unassuming way amid the family decorations of holly and mistletoe, and a vast litter of presents, ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... Christmas eve and yesterday, there were little branches of mistletoe hanging in several parts of the house, in the kitchen, the entries, the parlor, and the smoking-room,—suspended from the gas-fittings. The maids of the house did their utmost to entrap the gentlemen boarders, old and young; under the privileged places, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... These, with the mistletoe, the favourite Druidical plant, the sorcerer is entreated, in an old balled, to lay aside, to seek no more for vain enchantments, but to remember ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the maire, though busy with a pitch-fork upon a manure heap, received us with municipal gravity. We were now nearing the battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a team of white oxen under the yoke, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the work of preparation in which all were glad to take part, the gathering of the evergreens—red-berried holly, mistletoe with its glistening pearls, ground-pine, moss, and other wood treasures—for the decoration of parlor, hall, and dining-room, and, above all, of the old village church, a gleeful labor in which the whole neighborhood took part, and helpers came from miles ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... buckled scarlet that capered to and fro, And all her rusty locks were wreathed with twisted mistletoe; But never a dint, or mark, or print, in the whiteness for to see, Though danced she high, though danced she fast, though ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... So Loki, who always tried to do mischief, made an arrow of mistletoe, and gave it to the prince who shot and ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... and submissive tact made the best of things; and that evening she began to decorate the hall, dining-room, and drawing-room with holly and mistletoe. Before the pair retired to rest, the true Christmas feeling, slightly tinged with a tender melancholy, permeated the house, and the servants were growing excited in advance. The servants weren't going ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... other lands. The Druidic priests were well versed in astronomy and astrology, and the planets had an important part in the teachings. A portion of their ritual is said to have correspondences with the early Jewish rites and worship. Their favorite symbol—the mistletoe—was used as indicating re-birth, the mistletoe being the new life springing forth from the old one, typified by the oak. The Druids traveled into Ancient Britain and Ireland, and many traces of their religious rites may still be found there, not only ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... the success of his mission Uncle Noah trudged sturdily down the two miles to Cotesville, past Major Verney's old plantation, the cheery lights of the great house twinkling brightly through a curtain of snow, and into the snow-laden air of the village streets alive with Christmas shoppers. Holly and mistletoe, Christmas trees filling the air with the odor of pine, dancing snowflakes and bright lights, wonderful windows wreathed and dotted in Christmas glitter, and cheery voices—who could resist them? Uncle Noah felt his ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... neither coyotes nor horses could scent him. The nearer he approached the head of the arroyo, where the well was located, the thicker grew the desert vegetation. At length a dead palo verde, with huge black clumps of its parasite mistletoe thick in the branches, marked a distance from the well that Gale considered close enough. Noiselessly he crawled here and there until he secured a favorable position, and then rose to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey |
