"Mistletoe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thistle, the shamrock, the leek, the lion, the unicorn, the harp, &c. are familiar examples of national emblems. The ivy, the holly, and the mistletoe are joined up with the Christmas worship, though probably of Druidical origin. The Assyrian sculptures present, under the "Joronher," or effulgence, a sacred tree, which may assimilate with the toolsu and the peepul tree, held in almost ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... sung; That only night in all the year Saw the staled priest the chalice rear. The damsel donn'd her kirtle sheen; The hall was dressed with holly green; Forth to the wood did merry men go, To gather in the mistletoe. Then open wide the baron's hall, To vassal, tenant, serf, and all; Power laid his rod of rule aside, And Ceremony doft'd his pride. The heir with roses in his shoes, That night might village partner choose; The lord, underogating, share The vulgar ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... have been found a merrier party in the whole city than that at work in the Spectacle Man's study on Christmas Eve. Mark had brought in a quantity of cedar and mistletoe, and while Mrs. Morrison and Miss Sherwin trimmed the tree, the children and Miss Moore turned the shop into a bower of ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... heavily in November; there will be three or four days of steady downpour and then a clear and green week. December is also likely to be rainy; and in this month people enjoy the sensation of gathering for Christmas the mistletoe which grows profusely on the live oaks, while the poppies are beginning to blossom at their feet. By the end of January the rains come lighter. In the long spaces between rains there is a temperature and a feeling ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the subject, that your conversation was enlivened by many curious disquisitions of the nature {p.171} of undulating exhalations. I should have bowed before the venerable grove of oaks at Hamilton with as much respect as if I had been a Druid about to gather the sacred mistletoe. I should hardly have suspected your host Sir William[97] of having been the occasion of the scandal brought upon the library and Mr. Gibb[98] by the introduction of the Cabinet des Fees, of which I have a volume or two here. I am happy to think there is an admirer of snug things in the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... which wind and weather had carried mould, blades of grass and flowers sprang forth. Especially above, where the large boughs parted, there was quite a hanging garden, in which wild raspberries and hart's-tongue ferns throve, and even a little mistletoe had taken root, and grew gracefully in the old willow branches, which were reflected in the dark water beneath when the wind blew the chickweed into the corner of the pool. A footpath which led across the fields passed close by the old tree. High up, on the woody hillside, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Far behind the corner of the house—which rose like a geranium bloom against the subdued colours around—stretched the soft azure landscape of The Chase—a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as they had grown when they were pollarded for bows. All this sylvan antiquity, however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the immediate ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... had dropped in, was suddenly reminded of that lugubrious old ballad, "The Mistletoe Bough," and recited large worn fragments of it impressively. It tells of how a beautiful girl hid away in a chest during a Christmas game of hide-and-seek, and how she was found, a dried vestige, years afterwards. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the stars, but the moon has had a potent influence on medicine. For instance, mistletoe was to be cut with a golden knife, and when the moon was only six days old. Brand[82] quotes from The Husbandman's Practice, or Prognostication Forever, published in 1664, the following curious passage, "Good to purge with electuaries, the moon in Cancer; with pills, the moon in ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree. But I fear 'tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the body that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need. I wheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it from this correspondence, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... sunflower; Louisiana, magnolia; Maine, pine cone; Michigan, apple blossom; Minnesota, moccasin; Mississippi, magnolia; Montana, bitter root; Missouri, goldenrod; Nebraska, goldenrod; New Jersey, sugar maple (tree); New York, rose; North Dakota, goldenrod; Oklahoma, mistletoe; Oregon, Oregon grape; Rhode Island, violet; Texas, blue bonnet; Utah, Sego lily; Vermont, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... vegetates. Moreover, however great the cedar and the palm may be, it is not with the sap one sucks from them that one can become great one's self. A giant's parasite will be at best a dwarf. The oak, colossus that it is, can produce and sustain nothing more than the mistletoe. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to suspend a superb Mistletoe bough in the publishing-office. PUNCH will be in attendance from daylight till dusk. To prevent confusion, the salutes will he distributed according to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... feet. All along, the river was a roaring torrent, its fall very great; and, descending with a rapidity to which we had long been strangers, to our great pleasure oak trees appeared on the ridge, and soon became very frequent; on these I remarked unusually great quantities of mistletoe. