"Goblin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and moon, woods, and the white slumbrous clouds; where cuckoos, and the wind, the pigeons, and the weirs are always singing; and in the flash of naked bodies, the play of waterlily leaves, queer goblin stumps, and the twilight faces of the twisted tree-roots, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... far over the waves. The knight scarcely knew what had happened to him. He returned to his chamber buried in thought, and sometimes feeling sure that he had beheld Aslauga, sometimes, again, that some goblin had risen before him with deceitful tricks, mocking in spiteful wise the service which he had vowed to his dead mistress. But henceforth, wherever he roved, over valley or forest or heath, or whether he sailed upon the waves of the sea, the like appearances met him. Once he found a lute lying in ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... still laughingly, not to be confused by her old playfellow's look. "I'm neither ghost, goblin nor evil spirit, nor anything worse than ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... Roman Jupiter was a Christian daemon, his existence at all events was recognised. But even this negative way of adopting the old beliefs gave way as the Church spread further. The tribe of daemons soon included the popular fairy, elf, and goblin. And then came the positive adoption of pagan customs. Gibbon describes how the early Christians refused to decorate their doors with garlands and lamps, and to take part in the ceremonial of lifting the bride over the threshold of the house.[464] Both these ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... life—an evidence, the ethnographer might perhaps say, of its purely Celtic origin; and as Superstition has her figures as certainly as Poesy, the perils of a wild mountain-born stream, flowing between thinly-inhabited banks, were personified in the beliefs of the people by a frightful goblin, that took a malignant delight in luring into its pools, or overpowering in its fords, the benighted traveller. Its goblin, the "water-wraith," used to appear as a tall woman dressed in green, but distinguished chiefly by her withered, meagre countenance, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... third little Goblin leered round at me— And there were no lids on his eyes at all— And he clucked one eye, and he says, says he, "What is the style of your socks this fall?" And he clapped his heels—and I sighed to see That he had hands ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... which he pulled the nest with its contents, four half-fledged birds, looking, with the loose down at the back of their heads, their great goggle eyes and wide gapes, combined with the spiky, undeveloped feathers and general nakedness, about as ugly, goblin-like creatures as a painter could ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... olive grove, pass before the eyes of their imagination. Dangers often appear greater at a distance than upon close examination; many a phantom of ghastly aspect proves upon inspection to be but a turnip-faced goblin after all: and we suspect that if some of the timorous would adventure themselves upon Spanish soil, they might find their precious persons far safer than they had anticipated; and discover that they were in the hands neither of Caffres nor cannibals, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... than mine. There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here—most strange of all—is a land of ice and snow without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this land they found some mammoth bones; there are no mammoths now. You don't know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not a fierce, flesh-eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes if I met one in a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when it would ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... among groups of idle soldiers, we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and locked again behind us; and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... fond eyes followed him as he played, and he was rocked and cradled as something holy. There was a time when his heart, soft and unworn, might have opened to questionings of God and Jesus, and been sealed with the seal of Heaven. But harsh hands seized it; fierce goblin lineaments were impressed upon it; and all ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... evil. This fear not even the flickering flame of the lamp, which she lighted at last and placed upon the mantel, was able to dispel, for the shadows grew darker, folding themselves around her heart, until she covered her eyes with her hands, lest some goblin shape should ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... the passing beetle's hum The Elfin army's goblin drum To pigmy battle sound; And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... old come forth to play On a sulphurous holiday, Tell how the darkling goblin sweat (His feast of cinders duly set), And, belching night, where breathed the morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... bee-hive shape. Medium weight. In a diversity of shades. The special puggaree of goblin blue material is designed to protect the wearer from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Foxglove is known as the Great Herb, and Lusmore, also the Fairy Cap; and in Wales it is the Goblin's Gloves; whilst in the North of Scotland it is the Dead men's Bells. We read in the Lady of the Lake ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... is a wild horse of Tartary; and here, most strange of all—is a land of ice and snow, without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this land, they found some mammoth bones: there are no mammoths now. You don't know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty, goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not a fierce, flesh- eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes, if I met one in a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when it would trample me down ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Alexander filled our throne, Third monarch of that warlike name, And eke the time when here he came To seek Sir Hugo, then our lord; A braver never drew a sword; A wiser never, at the hour Of midnight, spoke the word of power: The same, whom ancient records call The founder of the Goblin Hall. I would, Sir Knight, your longer stay Gave you that cavern to survey. Of lofty roof, and ample size, Beneath the castle deep it lies: To hew the living rock profound, The floor to pave, the arch to round, There never toiled a mortal arm - It ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... transparent larvae. These change their skin very frequently during growth, and attain full development in about eleven weeks. Two centuries ago the bed bug was a rare insect in Britain, and probably owes its name, which is derived from a Celtic word signifying "ghost" or "goblin," to the terror which its attacks at first inspired. An allied species, the dove-cote bug (Cimex columbaria), attacks domestic fowls ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... all the cold—an unsheltered creature; and the chill fancy of the villager followed him out to the heath on a journey that had no law. Was it he in person, or a poet for him, that made the swinging song: "From the hag and the hungry goblin"? If a poet, it was one who wrote like a madman and not ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... country-house that night, and the presiding genius of the revel was still the beautiful hostess—never more beautiful, never so winning before. No one noticed that, by her orders, or her husband's, the window through which she had beheld the goblin visage was closely curtained. Or, this may have been an accidental disposition of the drapery, since no trace of her momentary alarm remained in her countenance ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... old book shop, I found a collection of Goblin Poetry in three volumes, containing many pictures of goblins. The title of the collection is Ky[o]ka Hyaku-Monogatari, or "The Mad Poetry of the Hyaku-Monogatari." The Hyaku-Monogatari, or "Hundred Tales," is a famous book of ghost stories. On the subject ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... Sir, that the stern of a Thorneycroft boat, which we are not, comes out in a pretty bulge, totally different from the Yarrow mark, which again we are not. But, on the other 'and, Dirk, Stiletto, Goblin, Ghoul, Djinn, and A-frite—Red Fleet dee-stroyers, with 'oom we hope to consort later on terms o' perfect equality—are Thorneycrofts, an' carry that Grecian bend which we are now adjustin' to our arriere-pensee—as the French would put it—by means of painted ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... The little goblin's unsuspecting simplicity made me foolhardy; I would stuff him recklessly full of lies; rout him out o' field grandly, and stop his ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... loose him from his thrall, And lead him into the light? 'Ah me!' he murmured, 'I dare not call, Lest she may doubt it a goblin's waul, And leave me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... student: he lived in a garret, and nothing at all belonged to him; but there was also once a regular huckster: he lived on the ground floor, and the whole house was his; and the goblin kept with him, for on the huckster's table on Christmas Eve there was always a dish of plum porridge, with a great piece of butter floating in the middle. The huckster could accomplish that; and consequently ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... hovering over them and kind doctors with stethoscopes sitting beside them—that sort of thing—the obvious road to the heart. The second is hitting the superior kind of idiot in the eye—inventing a cheap new formula—putting a goblin upside down in one corner, an immoral-looking woman in another, and passing the arrangement off as an allegory. Then up jumps an interpreter and booms you. The third is slowly making your name by the sweat of your brow, and selling your pictures when you are fifty-five to people who never recognized ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... were mountain goblins. I don't want one, thank you, sir! water nixies and pixies are as much as I can bear in the goblin line." ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... in quest of the goblin Sal, but she saw nothing save an idiotic face with bushy tangled hair; and nose flattened against the window pane. In terror Mary clung to Mr. Knight, and whispered, as she pointed towards the figure, which was ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Vaughan and Sir David Gam, fell at Agincourt. It is said that Shakspeare visited Scethrog, the family castle in Brecknockshire; and Malone guesses that it was when there that he fell in with the word "Puck." Near Scethrog, there is Cwn-Pooky, or Pwcca, the Goblin's valley, which belonged to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker gives, in his Fairy Legends, a fac-simile of a portrait, drawn by a Welsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom?) he himself had seen sitting on a milestone,[45] by the roadside, in the early morning, a very unlikely ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Mountain region near Great Falls is a wonder-land, like the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, or the Goblin Land near the Yellowstone. It would seem that it ought to be made a State park. Here one fancies one's self to be amid the ruins of castles, cathedrals, and fortresses, so fantastic are the shapes of the broken ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... with ghosts on a stormy shore, And spoke in a tongue which men speak no more; Living in wild and wondrous ways, In the ancient giant and goblin days." ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... into a conceivable image of life, becomes at once, to him as to you, a matter of amusement as much as of admiration. The ordinary conditions of perfection in form, gesture, or feature, are willingly dispensed with, when the ugly dwarf and ungainly goblin have only to gather themselves into angles, or crouch to carry corbels; and the want of skill which, in other kinds of work would have been required for the finishing of the parts, will at once be forgiven here, if you have only disposed ingeniously what ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... on that gloomy night Demon foul to urge the deed? Would he tremble at the sight If some horrid goblin sprite Came his ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... act we are introduced to Puck-hairy, who laments his lot as the familiar of the malignant witch in whose service he has now to 'firk it like a goblin' about the woods. Meanwhile Karol meets Douce in the dress of Earine, who, however, runs off on the approach of Aeglamour. The latter fancies she is the ghost of his drowned love, and falls into a 'superstitious commendation' of her. His delusions ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... been there before, assuring us that he knew exactly where it was. So, after some difficulty with our coachman, and being stopped at one church which would not answer our purpose in any respect, we were at last set down by one which looked authentic; embowered in mossy elms, with a most ancient and goblin yew tree, an ivy-mantled tower, all perfect as ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hope of relief in the shape of a pill to liver-troubled humanity. Parenthetically, I may remark that this city is, if anything, rather worse than London in the way of placards that scar the face of it. The goblin-like advertisements that spit soap and other things at unoffending eyes at night in Trafalgar Square are bad enough, but the advertisements in New York are worse still. There is a fine square here called Madison, in the centre of ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... from the place where she stood, but there was no one to go with her down them. She waited—waited. And then she saw far off the gleam of the torch from which spring colored fires. It flitted through the darkness; it hovered. The gleam of it lit up, like a goblin light, the beginnings of the strange ways. She saw shadowy forms slipping away stealthily into their narrow and winding distances; she saw obscure stairways, leaning balconies full of soft blackness. She divined the rooms beyond. And whispering voices ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... to another. I know not if it is owl or flittermouse; I could fancy it was a black cherub, an infernal cherub of darkness, not with the wings of a bird and the head of a baby, but with the head of a goblin and the wings of a bat. I think, if there were light enough, I could sit here and write some very creditable creepy tale, about how I went up the crooked road beyond the church and met Something—say a ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... heard much of Peg's pets and now we saw them. Six cats occupied various cosy corners; one of them, the black goblin which had so terrified us in the summer, blinked satirically at us from the centre of Peg's bed. Another, a dilapidated, striped beastie, with both ears and one eye gone, glared at us from the sofa in the corner. A dog, with only three legs, lay behind the stove; a crow sat on a roost ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a derisive goblin or a piteous, ineffective human soul, according as you are a laughing or a weeping philosopher. It expresses everything in the Street that is pictorial and dramatic; but Wall Street is first and last a realm of business. It is a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... even in their wood-cutting by the demons of that weird place. And indeed the fancy had an essential truth, for the very nature of the land fought against them; and each of those dwarf trees, hard and hollow and twisted, may well have seemed like a grinning goblin. It is said that they found timbers by accident in a cavern; they tore down the beams from ruined houses; at last they got into touch with some craftsmen from Genoa who went to work more successfully; skinning the cattle, who had died in heaps, and covering ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... worship him. This power, which is commonly exercised by female deities, is worth remarking as a hint of his subsequent transformation into a goddess. For the better achievement of his merciful deeds, he assumes all manner of forms, and appears in the guise of a Buddha, a Bodhisattva, a Hindu deity, a goblin, or a Brahman and in fact in any shape. This chapter was translated into Chinese before 417 A.D. and therefore can hardly be later than 350. He is also mentioned in the Sukhavati-vyuha. The records of the Chinese pilgrims Fa-Hsien and Hsuean Chuang[23] indicate that his worship prevailed in India ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... arm forensically—"a deppitation of Chinks waits on me at the dock gates; they explains as from a patriotic point of view they feels it to be their dooty to buy that pigtail off of me, and they bids a quid, a bar of gold—a Jimmy o' Goblin!" ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... with him. "You did it anyhow. And in the second place you got me out of a villainous bad temper and turned an ugly goblin into a very happy butterfly. I'm downright ashamed of myself for being so horrid about Rose de Vigne. She isn't at all a bad sort though she is so impossibly beautiful. Your brother is going to dance with her now. See! There ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... they said, "in scarlet cardinal's cloth Enough to cover it, and, at every corner, Of every piece, a right rose-noble too; Then all that kings can buy of Wheen is yours. Only," said they, "a merchant bought it once; And, when he came to claim it, goblins flocked All round him, from its forty goblin farms, And mocked him, bidding him take away the stones That he had bought, for nothing else was his." These things were fables. They were also true. They thought him a magician, Tycho Brahe, The astrologer, who wore the mask of gold. Perhaps ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... possession seems to grow independent, and refuses to return to its task at our call? What are the secret psychological conditions which influence the mental powers as strangely as if there were a goblin who had power to mesmerize Fancy and put it to sleep, to lock up Imagination in a dreary den of commonplaces, to blindfold Attention and make sport of his vain groping, and to send sober Reason off on foolish errands, so that Mistress Soul has not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... candle on the bare, pine table shed only a small ring of light, and the goblin shadows danced away from the wide hearth into the corners of the room. In the darkest one stood an old four-post bed with a billowy feather mattress, covered by a tartan quilt. Beside it hung a quantity of rough coats ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... drift they? What's the mournful dirge they sing? Do they hail a witch's marriage Or a goblin's burying?" ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... huge lantern which Dan had made out of a turnip, and proceeded to devour all the apples we might have eaten through the day but had not. We were a blithe little crew, sitting there in the light of our goblin lantern. We had in very truth been given beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning. Life was as ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... have been thinking you were a goblin—a devilkin! However, I see how it is: you are a sap-engro, a chap who catches snakes, and plays tricks with them! Well, it comes very nearly to the same thing; and if you please to list with us, and bear us pleasant company, we shall be glad ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that and her very strange clothes. She was dressed all in velvet and fur, and her arms up to her elbows were hidden in a huge white muff. She swayed as she walked on weird little high heels and the toes of her boots drew out to long points, almost like a goblin's. Her hat was a velvet affair, so awkward and heavy it seemed to weigh down her head, and her candleflame hair was smothered under it. Is it any wonder that they did not know ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... pronounced supernatural, and yet it was as unlike anything human as is possible to imagine. It was more like some fantastic figure seen in a dream—the creation of a disordered brain. It may be that it was a goblin—Nick thought it one. It was only about two feet high; a mass of dark-brown hair streamed down its back, partially concealing a great hump, and thence flowed down to its heels. Its head was round as a ball and topped out by a velvet cap of curious shape and workmanship, with a broad ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... this vain pursuit Sir William Elphiston and his companions had gone a long way in the southwest direction of the pit, and began to think they really had to do with an impalpable being. Just then it seemed as if the distance between the goblin and those who were pursuing it was becoming less. Could it be fatigued, or did this invisible being wish to entice Sir William and his companions to the place where the inhabitants of the cottage had perhaps themselves been enticed. It was ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... with profound skill in nature; extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life. Here are exhibited princes, courtiers and sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits and of earthy goblin, the operations of magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of those for whom our passions and reason ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... moon, Massa Jack," he muttered thickly, "or a goblin's lantern. Lawd, I don't jest like de looks ob ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... You take this seriously through and through. I laugh at it in the bottom of my heart, and size it up at its true value. I'm like a child that don't really believe in goblins, yet likes the shivery effects of goblin stories." ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... mental legs. And in consequence they have struck upon certain devices for getting off the map and away from its precise and restricting bigotry. Davy fell asleep. It was Davy, you remember, who grew drowsy one winter afternoon before the fire and sailed away with the goblin in his grandfather's clock. Robinson Crusoe was driven off his bearings by stress of weather at sea. This is a popular device for eluding the known world. Whenever in your novel you come on a sentence like this—On the third night ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the hoot of the owl, the kouku, which in Malay is the ghost-bird, the burong-hantu, seemed to deepen the silence. Does not that word hantu, meaning in Malay an evil spirit, have some obscure connection with our American negro "hant," a goblin or ghost? Certainly the bird's long and dismal "Hoo-oo-oo" wailing through the shuddering forest evoked dim and chilling memories of tales told by candlelight when I was ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... No goblin he; no imp of sin; No crimes had ever known; They took the shaggy stranger in, And reared him as ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... new. Death is and has been ever since old Maui died. Then Pata-tai laughed loud And woke the goblin-god, Who severed him in two, and shut him in, So dusk ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... that it was commonplace. The next moment a torrent of guttural but good-humored oaths came from Major Burke as he and the two other men saw what was in front of them. The target stood up in the dim grass like a dark goblin grinning at them, and it was literally grinning. It had two eyes like stars, and in similar livid points of light were picked out the two upturned and open nostrils and the two ends of the wide and tight mouth. A few white dots above each eye