"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not invent a melody; so he coolly stole Aileen Aroon, soiled it by inserting sordid and incongruous jerks into the refrain, and called the stolen and adulterated article Robin Adair. An artisan of the same kidney was soon found to write words down to the degraded ditty: and, so strong is Flunkeyism, and so weak is Criticism, in these islands, that the polluted tune actually superseded the clean melody; and this ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... his horse had been "stun lame" the night before, Mr. Price was able to start for Harwich, via Brampton, very early the next morning. He was driving along through Northcutt's woods with one leg hanging over the wheel, humming through his nose what we may suppose to have been a love-ditty, and letting his imagination run riot about the lady in question, when he nearly fell out of his wagon. The cause of this was the sight of fat Tom coming around a corner, with Jethro Bass behind him. Lem Hallowell and the storekeeper had kept their secret ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... silence but for the bells—the bowman's pole is lowered—as with one stroke out sweep the paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the chapel spire gleams—it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive ditty,—the voyageur's song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,—and the adventurers are launched ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... king of singers all other birds were not mute. But evidently the birds have not enthroned this thrush. Possibly, even, they do not share human admiration for his song. The redstart goes on jerking out his monotonous ditty; chippy irreverently mounts a perch and trills out his inane apology for a song; the vireo in yonder tree spares us not one of his never-ending platitudes. But the hermit thrush goes on with sublime indifference to the voices of common folk down below. Sometimes he is answered ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... suggestive of the singing of hymns in church, the words of the songs are occasionally such as to correct this impression. But whether it be a patriotic song, a sentimental ballad, or a ditty of a nature that would shock the average young Englishman, all are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without a false note. At the end, the chairman calls "Prosit!" Everyone answers "Prosit!" and the next ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... you choose," said the Elector, "and may good fortune attend you everywhere. Electress, give me your arm, and let us withdraw to our own apartments. And he, our son, will doubtless, first of all, have to take a most touching and tearful farewell of Leuchtmar, and sing a mournful ditty about the cruel father who would take away from him his nurse—that is to ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... when I reached 65 That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... all folk, the Warder's ditty, 'Tis ten o'clock in our city; Heed well your fire and eke your light, That none may be harmed this night! Praise ye God, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... affected. She would cry no more for an ungrateful fellow,—ungrateful for not seeing through the stone walls how she had been employed all the morning; and making it up. So she bathed her red eyes, made a great alteration in her dress, and came dancing into the room humming an Italian ditty. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... this ditty to you, In my necktie of red and my jacket of blue; I'm sure you'll prefer the song that was mine And smile ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... Expressed in English, this ditty simply set forth the fact that the beasts and the birds do not labor, but Man, who is neither a beast nor a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... he has a knapsack on his shoulders, which he casts down on the corner of the stoup; he is singing a line of an old French ditty; he raps at the open door. The Highlander bids him welcome, but starts with glad surprise as his hand is grasped by the old trapper. "Ha, Jacob Morelle, it is many a weary year since your step turned this way." The tear stood in the eye of the soldier ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Miss Elting took down the curtains, which also were sadly in need of ironing, while Margery and Hazel prepared the noon meal. Tommy perched herself on the rail of the upper deck, and caroled forth a lisping ditty. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... the fruit, in came the two young damsels in gowns of taffeta very fine, bearing in their hands two vast silver salvers full of divers fruits, such as the season yielded, and set them on the table before the King. Which done, they withdrew a little space and fell a singing to music a ditty, of which the ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... little feet over the rough floor brings indolent, half-indifferent guessing as to which of the lesser four-foots they belonged. The whippoorwills down in the river woods call until they drop off, one by one, and the timid ditty of a singing mouse that lives under the floor by my cot is the last message the sandman sends to close our eyes before sleep. And such sleep! That first steel-blue starlit night in the open we said that we meant to sleep and sleep it out, even if we lost a whole day by it. It seemed but ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail, capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron de Ross ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... Trifels, in which Richard Coeur-de-Lion was imprisoned by the Archduke of Austria, his deadly enemy, the plaintive notes of a familiar lay fell on their ears. The singer was a young shepherd, and one of the knights, a troubadour, asked him to repeat his ditty. The youth complied, and the knight accompanied him as he sang, their voices ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... when the vehicle rolled away on its great scarlet wheels, he hung on behind, as if giving way to a childish impulse, and was whirled through a cloud of dust, singing at the top of his voice the popular ditty of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... utricle, bladder; pericarp, udder. stomach, paunch, venter, ventricle, crop, craw, maw, gizzard, breadbasket; mouth. pocket, pouch, fob, sheath, scabbard, socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, valise; grip, grip sack [U.S.]; skippet, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fire, when all of a sudden it came into her head to wonder what they were doing at Coventry. There was grandfather, no doubt, in the keeping-room, telling his never-tiring stories of Little Robby, and Old Bose, and the Babes in the Wood; of singing the ever-new ditty of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... said, "I've stumbled on a good thing by accident. It's a ditty-box; rather a superior one, and a good bit bigger than usual; almost a chest; brass bound and a nice bit of poker-work on it; a girl's head. I've ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... grander character of composition, and that while Edward's "breeze" but "stirred the stream," he had fathomed the ocean. But a "heavy blow and great discouragement" was in store for Master James, for as he commenced a love ditty which he called by the fascinating title of "The Rose of Silence," and verily believed would have enraptured every woman in the room, a powerful voice, richly flavoured with the brogue, shouted forth outside the door, "Ma'am, if you plaze, supper's ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... He bethought himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye and a voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it ran occasionally into a falsetto like the notes of a split reed, he quavered forth a quaint old ditty: ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... tread of footsteps on the stairs reached us. A man was coming up, and he was singing languidly a love ditty. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... proceeded to eat her dinner with an expression of artless and whole-souled relief. She was able to point out to Henry, as a bit of prandial small-talk, that the orchestra was playing "Nancy Brown"—a classic ditty whose notes had reached even Clayton Centre. It was at this stimulating point of the dinner, also, that she felt privileged for the first time to remove her gloves, glance at the other tables and the clothes of the women, and talk freely to her husband. Hitherto she had ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... forced it back with his cane. Some persons now living remember a popular superstition, lingering in the minds of some of the more ignorant class, that Corey's ghost haunted the grounds where this barbarous deed was done; and that boys, as they sported in the vicinity, were in the habit of singing a ditty beginning thus:— ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... old women had put into the pot a toad, the toe of a frog, the wool of a bat, an adder's tongue, an owl's wing, and many other things, of which you will find the list in Shakspeare. Now and then they walked around the pot, repeating a very sensible ditty:— ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... that hymn of praise sank to pianissimo notes and was transformed by some sort of evil magic to something shockingly different. It was as if a skillful yet unscrupulous musician were constructing a revolting medley, placing the sacred song in juxtaposition with the obscene ditty. And the words of the revolting thing were "Runyon and Sylvia! ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... both country and city, Come listen with patience, and hear out my ditty: At this time I'll choose to be wiser than witty. Which nobody ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... why he said the other day, "Give me to gaze once more on the blue hills," to the girl in the booking-office, when what he really wanted was a ticket (of a light heliotrope colour) to St. James's Park. Lord BYRON, on the other hand, composed a sorrowful ditty on the decadence of the Isles of Greece whilst shaving; but the invention of the safety-razor and the energetic action of M. VENIZELOS will most likely render it unnecessary for anyone to repeat such a performance. As for the people who have a sudden ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... singing was certainly not one of them. He could hail the fore-royal-yard from the taffrail in a gale of wind, and make himself pretty plainly heard too; but when it came to trolling forth a ditty, he had no more voice than a raven; and my sister had often thrown him into a state of the most comical distress by proffering a similar request to that now made ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... song, which is said to have been originally connected with a plaintive Jacobite ditty, now lost, has suggested several modern songs similar in manner and sentiment. Imlah composed two songs with this chorus. The earlier of these compositions appears in the "May Flowers." It is evidently founded upon a rumour, which prevailed in Aberdeenshire during the first ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... his senses, and stranger smells, yet the lilt of that old childish game was ever humming in his brain and he saw himself with other boys and girls with clasped hands linked in a circle and going round in a ring as they sang the old ditty. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... it we must not be forgetful that a great change has taken place. We are no longer a weak Nation, thinking mainly of defense, dreading foreign imposition. We are great and powerful. New powers bring new responsibilities. Our ditty then was to protect ourselves. Added to that, our duty now is to help give stability to the world. We want idealism. We want that vision which lifts men and nations above themselves. These are virtues by reason of their own merit. But they must not be cloistered; they must not be impractical; ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... winks so pretty, Little, sharp round eyes; Beppo sings a jolly ditty, Quite to our surprise. Then we mount, and off we go, up and down the mall, Never do they careless ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... original. Then there were her 'Songs for Little People,' at once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's Porgie,' and that ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the coming Imperial spirit, entitled 'Black Him In ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... alleviating the