Does anyone know if you can echo a line to the screen from within a SQL script?

I've got a SQL script that takes quite a long time to execute and I'd like to have the script print a line to the screen showing what is being executed. What I'm trying to do is the equivalent of a bash echo, so something like echo "Loading table X". I could do this in a bash script, but that would require me to either be at the terminal while the script is running so I could supply my MySQL password or to hard-code my password into the script. Obviously I'm not thrilled about either option. Similarly, I could use the -vvv option to echo the command to the screen, but I'm wondering if there is something a little more elegant.