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... A thrice three cheers For garlands green and berries of red, And mistletoe clustering overhead, For the joy of our Christmas festival! But our beautiful tree, it is best of all! And circling still in a merry ring We'll still clasp hands as we dance and sing To the blessed ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... its sharp-spiked leaves and scarlet berries, and the white-berried, pale green mistletoe may be closely copied. All these and many more are made on the same principle, and in so simple a manner that even quite a little child may succeed in producing very good ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... triumphantly home, while the girls had piled the sleds with evergreens and ground pine. On the return a stop had been made at the market, and great quantities of holly had been bought. Even the sprig of mistletoe for the chandelier in the hall had not ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... pea conferred a like privilege on the lady who drew the favoured lot. The rest of the visitors assumed the rank of ministers of state or maids of honour. The festival was generally held in a large barn decorated with evergreens, and a large bough of mistletoe was not forgotten, which was often the source of much merriment. When the ceremony began, some one repeated ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... sprung some of the Twelfth-Night revels, mingled with those in honour of the Manifestation and Adoration of the Magi. And, in all probability, some other Christmas customs are adopted from the festivals of the ancients, as decking with evergreens and mistletoe (relics of Druidism) and the wassail bowl. It is not surprising, therefore, that Bacchanalian illustrations have been found among the decorations in the early Christian Churches. The illustration on the following page is from a mosaic in the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... tintype picture of a boy, and the mouth-organ. This she gave to the hands that fluttered about the face on the pillow. He began to play "The Mocking Bird," opening and shutting his bony hands to let the music rise and fall. When he closed that tune he played "O the Mistletoe Bough," and after that over and over again he played "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground." When he dropped the mouth-harp, he lay very still for a time, though his lips moved incessantly. The morning was coming, and he was growing ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... went joyously forward—Christmas-games and incantations, the dexterous introduction, by a jocose old gentleman, of a mistletoe-bough into the festoons draping the chandelier, and divers other tricks, all of which were taken in excellent part by the victims thereof, and vociferously applauded by the spectators. The great hall-clock ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the holly, and the persimmon—gaily festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves upturned to the sun—flung their broad arms over the road, forming an archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove for the greatest hero ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... all sorts of nonsensical gifts out of paper and cardboard and paste; no one was forgotten. Mrs. Lynch declared herself "as rich as rich" with bracelets and a necklace made of red berries. Mrs. Budge, forgetting, when Robin held a sprig of mistletoe over her head and daringly kissed her wrinkled cheek, that "things was going to sixes and sevens," laughed until her sides ached at Harkness in his silly clown's cap. Robin and Beryl, with much solemnity, exchanged purchases each had secretly made at the village store and Robin could not ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... him as Sir Giles rode on to the fortified Aldgate, and after a challenge from the guard, answered by a watchword from Lorimer, and an inquiry for whom the knight held, they were admitted, and went on through an increasing crowd trailing boughs of holly and mistletoe, to the north gateway of the Tower. Here they parted with Lorimer, with friendly greetings and promises to come and see ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... luk back an' see ha we've spent th' past eleven, an' aw think ther's few but what'll be able to see monny a place where they've missed it. An' if soa we'd better mak th' best o'th' few days left to mak what amends we can. Owd Christmas comes in smilin', with his holly an' his mistletoe, an' his gooid tempered face surraanded wi' steam of plum puddin' an' roast beef—tables get tested what weight they can bear—owd fowk an' young ens exchange greetin's, punch bowls steam up; an' lemons an' nutmegs suffer theresen to be rubbed, scrubbed, sliced, an' stewed; ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... Too-Keela-Keela's soul abide equally in every part of this aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a mistletoe, which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever green and yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their Sathanic religion. For in this very bough—easy to be discerned by the eye among the green leaves of the tree—" the ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... the little shrub mistletoe, which grows, you know, on the west side of Valhalla, and to which I said nothing, because I thought it was too ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... twinkled, and gayly Her Grace Crossed the old polished floor with a step light and quick, And her high slipper heels went clickety-click. She looked cautiously round,—she was all by herself; Like a mischievous elf, She took from a shelf A mistletoe spray with its berries like pearls; Then tossing her head and shaking her curls, In a manner half daring and yet half afraid, The madcap maid, with a smile that betrayed Expectant thoughts of her lover dear, Fastened the spray ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... was near the Christmas season, the decorations included evergreens, holly and mistletoe, but besides these, quantities of roses and rare flowers of all sorts were used. The florists came early and worked all day, and they transformed the house into ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... skeletons or skeleton-like figures, are not uncommon among the sepulchral embellishments of an earlier period. Where one of these figures is found, the forty-day-fast story is likely to grow out of it, as the mistletoe springs from the oak or ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... evening gloom the shabbiness of the furniture could not be seen, and the fire-light danced playfully over the worn, comfortable-looking chairs drawn up to the hearth, on the holly and mistletoe which decorated the walls, and the great cluster of geranium and Christmas roses which the Adairs had sent to Janetta the day before. Everything looked homelike and comfortable, and perhaps it was no ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... lunch, grandpapa produces a small sprig of mistletoe from his pocket, and tempts the boys to kiss their little cousins under it—a proceeding which affords both the boys and the old gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather outrages grandmamma's ideas of decorum, until grandpapa says, that when ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand seeds, of which only one of an average comes to maturity, may be more truly said to struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which already clothe the ground. The mistletoe is dependent on the apple and a few other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle with these trees, for, if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes growing close together on the same branch may ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... crackers, and perfumed soap—and now that their vacation has begun, their little brown heads can be seen bobbing up and down in the blue sea. Their Christmas-tree will be the royal palm; and nipa boughs their mistletoe. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... down" is supposed to be as ancient, not only as the times of the Heptarchy, but as those of the Druids, and to have furnished the chorus to the hymns of those venerable persons when they went to the wood to gather mistletoe.] ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Yule! 'tis Yule! all eyes are bright, And joyous songs abound; Our log burns high, but it glows less bright Than the eyes which sparkle round. The merry laugh, and the jocund tale, And the kiss 'neath the mistletoe, Make care fly as fast as the blustering gale That wreaths the new fallen snow. 'Tis Yule! 'tis Yule! all eyes are bright, And joyous thoughts abound; The log burns high, but it glows less bright Than the eyes which ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... on the bald Iguvian summits. A second little pass leads from this region to the Adriatic side of the Italian watershed, and the road now follows the Barano downward toward the sea. The valley is fairly green with woods, where mistletoe may here and there be seen on boughs of oak, and rich with cornfields. Cagli is the chief town of the district, and here they show one of the best pictures left to us by Raphael's father, Giovanni ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the time went on to Christmas and New Year. Weircombe kept these festivals very quietly, yet not without cheerfulness. There was plenty of holly about, and the children, plunging into the thick of the woods at the summit of the "coombe" found mistletoe enough for the common need. The tiny Church was prettily decorated by the rector's wife and daughters, assisted by some of the girls of the village, and everybody attended service on Christmas morning, not only because it was Christmas, but because ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... she nothing spoke, The sighs she heaved were soft and low, And naught was green upon the oak But moss and rarest mistletoe: She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 35 ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... counseled the Birds that when the acorn first began to sprout, to pull it all up out of the ground and not allow it to grow. She said acorns would produce mistletoe, from which an irremediable poison, the bird-lime, would be extracted and by which they would be captured. The Owl next advised them to pluck up the seed of the flax, which men had sown, as it was a plant which boded no good to them. And, lastly, the Owl, seeing an archer ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars; and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... gently up a hillside, and on both margins of the graveled way, ancient elm trees stood at regular intervals, throwing their boughs across, to unite in lifting the superb groined arches, whose fine tracery of sinuous lines were here and there concealed by clustering mistletoe—and gray lichen masses—and ornamented with bosses of velvet moss; while the venerable columnar trunks were now and then wreathed with poison-oak vines, where red trumpet flowers insolently blared defiance to the waxen pearls of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... lay Balder dead; and round Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, darts, and spears, Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clove; But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw— 'Gainst that alone had Balder's life no charm. And all the Gods and all the Heroes came, And stood round Balder on the bloody floor, Weeping ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Yule! It brings the schoolboy home from school. [N.B.