pain, Shanks bellowed into my ear, loud enough to bring the dead out of the grave-mounds on the surrounding hill-sides, "Puh p'a teh, pub p'a teh"; then, raising his carrying-pole to the correct angle on the hump on his back, went merrily forward, warbling some squealing Chinese ditty. But Shanks was the songster of the party. He often madly disturbed the silence of middle night by a sudden outburst inte song, and when shouted down by others who lay around, or kicked by the man who shared his bed, and whose ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... often mourn in vain— A knight in distant battle slain, Whose bones had moulder'd in the earth Full many a year before thy birth. He fed our ears with songs of old, And one was of a heart of gold,— A native ditty I would fain, But never yet could hear again. It spoke of friendship like his own, Once only in existence known. My prime of life the blessing crost, And with it life's first ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... medical observation and opening science in the Letter, as well as of sweet old literature, and still sweeter old religion, to make it a classic to every well-read doctor in the language. 'To be dissolved and to be with Christ was his dying ditty. He esteemed it enough to approach the years of his Saviour, who so ordered His own human state, as not to be old upon earth. He that early arriveth into the parts and prudence of age is happily old without the uncomfortable attendants of it. And 'tis superfluous to live unto grey ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... or girl has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now living ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... the buckboard stood at the ranch gate. Bud Shoop, crooning a range-ditty that has not as yet disgraced an anthology, stood flicking the ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and purser, with the midshipmen, were engaged in amusing themselves in a more uproarious fashion. Many a merry stave and sentimental ditty was sung, and not a few yarns were spun, anecdotes told, and jokes cut, albeit not of the newest. The remainder of the shipwrecked men having been pretty well worked during the day, soon turned in, and in spite of the storm raging over their heads went fast asleep; the only people awake ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... illustrious author whose conception he embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal Hole."[177] The encores were frequent, and for the most part the little fellow responded to them; but the misplaced enthusiasm that took similar form at the heroic intensity with which he stabbed Dollalolla, he rebuked ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... bosom,'" he reiterated with a plangent cadence; "I remember them all, sir; from the cradle I had a gift for music." And then, with an ample flirt of his bow, he broke, all beams and smiles, into this ingenuous ditty: ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry captain of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are mine; this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so fast; I did not mean ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... those poemes in variable measures, & coupled a short verse with a long to serue that purpose the better, and we our selues who compiled this treatise haue written for pleasure a litle brief Romance or historicall ditty in the English tong of the Isle of great Britaine in short and long meetres, and by breaches or diuisions to be more commodiously song to the harpe in places of assembly, where the company shalbe desirous to heare of old aduentures & valiaunces of noble knights in ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... pattern was rather disfigured by the yellow stains of the tobacco with which it had been brought in contact. In drawing this calico slowly from his bosom inch by inch, Toby reminded me of a juggler performing the feat of the endless ribbon. The next cast was a small one, being a sailor's little 'ditty bag', containing needles, thread, and other sewing utensils, then came a razor-case, followed by two or three separate plugs of negro-head, which were fished up from the bottom of the now empty receptacle. These various ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... of his nearest of kin brings all the temporal estate he was possessed of at his death, as guns, bows and arrows, beads, feathers, match coat etc. This relation is the chief mourner, being clad in moss, with a stick in his hand, keeping a mournful ditty for three or four days, his face being black with the smoke of pitch pine mixed with bear's oil. All the while he tells the dead mans relations and the rest of the spectators who that dead person was, and of the great feats performed ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... Mrs. McChesney sat absolutely expressionless while a shrill blonde lady and a nasal dark gentleman went through what the program ironically called a "comedy sketch," followed by a chummy person who came out in evening dress to sing a sentimental ditty, shed the evening dress to reappear in an ankle- length fluffy pink affair; shucked the fluffy pink affair for a child's pinafore, sash, and bare knees; discarded the kiddie frock, disclosing a bathing-suit; left the bathing-suit behind the wings in favor of satin knee-breeches ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... upon the scene, causing a general stampede among the disciples of the onion and a hasty adjournment of the festival. What law against irregular assemblages was infringed by these onion-worshipers is not clear, for one can hardly detect sedition lurking under the rustic ditty, and it is equally difficult to suspect an Orsini bomb conspiracy of being typified by the conjuring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... youth crowned the swiftest workwoman with field flowers, withering in the nearest swathe. All wove garlands, then made for the shade of the trees and shared a low basket of golden apples. One had a lute and another sang a love ditty with ethereal passion. They were in Arcadia,—silken shepherdesses, slim princes in disguise,—and they breathed the sweetness, the innocent yet lofty grace which ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... anyway. Well, he would have it attended to, sometime; his life was valuable now. But he wasn't going to hurry about it, if a sound leg meant his being taken and ordered off to this dam-fool War. Nicky-Nan pursed up his lips as he worked, whistling to himself a cheerful, tuneless ditty. Some one tapped ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the Spanish cavalier, And thus his ditty ran: God send the Gypsy lassie here, And not the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... and Ucalegon the wise, All, elders of the people; warriors erst, But idle now through age, yet of a voice Still indefatigable as the fly's[10] 175 Which perch'd among the boughs sends forth at noon Through all the grove his slender ditty sweet. Such sat those Trojan leaders on the tower, Who, soon as Helen on the steps they saw, In accents quick, but whisper'd, thus remark'd. 180 Trojans and Grecians wage, with fair excuse, Long war for ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... by the victim of some strong disease, to imitate which no healthy or sane person would, could, or durst attempt. James Montgomery will live by his smaller poems—his larger are long lyrics—and when was a long lyric any other than tedious? Hunt has sung many a joyous carol, and many a pathetic ditty, but produced no high or lasting poem. Pollok has aimed at a higher object than almost any poet of his day; he has sought, like Milton, to enshrine religion in poetic form, and to attract to it poetic ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... of life's thorny mazes Excited our pity at fortune's hard fare, And troubled the city's most troublesome places, While singing his ditty of "Nothing to Wear." ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... encountered the prominent feet in the third story window of the Linder mansion, and rested. He moved forward. Opposite the window he paused. He raised the mouthpiece to his lips and embarked on a perilous sea of notes from which the tutored ear might have inferred that once popular ditty, Egypt. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Scholar, or listen while I sing that sweet ditty of country contentment and an angler's life, writ by ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... cut their names on doors or rock-heads, But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads; Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty, Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty, Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains, O'er wainscots, borrowed books, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... thus read by Raleigh to Spenser at Kilcolman was the 'lamentable lay' to which reference had just been made—the piece in praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spenser's pastoral, the speaker is persuaded by Thestylis (Lodovick Bryskett) to explain what ditty that was that the Shepherd of the Ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, but in terms which are scarcely critical, that Raleigh's poem was written in love and praise, but also in pathetic ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... court in her sequestered haunts, By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell, Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, And Health, and Peace, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... So, this is the Gate, and most invitingly open: If there shou'd be a Blunderbuss here now, what a dreadful Ditty wou'd my Fall make for Fools; and what a Jest for the Wits; how my Name wou'd be roar'd about Streets. ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... that," explained Mrs. Enderby; "it's to have your maids say 'All right' when you ask them to remove the soup. It's a bit shocking also to have your cook or housemaid going about the house singing some wretched ditty. What was that one, Charley, that Irma Maud sang till we were nearly wild (Irma Maud was my chambermaid). What was it? ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... best to keep the party amused, and got Paul Lizard, who could sing a good song, to strike up a merry stave; and Paul, once set going, was generally loath to stop. His full manly voice trolled forth many a ditty, sounding above the whistling of the storm and the roar of the waves. Then adventures and stories were told, and yarn after yarn was spun, most of which were no novelties to the hearers. The boatswain, who seldom condescended to tell his adventures except to the other warrant officers, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed with different tea-masters. Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained in the ancient ditty: ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... livelier measure Comes the Teian bard of pleasure, Round his brow where joy reposes Radiant love enwreaths his roses, Rapture in his verse is ringing, Soft persuasion in his singing:— 'Twas the same melodious ditty Moved Polycrates to pity, Made that tyrant heart surrender Captive to a tone so tender: To the younger bard inclining, Round his brow the roses twining, First the wreath in red wine steeping, He his cithern to his keeping ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... tin, and sucked another Dutchman in!" was the ditty that ran through my head as I heard this. Old man Evans' way of looking at the matter seemed reasonable to my cautious mind; and, anyhow, when a man has grown old he knows many things that he can give no good reason for. I have always found that the well-educated fellow with a deep-sounding ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring, Every thing did banish moan Save the Nightingale alone. She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sung the dolefullest ditty, That to hear it was great pity. Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry; Tereu, tereu, by and by: That to hear her so complain Scarce I could from tears refrain; For her griefs so lively shown Made me think upon mine own. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Up-to-Date Version of a celebrated Bacchanalian ditty, as it might be revised by Dr. Mortimer Granville and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... when Ward took up the ditty where she left off and sang it with the rollicking enthusiasm which only a man who has soothed restless cattle on a stormy night ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... "Humph! quite right, Mr. Ditty," Captain Hamilton said hastily. Then he thrust his, head back into the office. "My mate's come for me, Tyke. We've got an errand on Whitehall Street. See you to-morrow. Good night, ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... this ditty, the chick hopped solemnly forward, gave vent to a most realistic cluck, scratched vigorously for worms, and the Happy Family vanished amid an uproar of applause, while Mary piloted her audience into the circus proper, ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... twisted the course of true love This ditty explains, No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve If ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... guitar mechanically, as it were, and as her fingers wandered over the strings, a bar or two of the strain, sad as the sigh of a broken heart, suggested an old ditty she had loved formerly, when her heart was full of sunshine and happiness, when her fancy used to indulge in the luxury of melancholic musings, as every happy, sensitive, and imaginative girl will do as a counterpoise ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... ranting ditty seemed to mock me, my breath came and went to it, my heart beat to it; yet even so, I was praying passionately and this my prayer, viz: That whoso was waiting above us for my death-cry should not again lift the scuttle lest I be discovered ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... her cushions aright. Therewith she gave this young gentleman her hand to support her to her seat, and asked him whether, in his country, they did not do service and devoir to the divine Dame Musica? And whereas he replied that verily they did, that in his own land he had heard many a sweet ditty sung by noble ladies to the harp and lute, that the children would ever sing at their sports, and that he, too, had oftentimes uplifted his voice in singing of madrigals, she besought him that he would make proof of some ballad or song. The rest of the company joining in her entreaties ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... under column there doth stand Inamorato with folded hand; Down hangs his head, terse and polite, Some ditty sure he doth indite. His lute and books about him lie, As symptoms of his vanity. If this do not enough disclose, To paint him, take ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Keeshee begged the favour of a little rum and medicine to heal his foot, which was inclined to swell and give him pain; and another request which he made was, that they would repair a gun, which had been deprived of its stock by fire. He then sung them a doleful ditty, not in praise of female beauty, as is the practice with the songsters of England, but it was in praise of elephants and their teeth, in which he was assisted by his cane bearer, and afterwards took his leave. They received little presents of goora ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a-ploughin', and couldn't have done it worse; He sat down on the handles, an' went to spinnin' verse. He wrote it nice and pretty—an agricultural ditty; But all o' his pesky measures didn't measure an acre more, Nor his p'ints didn't turn a furrow ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... be full and pure; for to keep the purity nothing would have to be named which carried the least suggestion of sadness with it, and, in the world that human language refers to, such a condition would exclude every situation possible. "O joy, O joy," would be the whole ditty: hence some dialecticians, whose experience is largely verbal, think whatever is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... their ethical statement. The Persians and the Arabs, with great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the pleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which the improvvisatori produced on the children of the desert. "When the bard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement was almost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild tribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by their self-taught poets, or by the girls of their encampment, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... name from the dittis or Manchester stuff of which it was once made. It is in use among seamen for holding their smaller necessaries. The ditty-bag of old, when a seaman prided himself on his rig, as the result of his own ability to fit himself from clue to earing, was a treasured article, probably worked in exquisite device by his lady-love. Well can we recollect the pride exhibited in its display ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight!— From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future!—how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... from the reaction of this morning. I never can get over my old timidity and dislike to do anything in public. I can do what I will, but it often costs me dear. I was led on unexpectedly this morning. I only anticipated singing a ditty for the children when I first went to the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... many miles of "foot-path way," under how many green hedges, has my childish treble chanted that enlivening ditty! ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... a-fashioned the wondrous words o' the ditty we've just polished off; an' supposin' a friend o' mine, same as Uncle Issy might he, had a-dropped in, in passin', an' heard me read the same. 'Hullo!' he'd 'a said, 'You've a-put the same words twice over.' 'How's that?' 'How's that? Why, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Carew Hazlitt, in Mary and Charles Lamb, 1874, says: "I found these lines—a parody on the popular, or nursery, ditty, 'Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home'—officiating as a wrapper to some of Mr. Hazlitt's hair. There is no signature; but the handwriting is unmistakably Lamb's; nor are the lines themselves the worst of his playful effusions." The piece suggests that Lamb, in a wild ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... an effective dispeller of care; and those who find Omar Khayyam or "In Memoriam" incapable of removing the of burden of their woes, will no doubt appreciate the "Owl and the Pussy-cat," or the Bab Ballads. In some form or other verse and song are closely linked with happiness; and a ditty from any age has its interests ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... say, were fictitious negroes, sang it so well that the audience listened with breathless attention and evident delight, and encored it vociferously. The next song was "Oh! Massa, how he wopped me," a ditty of quite a different stamp, but equally popular. It also was encored, as indeed was every song sting that evening; but the performers had counted on this. After the third song there was a hornpipe, in the performance of which the dancer's chief aim seemed to be, to ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... at what he had, been writing, "poetry, I protest!—Ay, I know this poor fellow's in love; and every man who is in love is a poet, 'with a woeful ditty to his mistress's eyebrow.' Pray what colour may Miss Sidney's eyebrows be?—she is really a pretty girl—I think I remember seeing her at some races.—Why does she never come to town?—But of course she is not to blame for that, but her fortune I suppose.—Marrying a girl without ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the house, he went splashing down the road with a very elastic tread, springing over the starlit puddles, and trolling out some sentimental ditty. He reached the inn, and went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... what he was up to—"we all favor your voice in the ditty of My Son John. And you, Jonathan Witchcott, I don't know of any other fellow that can better sing the part of the courting man than you yourself. And I'm satisfied that no fairer maid was ever wooed than Dru yonder. So lead off, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Homage they pay to his Manner of signifying to them that he wants a Subsidy. You must, sure, have heard speak of an old Man, who walks about the City, and that part of the Suburbs which lies beyond the Tower, performing the Office of a Day-Watchman, followed by a Goose, which bears the Bob of his Ditty, and confirms what he says with a Quack, Quack. I gave little heed to the mention of this known Circumstance, till, being the other day in those Quarters, I passed by a decrepit old Fellow with a Pole in his Hand, who ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the commandant, was in a position to do much good without being suspected. Pete was an original character, of a jovial nature, and, when intending some serious adventure, would appear very solemn, and usually singing a doleful ditty, often the following, which was ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such heart did once the poet bless, Who, pouring here a[3] later ditty, Could find no refuge from distress, But in ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... himself opposite to Mr. Jinks, who was driving his needle as savagely as ever, and, with a tremendous frown, chaunting the then popular ditty of the "Done-over Tailor." Whether this was in gloomy satire upon his own occupation we cannot say, but certainly the lover of the divine Miss Sallianna presented an appearance very different from his former one, at the Bower of Nature. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... young gentlemen on board meantime amused themselves by shouting sundry derisive songs, one of which was specially chosen when the "Revenge" was sufficiently near to be aggrieved by it: and Arthur, who had learned enough Spanish from his mother to act as translator, rendered the ditty into plain English prose for the benefit of Jack and Basset. The former received it with lofty scorn,—the latter with fiery vaticinations concerning his intentions when the ships should meet: and looking at ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... equalled thine, thou prince of Ganymedes? and when were cigars more justly appreciated, than as our puffs kept time with the trolling ditty, resounding through ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... creaked along the road in his wagon until far into the quiet, hissing night of the Foehn, and the gleam of a lighted window replied to the swaying light of his lantern on the horse-collar, he himself would send that same little ditty out into the yearning, burning spring night with his strong, clear voice, making the sleepless girls that heard it bite their pillows ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... raise a house as high as the mountain summit of Oromedon, {40} so I hate all birds of the Muses that vainly toil with their cackling notes against the Minstrel of Chios! But come, Simichidas, without more ado let us begin the pastoral song. And I—nay, see friend—if it please thee at all, this ditty that I lately fashioned on ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... saccharine tune sung by someone who strode stiffly to and fro in a glare of amber footlights—wasn't there a song about: "And I lo-ong to settle down, in that old Long Island town!" Wasn't there such a ditty? It came softly back, unbidden, to the sentimental attic of our memory as we passed along that fine avenue of trees and revisited, for the first time since we moved away, the wide space of those Long Island fields and the row ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... sterner; but just as I thought the sentiment of desolation perfect, a little goatherd, who had climbed high up the rocks somewhere with his equally sure-footed companions, began to sing, not a pastoral ditty in the Southern dialect, but the 'Marseillaise,' thus recalling with shocking incongruity impressions of screaming barrel-organs at the fete ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... these few memorials of a transient state of things fast passing into oblivion; for the feudal state of Fort William is at an end, its council chamber is silent and deserted; its banquet hall no longer echoes to the burst of loyalty, or the "auld world" ditty; the lords of the lakes and forests have passed away; and the hospitable magnates of Montreal where ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... it," answered the monk, "and you may thank me if the storm is averted for the moment, although it must burst erelong. Before the ambassador could obtain his audience, I hurried to the archduke, and chanted the old ditty; told him you were the Maccabees of the century—the bulwarks of Christendom: that without you the Turks would long since have been in Gradiska—that the Venetians, through fear and lust of gain, were hand and glove with the followers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... dryer, soaring higher—Old Clem! One day soon after the appearance of the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly saying to me, with the impatient movement of her fingers, "There, there, there! Sing!" I was surprised into crooning this ditty as I pushed her over the floor. It happened so to catch her fancy that she took it up in a low brooding voice as if she were singing in her sleep. After that, it became customary with us to have it as we moved about, and Estella would often join in; though the whole strain was so ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... battle shout, and now and then his wife assisted—till finally the teeth came out. And never once while thus he pottered around my torn and mangled jowl—not once, while I was being slaughtered, did I let out a single howl! No brass-bands played, none sang a ditty of triumph as I took my way; no signs of "Welcome to Our City" were hung across the street ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... himself the melody of his little ditty in a deep bourdon as he paused a moment at the door. Then he ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... in a tipsy, disconnected way the senseless ditty, swaying back and forth to the imaginary music. Beautiful as a dream, with dark hair, and great melting eyes, her skin was like lilies, and each cheek a luscious peach. Her tall, graceful figure, clad in long, sweeping black draperies, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... by a singer, who imitated the gramophone in utilizing a big megaphone, to make up for the deficiencies of his voice — according to his own statement. He hid behind the curtain of Captain Nilsen's cabin, and through the megaphone came a ditty intended to describe life on the Barrier from its humorous side. It was completely successful, and we again had a laugh that did us good. Performances of this kind, of course, only have a value to those who have taken part in or are acquainted with the events to which they refer. In case any outsider ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... better conclude this summary of what I have been able to learn about the honest Lapps, than by sending you the tourist's stock specimen of a Lapp love-ditty. The author is supposed to be hastening in his sledge towards the home ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... he names it, and doth so Use it, than brutes more brutish still to grow. With deference to your grace, he seems to me Like any long-legged grasshopper to be, Which ever flies, and flying springs, And in the grass its ancient ditty sings. Would he but always in the grass repose! In every heap of dung he thrusts ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... her letters, but all the while was thinking of her conversation with her uncle as well as something else suggested by the newcomer and his ditty. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... given an ecclesiastical or Plain Song character, has here added to his luminous lecture the following precious original composition, reproduced in facsimile, in which through ingenious contrapuntal treatment he gives a mock sacred form to an old French ditty, "I Have Some ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... not each ditty with the glorious tale? Ah! such, alas, the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date. Pride! bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate, See how the mighty shrink into a song! Can volume, pillar, pile, preserve thee ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... to sing the burden of an Irish ditty, but the broken-nosed tea-kettle over the fire beginning to sing too, she ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... made no answer, but, lifting his babe from its mother's lap, commenced tossing it in the air and singing a pleasant nursery ditty. Caroline sat in a moody state of mind for some minutes, and then left the room to give some directions about tea. On her return, Ellis said, in as cheerful a voice as if no unpleasant ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... times, one of the tattooing artists would crawl over the bulwarks, followed by his sitter; and then a bare arm or leg would be extended, and the disagreeable business of "pricking" commence, right under my eyes; or an irruption of tars, with ditty-bags or sea-reticules, and piles of old trowsers to mend, would break in upon my seclusion, and, forming a sewing-circle, drive me off with ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... wonder with a foolish look of horror. The pavement was often blocked for hours together, and itinerant vendors of refreshment made it a new market center, while vocalists hastened thither to sing the delectable ditty of the deed without having any voice in the matter. It was a pity the Government did not erect a toll-gate at either end of the street. But Chancellors of the Exchequer rarely avail themselves of the more obvious expedients for paying off the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... from hand to hand, and form the "root of title" of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an ancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water without mud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniably declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost complete disappearance ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... you folks did; that you could afford to hunt for buried treasure, or buried beans, or buried anything else, if you wanted to. And if you'll report one of them even winking disrespectful, or showing the trace of a grin, I'll set him and his ditty ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... fought passionately for her friend and never gave way till Kurt had promised not to go on with his ditty. But her mother wanted to know now what had given Mea such red eyes. So she told them that she had followed Loneli in order to comfort her, for she was still crying. Loneli had told her then about being caught at chattering. Elvira, ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... full pressure, and the cook is ready to receive the gear. Sleeping-bags, "computation bag," hypsometer, "meat block" (a three-inch-square paper pad on which meteorological notes were taken); clothes-bag opened, three ditty-bags passed in and bag retied; a final temperature taken and aneroid read; sledge anchored securely by tow-rope to the ice-axe, and a final look round to see all gear is safely ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... his head, and the tete-a-tete was put an end to by a burst of singing from one of the sergeants, who was followed at the end of his song by others, each giving a ditty in his turn; the singer standing up in front of the table, stretching his chin well into the air, as though to abstract every possible wrinkle from his throat, and then plunging into the melody. When this was over one of the foreign hussars—the genteel German of Miller Loveday's description, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... things, at their looms—mill-girls always are—and their young souls took courage from the familiar sound of one another's voices. They sang the hymns and songs which they had learned in the schools and churches. No classical strains, no 'music for music's sake,' ascended from that furnace; no ditty of love or frolic, but the plain, religious outcries of the people: Heaven is my Home, Jesus, Lover of my Soul, and Shall we Gather at the River? Voice after voice dropped. The fire raced on. A few brave ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and hear a friend Trill forth harmonious ditty, Strange things I'll tell which late ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... thee, oh, thou human race. God's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking! Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show; The name of one is man, the other's woman! Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty, 'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat. Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast Is Cain's foul mark upon thy ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cried merrily, "how I will punish you!" and she stooped and picked a couple of mushrooms, quite happy again, and even sang a scrap of a country ditty in a pretty bird-like voice as she came to a bramble clump, and ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... my tongue might betray me, I muttered back an indistinct response. The Scot was either suspicious, or offended by my churlishness. I slipped off quickly to a dark corner, but I saw him eying me closely. A youth brushed past humming a ditty, which seemed strangely out of place in those surroundings. He stood an elbow's length from me and kicked moccasined heels against the floor in the way of light-headed lads. Both the air and figure of the young ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Genevieve's eyes spoke of no want of gratitude, and with glee which she no longer strove to repress, she tripped away to equip herself, and Albinia heard her clear young voice upstairs, singing away the burthen of some queer old French ditty. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... begin by singing us a fashionable ditty," remarked Ferdishenko, and looked at the mistress of the house, to see what ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the guitar now ceased, and no French words were heard. No ditty of Latin origin, be it ever so melodious and fervid, could stand against such a wild storm of Anglo-Saxon vociferation. Every ahoy rang out as if sea captains were hailing each ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Kid went below and struck a light. Joe could hear him fumbling about, and a little later heard his own name called softly. On going into the cabin, he saw 'Frisco Kid sitting on the edge of the bunk, a sailor's ditty-box on his knees, and in his hand a carefully folded ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... the Greek Sila, I was more fortunate. A boy at the village of Macchia possessed a pair which he obligingly gave me, after first playing a song—a farewell song—a plaintive ditty that required, none the less, an excellent pair of lungs, on account of the two mouthpieces. Melodies on this double flageolet are played principally at Christmas time. The two reeds are about twenty-five centimetres in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the harpsichord, and sang, in sweet unaffected style, one of the songs of her native country, a merry ditty, with a breathing of sadness in the refrain of it, like a twilight wind in a ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... She blinket on her sodger: An' ay he gies the tozie drab The tither skelpin' kiss, While she held up her greedy gab Just like an aumous dish. Ilk smack still, did crack still, Just like a cadger's whip, Then staggering and swaggering He roar'd this ditty up— ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... finished playing a melancholy air, exclaimed, "That was but a melancholy ditty, miss—we'll try a merrier." ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... bell-like tones, the salty words, the air, like all the chanteys, both sad and reckless, caressed Martin's ears like a siren charm. The boatswain's words, "'E sings like a blessed angel," crossed his mind. Rather, a blessed merman! To Martin, greedy for the oceans and beyond, the ditty seemed the very whisper of bright and beckoning distance—a whisper of tropic seas, of spice-scented nights, of blue isles. It heaped fuel on his ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a hundred women clothed in red baize, while his wife was seated in front of him. Between the speeches the ladies burst forth into a sort of plaintive ditty. The party was entertained by a band of musicians, consisting of three drummers and four performers on the marimba, a species of piano. It consists of two bars of wood placed side by side; across these are fixed fifteen wooden keys, each two ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... always highly appreciated by the children, and they sang the pleasing ditty over and over, while King rubbed away at the shoes ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... the early days, expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty, either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire checked the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... porpoise, as I opened the drawing-room door, was sitting with his feet upon the mantel-piece, and a bumper of port in his paw, making strenuous efforts to accomplish the ditty. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
