# Maiden

A maiden or maid is a female virgin or, more broadly, merely an unmarried young woman or girl. Related terms include damsel and wench.

## Quotes

* There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.
** Book of Proverbs, 30, 18–19 (KJV)
** The Hebrew word is עַלְמָה (ʻalmâh)
* Then when they had had their joy of food, she and her handmaids, they threw off their head-gear and fell to playing at ball, and white-armed Nausicaa was leader in the song. And even as Artemis, the archer, roves over the mountains, along the ridges of lofty Taÿgetus, or Erymanthus, joying in the pursuit of boars and swift deer, and with her sport the wood-nymphs, the daughters of Zeus who bears the aegis, and Leto is glad at heart—high above them all Artemis holds her head and brows, and easily may she be known, though all are fair—so amid her handmaidens shone the maid unwed.
** Homer, Odyssey, VI, 77–133 (tr. A. T. Murray)
* O I forbid you, maidens a’, That wear gowd on your hair, To come or gae by Carterhaugh, For young Tam Lin is there.For even about that knight’s middle O’ siller bells are nine; And nae maid comes to Carterhaugh And a maid returns again.
** Tam Lin
* And lang, lang may the maidens sit Wi’ their gowd kames in their hair, A-waiting for their ain dear loves! For them they’ll see nae mair.
** Sir Patrick Spens
* MAIDEN, n. A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, bleating out of the field by the canary — which, also, is more portable.
** Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
* Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
** William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)
* Maid of Athens, ere we part, Give, oh give me back my heart!
** Lord Byron, "Maid of Athens, ere we part" (1810)
* A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.
** Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan (wr. 1797; pub. 1816)
* Though friendships differ endless in degree, The sorts, methinks, may be reduced to three. Acquaintance many, and Conquaintance few, But for Inquaintance I know only two — The friend I've wept and the maid I woo.
** Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Three Sorts of Friends", in Frazer's Magazine (January 1835)
* If Love the Virgin's Heart invade, How, like a Moth, the simple Maid Still plays about the Flame!
** John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728), Air IV
* Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.
** Thomas Hardy, "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" (1917)
* Should ever the fine-eyed maid to me be kind; Ah! surely it must be whenever I find; Some flowery spot, sequestered, wild, romantic; That often must have seen a poet frantic.
** John Keats, "To George Felton Matthew" (November 1815)
* Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long; And so make Life, and Death, and that For-Ever, One grand sweet song
** Charles Kingsley, "A Farewell" (1856)
* The heart of a man to the heart of a maid — Light of my tents, be fleet — Morning awaits at the end of the world, And the world is all at our feet.
** Rudyard Kipling, "Gypsy Trail" (1904)
* How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!
** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Morituri Salutamus" (1875)
* Some times with secure delight The up-land Hamlets will invite, When the merry Bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the Chequer'd shade.
** John Milton, L'Allegro (1631)
* The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctances, will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will come together as human beings.
** Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter IV (16 July 1903)
* The rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music.
** William Shakespeare, in A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595); Oberon in Act II, Sc. 2
* Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.
** William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599); Rosalind, in Act IV, sc. 1
* He that would woo a maid must feign, lie and flatter, But he that woos a widow must down with his britches and at her.
** Nathaniel Smith (c. 1669), quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams (1943) by Edmund Fuller
* She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love.
** William Wordsworth, in "She dwelt among the untrodden ways" in Lyrical Ballads, 2nd edition (1800); also sometimes published as "Lucy" though it is but one of the Lucy poems.
* If you can kiss the mistress, never kiss the maid.
** Anonymous proverb, collected in A Hand-book of Proverbs: Comprising an Entire Republication of Ray's Collection of English Proverbs, with His Additions from Foreign Languages (1899) by John Ray, further edited by Henry George Bohn, p. 420
* "Where are you going, my pretty maid?" "I am going a-milking sir," she said. "May I go with you, my pretty maid?" "You are kindly welcome sir," she said. "What is your father, my pretty maid?" "My father's a farmer, sir," she said. "What is your fortune, my pretty maid?" "My face is my fortune, sir," she said. "Then I can't marry you, my pretty maid?" "Nobody asked you sir," she said.
** Anonymous nursery rhyme among those attributed to Mother Goose in various collections, including The First Book of Song and Story‎ (1903), edited by Cynthia May Westover Alden and Beatrice Stevens

### A Dictionary of Similes

    Reported in: Frank J. Wilstach, ed. A Dictionary of Similes (1916)
* The spotless maid is like the blooming rose Which on its native stem unsullied grows.
** Ariosto
* Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare, And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.
** Lord Byron
* Maids are like contentment in this life, Which all the world have sought, but none enjoy’d.
** Sir John Davies
* A maiden is like a half-blown damask rose, fair as a dream and full of the sweet fragrance of the purity of dawning womanhood.
** Annie E. Lancaster