—Vulgarly pronounced 'schule' in the West of England.] Puddings and mistletoe and holly, With other contrivances for banishing melancholy: Boar's head, for instance—of which I have never partaken, But the name has ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... entire yard was little better than a brush heap. He soon turned away home relieved: he would be able to tell Gabriella to-night that none of the windows had been broken nor the roof; only a new woods scholar, with little feet and a big hard head and a bunch of mistletoe in one hand, was standing on the steps, waiting for her ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... cases green matter is wanting in their tissues or is hidden by a livid tint that strikes the observer. Such are the Orobanchacc, or "broomropes," and the tropical Balanophorace. Nevertheless, other parasites, such as the mistletoe, have perfectly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... dreary plain, dotted with the "fallen cromlechs of Stonehenge," and in front of the desecrated stone altars stood a veiled woman, with her hands clasped over a silver crescent-curved knife, and her bare feet resting on oaken chaplets and mistletoe boughs, starred and fringed with snowy flowers. Under the dexterously painted gauze that shrouded the face, the outline of the features was distinctly traceable, end behind the film,—large, oracular, yet mournful eyes, burned like setting stars, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Maypole as the spirit of the new vegetation, [335] and against the old nature-rites observed at Christmas, the veneration of fire as the preserver of life against cold, and the veneration of the evergreen plants, the fir tree, the holly, and the mistletoe, which retained their foliage through the long night of the northern winter, and were thus a pledge to man of the return of warmth and the renewal of vegetation in the spring. And it therefore seems not altogether improbable that the Puritans may have similarly contended against the superstition ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... trunk, and this was the first journey it had made since it carried her bridal finery to and from the Philadelphia Centennial. In the quiet, uneventful years that followed it had reposed in a big, roomy old garret, undisturbed save at the annual spring house-cleaning, or when we children played "The Mistletoe Bough" and hid in it the skeleton which had descended to us as a relic ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... were signs of the season in every corner of the plain but cosy little sitting-room. Mistletoe hung from the chandelier; gay bunting and strands of gold and silver tinsel draped the bookcase and the writing desk; holly and myrtle covered the wall brackets, and red tissue paper shaded all of the electric light globes; big candles and little candles ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... have noticed that the mistletoe was a bad parasite on the pecans in some regions. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the house, this evening, and as this gives me room at the table, I am going to begin to answer your letter. George is out of town, and all the rest, including the servants, have gone to see the Mistletoe Bough. It is astonishing how slowly you get well; and yet with such heat and such smells as you have in Chicago, it is yet more astonishing that you live at all. I thought it dreadful to have the thermometer stand at 90 deg. in my bedroom, three ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... induction only I your law of being reach. Now I hear of this wrong action—what is that to you and me? Sin within you may have done it—fruit not nature to the tree. Foreign graft has come to bearing—mistletoe grown on your bough— If I ever really knew you, then, my friend, I know you now. So I say, "He never did it," or, "He did not so intend"; Or, "Some foreign power o'ercame him"—so I judge the action, friend. Let the mere outside ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... cried, "I know foreign custom. I know everything. Mistletoe! Mistletoe! A kiss for the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... I have given is, I am confident, absolutely free from every source of error. I do not remember that Mr. Rathbone had communicated with me since he sent me a plentiful supply of mistletoe a year ago last Christmas. The account I received from him was cut out of "The Sporting Times" of March 5, 1887. My own knowledge of the case came from "Kirby's Wonderful Museum," a work presented to me at ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "and, to be sure, he was an exceedingly melancholy man, for he did sit away from the company during the most part of the evening. We afterwards heard that he had been keeping a secret account