indicated the hoary eyebrows; and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Protestant of the Church of England. I think I have now said enough upon this subject. Do not write till you hear from me again, which will be when all is settled. I wish this important event may hasten your return to town. I send a goblin story, with best compliments to the misses, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... while looking, she began to talk in an indescribably dry, monotonous tone—a tone without vibration or inflection—you felt as if a graven image of some bad spirit were addressing you. But it was all a figment of fancy, a matter of surface. Miss Mann's goblin grimness scarcely went deeper than the angel sweetness of hundreds of beauties. She was a perfectly honest, conscientious woman, who had performed duties in her day from whose severe anguish many a human Peri, gazelle-eyed, silken-tressed, and silver-tongued, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... says the other young lady, in a sort of ecstasy, that made Tom start - "I hereby abjure my chosen husband too. Hear me, Goblin!" - this was to the Gifted - "Hear me! I hold thee in the deepest detestation. The maddening interview of this one night has filled my soul with love - but not for thee. It is for thee, for thee, young man," she cries to Tom. "As Monk Lewis finely observes, Thomas, ...
— The Lamplighter • Charles Dickens
... startling in such an apparition. At first there came involuntarily half-superstitious thoughts. He recalled all those mysterious beings of whom he had ever heard whose occupation was to haunt the seats of old families. He thought of the White Lady of Avenel, the Black Lady of Scarborough, the Goblin Woman of Hurst, and the Bleeding Nun. A second glance served to show him, however, that she could by no possibility fill the important post of Family Ghost, but was real flesh and blood. Yet even thus she was scarcely less impressive. Most of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Burns, through the enchantment which romance and poetry have thrown around them. We listen for the tinkling chime of the fairy bells as we pass through the glen of Thomas the Rhymer, almost expecting to see by our side, as we muse on the banks of the goblin stream, the queen of the fairies on her "dapple gray pony." Again, through the cloisters of Melrose Abbey we wander silently and in awe, almost wishing that honest John Boyer would leave us awhile unmolested even by the praises of his master the "shirra," whom ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... is not strange that the Canadian peasant dwells in a world charged with the supernatural. Night furnishes the opportunity for goblins to be abroad; the flickering lights on the marshes are goblin fires. Then, too, the vagrant dead wander about restlessly, sinful souls refused entrance to Heaven until they have sought and secured adequate prayers for their pardon and relief. To cross a cemetery at night might attract the fatal vengeance of the dead thus ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... the stable, where the sight of the dead calf told him all. Swearing loudly, he opened the door of the third stall quickly, and cried to his goblin servants to go and chase the fugitives. 'Bring them to me, however you may find them, for have them I must!' he said. So spake the old man, and the ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... to be found for the looking. . . . I must make another call upon your memory, my friend, and refer it to a story of Hans Andersen's which fascinated the pair of us in childhood, when we were not really a pair but inseparables, and before you had grown wise; the story of the Student and the Goblin who lodged at the Butterman's. The Student, at the expense of his dinner, had rescued a book from the butter-tub and taken it off to his garret, and that night the Goblin, overcome by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo! the garret was full of light. Forth and up from ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house was much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to tell what was ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... drew it close, which brought him to the ground, and then threw himself upon him. The fall and the struggle made so much noise, that the other officer and the landlord ran up with lights and weapons; and the goblin was found to be no other than the good Friar, who, having conceived something more than a spiritual affection for his landlord's pretty daughter, had played this infernal farce, to gratify ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind, for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskillful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... exchequer, had left a kind of golden architectural splendour on the place, always too ample for its population. The sloping Gothic roofs for carrying off the heavy snows still indented the sky—a world of tiles, with space uncurtailed for the awkward gambols of that very German goblin, Hans Klapper, on the long, slumberous, northern nights. Whole quarryfuls of wrought stone had been piled along the streets and around the squares, and were now grown, in truth, like nature's self ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... gorgeous autumn foliage, palms and potted rubber plants stood all about, and last, but by no means least, there was a long table laden with goodies and more pumpkin decorations. The room was a fitting scene for goblin's revels. ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the apathy of despair; at another bright with the fierce fever of revolt. In the one phase or the other he had passed many hours of late, some of them amid the dead-sea grandeur of this room. And he had had his hours of hope also. A fortnight back a ray of hope, bright as the goblin light which shines the more brilliantly the darker be the night, had shone on him and amused and enchanted him. And then, in one moment, God and man—or if not God, the devil—had joined to quench the hope; and this morning he sat sunk ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the Maintenon, has never convinced them that he wasn't a trifle in league with the devil. At the foot of his praying-chair was always chained a little casket of ebony, bound with iron. In this he imprisoned a little yellow man, a demon of the most concentrated structure, hardly a foot long. This goblin ran through the air, on an errand or with a letter, about as fast as a stroke of lightning, and admirably filled the place of the modern telegraph. For each meal he took three seeds of hemp, which he loved to receive from the king's hand. By and by the little yellow man became ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Branxholm, and the water in crossing which the Goblin Page was obliged to resume his proper shape and fly, crying, "Lost, lost, lost!" Verily these things seem more like home than one's own nursery, whose toys and furniture could not in actual presence engage the thoughts ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hideous forbidding looks, and ready to purchase affection at any cost of labor, with a kindly heart, and a longing for human sympathy and intercourse. Such a being looks like the prototype of the Aiken-Drum of our infancy, and of that "drudging goblin," of whom we all ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... armored her spirit, she built a fire, put on water to heat, attended capably to innumerable details. Rose was a woman of sound experience. She had been with others at such times. It held no goblin terrors for her. Had it not been for Martin's heartlessness, she would have felt wholly equal to the occasion. As it was, she made little commotion. Dr. Bradley, gentle and direct, had been the Conroys' family ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... was thus vaulting, the rogues in great astonishment said to one another, By cock's death, he is a goblin or a devil thus disguised. Ab hoste maligno libera nos, Domine, and ran away in a full flight, as if they had been routed, looking now and then behind them, like a dog that carrieth away a goose-wing in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... its slow way up the sides of the gorge. Now it hid a tuft of foliage, and now it wreathed itself around a horned clump of aloes, and, streaming far down below it in the dimness, made it seem like the goblin robe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... thanks for your interesting and kind letter in which you do me the honour to ask my opinion respecting the pedigree of your island goblin, le feu follet Belenger; that opinion I cheerfully give with a premise that it is only an opinion; in hunting for the etymons of these fairy names we can scarcely expect to arrive ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... rest ye free, From murders Benedicite. From all mischances that may fright Your pleasing slumbers in the night, Mercy secure ye all, and keep The goblin from ye while ye sleep. Past one o'clock, and almost two! My masters ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... struggling forward again, I soon found myself sufficiently near to the Carding Mill to recognise the place, blind as I was. A little girl now ventured to approach me, as, true to the instincts of her nature, the idea dawned upon her that I was no goblin of the mountains, no disagreeable thing from a world beneath popped up through the snow, but a real fellow-creature in distress. I spoke to her and told her that I was the clergyman of Ratlinghope, and had been lost in the snow ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... dominoes, Haunting old gardens that are always June, To sit within the shadow of a rose, And strum and sing your every fragile tune. For all we meet you where the great world rides, You have no league with anything we are: Your life is all entangled in the tides Of goblin moons and ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... crow's-feet and crafty. When I greeted the woman, she answered in Romany, and said she was a Stanley from the North. She lied bravely, and I told her so. It made no difference in any way, nor was she hurt. The brown boy, who seemed like a goblin, umber-colored fungus, growing by a snaky black wild vine, sat by her and stared at me. I was pleased, when he said tober, that she corrected him, exclaiming earnestly, "Never say tober for road; that is canting. Always say drom; ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... at Smith, started to move, came back and took his torch, made a violent gesture with it which drenched the weeds with goblin light. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... lore, however, was discovered in an old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits, showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... was laying out aloft. He ordered himself to do a thing and then, with the pent-up energy of a thousand devils, he did it. The years of degradation as navigating officer of the Maggie fell away from him, as he sprang, agile and half-naked, into the shrouds; a great, hairy demi-god or sea-goblin he lay out along the yards and sprang from place to place with the old exultant thrill of youth and joy in ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... was just in time. If I had no laucht at yon foolish lads and begun to rin at the first you'd a bin sinkin' doon to the bowels o' the airth be the noo! Wully Beagrie thocht you was a ghaist, and Tom MacPhail swore ye was only like a goblin on a puddick-steel! "Na!" said I. "Yon's but the daft Englishman—the loony that had escapit frae the waxwarks." I was thinkin' that bein' strange and silly—if not a whole-made feel—ye'd no ken the ways o' the quicksan'! I shouted till warn ye, and then ran to drag ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... was B., who never undeceived Mountain, or tried to do so; but in detailing the story to my father, closed the recital thus: 'I have always thought that he had an attack of delirium tremens, and that he fancied the assault of the goblin; for I forgot to tell you that next morning they followed his track, finding his shoes and fragments of his attire on the opposite side of the run, which was torn up, with the marks of a terrible struggle and many feet. Probably he tore off his own clothes in the fancied ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... slumbers;" when and how he ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea that such things were, companioning a host of others that were not; there are no dates or means to tell. But, awake, and standing on his feet upon the boards where he had lately lain, he saw this Goblin Sight. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... he couldn't free himself he was more frightened than ever and shouted (because, you see, he could not see what held him), "You let go of me, you old ghost, or goblin man! You let go of me or I'll claw you to pieces! Let go of me or I'll come back there and pull all your hair out, and I'll throw you in the briars so far you'll never get out and they will stick ...
— Doctor Rabbit and Brushtail the Fox • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... could be called—came and went of themselves. Overcome by the appearances of things—as what man the strongest may not sometimes be?—I felt as if I had lost her utterly, as if there was no Lady Alice anywhere, and as if, to add to the vacant horror of the world without her, a shadow of her, a goblin simulacrum, soul-less, unreal, yet awfully like her, went wandering about the place which had once been glorified by her presence—as to the eyes of seers the phantoms of events which have happened years before ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... acquaintance with the Desert, so dangerous to enter, so difficult, as Mahmood subsequently found, to cross, they discovered, that over and above the plain prosaic danger, this Waste of Sand laid, like a very demon, goblin snares for the unwary traveller's destruction, in the form of its Mirage. Ignorant of "optical phenomena," they gazed at this strange illusion, these phantom trees and water, these mocking semblances of cities that vanished as you reached them, with astonishment, and even ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... we went to meet him, "I love him best in buff and steel, though he'll ever be my cap'n, pal. There aren't what you'd call a lot of him, neither, but what there is goeth a prodigious long way in steel or velvet. Talk o' glory! Talk o' fame! Pal, glory's a goblin and fame's a phantom compared wi' Cap'n Sir Adam Penfeather, and you can keel haul, burn and hang ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... again!" he said hoarsely, as soon as he could speak at all. "Hear me, Ume-ko, it is my command! Never again approach that tree. It is a goblin tree. Some dead, unhappy woman, drowned here in the self-death, must inhabit it and would entice you to destruction. Oh, Ume, my wife,—my wife! I saw the black earth grinning beneath your feet. I cannot bear it! Come away from this place at once,—at ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... swept away. Rome left some poetry to her sewer, and called it the Gemoniae; Paris insulted hers, and entitled it the Polypus-Hole. Science and superstition were in accord, in horror. The Polypus hole was no less repugnant to hygiene than to legend. The goblin was developed under the fetid covering of the Mouffetard sewer; the corpses of the Marmousets had been cast into the sewer de la Barillerie; Fagon attributed the redoubtable malignant fever of 1685 to the great hiatus of the sewer of the Marais, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... weird, and fantastic, and goblin-like shapes the comets assume under the telescope. Look at the representation on page 137, from Guillemin's work,[1] of the appearance of the comet of 1862, giving the changes which took place in twenty-four hours. If we will imagine one of these monsters close ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... stand all around, like giants, to "sentinel this enchanted land." On leaving the island we saw the Goblin's Cave in the side of Ben Venue, called by the Gaels "Coiran-Uriskin." Near it is Beal-nam-bo—the "Pass of Cattle"—overhung with ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... wanderer had looked in at midnight, he would have seen the fire blazing up again, and in the cheerful glow the old cat blinking her yellow eyes, as she sat bolt upright beside the spinning-wheel, like some sort of household goblin, guarding the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... present Folk-lore being merely in general a degenerated and debased form of the highest mythological and medical lore of very distant times. A collection of the popular superstitions and practices of the different districts of Scotland now, ere (like fairy and goblin forms vanishing before the break of day) they melt and disappear totally before the light and the pride of modern knowledge, would yet perhaps afford important materials for regaining much lost antiquarian knowledge. For as the palaeontologist can sometimes reconstruct in full ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... itself to have been no fructifying Nile but a destructive lava stream, leaving the country charred and desolate after its passage. The gold that only yesterday had poured through greedy fingers, had turned to-day to ashes and withered leaves like the goblin gold of a fairy tales. Diminished inclination for work, an insanely increased demand for the luxuries of life, the accepted ideas of morality shaken to their foundations by scandalous examples of triumphant ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... daylight fail; Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat, How faery Mab the junkets eat; She was pinched and pulled, she said; And he, by Friar's lantern led, Tells how the drudging goblin sweat, To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down, the lubber-fiend, And, stretched out all the chimney's length, Basks at the ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... terror. I should like to see a whale squeezed in between Prince's Street and Custom-house Street, glaring at a family on the upper floor, or the fine, gold-laced policemen trying to bring into court a stranded sea-goblin. I should like, too, to see the town's theatrical reviewers, who are accustomed to see "Haupt und Statsaction" in vaudevilles twice a week, stand with their eye-glasses to their eyes, before such a play, which, without more ado, ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... created the Gods, fear still holds their empire in the mind of mortals; they have been so early accustomed to tremble even at the name of the Deity, that it has become for them a specter, a goblin, a were-wolf which torments them, and whose idea deprives them even of the courage to attempt to reassure themselves. They are afraid that this invisible specter will strike them if they cease to be afraid. The religious people fear their ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... one, and was often very vexed with him, because he would not give up the pranks and follies of childhood. She could no longer put up with it patiently, when he pounced upon her tail if she happened to whisk it, or played leap-frog over her back like a small black goblin. On such occasions she would spit at him angrily, and box his ears with the whole strength of her outstretched arm, but Darkie did not care a bit. He must play with some one, and as Peter the dog ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... with black cliffs the torrents toil, He watch'd the wheeling eddies boil, Till, from their foam, his dazzled eyes Beheld the River Demon rise; The mountain mist took form and limb Of noontide hag or goblin grim. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Chinese of one of the wild tribes of Kwei-chau; and was told to Wallace of some of the Aru Island tribes near New Guinea, and to Bickmore of a tribe on the south coast of Floris, called Rakka (probably a form of Hindu Rakshasa, or ogre-goblin). Similar charges are made against sundry tribes of the New World, from Brazil to Vancouver Island. Odoric tells precisely Marco's story of a certain island called Dondin. And in "King Alisaunder," the custom is related of a people of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... circumstances are not known, and the fact has been doubted. A year later, one Margaret Jones, of Charlestown in Massachusetts, and it has been said, two other women in Dorchester and Cambridge, were convicted and executed for the goblin crime. These cases appear to have excited no more attention than would have been given to the commission of any other felony, and no judicial record of ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... not to what you have to say, you goblin!" he exclaimed vehemently. "Your voice is hateful to me, and if I meet you again by the well I will drive you away ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane; O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canonized bones, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... I've tests: From youth I have lived in two alternate worlds, And night is live like day. This was no goblin! 'Twas a true vision, and my mother's soul Is freed by my poor prayers from penal files, And waits ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... he had to pass, or, worse still, in which he had to go to bed alone, and there lie in cold perspiration induced by a mortal agony of fright! The unused doors which would not lock, and through which he expected to see the goblin come forth to get him! The dark shadows back under the bed where he was afraid to look for the hidden monster which he was sure was hiding there and yet dare not face! The lonely lane through which the cows were to ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... whispered and sung these matters into Joan's baby ears until her father stopped it. She remembered how black he looked when she lisped about the piskeys; and though to-day she half believed in demon and fairy, goblin and giant, and quite believed in the saints and their miracles, she kept this side of her intelligence close locked when at home, and only nodded very gravely when her father roared against the blighting credulity of men's minds and the follies for which ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... is," answered the rose tree; "but very few people know of it. You can go to the Red Rock Goblin, if you like, and get a whole new idea for yourself. He has quantities of ideas, piled up in heaps; but very few ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... The ass brayed, the dog barked, the cat mewed, and the cock crowed; then they burst through into the room, breaking all the panes of glass. The robbers fled at the dreadful sound; they thought it was some goblin, and fled to the wood in the utmost terror. Then the four companions sat down to table, made free with the remains of the meal, and feasted as if they had been hungry for a month. And when they had finished they put out the lights, and each sought out a sleeping-place ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... warm, Quoth the lad, "Lest some harm From the visit of Nick be betiding,— Set open the door, And not long on the floor Will the Goblin of Hell ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... constantly everywhere, destroyed the Daityas and the Danavas by thousands. Sometimes it blazed like fire and consumed them all; sometimes it struck them down as it coursed through the sky; and sometimes, falling on the earth, it drank their life-blood like a goblin. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the black cave of a palace at Arezzo into which the white Pompilia is borne, the cave and its denizens—the "gaunt gray nightmare" of a mother, mopping and mowing in the dusk, the brothers, "two obscure goblin creatures, fox-faced this, cat-clawed the other," with Guido himself as the main monster. Yet the Count, short of stature, "hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of beard" is not a monster but a man; possessed of intellectual ability ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... a pretty idea," mused the Minor Poet. "I shall see them in the twilight: pathetic little round-eyed things of goblin shape, dimly luminous against the darkening air. Whence come you, little tender Thought, tapping at my brain? From the lonely forest, where the peasant mother croons above the cradle while she knits? Thought of Love and Longing: lies your gallant father with his ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... open, shouting rich pedigrees at the leading mule, Cordovan hat on the back of his head, from under which sprouted a lock of black hair that hung between his eyes over his nose and made him look like a goblin, the driver bounced and squirmed and kicked at the flanks of the mules that roamed drunkenly from side to side of the uneven road. Down into a gulch, across a shingle, up over a plank bridge, then down again into ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... Skarphedinn, "thou art the sweetheart of the Swinefell's goblin, if, as men say, he does indeed turn thee into a woman every ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... strange dreams. Sometimes he thought he was in the Hodoo Region, or Goblin Land, the abode of evil spirits, where he saw every kind of fantastic beast, bird, and reptile, and no end of spectral shapes in the winding passages of a weird labyrinth on a far-off island. Then his dreams were of rare beauty. Green foliage was ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... for a time and in a low tone, lest some listening goblin might carry his words if spoken out loud to the ears of the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... him with his trusty hawthorn. Accordingly he set forth, and arrived at the haunted spot. The spectre stood in his path, and, raising his stick, he struck it with all his strength, but it made no impression, nor did the goblin move. The stick fell as upon a blanket—so the man described it—and he instantly became sober, while a cold tremor ran through every nerve ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Flickering on the wind, as quivers Trailing weed in running rivers; And others, in far prospect seen, Newly loosed on this terrene, Shot in piercing swiftness came, With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame. As crystelline ice in water, Lay in air each faint daughter; Inseparate (or but separate dim) Circumfused wind from wind-like vest, Wind-like vest from wind-like limb. But outward from each lucid breast, ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... that another goblin had come unbidden into their home: Discontent. He had learned to seek and always found the wistful look with which she regarded their callers' pretty gowns or heard tales of jolly dinners at the club. (Months ago the club had been dropped.) And he knew that in her heart ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... the "deuce" in dice, the lowest and therefore the most unlucky throw. The personification, with a consequent change of gender, to der daus, came later. The word has also been identified with the name of a giant or goblin in Teutonic mythology. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... not have ventured to come in contact with you; but you are only the heir of the pit of darkness, you dirty hell-dog! You are scarcely worthy of a night's lodging," added he, "and yet we'll grant you some nook, wherein to await the dawn;" and with that word the goblin with his pitchfork, gave him more than thirty tosses in the fiery air, until he at length cast him into an abyss out of sight. "That may do," said the other, "for a squire of half blood, but I ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... applied his eye to the glass, and turning his ear to the partition, listened attentively: with a subtle and eager look upon his face, that might have appertained to some old goblin. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... play On a Sunshine Holyday, Till the live-long day-light fail, Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale, With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat, She was pincht, and pull'd the sed, And he by Friars Lanthorn led Tells how the drudging Goblin swet, To ern his Cream-bowle duly set, When in one night, ere glimps of morn, His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn That ten day-labourers could not end, Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend, And stretch'd ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... handkerchief, while I said, as easily as I might, "You need not accuse your German blood, for I have lived long enough in my American's Paradise to know that civilized Paris is considerably worse in this particular respect, with the addition of a certain goblin levity particularly French. How often have I seen babies frightened by the skulls in the dentists' windows, with their cynical chewing action! It is said that a child sat next a dentist's apprentice once in an omnibus, and was observed to turn rigid, fixed and white, but unable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... rouses up the fire: While well attested, and as well believed, Heard solemn, goes the goblin story round, Till superstitious horror creeps o'er all. Or, frequent in the sounding hall, they wake The rural gambol. Rustic mirth goes round; The simple joke that takes the shepherd's heart, Easily pleased; the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... could not concur in these views, or be satisfied with the mode of reasoning by which they were maintained. In his opinion, Robin Hood was neither a Saxon malcontent nor the hero of a poet's romance; nor yet was he 'a goblin or a myth.' He was, in all probability, exactly such a person as the popular songs described him—an English yeoman, an outlaw living in the woods, and noted for his skill in archery. Previous researches had proved, that many of our old ballads are merely rhyming records of historical events. Mr ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... were in the market-place before lunch, so nobody had seen him. But, deserted by his mistress, he sat up in the car to look for her, and the passers-by caught sight of him. Word went round that there was a strange monster, a cross between a monkey and a goblin, sitting in an automobile, and all the people of Hoorn poured into the street to see the show, just as they had poured to the harbor more than three hundred years ago when the "zeeslag" was ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... A waif of the goblin pirate crew, With not a soul to deplore him, He steers for the open verge of blue With ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... any other being. Triumph, inhuman triumph, glistened in its eye, and, with relentless delight, it brewed the tempest, and hurled the destructive lightning. Edwin gazed upon this astonishing apparition, and knew it for a goblin of darkness. The heart of Edwin, which no human terror could appal, sunk within him; his nerves trembled, and the objects that surrounded him, swam in confusion before his eyes. But it is not for virtue to tremble; ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... with, fright. After a few steps he began to run, heavily, awkwardly at first, stumbling as if his joints were loose; but as his body awoke and the blood surged through him he went faster and faster until he was fleeing like a wild animal. And as he ran his terror grew. He fell many times, goblin shapes pursued him or leaped forth from the shadows, but he knew that no matter how fast he fled he could never escape the thing he had met back there in the night. It was not the grisly sight of his murdered friend nor the bared ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... believe, Doctor," whispered the seaman, "that they think your work has been done by a goblin of some sort!" ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... scattered over the borders, civil war was crushed, the Revolution triumphant. Soon the "dwarfish, ragged sans-culottes, the small black-looking Marseillaises dressed in rags of every colour," whom Goethe saw tramping out of Mayence "as if the goblin king had opened his mountains and sent forth his lively host of dwarfs," had forced Prussia, the arch-champion of monarchy, to make peace and leave its Rhine provinces in the hands of regicides. Meanwhile terror reigned in Paris. In the frenzy ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Gray Owl; but in Skane a marvellous thing has happened! A boy has been transformed by an elf into a goblin no bigger than a squirrel; and since then he has gone to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day labourers ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... die!" And so he did:—they cut his throat, And put to sleep his rousing note. And yet this murder mended not The cruel hardship of their lot; For now the twain were scarce in bed Before they heard the summons dread. The beldam, full of apprehension Lest oversleep should cause detention, Ran like a goblin through her mansion. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... shook the moisture from his clothes, he was not without a wish that the day would dawn, and that he might be preserved on a road which his imagination beset with greater perils than the raging river; for his superstitious feeling let loose upon his path elf and goblin, and the current traditions of the district supplied very largely to his apprehension the ready materials ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... large-headed, small-bodied goblin of a boy, made an unintelligible, guttural sound in his throat and remained where he was, evidently considering it of paramount importance that he should see what the gentleman ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... about the Brown Cow. His was a narrow and surly old age, not overwell provided, for he had never been a thrifty man; and he found among the rattletrap furnishings of his neglected home one living chattel quite as worthless—a weird, lean goblin of a boy, his sole descendant, fatherless and motherless, playing lonely little games in corners, making crass drawings with a charred stick on the walls, and viewing the blossoming orchards of spring with a crazy delight in color. I fear there was not much affection between ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... on a bank. His fayland eyes could see right into the ground. He saw the fat fleshy root like a little goblin, reaching its long white fingers down into the soil, picking out the magic crystals to pack away in its pockets; and he could see the tall stem like a wood-elf carrying them up, and spreading them upon its flat hands, so they could soak up the juices of the sun and air. He could ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would—with the least waiting, perhaps a few days—bring the packet to our types in time. I have little hope, almost none, from a sally so desperate on possible portfolios; but neither will I be wanting to my sanguine co-editor, your good friend. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... then asked the smiling Maniac for balls. He brought me a selection of large red globes nearly as big as Dutch cheeses. I said, 'Are these tennis-balls?' He said, 'Oh did you want tennis-balls?' I said Yes—they often came in handy at tennis. The goblin was however quite impervious to satire, and I left him endeavouring to draw my attention to his wares in general, particularly to some zinc baths which he seemed to think should form part of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the midst of the raging billows, through a frightful opening, appears PLUTO'S palace. Eight FURIES issue from it, and form the entry of the ballet, in which they show their delight at having kindled such dire wrath in the heart of the sweetest of divinities. A GOBLIN adds perilous jumps to their dances, and meanwhile PSYCHE, who, in obedience to VENUS, has come to the infernal regions, is seen crossing again in CHARON'S bark, holding the box given to ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... buds where they have lain Until the mystic midnight time drew near, To chimes of hare-bells and the far-off strain Of forest melodies, the elves appear In all the gorgeousness of goblin gear. With brilliant dress the golden-beetle wore, With scarlet plumes the humming-bird once bore, They come in troops from every flower and tree, And 'round the fairy throne in concourse pour,— The Queen of ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... not to me, but to us," she corrected, smiling; "but tell me what think you of this appearance which has so startled our Margaret. Was it ghost or goblin or dream of the night? We have never had either witch or warlock about the house of Thrieve since the old Abbot Gawain laid the ghost of Archibald the Grim with four-and-forty masses, said without ever breaking his fast, down there ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... faced, but also activity and beauty to be enjoyed. The feeling of health and strength is predominant. Life laughs at death itself, or meets it with a noble confidence—is not taught to dread it as a malignant goblin. Shakspeare has all the smiles as well as tears of nature, and discerns the "soul of goodness in things evil." He is comedy as well as tragedy—the entire man in all his qualities, moods, and experiences; and he beautifies all. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... while on his way to Italy, Lewis sojourned for a space with Byron and Shelley in their Swiss retreat and set the whole company composing goblin stories. The most remarkable outcome of this queer symposium was Mrs. Shelley's abnormal romance, "Frankenstein." The signatures of Byron and Shelley are affixed, as witnesses, to a codicil to Lewis' will, which he drew at this time ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... thousand distracting questions before me. My progress seemed like a journey through the Spessart, where at every step some new goblin or monster starts from the ground or steps from ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... herbe. Palsgr. Galium aparine, A.S. hegerifan corn, grains of hedgerife (hayreve, or hayreff), are among the herbs prescribed in Leechdoms, v.2, p.345, for "a salve against the elfin race & nocturnal [goblin] visitors, & for the woman with whom the ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... found this to interfere with her after-dinner nap, and no wonder; for if a cohort of ghosts had been "shrieking and squealing," as Calpurnia puts it, in our back garden, or it had been fitted up as a creche for a nursery of goblin infants in the agonies of teething, the noise could not possibly have ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... profound skill in nature, extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life. In a single drama are here exhibited princes, courtiers, and sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits, and of an earthly goblin. The operation of magick, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of the pair for whom our passions and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... hour to social pleasure they resign, And black remembrance drown in generous wine. On deck, beneath the shading canvas spread, 340 Rodmond a rueful tale of wonders read Of dragons roaring on the enchanted coast; The hideous goblin, and the yelling ghost: But with Arion, from the sultry heat Of noon, Palemon sought a cool retreat. And, lo! the shore with mournful prospects crown'd, [2] The rampart torn with many a fatal wound, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... to convince any man of the folly of such apprehensions, or to fortify him against such terrours for the time to come; for if any man, in reality, now dreads the pretender, fear must be his distemper; he is doomed to live in terrours, and it is of no importance whether he dreads an invasion or a goblin, whether he is afraid to disband the army, or to put out his candle in the night; his imagination is tainted, and he must be cured, not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson |
