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Ditty   Listen
noun
Ditty  n.  (pl. ditties)  
1.
A saying or utterance; especially, one that is short and frequently repeated; a theme. "O, too high ditty for my simple rhyme."
2.
A song; a lay; a little poem intended to be sung. "Religious, martial, or civil ditties." "And to the warbling lute soft ditties sing."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books



... sword interested her to be an Amazon, and following her warily to a fine close arbour, he heard her sing, with a voice no less beautiful to his ears than her goodliness was full of harmony to his sight. The ditty gave him suspicion, and the voice gave him assurance who the singer was, and entering boldly he perceived ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... man draws near; 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 ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... upflinging of dust. Pink, with a quite obtrusive facetiousness, began lustily chanting that it looked to him like a big night to-night—with occasional, furtive glances at Weary's face; for he, also, had been quick to read those close-pressed lips, which did not soften in response to the ditty. Usually he laughed at ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... must be maintained. But in maintaining 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... observes that he has committed only one plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth sweetly ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... cavalier) sang 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 your approval ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... parents are actually being offered a premium of three hundred pounds to remove their sons from Osborne. On the other hand promotion from the lower deck was to be encouraged, and in future every youngster entering the Navy would metaphorically carry a broad-pennant in his ditty-box. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... warm— 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

... shade Which a group of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring, Everything did banish moan, Save the nightingale alone; She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, That to hear it was great pity.... Ah, thought I, thou mourn'st in vain, None takes pity on thy pain. Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee; Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee; King Pandion he is dead, All thy friends ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... after cheer follows; and, as we approach the thin column of smoke curling over the trees between us, Styles bestrides the prostrate form of the still sleeping professor and makes the calliope yell and shriek that classic ditty, "Old Gray Horse, come out of the Wilderness!" ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... it! Go, by all means. I will make myself jolly until you return," said Cloudy, walking up and down the floor whistling a love ditty, and thinking of little Jacko. He always thought of her with tenfold intensity whenever he returned home and came ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... with kisses.) Oh, you've been and rubbed off some of your cheek on my complexion—you dirty boy! (He playfully "bashes" ALF's hat in.) Now show the comp'ny how pretty you can sing. (ALF attempts a Music-hall ditty, in which he, not unnaturally, breaks down.) It ain't my son's fault, Ladies and Gentlemen, it's all this little gal in front here, lookin' at him and makin' him shy! (To a small Child, severely.) You oughter know worse, you ought! (Clumps of sea-weed and paper-balls are ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... docility, the youth was now all submission. He walked up and down any number of times like a tame animal at the Zoological Gardens, and now quite agreed that his name was Mary Jones. He sang "Tom Bowling" at command, and No. 6, not to be outdone, warbled a ditty called, I think, "The Slave Girl's Love," the refrain of which, according to her version, was, "I cannot love, because I ham a slave." She broke down in the middle of this aspiring ditty, and then personated a Jew old clo' man, a woman selling "ornaments for your firestoves," ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... the 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 ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... which breaks, like a suppressed sigh, through the free and light music of that Swabian era. The brightest sky of spring is not without its clouds in Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Whether we listen to a short ditty, or to the epic ballads of the "Nibelunge," or to Wolfram's grand poems of the "Parcival" and the "Holy Grail," it is the same everywhere. There is always a mingling of light and shade,—in joy a fear of sorrow, in sorrow a ray of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... these are rather songs on Greek motives than translations from the Greek, the slackness and dilution matter less. But the strictly miscellaneous division holds some of the best work. We could no doubt dispense with the well-known ditty (for once very nearly the "rubbish" with which Moore is so often and so unjustly charged) where Posada rhymes of necessity to Granada, and where, quite against the author's habit, the ridiculous term "Sultana" is fished out to do similar duty ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!— your "Braes of Balquidder," and "Yon Burnside," and "Gloomy Winter," and the "Minstrel's" wailing ditty, and the noble "Gleneiffer." Oh! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles! Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to loom, ministering to the low-hearted; and when the breast was filled with everything but hope and happiness, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... which marked Dr Johnson, Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled The Window, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by Strahan in December 1870. "A puppet," Tennyson called the song-book, "whose only merit is, perhaps, that it can ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... its 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 when "on end clothes" ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... faggot-cutting, and the bunches lay piled amidships, while fore and aft they plied their oars, and sang. The gloaming hid all but sound and sex, and threw its veil of romance over the trollers, who sent their hearts out thus across the twilight sea. The song, no doubt some common ditty, gathered a pathos over the water through the night. It swept from one side of us to the other, softened with distance, lingered in detached strains, and then was hushed, leaving us once more alone with ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... 'Spring Soon,' and kept it up with good heart more or less all through the winter's direst storms, till at length the waning of the Hunger Moon, our February, seemed really to lend some point to the ditty, and they redoubled their optimistic announcement to the world in an 'I-told-you-so' mood. Soon good support was found, for the sun gained strength and melted the snow from the southern slope of Castle Frank Hill, and exposed ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... movements, his bright oriole colors flashing as he dashed through a patch of sunlight,—a beautiful object, but a perfectly silent one. When his happiness demanded expression he flew to a maple-tree, and poured out his soul in the quaint though not very musical ditty of his race. Sometimes he stood still on a branch, like a bird who has something to say; but more often he rushed around after insects on this tree, and threw in the notes between the firm ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... they found Ross there. He was sitting at the piano strumming a music-hall ditty. As the door opened be shuffled to his feet, shook hands distantly with Auntie Nan, and nodded his ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... This affecting ditty was being sung with great gusto by King and Marjorie, while Kitty, her mood divided between smiles and tears, was ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... the mellow wedding-bells, 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 swinging and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... direction, were steering along, very soberly, under a bright moonlight, when something put it into the heads of some other stragglers of the party to break out, at the top of their voices, into a stanza of that immortal ditty—"We won't go home till morning." Instantly we could hear a window, which we well knew to be the dean's, open above us, and as the unmelodious chorus went on, his wrath found vent in the usual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... large imperial was incessantly agitated by nervous trembling—but he restrained himself. Taking, by two of the corners, the handkerchief which he had just dipped in the water, he shook it, wrung it, and began to hum to himself the burden of the old camp ditty: ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... 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

... 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, managed ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... he sat blond and roseate and gay, warbling after his fashion on the hearth, her clouded old eyes were relumed with a radiance that came from within and was independent of the prosaic light of day. His favorite ditty was an old nursery rhyme in which the name "Pretty Polly Hopkins" occurs with flattering iteration, and he began to apply it to her, for he had come to think her very beautiful—such is the gracious ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... saucer of caraway seeds, bowls of pickles, peppers, pickled peppers and rye bread with plenty of mustard, pretzels or cheese straws, smearcase and schwarzbrot. Beer and cheese forever together, as in the free-lunch ditty of that great day: ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... it began, what art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not die now-a-days, either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them. And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, too. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... tomatoes. Cook for a little while together, then add half a pound of sharp cheese, three or four pimentos, and a small tin of mushrooms; also add a tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce. Cook all together slowly for a while, then pour over toast or crackers. This is also called "rinktum ditty." ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core

... about southbound passage, he was told to go down and board the first steamer at the pierhead, and that it would leave at eleven that night. So he took all his meager belongings, which he could easily carry in a blanket roll and a sailor's ditty-bag, and went down half an hour before sailing time. There seemed no one to bar his passage, and he passed up the gangplank aboard a two-funnelled, clean-decked steamer, and made his way to a smoking ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... my mother was wont to sing it to the virginals. 'Cold to 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

... medium. It lies with wondering blue eyes watching the coloured toys which she dangles before it, and takes in the elements of form and colour. She pats it to sleep, and, on the borders of dream-land, those "sphere- born, harmonious sisters, voice and verse," visit it in the form of a plaintive ditty, which has ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two adjoining rye-fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to listen, and soon recognized Aasa's yellow hair over the tops the rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father's countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... and "squalidus" is "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to tip him a kiss;" "pingue ingenium" ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... 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, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... resource for which it would be vain to look in the multifarious compositions of the Kapellmeisters of the period. 'Der Widerspaenstigen Zaehmung' follows the incidents of 'The Taming of the Shrew' very closely. The action begins at night. Lucentio is serenading Bianca, but his ditty is interrupted by a riot among Baptista's servants, who refuse to submit any longer to Katharine's ill-treatment. Peace is restored, and Lucentio resumes his song. A second interruption is in store for him in the shape of Hortensio, another ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... 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 ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... or girl has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis

... called on for a good old Christmas song. 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,— ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment. Gavroche did not think of this. This post was occupied by the National Guards of the suburbs. The squad began to wake up, and heads were raised from camp beds. Two street lanterns broken in succession, that ditty sung at the top of the lungs. This was a great deal for those cowardly streets, which desire to go to sleep at sunset, and which put the extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour. For the last ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... that the wife of the former was a Frenchwoman, and, conscious of each other's knowledge, felt doubly awkward, while Molly was as much confused as though she herself were secretly married. However, Cynthia carolled the saucy ditty out, and her mother smiled at it, in total ignorance of any application it might have. Osborne had instinctively gone to stand behind Cynthia, as she sate at the piano, so as to be ready to turn ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... went below to the officers' corridor. Now and then, through the quiet, a mandolin or guitar could be heard far off twanging some sentimental island ditty; and beneath these sweeter sounds lay a ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... Marlborough. An epic, indeed a dozen of them, was converted to white ashes before the single sheet of an old ballad was half consumed. In more than one case, too, when volumes of applauded verse proved incapable of anything better than a stifling smoke, an unregarded ditty of some nameless bard—perchance in the corner of a newspaper—soared up among the stars with a flame as brilliant as their own. Speaking of the properties of flame, methought Shelley's poetry emitted a purer light than almost any other ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... his calling, and there can be little doubt but he is the finisher of many, after the Finish; he is, however, generally good humoured, communicative, and facetious, and seldom refuses to see any person in company for a mighty, usually concluding the result with a mirthful ditty, or a doleful countenance, according to the situation in which he is left as a winner or a loser; and in either case accompanied with a brightness of visage, or a dull dismal countenance, indicative of the event, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... persuade myself either Constantine Attila or the Popes themselves have chased them all away. I think I should have found some out, who would have fed me with milk and chestnuts, have sung me a Latian ditty, and mourned the woeful changes which have taken place, since their sacred groves were felled, and Faunus ceased to be oracular. Who can tell but they would have given me some mystic skin to sleep on, that I might have looked ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... jolly song, your Honor," continued Pothier, waving one hand in cadence to a ditty in praise of wine, which a loud voice was heard singing in the Chateau, accompanied by a rousing chorus which startled the very pigeons on the roof and chimney-stacks. Colonel Philibert recognized the song as one he had heard in the Quartier Latin, during his student ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... never went off.... It never went off... you will understand the allusion. This song achieved instant popularity, and when Tartarin was passing, the stevedores on the quay and the grubby urchins hanging round his door would chant this insulting little ditty... only they sang it from a safe distance because ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... was still drinking heavily, his face crimson and blear-eyed and brutalized, his speech thickened disgustingly. He was sprawled in an armchair, waving an empty glass in an erratic attempt to mark the time of a college ditty six or seven years out of date, which he was trying to sing. He leered ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... to chant this ditty to his loving subjects, was a monstrously fat old man, with only one eye; and a nose which bore evidence to the frequency, strength, and depth of his potations. He wore a murrey-coloured plush jerkin, stained with ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Cousin, saies the t'other, it seems that you are deeply studied in the Art of Witchcraft, for I fear its too true. I went from home on purpose to take my pleasure for three weeks or a month, that I might store my self with fresh provisions, and sing a sweet ditty in commendations of my Betty. Ho, Ho, saith Master Barebreech, flatter not your self with such a fancy, that you'l get as much up again in three weeks or a month, as you have been running behind hand in four. If you'l do well, let's for a frolick go into France, there's a gallant air, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... bursts of music That make the forests ring, Comes the swelling, happy ditty His birdship ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... calf. From Traquair to Murder Cairn, the hill rung with the discordant attempts of the Saxon upon the unmanageable monosyllable, and the heartfelt laugh which followed every failure. They had, however, better modes of awakening the echoes; for Wakefield could sing many a ditty to the praise of Moll, Susan, and Cicely, and Robin Oig had a particular gift at whistling interminable pibrochs through all their involutions, and what was more agreeable to his companion's southern ear, knew many of the northern airs, both lively and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... Bowldler to Palmerston later on, as they sat drinking in that ditty, one on either side of the kitchen table, "it can't sing, but the words is that I dreamt I dwelt in Marble Halls with Princes and Peers by my si-i-ide—just like that. Princes!" She leaned back in the cheap chair ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... feel that the author is a little too well pleased with himself? Do you not fancy that he will soon be regaling his sitter with a good, round platitude from the exterior boulevards or a morsel from some regimental ditty in which he once excelled, that, in another moment, he will be tapping him on the back, and that he has gone a little out of his way to tell you these things? The Primitives tell us nothing of that sort; they stick to their business of creating significant form. ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... turns round and 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 trip, never make ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... both country and city, Come listen with patience, and hear out my ditty: At this time I'll choose to be wiser than ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... Francis Hopkinson, Barry's accuser of want of respect for him made the event memorable by a humorous ditty reflecting upon ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin

... another day of toil is here; come to work." It is monotonous as a frog chorus, but there is a merry thrill in the notes of the amphibian which are entirely wanting in the song. If it were not for the light-hearted tremolo of the chewink thrown in now and then, and the loud, cheery ditty of the summer yellow-bird, who begins soon after the pewee, one would be almost superstitious about so unnatural a greeting to the new day. The evening call of the bird is different. He will sit far ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... 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 ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... into a wooden pail And sang a country ditty, An innocent fond lovers' tale, That was not wise nor witty, Pathetically rustical, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... times more, the sad little ditty was sung; then the sweet voice slipped softly into Holland's "Lullaby," which had been learned from hearing it sung by Miss Lucy ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd

... face, for tears of uncontrollable regret that he had not been born a "swain" (as he put it). Suddenly, however, one of his roulades ceased with more abruptness than usual and the enchanted Tristram waited in vain for the ditty to be resumed. The fact was that Captain Salt had glanced out of the window and seen at a stable door across the court a man stooping with his back to the inn and washing down the legs of a dark ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... has seen as bad hexameters since. But then the matter was serious. There is a story (I know not how true) that Spenser was half bullied into re-writing the "Faerie Queene" in hexameters, had not Raleigh, a true romanticist, "whose vein for ditty or amorous ode was most lofty, insolent, and passionate," persuaded him to follow his better genius. The great dramatists had not yet arisen, to form completely that truly English school, of which Spenser, unconscious of his own vast powers, was laying the foundation. And, indeed, it was not till ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... fell in love with the little creature at the first sight of him—and fed him, on the evening of his arrival, with crumpets and buttered toast. And in return he danced "La Dieppoise" for her, and sang her a little ungrammatical ditty in praise of wine ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... but when I did dare, to my amazement, she was smiling good-humoredly, and I saw the words meant nothing to her. But the chorus was interrupted at that moment by a single voice which I recognized at once as Josef Papin's, singing a ditty about doves and cuckoos and nightingales, and winding up by declaring that he was dying for the soft eyes of his mistress. I saw that mademoiselle recognized the voice, too, and I was vexed to see the bright color ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... was just out of hailing distance. Nobody seemed stirring. The whole shore and back land thereabout was deserted; the edge of the city was four miles distant. Hoang returned to the forecastle-hatch and went below, groping under his bunk in his ditty-box. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... easily from the saddle, led his horse toward the corral, and whistled a sprightly ditty as he ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... approvingly 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 can put into ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... then came a steep hill. While the pony was pulling and tugging with all his might, the girl bounced off, landing like a wood-nymph about six feet in the rear of the cariole; when, with strides that perfectly astonished me, she began to march up the hill, singing a lively Norwegian ditty as she sprang over the ruts and ridges of the road. I halted in amazement. This would never do. Respect for the gentler sex would not permit me to ride up the hill while so lovely a creature was taking it on foot. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... begun. Harriet and Jane handled the irons. 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

... I cried, Dare I woo and wed a bride? I, like thee, have no home-nest; And the twin notes thus tuned their ditty, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... 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

... cottage sat the grandmother knitting and nodding, with white hair shining under her snowy cap-border; and while the carpenter carved and whistled an old-fashioned ditty, "Meet me by moonlight alone," the girl in a quavering ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... Mrs. Gossip, it is our duty to take care of the child, it must have good food that it may be strong. I know a sheep-fold from which we might fetch a nice morsel." The wolf was pleased with the ditty, and she went out with the fox to the farm-yard. He pointed out the fold from afar, and said, "You will be able to creep in there without being seen, and in the meantime I will look about on the other side to see if I can pick up a chicken." ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... England" sung, because of his own country's successes, some time ago. They were gallant and conspicuous victories of the American frigates; we do not grudge them. A fair fight should leave no rancour, above all in the victors, and Dr. Holmes's withers would have been unwrung by Campbell's ditty. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... she could bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering when her husband would come and rescue her from these beasts. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... still, and nature's pleasing themes, Pour'd forth his unpremeditated strain: The world forsaking with a calm disdain. Here laugh'd he, careless in his easy seat; Here quaff'd, encircl'd with the joyous train, Oft moralizing sage: his ditty sweet He loathed much to write, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... great sycamore trees. Through open doorways she would catch glimpses of picturesque groups of eager card-players, crowded round a flickering candle. From the darkness there would steal the sound of flute or zither, of voices singing. Occasionally it would be some strident ditty of the Paris music-halls, but more often it was sad and plaintive. But early in October the rains commenced and the stream became a roaring torrent, and a clammy mist lay like a white river between the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... dog," she 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 went on staining ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... the fact that 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... 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 ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton

... to sleep in a wee loft. I could not sleep. I was always seeing those wounded men passing, passing, and in my ear—like the maddening refrain of a musical comedy ditty—there was always murmuring—"We shall never return. It doesn't matter." Outside was the clink and clatter of the column, the pitiful curses of tired men, the groaning roar of the motor-lorries as they toiled up ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... will praise 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 ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... Wharton, carelessly looking 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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... got a noospaper in my ditty-box down below as will tell you all about it, and then, p'r'aps, you'll feel as if you'd believe there wos sich ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... had chosen was a bright little Irish ditty, with a catchy tune and lively accompaniment. Garnet played the air softly on the mandoline, and the two girls sang in unison, keeping strictly together, and pronouncing very plainly, so that the point of the amusing words should ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... song is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... part, I am content with the Abbess Juliana, who wrote enthusiastically about hawking; and after her I would mention Anne Askew, who in prison and on the eve of her fiery martyrdom wrote a ballad that has, at any rate, a pathetic and historical interest. Queen Elizabeth's 'most sweet and sententious ditty' on Mary Stuart is highly praised by Puttenham, a contemporary critic, as an example of 'Exargasia, or the Gorgeous in Literature,' which somehow seems a very suitable epithet for such a great Queen's poems. The term she applies to the unfortunate Queen of Scots, 'the daughter ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... sometimes almost to fury. He loved music,—not, as he said, the bray of trumpets and the squeak of fiddles, but melody; and occasionally, seated at a piano, he sang, in a voice sweet and low and full of pathos, some tender English ditty. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... squint-eyed woman had been taken ill of a fever, and removed to the town in a tilted ambulance; and as she had lain quivering and moaning on the stretcher she had seemed still to be singing her little ditty about the graveyard and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... the most of my attention. It was pleasant to find here two comparatively rare warblers, of whom I had before had only casual glimpses,—the mourning warbler and the bay-breasted. The former was singing his loud but commonplace ditty within a few rods of the piazza on one side of the house, while his congener, the Maryland yellow-throat, was to be heard on the other side, along with the black-cap (Dendroeca striata), the black-and-yellow, and the Canadian flycatcher. The mourning warbler's song, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... reason why her cheeks had remained pink, and flushed not thistle purple like the rest of her countenance. Even the serving-man smiled to himself, a mocking smile, and hummed in a low voice, as he continued to lay the blows thickly on Miles, a ditty having this refrain— ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... be as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen 10 The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such as did once the Poet bless, [1] Who murmuring here a later [C] ditty, [2] Could find no refuge from distress 15 But in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... companions, who on their parts renew an old acquaintance with the princess's attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest: every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and rallies the king and the two others, till the discovery of a love-letter forces him also to hang ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... be doubted whether Virgil himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty. Why otherwise did he not simply and at once—as his masters Homer and Theocritus had done before him—describe her notes as mournful, instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for giving them that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... he told himself. That ancient ditty, "The Yeoman's Wedding," that he had often heard Dr. Mangan sing, attacked him like an illness, and enforced its galloping metres ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... boy drop off by degrees to sleep under the gentle motion and the lulling song. They sang and rocked till the lids came creeping down, and hid the great blue eyes; but still they sang and rocked, lulling the boy, and gladdening their own hearts; for the quaint old Breton ditty was tunable as the lark that carols over the green wheat in April; and the words so simple and motherly, that a nation had taken them to heart. Such songs bind ages together and make the lofty and the low akin by the great ties of music and the heart. Many a Breton peasant's ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... 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 complaint, of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... called upon to accompany M. du Bartas on the piano while he mangled the great solo from Figaro; and the way being opened to music, the audience, as in duty bound listened while Chatelet in turn sang one of Chateaubriand's ballads, a chivalrous ditty made in the time of the Empire. Duets followed, of the kind usually left to boarding-school misses, and rescued from the schoolroom by Mme. du Brossard, who meant to make a brilliant display of her dear Camille's talents ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... me this means coffee, tea, sugar, canned milk, dried fruit, rice, cornmeal, flour and baking powder mixture, a little bacon, butter, and seasoning. This will weigh less than ten pounds. With other minor appurtenances in the ditty bag, including an arrow-repairing kit, one's burden is less than ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... the moment when once more his persecutor was commencing his childish ditty, he felt as if, from the top of a mountain a hundred miles away, a cold cloud came journeying through the sky, and descended upon him. He opened his eyes: there was Joan, and the cold cloud was her soft cool hand on his forehead. The next thing he knew ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... copy of the ballad, which was about a recent double suicide: "The sorrowful ditty of Tamayone and Takejiro,— composed by Tabenaka Yone of Number Fourteen of the Fourth Ward of Nippon-bashi in the South District of the City of Osaka." It had evidently been printed from a wooden block; and there were two little pictures. One showed a girl and boy sorrowing together. The ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... and mount you with the sun, Call all the winds to make you speedy wings, And to my fairest Maya see you run And weep your last while wantonly she sings; Then if you cannot move her heart to pity, Let Oh, alas, ay me be all your ditty. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... from savages, as in this instance of their forebearance. For somewhat similar reasons, perhaps, married people alone are here permitted to eat ducks. They hold their corrobories, (midnight ceremonies), and sing the same melancholy ditty that breaks the stillness of night on the shores of Jervis' Bay, or on the banks of the Macquarie; and during the ceremony imitate the several birds and beasts with which they are acquainted. If these inland tribes differ in anything from those on the coast, it is in the mode of burying ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... nectar. Van Dam told a shark story. Mavick demonstrated its innate improbability. The Major sang a song—a song of the forties, with a touch of sentiment. Jack, whose cheerful voice was a little of the cider-cellar order, and who never sang when he was sad, struck up the latest vaudeville ditty, and Carmen and Miss Tavish joined in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... settin' 'round when this lover of Polly's shows in the door, drinkin' an' warblin' that entertainin' ditty, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... whipped; give fifty or more lashes—and they'd count them lashes. If they said a hundred you got a hundred. They wuz somethin' lak the Klu Klux. We wuz 'fraid to tell our masters about the patty rollers because we wuz skeered they'd whip us again, fur we wuz tole not to tell. They'd sing a little ditty. Ah wish Ah could remember the words, but it went somethin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... "Behold here's a ditty, 'tis true and no jest Concerning a young gentleman in the East, Who by his great gaming came to poverty, And afterwards went many voyages ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... and preening his feathers a second, the while humming a little love ditty comes very close and whispers; 'Love, will you be mine?' And the answer is so low that nothing but ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... and how, before our door, Danced the bright waters!—from his perch on high The hang-bird sang his ditty o'er and o'er, And the song-sparrow ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... that," a seargeant said; "But where's poor Pansy? gone, I fear" "Ay, mustered out at Ashby's Gap" "I see; now for a live man's song; Ditty for ditty—prepare to cheer. My bluebirds, you can fling ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... 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. —Ah! thought I, thou mourn'st in vain, None takes pity ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... isn't 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? Something about ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... light on him and on the lute he was playing. To the faint sound of the instrument, which was rather a large one, and which he had propped on the pillow by his side, he was singing, or rather murmuring a long ditty. Twice, thrice, four times he repeated it in the same way. Now and again he suddenly let his voice sound more loudly—and though his hair was quite grey his voice was not unpleasing—and sang a few phrases full of expression ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... him home." Thus he spoke; but they stood off. and made way for the chariot. But when they had brought him into the illustrious palace, they laid him upon perforated beds, and placed singers beside him, leaders of the dirges, who indeed sang a mournful ditty, while the women also uttered responsive groans. And amongst them white-armed Andromache began the lamentation, holding the head of ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... miserable, man and Neal, often retired beyond the hearing of their respective wives, and supported each other by every argument in their power. Often have they been heard, in the dusk of evening, singing behind a remote hedge that melancholy ditty, "Let us both be unhappy together;" which rose upon the twilight breeze with a cautious quaver of sorrow truly ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... [CH] sitting under midnight's misty moon, Lo I see the spirits flitting o'er the waters one by one! Slumber wraps the silent city, and the droning mills are dumb; One lone whippowil's shrill ditty calls her mate that ne'er will come. Sadly moans the mighty river, foaming down the fettered falls, Where of old he thundered ever o'er abrupt and lofty walls. Great Unktehee—god of waters—lifts ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... the mountains, Where flow malignant fountains. We are ready for you—Come! Vampires from the passes, Where grow blood-sucking grasses, We are ready for you—Come! Vice Elementals pretty Give ear unto our ditty We are ready for you—Come! Planetians, forms so fearful, We inform you, eager, tearful, We are ready for you—Come! Clanogrians, things of sorrow. Postpone not till to-morrow, We are ready for you—Come! Barrowvians, shades seclusive, Be not to us exclusive, We are ready for you—Come! Earthbound ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... from the brook, These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove unalarmed Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach. Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... and roses, gathered by unseen hands, evidently appertaining to aforesaid legs, were being dropped into the laps of several girls perched like a flock of white birds on the railing below; while a manly voice 'fell like a falling star', as it sung this pensive ditty to ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... and deep Through the noisome and smoke-grimed city, Turning the wheels and the spindles, And the great looms that have no pity,— Weight, and pulley, and windlass, And steel that flashes and kindles, And hears no forest-learnt ditty, Not ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... English—stood with his back to the chimney a few feet away, watching his companion. The silence between them was as yet unbroken, had lasted, indeed, since she had stolen away from the shabby drawing-room below, where a florid lady with a raucous voice had been shouting a music-hall ditty. Close upon her heels, but without speech of any sort, he had followed. They were almost strangers, except for the occasional word or two of greeting which the etiquette of the establishment demanded. Yet she had accepted his espionage without any protest of ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... verse of a half-Swedish ballad about a "girl so true," that he wished he then had by his side, for the time without her seemed so long. Now and then the spray of a sea would bring him more sharply to himself, but it did not last long; and so the ditty, which was melancholy to the last degree, would ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... mellow wedding bells— 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, All in time, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! O, 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 rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... a lover's sin Let them not read my ditty, it will be To their dull ears so musicless and thin That they will have no joy of it, but ye To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile, Ye who have learned who ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... could repeat The Rhyme of the Three Sealers in his sleep, and most of The Lady of the Lake. He used to lie and sing at the top of his voice, sometimes: The Chisholm Trail—unexpurgated—and Sam Bass and that doleful ditty about the Lone Prairie, and quaint old Scottish songs he had heard his mother sing, long and long ago. His leg would heal of itself if he let it alone long enough, he reminded himself often. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... was too strong as yet to be crushed. In dismissing Marlborough, Great Britain had lost one of her chief assets. His name had become a terror to France. To this day, both in France and in French Canada, is sung the popular ditty "Monsieur Malbrouck est mort," a song of delight at a report that Marlborough was dead. When in place of Marlborough leaders of the type of General Hill were appointed to high command, France could not be finally beaten. The Treaty ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... in 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 History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... be the consequences of irritating her friend, and trembling with the fear of doing so, poor Nell sang him some little ditty which she had learned in happier times, and which was so agreeable to his ear, that on its conclusion he in the same peremptory manner requested to be favoured with another, to which he was so obliging ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... has a better ear than Dryden or Handel. Apropos to Dryden, he has burlesqued his St. Cecilia, that you will never read it again without laughing. There is a description of a milliner's box in all the terms of landscape, painted lawns and chequered shades, a Moravian ode, and a Methodist ditty, that are incomparable, and the best names that ever were composed. I can say it by heart, though a quarto, and if I had time would write it you down; for it is not yet reprinted, and not one to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... Mr. Selwyn's lips, I burst forth incontinent into the following ditty, the words extemporised to the tune ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... this, O comrades, ready before us. Busy the virgins muse, their practis'd ditty recalling, Muse nor shall miscarry; a song for memory waits us. Rightly; for all their souls do inwards ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... chorus. The soft 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 sea-lust. His ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... must I hang my self, my friends will look for't. Eating and sleeping, I do despise you both now: I will run mad first, and if that get not pitty, I'le drown my self, to a most dismal ditty. [Exit Savil. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... whortleberry bushes, where he was effectually concealed. Scarcely had he done this, when to his great terror he saw two Indians peeping cautiously out of a thick canebrake. Deceived by the song of Yates, who with stentorian lungs was still giving forth his woodland ditty, they supposed both had passed. Young Downing thought it impossible but that the savages must have seen him as he concealed himself. Greatly alarmed he raised his gun, intending to shoot one and to trust to his heels for escape ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... and sleepy there it nestled, seeming far from hastening Time, As a teeny-tiny village in some quaint old nursery rhyme, And a teeny-tiny river by a teeny-tiny weir Sang a teeny-tiny ditty that I stayed a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... the rope pullers' heads. It was then allowed to fall with a thud. After each thud the pullers moved along a foot so that the block should drop on a fresh spot. The gangs hauling at the rammers worked to the tune of a plaintive ditty which went slowly so as to give them plenty of breathing time. It was ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... their melodies are by no means uniformly sad, some ditty of the joyousness of springtime or the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... he has become a prime mover in a folksong and folklore conservation movement called American Folkways Association. "There are a lot of McCoys," he says, "who can pick a banjo and sing as fine a ditty as you ever heard. There's Bud McCoy over on Levisa Fork. Never saw his betters when it comes to picking the banjo. We've played together a whole day at a stretch and never played the same tune twice. We just stop long enough to eat ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... body begins to feal the trip now, geting tiresome now. since they have taken all of our ditty Boxes and benches and all extra mess chests and stored them away, we have no place to sit down except on deck and let our feet hang over. then the men forward cant get enough water to keep themselves clean. I am more lucky than ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross

... within his arm, Wi' usquebae an' blankets warm— 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

... beneath the hollyhocks I spied the tiny tailor who makes the fairies' frocks; There he sat a-stitching all the afternoon And sang a little ditty to a quaint wee tune: "Grey for the goblins, blue for the elves, Brown for the little gnomes that live by themselves, White for the pixies that dance upon the green, But where shall I find me a robe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various

... to his oar, With measured sweep the burden bore, In such wild cadence, as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allan know, 395 "Roderick Vich Alpine, ho! iro!" And near, and nearer as they rowed, Distinct the martial ditty flowed. ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... it with apple parings, and they started forth in a procession, Nana drawing the shoe in front, followed by the whole flock, little and big, an imp about the height of a cigar box at the end. They all sang a melancholy ditty full of "ahs" and "ohs." Nana declared this to be always the custom ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola



Words linked to "Ditty" :   ditty bag, song, vocal



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