of all the kisses that were given and received under the mistletoe bough. Truly, I would not have suffered any one to kiss me in that manner had I known that so unfair a watch was being kept. Other maids beside were in a like way shocked, as Betty Marchant has since told me." But it seems ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... disappearance for many years remained an unsolved mystery, but some time afterwards the fatal chest was sold, which, on being opened, was found to contain the skeleton of the long-lost bride. This popular story was made the subject of a song, entitled "The Mistletoe Bough," by Thomas Haynes Bayley, who died in 1839; and Marwell Old Hall, near Winchester, once the residence of the Seymours, and afterwards of the Dacre family, has a similar tradition attached to it. Indeed, the very chest has been preserved in the hall of Upham Rectory, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... I put up holly and mistletoe, and produced from my trunks a real Christmas pudding that my mother had made. We had it for supper, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... her kirtle sheen; The hall was dressed with holly green; Forth to the wood did merry-men go To gather in the mistletoe. Then opened wide the baron's hall To vassal, tenant, serf, and all; Power laid his rod of rule aside, And ceremony doffed his pride. The heir, with roses in his shoes, That night might village partner choose; The lord underogating share The vulgar game of post-and-pair. All hailed with uncontrolled ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... Marigold Sacred affection. Marigold and Cypress Despair. Mandrake Rarity. Mignonette Your qualities surpass your charms. Morning Glory Coquetry, Affectation. Mock Orange Counterfeit. Myrtle Love in absence. Mistletoe Insurmountable. Narcissus Egotism. Nasturtium Patriotism. Oxalis Reverie. Orange Blossom Purity. Olive Peace. Oleander Beware. Primrose Modest worth. Pink, White Pure love. " Red Devoted love. Phlox Our hearts are united. Periwinkle ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... sake and Christmas cheer, We bear the seedling berries, for increase, To graft the Druid oaks, from year to year, Careful that mistletoe may never cease;— Wherefore, if thou dost prize the shady peace Of sombre forests, or to see light break Through sylvan cloisters, and in spring release Thy spirit amongst leaves from careful ake, Spare us our lives for the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Duncan Yordas, being skillfully removed, spent his Christmas (without knowing much about it) in the best and warmest bedroom in the rectory. But Mordacks returned, as an honest man should do, to put the laurel and the mistletoe on his proper household gods. And where can this be better done than in that grand old city, York? But before leaving Flamborough, he settled the claims of business and charity, so far as he could see them, and so far as ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Turdus viscivorus, Linnaeus. French, "Merle Draine," "Grive Draine."—I quite agree with the remarks made by Professor Newton, in his edition of 'Yarrell,' as to the proper English name of the present species, and that it ought to be called the Mistletoe Thrush. I am afraid, however, that the shorter appellation of Missel Thrush will stick to this bird in spite of all attempts to the contrary. In Guernsey the local name of the Mistletoe Thrush is "Geai," by which name Mr. Metivier ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the old walls might fall in at any time; but since you told me about the lights being seen, I've been thinking that perhaps he has heard about them too, and that's why he won't come here if he can help it. But we can ask him. What is the 'Mistletoe Bough'? Is it a ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... to help run the thing, and Rena Jackson and Lea Adams are in it—and Annie Pilgreen. Her and Happy are down on the program for 'Under the Mistletoe', a tableau—the red ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... was not to be Santa Claus at all. He was to be Father Christmas, with a wreath of mistletoe instead of a ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... the stork and crane, summoning forth the tender buds, and clothing the bare branches with delicate green. "Balder is the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the AEsir," says the "Edda." A voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart. Hermod rode down to the kingdom of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set adrift on a floating funeral pyre. Hermod would have succeeded in his mission, had not Lok, the Spirit of Evil, interposed to thwart him. For this, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... centre of the ceiling of this kitchen, old Wardle had just suspended, with his own hands, a huge branch of mistletoe, and this same branch of mistletoe instantaneously gave rise to a scene of general and most delightful struggling and confusion; in the midst of which, Mr. Pickwick, with a gallantry that would have ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... gives an ancient account of Balder, the sun-god, who was slain because of the jealousy of Loki (fire). Loki knew that everything in nature except the mistletoe had promised not to injure the great god Balder. So he searched for the mistletoe until he found it growing on an oak-tree "on the eastern slope of Valhalla." He cut it off and returned to the place where the gods were ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... an extraordinary reverence for the number three, and not only the berries, but the leaves of the mistletoe, grow in clusters of three united on one stalk. Its growing upon the oak, their sacred tree, was doubtless another ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... incarnated by avatars in human forms; I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth—oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters; I see where druids walked the groves of Mona—I see the mistletoe and vervain; I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... her—to make the frumenty and spiced cakes that from time immemorial had been eaten in that northern district to celebrate the feast of the Nativity. A Yule-log was sawn and placed upon the dining-room fire, and a huge bough of mistletoe hung ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... dinner. They always dined out. They strayed from the chop-house to chop-sueydom, from terrace to table d'hote, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from cafe to casino, from Maria's to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic life in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates. Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the wedding march you now hear only "Come with the Gypsy Bride." You rarely dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and, besides, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... supporting shafts—relics of an age when they were the only architecture, the only national monuments; when savage ancestors in lion skins, with stone weapons, led by white-robed Druid priests, came solemnly here and left the mistletoe wreath upon these Houses of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the ideal Christmas game. In the first place, it must be a round game; that is to say, at least six people must be able to play it simultaneously. No game for two only is permissible at Christmas—unless, of course, it be under the mistletoe. Secondly, it must be a game into which skill does not enter, or, if it does, it must be a skill which is as likely to be shown by a child of eight or an old gentleman of eighty as by a 'Varsity blue. Such skill, for instance, as manifests itself at Tiddleywinks, that noble ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... the sea looked like a wide satin ribbon shaken out and shimmering with opaline tints. Flower girls trooped forth making the air musical with their mellow cries of "Fiori! chi vuol fiori" and holding up their tempting wares—not bunches of holly and mistletoe such as are known in England, but roses, lilies, jonquils, and sweet daffodils. The shops were brilliant with bouquets and baskets of fruits and flowers; a glittering show of etrennes, or gifts to suit all ages and conditions, were ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... personified pure and tender love. Balder was the fair god who loved light and lived a life of purity and innocence. The evil Loke induced Balder's blind brother, der, to throw an arrow of mistletoe at him and he fell dead. When Nanna saw the body of her dead husband carried out to the funeral pyre, her ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... brisk, clear morning, with ribbons of mist blowing across the distant ranges. By noon, their way was leading through scattered growths of stunted cedar and juniper with an occasional gnarled, undersized oak in which grew mistletoe thick-hung with ivory berries. Bear grass and bunch grass dotted the sand. Orioles and robins sang as they foraged for the blue cedar berry. All the afternoon the trees increased in size and when they made camp at night, it was under a giant pine whose kindred stretched in every direction as ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... over-sweet, festoon'd; With bitter ivy bound; Terraced with funguses unsound; Deform'd with many a boss And closed scar, o'ercushion'd deep with moss; Bunch'd all about with pagan mistletoe; And thick with nests of the hoarse bird That talks, but understands not his own word; Stands, and so stood a thousand years ago, A single tree. Thunder has done its worst among its twigs, Where the great ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... for my father lived till a 'underd, an' then on'y went through slippin' on a wet stone an' breakin' a bone in 'is back; an' my grandfather saw 'is larst Christmas at a 'underd an' ten, an' was up to kissin' a wench under the mistletoe, 'e was sich a chirpin' old gamecock. 'E didn't look no older'n you do now, an' you're a chicken compared to 'im. You've wore badly like, not knowin' the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... know what they really looked like. They stand alone in the cotton-fields like our elms in a meadow, though there are fewer of them, and they are stiff and straight. The Spanish dagger, looking like a miniature palmetto, was planted for hedges round the garden and fish-pond. Mistletoe I saw ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... travelling was expensive and tedious, this meant more than it does to-day. The visitors received a joyous welcome, not a sort of empty every-day one. Plum pudding, roast beef, and mince pies and nuts were the order of the day, for beverage various kinds of drinks. Holly and mistletoe and evergreens obtained in nearly every house; in fact it was a joyous day from morn till night. Games of various kinds were played. Toys for children, rudimentary toys and picture books, cheap, and such as the ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... to fore-shadow the office of the evil archer Loki, who in the Scandinavian mythology shoots Balder with a mistletoe twig. The language closely resembles that ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... the ways of the Arioi because her husband had adopted the white convention of jealousy and monogamy. Only Tahitians like Tetuanui now knew anything about the order, and so many generations had they been taught shame of it that the very name was unspoken, as that of the mistletoe god was among the Druids after St. Patrick had accomplished his mission ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... took gay donkey-drives to visit a solemn dolmen in a gloomy pine-wood, with mistletoe hanging from the trees, and the ghosts of ancient Druids haunting the spot. The cavalcade on such occasions was an imposing spectacle. Matilda being fond of horses likewise affected donkeys (or thought she did, till she tried to drive one), and usually went first in a small ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... have exacted an oath from all of them." "What," exclaimed the woman, "have all things sworn to spare Baldur?" "All things," replied Frigga, "except one little shrub that grows on the eastern side of Valhalla, and is called Mistletoe, and which I thought too young and feeble to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... at Hidden Water that sings the songs of all the birds and whistles for the dog. His nest is in a great cluster of mistletoe in the mesquite tree behind the house and every morning he polishes his long curved bill against the ramada roof, preens out his glossy feathers, and does honor to the sun. For two years, off and on, Hardy had heard him, mimicking orioles and larks and sparrows and whistling ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... thou gaze at tokens Of ages long ago— Our old oaks stream with mosses, And sprout with mistletoe; And mighty vines, like serpents, climb The giant sycamore; And trunks, o'erthrown for centuries, Cumber the forest floor; And in the great savanna, The solitary mound, Built by the elder world, o'erlooks The ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... the dear old country 'tis Christ- mas, and to-night I'm thinking of the mistletoe and holly berries bright. The smoke above our chimbley pots I'd dearly love to see, And those dear folks down in Devon, how they'll talk and think ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... sharp arrows touch the earth and lo! How diamond-bright the stars do scintillate When Night hath lit her lamps to Heaven's gate. To the dim forest's cloistered arches go, And seek the holly and the mistletoe; For soon the bells of Christmas-tide will ring ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Stefan had failed her and she had failed her baby—these two ever present facts shadowed her world. She had bought presents for Lily and the baby, a pair of links for Stefan, books for Mrs. Farraday and Jamie, and trifles for Constance and Miss Mason, but the holly and mistletoe, the tree, the new frock and the Christmas fare which normally she would have planned with so much joy, were missing. Stefan's gift to her—a fur-lined coat—was so extravagant that she could derive no pleasure from it, and she had the impression that he had ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... A tree of Western Australia, with brilliant orange-coloured flowers, Nuytsia floribunda, N.O. Loranthaceae; which is also called Tree Mistletoe, and, locally, a Cabbage-tree. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Christmas. The young pines, growing among the larger ones, were just such little trees as were used at home for Christmas trees, and within an hour after getting the camp made, every man thought of Christmas at home. The boys went off into the woods and got holly, and mistletoe, and every pup tent of the whole brigade was decorated, and they hung nose bags, grain sacks, army socks and pants on the trees. Around the fires stakes had been driven to hang clothes on to dry, and as night came and the pitch pine fires blazed up to the tops of the great pines, ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... amongst others, a score of small chattering green paroquets were hopping close to us, and playing at bopeep from the lower surfaces of the leaves of the wild pine, (a sort of Brobdignag parasite, that grows, like the mistletoe, in the clefts of the larger trees,) to which they clung, as green and shining as the leaves themselves, and ever and anon popping their little heads and shoulders over to peer at us; while the red—breasted ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... between these priests and the occultists of other lands. The Druidic priests were well versed in astronomy and astrology, and the planets had an important part in the teachings. A portion of their ritual is said to have correspondences with the early Jewish rites and worship. Their favorite symbol—the mistletoe—was used as indicating re-birth, the mistletoe being the new life springing forth from the old one, typified by the oak. The Druids traveled into Ancient Britain and Ireland, and many traces of their religious rites may still be found there, not only in the shape of the stone ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... plants which mimic the stem characters of some of the smaller kinds of Cactus. Again, in the Cactuses themselves we have curious cases of plant mimicry; as, for instance, the Rhipsalis, which looks like a bunch of Mistletoe, and the Pereskia, the leaves and habit of which are more like what belong to, say, the Gooseberry family than to a form of Cactus. From this it will be seen that although these plants are almost all succulent, and curiously formed, they are by no means singular ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... sweaters for the heathen in South Africa to be ignored. But in that year of grace, 1897, there had been so many demands made upon everybody, from the Saint William's Hospital for Trolley Victims, from the Mistletoe Inn, a club for workingmen which was in its initial stages and most worthily appealed to the public purse, and for the University Extension Society, whose ten-cent lectures were attended by the swellest people in Dumfries Corners and their daughters—and so on—that the collections of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... like cranes standing on one leg with their heads slanted in pensive contemplation. There were no vineyards, but orchards aplenty near the farmhouses, and all about there were other trees pollarded to the quick and tufted with mistletoe, not only the stout oaks, but the slim poplars trimmed up into tall plumes like the poplars in southern France. The houses, when they did not stand apart like our own farmhouses, gathered into gray-brown villages around some high-shouldered church with a bell-tower in front or at ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... I want is to knock the B.P. with Christmas. The story is all blood and murder, but don't mind that—you must supply the antidote; put in the holly and mistletoe, plenty of snow and plum-pudding (the story was a seaside one in summer time). I like John Tenniel's work—give us a bit of him, with a dash of Du Maurier and a sprinkling of Leech here and there; but none of your Rembrandt effects—they ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the Millionaire's door and bethought himself. Like little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green thoughts and memories began to decorate his confused mind. He was quite drunk, mind you, and the present was beginning to fade. Those wreaths and festoons of holly with their scarlet berries making the great hall gay—where had he seen such things before? ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... beautiful pictures That hang on Memory's wall, Is one of a dim old forest, That seemeth best of all; Not for its gnarled oaks olden, Dark with the mistletoe; Not for the violets golden, That sprinkle the vale below; Not for the milk-white lilies, That lean from the fragrant hedge, Coquetting all day with the sunbeams, And stealing their golden edge; Not for the vines ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... I am like to mistletoe, Which has no root, and cannot grow Or prosper, but by that same tree It clings about: so I by thee. What need I then to fear at all So long as I about thee crawl? But if that tree should fall and die, Tumble shall ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... in gleams of wintry moonlight; ivy, holly, and evergreen glistened in the ruddy glow of mingled firelight and candle shine. From the arched stone roof hung tattered banners, and in the midst depended a great bunch of mistletoe. Red-cushioned seats stood in recessed window nooks, and from behind a high-covered screen of oak sounded the blithe air of Sir Roger ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... Casta Diva is sung—the "inconstant moon" that then and thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut from that impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping springs essayed to beat time, and the private box-like obscurity of the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... longer sing, O blackbird, sitting on the topmost spray; this tree is thine enemy; hasten where the vine rises in clustering shade of silvered leaves; on her bough rest the sole of thy foot, around her sing and pour the shrill music of thy mouth; for the oak carries mistletoe baleful to birds, and she the grape-cluster; ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... resplendent in that delicate species of beauty which attends the fairest complexion. It was, she thought, the Britoness Vanda; but her countenance was no longer resentful—her long yellow hair flew not loose on her shoulders, but was mysteriously braided with oak and mistletoe; above all, her right hand was gracefully disposed of under her mantle; and it was an unmutilated, unspotted, and beautifully formed hand which crossed the brow of Eveline. Yet, under these assurances of favour, a thrill ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and after a wedding-breakfast, which lasted all day, he went to a theatre to ask for two free passes. When he came back his bride was gone. He sought her with all the ardour of the bridegroom in the ballad of "The Mistletoe Bough," and with more success. Madame Ling was reading a novel at home. Mr. Carlyle has quoted Tobias Smollett as to the undesirability of giving the historical muse that latitude which is not uncommon in France, and we prefer to leave the tale of Ling's ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the mistletoe was also sacred especially when entwining the oak. Together they represented the Tree of Life, or the two generating agencies throughout Nature. Of the species of it which grows on the oak, Borlaise says that ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... mistletoe, the favourite Druidical plant, the sorcerer is entreated, in an old balled, to lay aside, to seek no more for vain enchantments, but to remember that he ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence |
