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More "Witch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forms and ghostly apparitions—of spectres that flit about lonely roads on moonlight nights, or haunt peaceful people in their own homes; of funeral processions, with long trains of mourners, watched from a distance, but which, on nearer approach, melt into a line of mist; of wild witch-dances in deserted houses, and balls of fire bounding out of doors and windows—stories which cause the flesh of children to creep upon their bones, and make cowards of them where there is no reason for fear. For you may lay it down ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... or hell—either from God and his saints, or from the devil and his angels. Now, if any doubt could be thrown on the source whence Joan's aid came, the English might argue (as of course they did) that she was a witch and a heretic. If she was a heretic and a witch, then her king was involved in her wickedness, and so he might be legally shut out from his kingdom. It was necessary, therefore, that Joan should be examined by learned men. They ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and the whole atmosphere was filled with the glory of the crown of the year. By a clever contrivance, autumn leaves came fluttering down and Patty's bare feet nestled in them with childish enjoyment. Her smile was roguish, she was a witch, an eerie thing. The orange light glowed and shone, and at the height of a tumultuous burst of music, there was a sudden pause. Patty stopped still, her smile faded, and the colours changed from autumn glows to a cold wintry ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... Belphoebe; the story of Florimel and the Witch's son; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of Cupid; and Colin Clout's vision, in the last book. But some people will say that all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... me only to-night! If one of t' witch people wud come, them we heard oft' home, and gif hur all hur wants, what ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... with her wrath, does the Norseman feel pleasure. Nature to him was not, as in Mr. Longfellow's exquisite poem, {3} the kind old nurse, to take him on her knee and whisper to him, ever anew, the story without an end. She was a weird witch-wife, mother of storm demons and frost giants, who must be fought with steadily, warily, wearily, over dreary heaths and snow-capped fells, and rugged nesses and tossing sounds, and away into the boundless ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... pipers played ere a Celtic Medusa gazed at them and turned them into stone. Every one knows the story of the Rollright stones, a similar stone circle in Oxfordshire, which were once upon a time a king and his army, and were converted into stone by a witch who cast a fatal spell ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Princess clamoured for the promised game at once, and soon the flicker from the flaming bow lighted up the darkened nursery as, around the witch-like caldron, they watched their opportunity to snatch the lucky raisin. The room rang so loudly with fun and laughter that even the King himself, big of head and rickety of legs, shambled in good-humouredly to join in the sport that was giving ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... called Gods to serve his stead; Forth Aias like a beast, to mangle me— These things ye will not credit, but I see." Then once again, and last, she turned her switch On Helen, hissing, "Out upon thee, witch, Smooth-handed traitress, speak thy secrets out That we may know thee, how thou goest about Caressing, with a hand that hides a knife, That which shall prove false paramour, false wife, Fair as the sun is fair ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... reading it in the town while Lizzie went inside the shops. Then I forgot about it till just now. Oh, I must know what happened when the Prince went to see the old witch!" ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... once," she observed, innocently; "but I took her down to the cowslip meadow and lost her. We called her the White Witch, she was so pretty and so full of mischief. I made myself quite ill crying over her loss, we were so afraid she was killed," and here Fay buried her face in the little creature's fur, as she rocked herself to and ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is the name of this little bush? Why, it is the witch hazel. And sometime when you fall down and bump yourself hard grandma will go to the medicine closet and will bring out a bottle, and from that bottle she will pour something on that little sore place and it will make it feel better. Do you know what it ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... Saul visited the Witch of Endor, and she, by some magic spell, called up Samuel, the prophet said: "Why hast thou disquieted me, to call me up?" He did not say: Why have you called me from another world? The idea expressed is: ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Claus had cut was a rod of witch-hazel, which has the power of showing wherever treasure lies buried. But Claus knew no more of that than the ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... Doboobie, although it may be he never wrote even MAGISTER ARTIUM, save in right of his hungry belly. Or it may be, that if he had any degrees, they were of the devil's giving; for he was what the vulgar call a white witch, a cunning man, and such like.—Now, good sir, I perceive you are impatient; but if a man tell not his tale his own way, how have you warrant to think that he can tell it ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... teeth vindictively, and put an inch more onto his stride. He was descending a long, open valley that seemed from its trackless snows to have been immemorially life-shunned and accursed. Black, witch-like pines sentinelled its flanks, and accentuated its desolation. And over all there was the silence of the Wild, that double-strong solution of silence from which all other silences are distilled, and spread out. Yet, as he gazed around him in this everlasting ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... foreign novelists, each of whom, so far as I know, has only two books. This green-and-gold volume contains both the works of the Pomeranian Meinhold in an excellent translation by Lady Wilde. The first is "Sidonia the Sorceress," the second, "The Amber Witch." I don't know where one may turn for a stranger view of the Middle Ages, the quaint details of simple life, with sudden intervals of grotesque savagery. The most weird and barbarous things are made human and comprehensible. There is one incident which ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tell dat, but I done study hit out dis-a-way, dat mo'n likely de gal bin turnin' up her nose at some young Injun man, an' outer spite he done gone an' got some witch ter putt a spell on her so's't de Owl 'ud look lak a man an' she 'ud go an' th'ow husse'f away on a ol' no-kyount bu'd. Yas, I reckon dat wuz 'bout de way. An' now y'all better shet up dem peepers er you'll be gittin' lak ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... will believe no ill. All this a wondrous witch did tell me true: One who can guide the stars to work her will, Or turn a torrent's course ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... however, wholly prepared for what happened next. The man in green, riding the frail topmost bough like a witch on a very risky broomstick, reached up and rent the black hat from its airy nest of twigs. It had been broken across a heavy bough in the first burst of its passage, a tangle of branches in torn and scored and scratched ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... Tso-ch'iu Ming on the Spring and Autumn, which imparts a human interest to the bald entries set against each year of these annals, there are several allusions to the Supreme Being. For instance, at a time of great drought the Duke of Lu wished, in accordance with custom, to burn a witch and a person in the last stage of consumption; the latter being sometimes exposed in the sun so as to excite the compassion of God, who would then cause rain to fall. A Minister vigorously protested against this superstition, pointing ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... the son of a farmer. My father was the son of a farmer, as was his father, and his. There is no break, so far as I know, in the line of farmers back into the seventeenth century. There was a Rev. George Burroughs who was hanged (in 1692) for a witch in Salem. He was a Harvard graduate. I know of no other Harvard graduate by our name until Julian (Mr. Burroughs's son) graduated in 1901 from Harvard. My father's cousin, the Rev. John C. Burroughs, the first president of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... up this expedition, and sets off. We will not spoil the story for you except to say that he spends some time on the way with a witch-doctor, who is able to conjure up for him a vision of where little Nell is. His adventures thereafter are many and various, and some of them are hair's-breadth ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... they had fashioned was a gossamer veil rent asunder by a miserable lunatic. It was too much for their sanity. Mere human reason could not withstand the shock. As the savage is crushed by the sleight-of-hand of the witch doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliah. How did he do it? It was the awful face of the Unknown upon which the world gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of its ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... dressed in deep mourning even to a little black silk bonnet, for the lost mother, she sang Lily Dale and Old Dog Tray while all listened with tears and astonishment to the sympathetic voice, and an uncle, Mr. James Cameron, exclaimed, "It's not a child, it's a witch." In the old Rincon school, so famous for its splendid teachers and also many scholars who afterwards became famous in California history, Maggie Cameron was called Hail Columbia because her voice could lead the singing of the entire school so strongly. In the old ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... in the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,— A syllabled silence that no man may hear,— As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some specter of some perished flower ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... bade him have a care for the welfare of Egypt before he refused her. Her words were dark and full of evil portent. The air seemed to winnow with bat-wings and to reek with vapors from witch-potions and murmur with mystic formulas. Every man of us crept, and drew near to his neighbor. When she paused for an answer, the king hesitated. She had menaced Egypt and it stirreth the heart of the father when the child is threatened. He turned to Har-hat in his perplexity and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... connexion with Punchkin and "the Giant who had no Heart in his Body"—Excursus on Bluebeard's Chamber; 4. The Water King or Subaqueous Demon—Female Embodiments of Evil: 1. The Baba Yaga or Hag, and 2. The Witch, feminine counterparts of ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... widening V-shaped wake glowed with opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions, went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake three or ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... going to die just yet," he said as merrily as he could; "and if I find myself going, I shall take care the blame falls on the right person. What was the witch woman like? Sit down on the chair there, and tell me ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Frankenstein was the outcome of the project before mentioned of writing tales of horror. One night, when pouring rain detained Shelley's party at the Villa Diodati over a blazing fire, they told strange stories, till Byron, leading to poetic ideas, recited the witch's scene from "Christabel," which so excited Shelley's imagination that he shrieked, and ran from the room; and Polidori writes that he brought him to by throwing water in his face. Upon his reviving, they agreed to write each a supernatural tale. Matthew Gregory Lewis, the author of ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... Vaucouleurs was a much perplexed man. It was a very natural idea then, and in accordance with every sentiment of the time that he should suspect this wonderful girl, who would not be daunted, of being a witch and capable of bringing an evil fate on all who crossed her. All thought of boxing her ears must ere this have departed from his mind. He hastened to consult the cure, which was the most reasonable thing to do. The cure was as much ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... for going right intil the cave? Would it no do you to shout when you got to the mouth of it? I dinna like that cave with the red sides till it. I'm thinking maybe there was red sides to the cave where the witch of Endor dweft. Are you no sure that there isna something of that kind, something no right in the ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... thirty standards rose. 160 From every warlike city That boasts the Latian name, Foredoomed to dogs and vultures, That gallant army came; From Sofia's purple vineyards, 165 From Norba's ancient wall, From the white streets of Tusculum, The proudest town of all; From where the Witch's Fortress[29] O'erhangs the dark-blue seas; 170 From the still glassy lake that sleeps Beneath Aricia's trees— Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest[30] doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, 175 And shall himself be slain; From the drear banks of Ufens,[31] Where ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... "The old witch said I was to meet with many misfortunes, pass a dreadful crisis, and then come out with ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... the side of the boat, and took up his position at the helm. He looked at the sky, and as soon as they were out in the open sea, he shouted to the men: "Pull away, pull with all your might! The sea is smiling at a squall, the witch! I can feel the swell by the way the rudder works, and ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... things of the follies and madnesses (for it is all one) that your worship has done and is still doing, that I will manage to make her softer than a glove though I find her harder than a cork tree; and with her sweet and honeyed answer I will come back through the air like a witch, and take your worship out of this purgatory that seems to be hell but is not, as there is hope of getting out of it; which, as I have said, those in hell have not, and I believe your worship will not say ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... accuser to single combat, when frequently the stoutest champion was allowed to supply their place; swallowing a morsel of consecrated bread; sinking or swimming in a river for witchcraft; or weighing a witch; stretching out the arms before the cross, till the champion soonest wearied dropped his arms, and lost his estate, which was decided by this very short chancery suit, called the judicium crucis. The bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Denis disputed about the patronage of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the reason why she was so vigorous and showed her sixty-six years so little. The fact that the two sixes stood together caused her, according to an old country saying[3] (which, however, was not universally believed in) to be regarded as a witch. It was said that she sometimes milked her black goat for hours at a time, and that this goat gave an astonishing quantity of milk, but that in milking this goat she was in reality drawing the milk out of the udders of the cows belonging ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... regiment, as well as bedchamber, were taken away, I would not believe it, till last night the Duchess of Grafton told me, that the night before the Duchess of Bedford said to her, "Are not you sorry for Poor Mr. Conway? He has lost every thing." When the Witch of Endor pities, one knows she has raised ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... mixed with water and drunk: if the body ejected the poison it was a sign of innocence. This method was the surest and least troublesome—for the investigation, sentence, and punishment were carried out simultaneously—unless the witch-doctor had been influenced, which sometimes happened, for there were various means ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... he found himself face to face with a keen-eyed, swarthy, wrinkled old woman, whose untended grey hair hung in ragged locks about her cheeks, and whose hooked nose and prominent chin gave her quite the aspect of some old witch as fancied by ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... stairs is the heat. That old arbor in the corner has been here ever since I was a child, and so have the syringa bushes and the green box next the wall. I wanted them all the year round—not just for three or four months in the year—and that witch Holker said he could do it, and he has. Half the weddings in town have been begun right on that bench, and when the lanterns are lighted and the fountain turned on outside, no gentleman ever escapes. You and Peter are immune, so I sha'n't waste any of my precious ammunition on you. And now what ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mare could do to me, by fair play and horse-trickery, but that the glory of sitting upon her seemed to be too great for me; especially as there were rumours abroad that she was not a mare after all, but a witch. However, she looked like a filly all over, and wonderfully beautiful, with her supple stride, and soft slope of shoulder, and glossy coat beaded with water, and prominent eyes full of docile fire. Whether ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... sate there, waiting quietly to be summoned, and as though we had troubled him, and—as though he had joined us. I think he was an evil man, close and evil. And there hangs in my mind a verse of Scripture, where Samuel said to the witch, 'Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?' Oh," he went on, "I do not know why I talk wildly thus"; for he saw that Roland was looking at him with astonishment, with parted lips; "but a shadow has fallen upon me, and there ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nature is weak, I put on a stronger, double leader and dropped another fly into the current. I might not get my salmon; but it was worth the price of fly and leader just to raise him from the deeps and see his terrific rush downstream, jumping, jumping, as if the witch of Endor were astride of his tail ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... a cavern (1-1/2 m. away) which gives its name (said to be a corruption of ogof, Celtic for "cavern") to the village. It is the oldest known cave in Great Britain, and was once inhabited (legend asserts) by an ancient witch. It may be reached either from Wookey Station or, just as easily, from Wells. Proceed through the hamlet to the large paper-mill and inquire at the farm opposite for a guide (fee, 1s. 6d.; 1s. each for two or more). A pathway runs up the L. bank ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... joined company with the old Cavalier Colonel and went on her way as Emlyn made that ugly face that Stead knew of old, clenched her hand and muttered, "Old witch! She is a Puritan at heart, after all! She is turning the house upside down, and my poor mistress has not spirit to say 'tis her own, with the old woman and the old hunks both against her! Why, she threatened to beat ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they returned to New York, Kathi having begged some more money from Vienna. She was already a worn, old witch of a woman, dressed gayly in remnants of past grandeur and always painting her face. She and her son held together in a partnership strained and rasping, but unbreakable, united by the mysterious tie of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Galland grounds as the angle of a redoubt, not a shot, not a sound; silence on the part of officers and men as profound as Mrs. Galland's slumber, while one of the Browns' search-lights, like some great witch's slow-turning eye in a narrow radius, covered the lower ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... about requiting her with the just penalties of a perfidious breach of contract. Their threats induced her instant flight toward my house for the usual protection, but the enraged friends of the dead man gave hot chase, and overtook the witch just inside the limits of the garrison, where, on the parade-ground, in sight of the officers' quarters, and before any one could interfere, they killed her. There were sixteen men in pursuit of the doctress, and sixteen gun-shot ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... is almost sad to think that any one could be so foolish, yet when Folks know but little, they will catch up strange notions and listen to silly signs without an atom of truth or common sense in them. So some ignorant Folks once believed that a witch, or some witchy Folk with an evil eye, might look upon them and cause them harm, or ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... peculiarities were such that, a hundred years before, she might have been burned for a witch, and fifty years later might have been honoured as a prophetess. But she missed the crest of the wave both ways and fell in the trough; her views on religious matters procured neither a witch's grave nor a prophet's crown, but ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... their misery. When, therefore, he sees his neighbour struck down before his face by some invisible power, and writhing with pain as though unseen snakes and tigers were rending him, what should he naturally conclude save that demon or witch or wizard is at work? and if he cares about the matter at all, what should he do save endeavour to find the culprit out and inflict condign punishment? In savage states, whenever anything untoward happens to the king or ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the pink-and-black type. She used to cry over me and say—I don't suppose she thought I would ever understand or remember—'Beware the brown-eyed boys, darlin'. False an' foul they are, the brown ones. They take a girl's poor heart an' witch it away an' twitch it away, an' toss it back all crushed an' spoilt.' Then she would hug me and sob. She left soon after; but the warning has haunted me like a superstition.... Could you kiss it away, Ban? Tell me I'm a ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Grumkow, 'will think Reichenbach is a witch (SORVIER) to be so well informed about all that, and will redouble the good opinion he has of Reichenbach. And so, if Reichenbach second my ideas, we will pack Borck and Knyphausen about their business; ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... save trouble or to avoid a charge of false modesty, express it. 'This over-pressure of a heavy pleasure,' &c., is admirable; and, indeed, it would be tedious to praise all that pleases me. Shelley's 'Witch of Atlas' I never saw; therefore the stanza referring to Narcissus and her was read by me to some disadvantage. One observation I am about to make will at least prove I am no flatterer, and will therefore give a qualified ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Her head, shorn of the false "front" she wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to mere points of blackness; her mouth, sunken and drawn over toothless gums, was like the mouth of a witch. The wind, blowing in gusts through the open door, inflated her gray shawl and the skirt of her dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her garments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced and gibbered behind her. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... not repealed till the 9 Geo. II, c. 5. In Scotland, so late as the year 1722, when the local jurisdictions were still hereditary [see post, Sept. 11], the sheriff of Sutherlandshire condemned a witch to death.' Penny Cyclo. xxvii. 490. In the Bishopric of Wurtzburg, so late as 1750, a nun was burnt for witchcraft: 'Cette malheureuse fille soutint opiniatrement qu'elle etait sorciere.... Elle etait folle, ses juges furent imbecilles ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... woman, looking rather droll; "it's very strange such a young creature as you should come down here to weep on account of great wickedness. You don't look much like a Salem witch, or a runaway from the ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... diminutive monkey form, and she looked as though a moderately high wind could blow her about like a feather. Her face was brown and puckered and lined in a most wonderful fashion. Where a wrinkle could be, there a wrinkle was, and her nose and chin were of the true nutcracker order, as a witch's should be. Only her eyes betrayed the powerful vitality that still animated the tiny frame, for these were large and dark, and had in them a piercing look which seemed to gaze not at any one, but through and beyond. Her figure, dried like that of a mummy, was surprisingly straight for one of ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... and sprite! Elf of eve! and starry Fay! Ye that love the moon's soft light, Hither—hither wend your way; Twine ye in the jocund ring, Sing and trip it merrily, Hand to hand, and wing to wing, Round the wild witch-hazel tree. ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... Wizard King The Nixy The Glass Mountain Alphege, or the Green Monkey Fairer-than-a-Fairy The Three Brothers The Boy and the Wolves, or the Broken Promise The Glass Axe The Dead Wife In the Land of Souls The White Duck The Witch and her Servants The Magic Ring The Flower Queen's Daughter The Flying Ship The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son The Story of King Frost The Death of the Sun-hero The Witch The Hazel-nut Child The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus Prince Ring ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... quite forget, that in there dwells a witch, who wants to put us unhappy little children into an oven and eat us. No, it is much better that we resist the sugar-panes and the pancake-roof, take each other by the hand, and go back ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... dear,' replied the witch, 'I found hundreds of them. They are on a shelf behind the cupboard, in a dark corner, but are locked up in a glass box. I am afraid the Magician carries the key with him, and I dare not ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... Whistlers. Black Flusterers, or bald Coot. Turkeys wild. Fishermen. Divers. Raft Fowl. Bull-necks. Redheads. Tropick-birds. Pellican. Cormorant. Gannet. Shear-water. Great black pied Gull. Marsh-hens. Blue Peter's. Sand-birds. Runners. Tutcocks. Swaddle-bills. Mew. Sheldrakes. Bald Faces. Water Witch, or Ware Coot. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... of the good leaves there is hounds tongue. Wear it at the feet of you against dogs what be savage. Herb Benet you nail upon the door. No witch nor evil thing can enter to ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... I did; I'd have him arrested for neglecting to watch over this case. As it is, when he comes back I'll dismiss him from my employment. He can go back to his infernal laundry work along with his old witch of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... clever craft," mourned the Ancient Mariner. "Never were there more dainty and lovable topmasts on a three- masted schooner, and never was there a three-masted schooner that worked like the witch she was to windward." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... 'twas as if dogs and cats had fared in and out. But at this Ulrich's coming her pulse did leap, and her eye shine; and when he went, she did sink back and sigh; and 'twas to be seen the sun had gone out of the room for her. Nay, burgomaster, look not on me so scared: no witch or magician I, but a poor girl that hath been docile, and so bettered herself by a great neglected leech's art and learning. I tell ye all this hath been done before, thousands of years ere we were born. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a go for me. I couldn't get out, so I bobbed under a four-legged wooden table, picked it up on my shoulders, and tried to protect my legs as much as I could. The girl screamed, and rushed to open the door, and then called out for me to run. I didn't need any telling. I rushed out, the old witch laying on the table with all her might until I got out of her reach. And that is the way I am here, because I shipped at once aboard the Betty Sharp, for fear I might be copped and put in choky by the ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... with color, lights and song, Calls from St. Mark's with ancient voice and strange: I am the Witch of Cities! glide along My silver streets that never wear by change Of years: forget the years, and pain, and wrong, And every sorrow reigning men among. Know I can soothe thee, please and marry thee To my illusions. Old and siren-strong, ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... about twenty-eight hundred years ago, ghosts were believed to appear. The Witch of Endor pretended to raise the ghost of Samuel, at about ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... skald, who had once been at the English court, had said that she seemed to have eaten her namesake's apple of immortality, without her apple of beauty, for no one could ever remember to have seen her other than a tiny dried-up old witch, with keen gray eyes, a sharp tongue, an ever ready foot and hand, and a frame utterly unaffected by any of the influences so sinister to far younger and stronger ones. Devoted to all the royal family, her special passion was for Prince Edmund, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nearly two thousand years after his time, still do as the old Rabbis did, and continue to treat the body—the effect—instead of the mental cause? But," looking down in meditation, "I suppose if you did that the people would cry, 'He hath a devil!' They thought I was a witch ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... old lady. "Take what you like," I said. "But what use is she to you?" "I like her, good ma'am; put yourself in my position.... Allow me to kiss your little hand." And I positively kissed the wretch's hand! "Well," mumbled the old witch, "I'll tell Marya Ilyinishna—it's for her to decide; you come back in a couple of days." I went home in great uneasiness. I began to suspect that I'd managed the thing badly; that I'd been wrong in letting her notice my state of mind, but I thought ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... father has prior claims; and I hardly need tell you, that once restored and reconciled to him, I expect as long a visit as you can afford to pay me. Think on what I have said; and, in the meantime, as I daresay your finances are not very flourishing"—(thinks I, you are a witch!)—"allow me to leave this ten-pound note in your hands." This part of his request was much more readily complied ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Magic and wizardy seem to have held a great fascination for mankind, an example being in the story of the Witch of Endor. That this tendency has in no wise altered is clear from the popularity of conjurors, illusionists, and so called magicians who still, be it East or West, attract an audience so easily and so surely. This little volume is ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... unassimilated news of events, that made a thunder in her head, Aminta walked down the garden path, meeting Selina and bearing her on. She had a witch's will to rouse gales. Hers was not the woman's nature to be driven cowering by stories of men's bloody deeds. She took the field, revolted, dissevering herself from the class which tolerated them—actuated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... like a witch-spell!" he declared. "There's nowt to do but whisper, 'Parson's fav'rite!'—an' Parson hisself melts away like a mist o' the mornin' or a weasel runnin' into its 'ole! ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... conjuring, which she firmly believed the Widow Keswick to be; but, as she possessed no such gift, she made up the deficiency, as well as she could, by mixing up her mind, her soul, and her desires, into a sort of witch's hodge-podge, which she thrust as a spell into the affairs of other people. Twice had the devices of this stupid-looking wooden peg of a negro girl stopped Lawrence Croft in the path he was following ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... hast the faculty opposite to that of a witch, and canst lay a tempest. I should as soon have imagined one man could have stopt a cannon-ball in its full force as ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... what you're driving at. You're kind of played out, after this long trip. You'll feel better when you get home and have a good bath, and put on the blue negligee. That's some vampire costume, you witch!" ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... purposes, and the process of preparing meals was conducted with an indifference that promised no savory results. About the glowing points of light wrinkled hags appeared irregularly, as if brewing some witch's broth, but they could not understand the phenomenon of Americans being hungry and signified no readiness to relieve them. In several instances Kirk and Mrs. Cortlandt were treated with open suspicion. But eventually they found a more pretentious- looking place, where they were taken ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... then, in those troublous times, that she had to give up the ghost. And your dear worthy father, he is the only person I have to thank for the judges not having treated me just like a faggot some years after: they had somehow got it into their pates that I was a witch, and there was no avail in denying it. But Signor Guido fought my battle, what with reason and what with ranting, what with entreaties and what with threats: so they merely banisht me out of the dear land. And now this thunderstorm brings me the son of my benefactor into my ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... and of her he begat nothing but devils." A commentator on Skinner, quoted in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, says that the English word Lullaby is derived from Lilla, abi (begone, Lilith)! In the demonology of the Middle Ages, Lilis was a famous witch, and is introduced as such in the Walpurgis night scene ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... the end of a narrow way, bordered by cinnamon-roses and stragglers from old gardens; and some of the neighbors said it would make them as nervous as a witch to be so far from the road. But it did not make Miss Letty nervous. For some reason, perhaps because of long usage, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... plot. This is an agreeable affair of a maid, reputed Catholic heir to the English Crown, and used as pretext for an abortive rising against KING JAMES I. You can see that in practised hands (as here) and decorated with a pretty trimming of sentiment, abductions, witch-finding and other appropriate accessories, this furnishes a theme rich in romance. Perhaps I was a thought disappointed that more was not made of the actual conspiracy, and that, having started "too near the throne," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... is your true water-witch, one who snuffs and paws, snuffs and paws again at the smallest spot of moisture-scented earth until he has freed the blind water from the soil. Many water-holes are no more than this detected by the lean hobo of the hills in localities ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... laughter behind her, and turning round saw the ugly stranger whom she had dismissed, who was making very merry over the disasters and mocking everyone, but especially the Queen. This annoyed Her Majesty very much, and she was about to order that she should be arrested, when the witch—for she was a witch—with two blows from a wand summoned a chariot of fire drawn by winged dragons, and was whirled off through the air uttering threats and cries. When the King ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... one thousand, but will speake false Latine, and breake Priscians head. Attempt nothing that you may with great reason doubt of and out of doubt you shall obtaine nothing. I tell thee, friend, the eminent confidence of strong spirits is the onely witch-craft of this World, Spirits wrastling with spirits as bodies with bodies: this were enough to make thee hope well, if she were one of these painted communities, that are ravisht with Coaches, and upper hands,[13] and brave men of durt: but thou knowest friend shees a good scholler, and like ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... for a witch. The silence was broken by the tapping of a cane. Around the corner the witch hobbled into the scene, testing each step before her. She was dressed in black, of course, and bent over with just the curve of the back the Artist loves to give to his old women. She was a friendly soul, and did not ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... had their ghost stories, their witch stories, and their traditions of hidden treasure, guarded by spirits of persons who had been murdered, and buried with the gold in order that their spirits might act as a charm to frighten away anybody who ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... was in the realm where his mother had lived, prepared a great feast in honor of his mother. But he began thinking how he might honor her in a different way. So he cut a witch-hazel wand with which to point at anything he wished to use in the preparation of this feast. Thus he collected wood and stones and many things on the face of the earth. And when all this was assembled he built him a ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... instructed them in witchcraft, and, after executing the witches' dance, they returned to their respective homes in the same fashion. This tradition is common to other countries, but in Jutland the belief was that the favourite form a witch adopted was that of a hare, which evaded the huntsmen, and could not be shot except by a piece of silver, which must have been inherited—a piece of silver purchased or given had no effect. The witch was then found in the person of some old woman with a ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... supernatural means for its discovery. They believed in omens, signs, and other superstitions. As a boy Joseph had been shrewd enough and superstitious enough to play this trait up for all it was worth. He had a magic peep-stone and a witch-hazel divining-rod that he manipulated so skillfully as to cause other boys and even older men to dig for him as he wished. He seemed to delight in tricking his companions in various ways, by telling fortunes, reeling off tall yarns, and posing as one possessed ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... a mountainous country. In two hours from Nazareth we passed a small rivulet. Two hours and a half, the village Denouny (Arabic), and near it the ruins of Endor, where the witch's grotto is shewn. From hence the direction of our route was S.S.E. Leaving Mount Tabor to the left we passed along the plain of Esdrelon: meeting with several springs in our road; but the country is a complete desert, although the soil is fertile. At five hours and a half is ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... and anticipate that. Why on earth do women let their nerves run away with them, in the first place? Nerves in this country are a mixture of climate, selfishness, and stupidity. I could be as nervous as a witch, but I won't. I walk miles every day and don't think about myself. Well! I told Mr. North all about the bold course of the young lady weary of frivolities, and he seemed much interested, paid you some compliment or other, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... to hear more and more insistent the accents of one voice, and out of the crowd of faces, began to distinguish more and more clearly the features of the writer; for all the world like some lovelorn girl, who, gazing with her soul in her eyes, finds in the witch's cauldron ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... hath power to draw from heaven the wandering huntress, Song was the witch's spell transformed the mates of Ulysses.... Home from the city to me, my song, lead ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the Judge, "there are things that neither clergy nor lawyers nor doctors can explain. Tell me, what do people think concerning this witch?" ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... to be baptized at St. Thomas's Church. Callon's son Langi, and half a dozen other boys, lived with Mr. Gomes, and ran after him all day—nice little fellows, who fraternized with our boys at the school-house. There were also five men, the chief of whom was Bulan (Moon), one of the manangs, or witch-doctors, of the tribe. These manangs, being as it were the priests of Dyak superstitions, and getting their living by pretended cures, interpretations of omens and the voices of birds, were of course the natural enemies of truth and enlightenment. Bulan, however, had tried ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... woman of the Renaissance is very different from the Medea of Victor Hugo's romance; and what remains most revolting to the modern conscience in her conduct is complacent acquiescence in scenes of debauchery devised for her amusement.[2] Instead of viewing her with dread as a potent and malignant witch, we have to regard her with contempt as a feeble woman, soiled with sensual foulness from the cradle. It is also due to truth to remember that at Ferrara she won the esteem of a husband who had married her unwillingly, attached ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... depart. Then the Gypsies huddled into the wagons, and she was seized by Zelaya and put into the first van. The old witch was ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... "Helen, you witch, you darling sister," says Frank, kissing her, "I will do it—yes, to-morrow I will set forth, like Coelebs, in search of a wife! Now you must help me farther with your lively imagination; you must choose ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... a copy of Villamaria's fairy stories in my hands, and I had a delightful dream wherein, under the protection and guidance of my fairy godmother, I undertook the rescue of a beautiful princess who had been enchanted by a cruel witch and was kept in prison by the witch's son, a hideous ogre with seven heads, whose companions ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... After eyeing him carefully I recognised by his strong odours, dewy locks and blear eyes, that the man was no other than my good Master Sleep. "I pray you, sir," cried I, squeaking, "what have I done to you that you bring that witch here to torment me?" "Hush," said he, "it is only my sister Nightmare; we twain are going to pay our brother Death {43b} a visit, and want a third to accompany us, and lest thou shouldst resist we came upon thee, just as he does, unawares. Consequently come thou must, willy-nilly." "Alas," ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... headmistress is summoned then, and I—I am doomed. I get my pieces to do out of school; and when I come home mother lectures me, and sends me to my bedroom. But I am free to-night. I have been good all day; and it is on account of you, Nora; just because you are a little Irish witch; and I sympathize with you to the bottom of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... looked as if she had come from a witch's Sabbath, if ever girl, scarce more than child, walked as if she had plucked the fruit of the Tree and savoured it bitter, it was the girl before him. Despair—it seemed to him—rode her like a hag. Dejection, fear, misery, were in her whole bearing. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... most vigorous attempts which have been made to turn the elements we have been considering to a profitable end. I have in my thoughts the invention of ether-inhalation and the induction of trance in mesmerism. The witch narcotised her pupils in order to produce in them delusive visions; the surgeon stupifies his patient to prevent the pain of an operation being felt. The fanatic preacher excites convulsions and trance in his auditory to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... may see—come into my study and I will show you her picture—she died, at least her body did, some sixty years ago. I frequently see her and talk with her." This spot must not be quitted without recalling that Marsland-mouth is the home of Lucy Passmore, the white witch in Westward Ho! It was hither that Rose Salterne came to perform the love-charm that should reveal her lover. It can hardly be said that such superstitions have yet died out of the West Country, but it is the older people now that cherish these ideas, secretly and ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... was extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... fall back in her chair with a little satisfied smile. Doris, silent and forgotten, could not keep her eyes for long from the two distant figures—from this new Arthur, and the sallow-faced, dark-eyed witch who had ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... warlike city That boasts the Latian name, Fordoomed to dogs and vultures, That gallant army came; From Setia's purple vineyards, From Norba's ancient wall, From the white streets of Tusculum, The proudust town of all; From where the Witch's Fortress O'er hangs the dark-blue seas; From the still glassy lake that sleeps Beneath Aricia's trees— Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain; From the drear banks of Ufens, Where ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Empire's Western gate Eight stately, painted Sachems wait For Amochol—for Amochol! Hazel and samphire consecrate The magic blaze that burns like Hate, While the deep witch-drums roll—and roll. Sorceress, shake thy dark hair down! The ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... age. He informed him that God would punish his impieties—that he was worse than any Saracen; and hinted that he might have inherited his wickedness from his grandmother, the Countess of Anjou, who was reported to be a witch, and of whom it was said that she had flown through the window during the most solemn part of Mass, though four ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... that's certain. What a plague has this little witch done to you all? And how did ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... this all, your Majesty; there is more and worse. Many testified that a witch, since gone from the village, none know whither, did foretell, and speak it privately in their ears, that the sick man WOULD DIE BY POISON—and more, that a stranger would give it—a stranger with brown hair and clothed in a worn ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... milk-veined rascals! ... What abject terror makes ye thus quiver like aspen-leaves in a storm? ... this darkness is but a conjurer's trick to scare women, and Khosrul's followers can so play with the strings of electricity that ye are duped into accepting the witch-glamour as Heaven's own cloud-flame! By the gods! If Al-Kyris falls, as yon dotard pronounceth, her ruins shall bury but few heroes! O superstitious and degraded souls! ... I would ye were even as I am—a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the landing stand, While here I'll kneel and blow, So that the little "Water-witch" Beneath the arch ...
— Cousin Hatty's Hymns and Twilight Stories • Wm. Crosby And H.P. Nichols
... of sickness were treated as the effect of witchcraft by the Indians, and the afflicted were carried into the woods and left alone with none near them except the medicine man whose business it was to expel the witch. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... witch!" he exclaimed. "She could wheedle the fish out of the sea if she'd say please to 'em that way. But how that honey-sweet tone and the yells she was letting loose awhile back could come out of that same little rose of a mouth, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... slowly, [16] and in good order; and when Joram met him in the field of Naboth, he asked him if all things were well in the camp; but Jehu reproached him bitterly, and ventured to call his mother a witch and a harlot. Upon this the king, fearing what he intended, and suspecting he had no good meaning, turned his chariot about as soon as he could, and said to Ahaziah, "We are fought against by deceit and treachery." But Jehu drew his bow, and smote him, the arrow ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... got?" Libbie Liberty burst out, basting the turkey. "I declare, I'm nervous as a witch, I'm ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... and the witch-like groping of her glance had cast a momentary spell over him. When it was gone, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... be lucky, and who shall be rich? Whether both, neither, one, or all three; Is a mystery which, Dame Fortune, the witch, Tells neither ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... the drugs and the ceremonies are methods emphatically to be avoided by any one who wishes to approach clairvoyance from the higher side, and use it for his own progress and for the helping of others. The Central African medicine-man or witch-doctor and some of the Tartar Shamans are good ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... this matter," replied Pharaoh quietly, "make your prayer to the Prince of Egypt, in whose household I understand the woman dwells. If it pleases him to surrender her who, I take it, is a witch or a cunning worker of tricks, to her betrothed and her kindred, let him do so. It is not for Pharaoh to judge of the fate ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... for fish were scarce, and some settlers were drowned. At that day, some of the new comers were Christians, some still worshipped the old Gods, Thor and Woden, and practised magic. These sent for a prophetess to tell them what the end of their new colony would be. It is curious to know what a real witch was like, and how she behaved, so we shall copy the story from ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... taste," remarked an odd-looking elf, who appeared suddenly from nowhere in particular. "For my part, I prefer to be just exactly what I am. Once a witch changed me into a boy for ten minutes, and I give you my word I never was ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... her, but this woman's nerve failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who decreed a whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have deserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake had been made—it was another woman who was the witch. And again in the Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news item, telling how a certain man awakened one morning, and found on his pillow where his head had lain a perfect reproduction ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the neighbouring village was spoiled. This occasioned very great noise in the country, and so greatly provoked were the people who resided in the other parishes that they absolutely accused her of being a witch, and sent old Gaffer Goosecap, a busy fellow in other people's concerns, to find out evidence against her. The wiseacre happened to come to her school when she was walking about with the raven ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... the people were so completely absorbed in the movements and words of their piache, or medicine man, or witch doctor, as the man in the jaguar skin proved to be, that they were quite oblivious of the presence of the two Englishmen; but suddenly the piache caught sight of them and stopped short in his leapings and howlings, and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... that, Provost?' said Summertrees. 'Your wife's a witch, man; you should nail a horse-shoe on your chamber ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... brain. I am pinking me with a pin. I dead myself in envy to see her. I take a broth all morning. I shall not tell you than two woods. Have you understanded? Let him have know? Have you understand they? Do you know they? Do you know they to? The storm is go over. The sun begins to dissipe it. Witch prefer you? The paving stone is sliphery. The thunderbolt is falling down. The rose-trees begins to button. The ears are too length. The hands itch at him. Have you forgeted me? Lay him hir apron. Help-to a little most the better yours terms. Dont you are awaken ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... through the woof of the spirit tales was the mention of witch-craft—witchcraft with which Kilbuck was now preparing to deal; not because he hoped to benefit the natives and free them from the curse of superstition, but because owing to a belief in the black art, the Indians of Katleean were not bringing in the amount of furs expected, and ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... have not been thinking much of these things. You have your eye upon Fame, and that old witch lives in another direction. To illustrate—our bull-necked friend and illustrious critic, James Rutlidge, in my story, will be named 'Sensual.' His distinguished father was one 'Lust.' The horrible example, Mr. Edward Taine,—boon companion ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... was a little too much breadth, perhaps, in the picture. Her pointed cap, however, with the little bow of ribbon on the top, gave her a piquant air, and did away with the heavy appearance of her costume to some extent; in fact, Edith looked like a fat little witch. But if she looked fat before being wrapped up in the sledge furs, she looked infinitely fatter when thus placed, and nothing of her visible except her two twinkling eyes. So grotesque was she that the whole party burst into a loud laugh as they ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... incensed waiting-woman, while Magdalen Graeme left the apartment; "I say, duck her in the loch, and then we will see whether she is witch or not, as every body in the village of Lochside will say and swear. I marvel your ladyship could bear so long with her insolence." But the commands of the Lady were obeyed, and the old dame, dismissed from the castle, was committed to her fortune. She kept ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... few moments, and then continued: "Green left for the city nixt mornin', an' Florence went back to her home with my kiss on her lips as a weddin' gift. A month passed, an' I was wonderin' why Florence had not been over to see me, an' then Silas Raeburn came into my tavern in a mighty rage. 'Ye old witch, where's my ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... ownself afther all? The little motherless darlin', with the goold hair I combed the knots out iv many's the time? The little witch that run barefoot an' barelegged over ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... bad-will, or any way at all; and if this shaving can't be done without my mounting on the croup, my master had better look out for another squire to go with him, and these ladies for some other way of making their faces smooth; I'm no witch to have a taste for travelling through the air. What would my islanders say when they heard their governor was going, strolling about on the winds? And another thing, as it is three thousand and odd leagues from this to Kandy, if the horse ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... back to you," he said. "You are too fast for me, but I tell you to your face that you had better change your tongue for a lock of an old witch's hair unless you intend to ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... scene, perhaps to foresee the law by which a new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from this chaos, and with a curiosity as ardent, but not so selfish, as that of Macbeth, to call up the apparitions of future kings from the strange ingredients of the witch's caldron. Thus I will not grieve that all the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron, but believe it will have Medea's virtue, and reproduce them in the form of new intellectual growths, since centuries cannot again adorn ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... broom can have to do with it, when a dwarf old dame appears, through a slit in the drapery—as perfect a dwarf as ever breathed,—but three feet high, and so really true that no one for a moment doubts her identity or vitality. "She is a Witch!" cry all, that has come down the chimney. The dame bows acquiescence, with numberless courtseys, telling the little company of her immense age and adventures—recounting her history:—about the large family she kept in the shoe; about the refractory ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my superiority—my accomplishments and my function—in her patience under my pain. She offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch's broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held out a large clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by the time that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the point of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... neither a wizard nor a witch to perceive that "Mary Bowline" is a creation of my own brain, and is of course defective, and will disappoint. But if it is true that "Bacon, Butler, and Shakspeare have rendered it impossible for any one after them to ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... exclaimed—"Up in the air and riding a theory like a witch on a broomstick! It's NOT natural. That's just where you're wrong! It's quite UN-natural. If a man has plenty of money he ought to be perfectly happy and satisfied,—he can get everything he wants,—he can move the whole world ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... runs, interpreted to mean that he could conquer the Romans, whereas the oracle subsequently explained to him that the real meaning was that the Romans could conquer him. Similar to this, as Shakspeare makes the Duke of York point out, is the witch's prophecy in Henry VI (Second Part, ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... practitioners were to apply painful treatments like allopaths use, ones with such poor statistical outcomes like allopaths use, there would most certainly be witch hunts and all such irresponsible, greedy quacks would be safely imprisoned. I find it highly ironic that for at least the past twenty five hundred years the basic principle of good medicine has been that the treatment must first do no harm. This is such an obvious ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... in fact, cased with ebony, boxwood, rosewood, cedar or sandalwood. English yew also serves the purpose; so does almond wood. Simpler, less expensive, and almost as effective, are Wands made of witch-hazel. In fact, apart from the Wands of live ivory, I consider that witch-hazel is as powerful as the golden Wand. Next in force to this witch-hazel are the shoots of the almond tree, and, lastly, the peach and ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Margrave, no longer with gasp and effort, but with the swell of a voice which drowned all the discords of terror and of agony sent forth from the Phlegethon burning below—"and this witch, whom I trusted, is a vile slave and impostor, more desiring my death than my life. She thinks that in life I should scorn and forsake her, that in death I should die in her arms! Sorceress, avaunt! Art thou useless and powerless ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... had), for with his own most Gracious hand he penned a most Gracious consignment of them to everlasting wrath, and devised most Gracious means for their confusion and slaughter, in virtue whereof scarcely a day passed but one witch at the least was most graciously hanged, drowned, or roasted in some part of his dominions. Still the press teemed with strange and terrible news from the North or the South, or the East or the West, relative to witches and their unhappy ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... first began to find Christianity too serious, and devised a merrier faith for France, and would have bright-glancing, soubrette Madonnas everywhere—letting their own dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burned for a witch. And thenceforward, things went their merry way, straight on, 'ca allait, ca ira,' to the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... an' sweep, An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep; An' all us other childern, when the supper things is done, We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about, An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you Ef ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... Grace. She was wrapped in the folds of a pale blue silk kimono. Her hair hung in loose golden waves far below her waist and she reminded Grace of the beautiful Rapunzel of fairy tale fame who was shut up in a tower by a wicked witch and forced each night to let down her golden hair so that her dreadful jailer might climb up ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... and bending over the fire,—was an old woman, so wild and shrivelled in her appearance that a much less superstitious urchin than Jacky might have believed her to be a witch. Her clothing may be described as a bundle of rags, with the exception of a shepherd's-plaid on her shoulders, the spotless purity of which contrasted strangely with the dirtiness of every thing else around. The old creature was moaning and moping over the fire, and drawing ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... clever you are at flattering and paying compliments! A pretty little creature like you was just made to turn all the men's heads—a little witch." ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... to breathe. Overhead, masses of black cloud, heavy with storm, hung low down over the town, and the earth, panting and worn out with the heat, waited thirstily for the cool drench of the rain. Evidently a witch-tempest was brewing in the halls of heaven on no small scale, and Gabriel wished that it would break at once to relieve the strain from which nature seemed to suffer. Whether it was the fatigue of his day's labour, or the late interview with Bell which depressed him, he did ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... comprised many oddities, eccentric men and women, recluses and other kinds,—one of old Philip English, (a Jersey man, the name originally L'Anglais,) who had been persecuted by John Hawthorne, of witch-time memory, and a violent quarrel ensued. When Philip lay on his death-bed, he consented to forgive his persecutor; "But if I get well," said he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" This Philip left daughters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... thunder, and as it died away a second girl took up the melody, very sweetly, but with a little more excitement—it was like a gleam of moonlight on the still agitated waters—a strange contralto witch gleam, and then again the chorus and the storm, and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger—the movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild, and mad—a locomotive quick step ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... profiteers—every one of them—crystal gazers, mediums, fortune tellers, and the rest. They are reaping a rare harvest for the moment. We punish the humbler rogues, but we don't punish the fools who go to see them. If I had my way, the man or woman who visited the modern witch or wizard should get six months in the second division. Fools should be punished oftener for their folly. But education will sweep these things into the limbo of man's ignorance and mental infancy. Ghosts cannot stand ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... brothers, and the twins therefore from them. Before her eyes, so near she could have tossed a flower to her, was Phyllis, a spectre from an awful past, the destroyer of the Quakeress, liable herself, within any hour, should the truth be discovered, to be burned like a witch. There she was, "the slave girl Phyllis," as the runaway advertisement would have had it, a culprit, and a property no way superior, in popular regard, to the blackest African, yet by Hayle blood so near of kin—kin! kin to her!—that with no other aid than a few touches of paint and pencil she was ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Koku got a letter from his brother, King Amo of Giant Land, telling of an earthquake which caused the upheaval of the huge stone. His people think we are great magicians or else witch doctors, and Amo wrote begging us to take the meteorite from his land. Of course, I was only too ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... food. At this rebuff I could not restrain my tears, but while I wept my horse stumbled and threw me over his head. I hoped at first I had broken my neck, and was just congratulating myself upon the misfortune, when a witch-woman came along and rubbed some ointment upon my bruises, in spite of my protests. To my great grief the pain left me, and I was soon well again. But, as a slight compensation for my disappointment, my horse had run away; so I began my journey ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... coordinated blood-drawing. And I had as lief have a Sioux Medicine man dance a one-step round my camp fire, and chant his silly incantation for my curing, as any of these blood pressure, electro-chemical, pill, powder specialists. Give me an Ipswich witch instead. Let her lay hands on me. Soft hands that turn away wrath. Have you such or did your ancestors, out of fear of their ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... immediately seek shelter under a linden tree; for out of linden wood were not battle-shields made? Long before Christianity had brought its gentler touches to English life the tribal medicine man wildly brandished such a shield, and sang defiantly to the witch maidens or disease demons: ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... our necks!" swore her capriciously passionate companion. "So you can go from your word like that, you young witch, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... wholly unnecessary. I, too, had seen it; a wonderful and uncanny sight. Out of the darkness under the elms, low down upon the ground, grew a vaporous blue light. It flared up, elfinish, then began to ascend. Like an igneous phantom, a witch flame, it rose, high—higher—higher, to what I adjudged to be some twelve feet or more from the ground. Then, high in the air, it died away ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... went, ill tales that took scant time to travel; and we lads, innocent of mind, were full of shame for what was common talk, and we were ready to believe that here was no common sinner. We knew there were witch women whom men justly burn for sin. And of Archbishop Maugher men said a spirit of evil ever went with him, ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... she is a witch, Outram," answered the priest with fervour, "a servant of the Evil One, such as are written of in the Scriptures. Last night I saw her praying to her gods; she did not know that I was near, for the place was lonely, but I saw her and I never wish to see anything so ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... must first yoke certain bulls that breathed fire from their nostrils, and slay a great dragon. But the Princess Medea saw Jason, and loved him, and purposed in her heart that she would help him. And being a great witch, and knowing all manner of drugs and enchantments, she gave him an ointment which kept all that anointed themselves with it so that they took no harm in battle with man or beast. But first Jason had promised, swearing ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... Sumptuous central grain, This mutable witch, This one refrain, This laugh in the fight, This clot of ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... girl had really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for a moment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, were wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very surprising impudence. That was when he ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... brought a cent home any longer, and, indeed, now called at the tavern-boat, and sat a moment or two under the shelter outside, more for appearance's sake than anything else. He was saving his earnings, then! Well, who was keeping the money for him! Dolores! Dolores, of course, that witch who had given love-philters to both her boys—otherwise, why were they always following round after her as if they didn't dare say their ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... be made by adding a teaspoonful of pulverized alum to a cupful of warm water; this is applied to the inflamed sides of the throat by means of a swab. Gargling the throat with a solution of ordinary extract of witch hazel, one part, and water two parts, also ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... Chairs, stand, bed, and my very clothes, took shape and form, and lived; and every one of them cursed me. Then in one corner of my room, a form, larger and more hideous than all the others, appeared. Its look was that of a witch, or hag, or rather like descriptions that I had read of them. It marched right up to me, with a face and look that will haunt me to my grave. It began to talk to me, saying that it would thrust its fingers through my ribs, and drink my blood; then it would stick ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... they wear blouses and look hungry, and when they left us the landlord notified the police that suspicious characters were at the hotel, and came there escorted by the mob, and the police surrounded the house and dad went to our room and used witch hazel on himself where the Cossack hit him with the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, and I think dad is going to join the revolution that is going to be ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... to be 'all in all, or not at all.' We may not 'compound for sins we are inclined to, by' zeal against those 'we have no mind to.' Our consciences are apt to have insensitive spots in them, like witch-marks. We often think it enough to remove the grosser evils, and leave the less, but white ants will eat up a carcass faster than a lion. Putting away Baal is of little use if we keep the calves ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... very handsome middle-aged brown woman, in a limp print gown and a gorgeous turban, stood at the gangway in a glare of light, which made her look like some splendid witch by a Walpurgis night-fire. 'Tell your boatman to go round to the other side,' ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... more than it had at first, and every step he took it seemed to grow heavier and heavier. He tried to struggle on— though it was all he could do to carry the box—until he had gone about eight miles and a quarter, when his patience gave way. 'I believe that tigress was a witch, and is playing off her tricks upon me,' he cried, 'but I will stand this nonsense no longer. Lie there, you wretched old box!—heaven knows what is in you, and I ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... disfigurement &c. (blemish) 848; want of symmetry, inconcinnity[obs3]; distortion &c. 243; squalor &c. (uncleanness) 653. forbidding countenance, vinegar aspect, hanging look, wry face, "spretae injuria formae" [Vergil]. [person who is ugly] eyesore, object, witch, hag, figure, sight, fright; monster; dog[coll.], woofer[coll.], pig[coll.]; octopus, specter, scarecrow, harridan|!, satyr|!, toad, monkey, baboon, Caliban, Aesop[obs3], "monstrum horrendum informe ingens ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... God likewise, for he seeketh less God than "a sign" from Him. And thus, as it is beyond the power of man to remain without miracles, so, rather than live without, he will create for himself new wonders of his own making; and he will bow to and worship the soothsayer's miracles, the old witch's sorcery, were he a rebel, a heretic, and an atheist a hundred times over. Thy refusal to come down from the cross when people, mocking and wagging their heads were saying to Thee— "Save Thyself if Thou be the son of God, and we will believe in Thee," was due ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... I don't know. I'm not a witch or a sorceress. Did you think I was?—just because I can see a little more ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... snobby to be pleasant. It is the haunt of the river swell and his overdressed female companion. It is the town of showy hotels, patronised chiefly by dudes and ballet girls. It is the witch's kitchen from which go forth those demons of the river - steam- launches. The LONDON JOURNAL duke always has his "little place" at Maidenhead; and the heroine of the three-volume novel always dines there when she goes out on the spree with ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... constructed for the beautifying of his capital, several are reflected in the waters of Vltava. There is, for instance, the bridgehead tower on the Mala Strana side, a graceful monument to Charles's gracious days. You may notice on passing under the gateway from the bridge the figure of a witch carved in stone, complete with broom and general air of nocturnal enterprise. I often wonder as I pass by here whether this figure inspired Marion Crawford when he was casting about for a title to his novel which ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?" he demanded. "What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of elves and fairies, and sing them old songs. Jean would crawl close to Randal and hold his hand, for fear the Red Etin, or some other awful bogle, should get her: and in the dancing shadows of the firelight she would think she saw Whuppity Stoorie, the wicked old witch with the spinning-wheel; but it was really nothing but the shadow of the wheel that the old nurse drove with her foot—birr, birr—and that whirred and rattled as she ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... disappointed, the more so as she had caught sight of the telephone-instrument in the hall, Esther stumbled down the steps and out again to the street, sick at heart over the waste of time and strength, both priceless now. The old witch, the iron-faced creature, eyeing her as if she wanted to steal something! Never mind, she must simply try the ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... given always add, I pray you, 'in my judgment,' though I may not, to save trouble or to avoid a charge of false modesty, express it. 'This over-pressure of a heavy pleasure,' &c., is admirable; and, indeed, it would be tedious to praise all that pleases me. Shelley's 'Witch of Atlas' I never saw; therefore the stanza referring to Narcissus and her was read by me to some disadvantage. One observation I am about to make will at least prove I am no flatterer, and will therefore give a qualified ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... has grown larger. The Count of Nideck goes to bed with chattering teeth. The next day again we can make out the figure of the old hag; the fierce attacks begin; the count cries out. The day after, the witch is at the foot of the mountain, and the consequence is that the count's jaws are set like a vice; his mouth foams; his eyes turn in his head. Vile creature! Twenty times I have had her within gunshot, and the count has bid me shed no blood. 'No, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... schooner, the pretty clever craft," mourned the Ancient Mariner. "Never were there more dainty and lovable topmasts on a three- masted schooner, and never was there a three-masted schooner that worked like the witch she was ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... not without a touch of the bully when he was at bay. She could certainly command her guests, even to the extent of decking out the most respectable and reluctant of them with her mediaeval masquerade. And it really seemed as if she could command the elements also, like a witch. For the weather steadily hardened and sharpened; that night the ice of the lake, glimmering in the moonlight, was like a marble floor, and they had begun to dance and skate on ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... notion of paying for one was loathsome to him. Then it was that he thought of the Countess of Chell, who happened to be staying at Knype. If he could obtain that great aristocrat, that ex-Mayoress, that lovely witch, that benefactor of the district, to honour his Thrift Club as patroness, success was certain. Everybody in the Five Towns sneered at the Countess and called her a busybody; she was even dubbed "Interfering Iris" (Iris being one of her ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... to the king. None have seen him, for he journeys only in the night. Moreover, when Zikali passes all men are blind and even women's tongues grow dumb. Perchance by 'his spirit' he means his medicine or the witch-doctoress, Nombe, whom folks say he created, since none have seen her father or her mother, or heard who begat her; or perchance his snake is hid behind the mats of the second litter, if in truth there ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... birth, as is usual, a name which is changed for another on his initiation into the secret society, this secret society having also, as usual, a secret language. About the age of three or five years the boy is decorated, under the auspices of the witch doctor, with certain scars on the face. These scars run from the root of the nose across the cheeks, and are sometimes carried up in a curve ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... joy. In relating the story to me the next day, he said that he felt like taking Lucille in his arms and giving her a genuine sailor hug; but she looked so fierce and wicked that he got the idea that she was a genuine witch; and he was afraid that her beautiful white hands would turn into claws, and that she would soon make a meal of him, if she felt ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... he had been the real Francis Sales and that man in the hollow looking at Aunt Rose and then turning to Henrietta in uncertainty was the one evoked by that witch on horseback, the modern substitute for a broomstick. Christabel Sales was right: Aunt Rose was a witch with her calm, white face, riding swiftly and fearlessly on her messages of evil. He was never ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... scrutinizing the numbers as he went along. Never had he seen such a fog. Two paces away from the curb a headlight became an effulgence. Indeed, there were a thousand lights jammed in the street, and the fog above absorbed the radiance, giving the scene a touch of Brocken. All that was needed was a witch on a broomstick. He counted five vehicles, and stopped. The door-window ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... a roving trade gather no moss. The Comprachicos were poor. They might have said what the lean and ragged witch observed, when she saw them setting fire to the stake, "Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle." It is possible, nay probable (their chiefs remaining unknown), that the wholesale contractors in the trade were rich. After the lapse of two centuries, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... his approaching death that he restored her to liberty. She retired to Havering Bower in Essex, where her grandson, the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, was reared and educated with Henry VI. She died in 1437, and the memory of "Joan the witch queen" was long held in awe by the people ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... naturally, not an uncommon item in parish registers, and is set forth in a bold, business-like manner. On August 21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were executed for the imaginary crime of witchcraft. "A grave, for a witch, sixpence," is an item in the municipal accounts. And the grave was a cheap haven for the poor woman who had been committed to the tender mercies of a Scotch witch-trier. Cetewayo's medicine-men, who "smelt out" witches, were only some two centuries in the rear of our civilisation. Three hundred ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... see me weep, When I recall to mind those once lov'd names, Guido of Prata, and of Azzo him That dwelt with you; Tignoso and his troop, With Traversaro's house and Anastagio s, (Each race disherited) and beside these, The ladies and the knights, the toils and ease, That witch'd us into love and courtesy; Where now such malice reigns in recreant hearts. O Brettinoro! wherefore tarriest still, Since forth of thee thy family hath gone, And many, hating evil, join'd their steps? Well doeth he, that bids his lineage cease, Bagnacavallo; Castracaro ill, And Conio ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... these discouragements, Grundtvig somehow experienced a wonderful rebirth of his hope in the spring of 1824, an experience to which he gave eloquent expression in his great poem, "New Year's Morning." He writes in the preface that he has "long enough battled with a witch called indifference, and has discovered that the battle wherein one is most likely to be defeated is the battle against nothing." He therefore urges his friends to ignore the witch and join him in a determined crusade for a reawakening ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... your friends. They wove for you this robe of rose-leaves, and threw over you a gray cloud from the Witch's Mountain. ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... of Fairy Tales," and an odd volume of the "Parents' Assistant." She picked out, slowly, the gist of these, with a lame and uncertain interpretation. She lived for weeks with Beauty and the Beast—with Cinderella—with the good girl who worked for the witch, and shook her feather bed every morning; till at last, given leave to go home and see her mother, the gold and silver shower came down about her, departing at the back door. Perhaps she should get her pay, some time, and go home ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... turmoil of thoughts that seethed in his brain, like a brew in a witch's cauldron—some of them dark and some golden bright, and some of them red with lust for many things—he proceeded down street to McCoppet's place, to find himself locked out of the private den, where the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... being shaken down, while she looked on at the leap-frog. "How is the dearest, prettiest, gentlest love in the world?" cried Zack, taking her hand, and kissing it with boisterous fondness. "Ah! she lets other old friends kiss her cheek, and only lets me kiss her hand!—I say, Blyth, what a little witch she is—I'll lay you two to one she's guessed what I've just ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... What witch's hand unhasps Thy keen claw-cornered wings From under the barn roof, and flings Thee forth, with chattering gasps, To scud the air, And nip the lady-bug, and tear Her ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... pump—and see that each animal has its food to a minute. The devil's roysterers! a Manhattan negro takes a Flemish gelding for a gaunt hound that is never out of breath, and away he goes, at night, scampering along the highways like a Yankee witch switching through the air on a broomstick—but mark me, master Euclid, I have eyes in my head, as thou knowest by bitter experience! D'ye remember, ragamuffin, the time when I saw thee, from the Hague, riding the beasts, as if the devil spurred them, along the dykes of Leyden, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... veritable Dryad might have performed. The music was rich, triumphant, and the whole atmosphere was filled with the glory of the crown of the year. By a clever contrivance, autumn leaves came fluttering down and Patty's bare feet nestled in them with childish enjoyment. Her smile was roguish, she was a witch, an eerie thing. The orange light glowed and shone, and at the height of a tumultuous burst of music, there was a sudden pause. Patty stopped still, her smile faded, and the colours changed from autumn glows to a cold wintry blue. Her gown became white, with blue shadows, the music was sharp ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... recurrence of mobile figures above and below. It seems as if the image of the fountain is fittest and most tempting for mirroring in music. Perhaps the most beautiful, the most haunting, of all the "Manfred" music of Schumann is this same scene of the Witch of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... One time, before my daughter Della got to wearing it, she was going down the road, not far from our house, when all at once her leg gave way and she could not walk. Of course I knowed what it was. So I went after Linda Woods, the witch doctor. She come with a bottle of something, all striped with all colors, but when you shake it up it was all the same color. She rubbed her leg with it and told me to get all the life everlasting (a weed you know) that I could carry in my arm, and brew ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... afraid so. The fireworks didn't just have the effect I expected. I thought they'd be glad to let us go, fearing that we could work magic, and might turn it on them. Most of the natives are deadly afraid of magic, the evil eye, witch doctors, and stuff like that. But evidently we've impressed the giants in the wrong way. If we could only speak their language now, we could explain that unless they let us go we might destroy their village, though of course we wouldn't do anything of the kind. If we could only speak their ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... started as though some one had struck her in the small of her back. Was the woman a witch? How amazing! ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... God be with you witch I know he will, as the Song says God can see me every day when I work and when I play. again God is always near me when I pray. I shall nor for get Miss H. her name shall never die out Christ have mercy upon her If God calls her I will spect to meet her in heven at the last trumpet shall sound. I ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, and blue ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... and something fluttered in my throat. He was under the spell of this slim, brown-haired witch. She was in his blood, running to his finger-tips. She was on him like the sun. Why could not the woman see what the good God was handing down to her? It was the treasure worth a kingdom. Did she think to find this thing at any crossroads? ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... MacPherson, Miss Mackenzie. Your aunt, Mrs. Hobson Newcome, who I must say is a most blundering silly person, had set about this story. It appears there is no truth in it. Do not look surprised that I know about your affairs. I am an old witch, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an Ultagh an Irish usurer or money-lender? Your correspondent at page 332. requests information respecting Roger Outlaw. Sir William Betham, in a note to the "Proceedings against Dame Alice Ugteler," the famous pseudo-Kilkenny witch, remarks that "the family of Utlagh were seated in Dublin, and filled several situations in the corporation." Utlagh and Outlaw are the same surnames. The named Utlagh also occurs in the Calendar of Printed Irish Patent Rolls. William Utlagh, or Outlaw, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... wished to put her to death while in the form of a toad. The straw was, of course, pure gold; but the girl foolishly cast it all away except a few stalks which clung to her dress. So a countryman who accidentally spilt some hot broth on a witch, disguised as a toad, is presented by her another day with a girdle for his little son. Suspecting something wrong, he tries it on his dog, which at once swells up and bursts. This is a Saxon saga from Transylvania; ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... rode out to the race-course, and saw Pelham, who is in training to run a mile with Hard-heart. Pelham is a handsome little chestnut, with a perfectly thorough-bred air, and gallops like a witch. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Barbara Yelloway, pulling the sleeve of the Factor, "dinna be getting ower near the hellicat witch—wha kens but she may be asking for the horn ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... you are a witch, I think. I wonder what those men do who have no sisters—poor fellows;" and then ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... him." What will you say of Balak, Nabal, Jeroboam? "Macbeth is rather guilty of tempting the Weird Sisters than of being tempted by them, and is surprised and horrified at his own hell-begotten conception." Saul is guilty of tampering with the Witch of Endor, and is alarmed at the Ghost of Samuel, whose words distinctly embody and vibrate the fears of his own heart, and he "falls straightway all along on the earth." "The exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... "that the ancestors of the Huggermuggers—the Huggers on the male side, and the Muggers on the female—were men smaller than me, the poor dwarf. Hundred of years ago they came to this island, directed hither by an old woman, a sort of witch, who told them that if they and their children, and their children's children, ate constantly of a particular kind of shell-fish, which was found in great abundance here, they would continue to increase in size, with each successive generation, ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... was a queer old woman, and lived alone in a little tumble-down house with nineteen cats. Folks called her a witch, but she wasn't, though she looked like an old rag-bag. She was real kind to me when I lived in that place, and used to let me get warm at her fire when the folks at the poorhouse ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... could have been the adept in conjuring, which she firmly believed the Widow Keswick to be; but, as she possessed no such gift, she made up the deficiency, as well as she could, by mixing up her mind, her soul, and her desires, into a sort of witch's hodge-podge, which she thrust as a spell into the affairs of other people. Twice had the devices of this stupid-looking wooden peg of a negro girl stopped Lawrence Croft in the path he was following in his pursuit of Roberta March. If Lawrence had known, at the time, what ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... curtain was almost ready to rise. And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green! And Mrs. Robson carefully picked out in the chorus the stout sister of a former servant who had worked for her mother! And the wicked old witch swept from the wings on the traditional broomstick! From that moment until the final transformation scene, when scintillating sea-shells yielded up one by one their dazzling burdens of female loveliness and a rather Hebraic Cupid descended from an invisible wire ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... psychics in the ignorant and undeveloped classes. The witch women and seers, and many of the colored races are psychic. In the past, these people were looked upon as witches and their words and works ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... what," she proceeded, "I'm a bit of an old witch, and I'll risk a soothword. As there isn't already a woman, there'll shortly be one—my thumbs prick. The stage is set, the scene is too appropriate, the play's inevitable. It was never in the will of Providence that a youth of your complexion ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... like mine, and like 'Bella Donna,' and like a lynx. There was just that look of deformity I had dreamed—mysterious and dreadful. I hated the creature. I couldn't feel she was mine and Jack's. She was like some changeling in an old witch tale. I couldn't bear it! I knew that I'd rather die than have Jack see that wicked elf after all his hopes. I told the doctor so. I threatened to kill myself. I don't know if I meant it. But he thought I did. He was a young ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... in the clerical books. Joanna would be created a Dr. herself, but not of Divinity. For in the Joanna page of the ledger the entry would be—"Miss Joanna, in acct. with the Church, Dr. by sundry diabolic miracles, she having publicly preached heresy, shown herself a witch, and even tried hard to corrupt the principles of six church pillars." In the mean time, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon both trials. The very best witness called from first to last deposes that ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a plain, and on the plain is a knoll, about twice the height of a one-storeyed cottage, and pointed "like a sugar-loaf." The old people remember, or have heard, that this mound was not there when they were young. It swelled up suddenly out of the grave of a witch who ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... Nor did the witch-doctoress say anything; she only fixed her beady eyes upon his face. Hadden returned the compliment, staring at her with all his might, till suddenly he became aware that he was vanquished in this curious duel. His brain grew confused, and to his fancy it seemed that the woman before ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... was all a dream of sleep. And I have said when morning shone:— "Why should the night-witch, Fancy, keep "These wonders for ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... ate a few juniper berries, and people said that was the reason why she was so vigorous and showed her sixty-six years so little. The fact that the two sixes stood together caused her, according to an old country saying[3] (which, however, was not universally believed in) to be regarded as a witch. It was said that she sometimes milked her black goat for hours at a time, and that this goat gave an astonishing quantity of milk, but that in milking this goat she was in reality drawing the milk out of the udders of the cows ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... it naturally, as though I was very surprised; but you could not deceive Mlle. Rosamunda. A more artful little witch never played at fairies ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... depart and save their lives while there was time, for otherwise the French would fall upon them and slay them all—but the English laughed greatly at the letter pretending to scorn it and really believing it to be the work of a witch who was led by evil spirits; and they answered her with vile taunts and insults, and one of their captains named Glasdale shook his fist in her direction and shouted in a voice that reached ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... lemon-groves; tall palm-trees wave their graceful branches by the shore; music of the softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors and sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm; without, are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But the witch herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin in the painted banquet-halls and among ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... I saw an admirable illustration of the affection which a sailor will lavish on a ship's boy, whom he takes a fancy to, and makes his "chicken," as the phrase is. The United States sloop "Water Witch" had recently been captured in Ossabaw Sound, and her crew brought into prison. One of her boys—a bright, handsome little fellow of about fifteen—had lost one of his arms in the fight. He was brought into the Hospital, and the old ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a devil frae hell, Or else his mother a witch maun be; I wadna have ridden that wan water For a' ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... changed; In vain! her hearers had no share In all she spoke, except to stare. Their judgment was, upon the whole, —That lady is the dullest soul!— Then tapt their forehead in a jeer, As who should say—She wants it here! She may be handsome, young, and rich, But none will burn her for a witch! A party next of glittering dames, From round the purlieus of St. James, Came early, out of pure good will, To see the girl in dishabille. Their clamour, 'lighting from their chairs Grew louder all the way up stairs; At entrance loudest, where they found The room with volumes litter'd round. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... thus been slowly simmering into toad-broth. At Tannington also they came to my father to ask him to let them have the church Bible and the church key. The key was to be spun round on the Bible, and if it had pointed at a certain old woman who was suspected of being a witch, they ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... never cut down; For granny relates with amazement, A witch bore 'em over the town, And hung them on Thorowgood's casement, The neighbours, I've heard the folks say, The miracle noisily brag on; And the shop is, to this very day, The sign of the George and ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... it—he knew it—Virginia Huff was the witch who had mixed the hell-broth that had raised up all this treachery against him. She had poisoned his men's minds and incited them to vandalism, but it would not happen again. He had been a fool to endure it ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... became ominous. She bade him have a care for the welfare of Egypt before he refused her. Her words were dark and full of evil portent. The air seemed to winnow with bat-wings and to reek with vapors from witch-potions and murmur with mystic formulas. Every man of us crept, and drew near to his neighbor. When she paused for an answer, the king hesitated. She had menaced Egypt and it stirreth the heart of the father when the child is threatened. He ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... thousand spears The thirty standards rose. 160 From every warlike city That boasts the Latian name, Foredoomed to dogs and vultures, That gallant army came; From Sofia's purple vineyards, 165 From Norba's ancient wall, From the white streets of Tusculum, The proudest town of all; From where the Witch's Fortress[29] O'erhangs the dark-blue seas; 170 From the still glassy lake that sleeps Beneath Aricia's trees— Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest[30] doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, 175 And shall himself be slain; From the drear ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... head of Leven Vale we set off in the steamer "Watch-Witch" over the crystal waters of Loch Lomond, passing Inch Murrin, the deer-park of the Duke ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... passage door. He cannot get in. He will be fooled, eh? Why should you be afraid? Have you not with you the most wonderful, the most brave sahib? Would he not give his life for you?" The dark eyes sparkled with understanding—aye, even mischief. Genevra felt that this Oriental witch knew everything. For a long time she looked in uncertain mood upon that smiling, wistful face. Then she said softly, moved by an irresistible impulse to ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... all began the same way: "If I had a witch with a wand, this is what we would do." The witch with a wand had come to Joyce in the shape of Cousin Kate Ware, and that coming was one of the pictures that Joyce could see now, as she thought about it with ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that he remembered his mother saying that whoever in bad health drank of the well was sure to get better. But the majority agreed that the former was the right version of the story—for was she not a witch, an old hating witch, whose delight was to do mischief? One said he had heard that she took the shape of a young woman sometimes, as beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all, for she struck every man who ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... his open hand upon the chimney. 'Witch!' he said, 'there is not your match for devilry in Europe. Service! the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lantern out in the porch watched him as he pounded down the dark road, his tow hair sticking out of his tattered black hat, the ends of his comforter flaunting in the breeze, and every gesture showing the agitated haste of a witch-scared boy. Then they looked at each other significantly, and ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to the other, puzzled but, I dare conjecture, highly entertained. I think you may take it, too, that a certain healthy sort of children will like to have these queer stories read aloud. The villainies of the Baba Yaga, an old witch of terrific resourcefulness, and the oddly inconsequent animal stories should make particular appeal. But you will be hard put to it to answer the questions which will be thrust at you; and (by the way) perhaps you will discreetly have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... there is not one woman amongst one thousand, but will speake false Latine, and breake Priscians head. Attempt nothing that you may with great reason doubt of and out of doubt you shall obtaine nothing. I tell thee, friend, the eminent confidence of strong spirits is the onely witch-craft of this World, Spirits wrastling with spirits as bodies with bodies: this were enough to make thee hope well, if she were one of these painted communities, that are ravisht with Coaches, and upper hands,[13] and brave men of durt: but ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... in his rhetorical power; in his "irreconcilable revolt and battle" against the political and social order of things in which he lived. "Byron threw himself upon poetry as his organ; and in poetry his topics were not Queen Mab, and the Witch of the Atlas, and the Sensitive Plant, they were the upholders of the old order, George the Third and Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington and Southey, and they were the canters and tramplers of the great world, and they ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... masters and mistresses in the night they carried lanterns and candles, and a great long club on the neck. These apprentices were apt to lounge with their clubs about the fronts of shops, ready to take a hand in any excitement —to run down a witch, or raid an objectionable house, or tear down a tavern of evil repute, or spoil a playhouse. The high-streets, especially in winter-time, were annoyed by hourly frays of sword and buckler-men; but these were suddenly suppressed when the more deadly fight with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were Madam Conway and Theo, the former of whom chided her for staying so late at the cottage, while Theo asked what queer things the old witch-woman had said to-night. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... of the unfortunate wife was called "trial by ordeal," of which Clarke gives a minute description in his commentaries. It was common at one time among many nations, the women in all cases being the chief sufferers as in the modern trials for witchcraft. If the witch was guilty when thrown into the water she went to the bottom, if innocent she floated on the surface and was left to sink, so in either case her fate was the same. As men make and execute the laws, prescribe and administer the punishment, "trials ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Havana's Witch-fog murks my Horoscope Until my dream-enamoured Senses grope Towards the Light, where in her opal Shrine Smiles Hopefulness, the great ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... exclamations, with which the poem opens, as Canidia and her three assistants surround him, glaring on him, with looks significant of their deadly purpose, through lurid flames fed with the usual ghastly ingredients of a witch's fire, carry us at once into the horrors of the scene. While one of the hags sprinkles her hell-drops through the adjoining house, another is casting up earth from a pit, in which the boy is presently imbedded to the chin, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... his first tale, of a witch who, by means of her magic charms, made not only her fellow-countrymen love her, but "the Indians even," and in his initiation into the mysteries of Isis, his robes "bore pictures ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... go down there if you like and fetch out your Witch of Endor, but as for me, I'm going to throw myself the other side of Collinson's lights. They're good enough for me, and a ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... they wended the wood, and nought befell to tell of. The witch-wife (for even such was she) fed the stolen child well and duly, and whiles caressed her and spake sweetly unto her; whiles also she would take her out of the pannier, and set her on the ass's back and hold her thereon heedfully; or, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... black thread through the woof of the spirit tales was the mention of witch-craft—witchcraft with which Kilbuck was now preparing to deal; not because he hoped to benefit the natives and free them from the curse of superstition, but because owing to a belief in the black ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... think you reason rightly; but these reflections should have come sooner. What has prevented you from seeing all this before? there was no need to be a witch to foresee, as soon as you fell in love with Valere, all that your genius never found out until to-day. It is the natural consequence of what you have done; as soon as I was made acquainted with it I never imagined ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself—only for knowing it. She was not naturally cruel, but the ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... staff that Claus had cut was a rod of witch-hazel, which has the power of showing wherever treasure lies buried. But Claus knew no more of that than the chick in ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... man couldn't say when he got close, she kind of dazzled him. She had black hair, and a white face, and—and— witch's eyes, but she was very kind and overpowering, haughty and generous. Any one would have known she was ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... world makes you visit that old hermit?" said Eliza Ray, her schoolmate, one morning. "Bridget, our hired girl, says she is sure such a looking old hag must be a witch." ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... himself,—according to promise then given. Old Duke Eberhard Ludwig comes, stays three weeks in great splendor of welcome;—poor old gentleman, his one son is now dead; and things are getting earnest with him. On his return home, this time, he finds, according to order, the foul witch Gravenitz duly cleared away; reinstates his injured Duchess, with the due feelings, better late than never; and dies in a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... whether is it better To be prodded with Danish poles, Having hewn a chamber in a ditch, And hounded like a howling witch, Or smoked to death ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... long, Fair. She's a lovely witch—she'll charm the hours away. This time next year how gay ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... sailor, as he brought the glass to bear in a moment. "It is a man in the water, lads, and swimming to save the witch, I do believe." ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... upon his back. On looking sharply, I guessed, from the warm smell which came from him, his clammy locks, and his gummy eyes, that the lad must be master Sleep. "Pray, sir," said I, squealing, "what have I done to you, that you bring that witch here to suffocate me?" "Hush," said he, "it is only my sister Nightmare; we are both going to visit our brother Death, and have need of a third, and lest you should resist, we have come upon you without warning, as he himself will sometime; therefore ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... other tales superstitions and old-wives' fables; but observe, he always trembles when he tells his own. But they are all true; there is not one old-wife's fable on the list. Necromancers have had private interviews with visitors who had no right to be seen this side the Styx. The Witch of Endor and the raising of Samuel were literal facts. Above all others, the Nemesis and Eumenides were facts not to be withstood. And, philosophize as we may, ghosts have been seen at dead of night, and not always under the conduct of Mercury;[6] even the Salem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... reader's admiration. The copiousness of his invention, and his judgment in sustaining the ideas which he started, are illustrated by referring to Caliban, a creature of the fancy, begot by an incubus upon a witch, and furnished with a person, language, and character befitting his pedigree on both sides. The passions are then considered as included in the manners; and Dryden, at once and peremptorily, condemns ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... me any more than you can help," Jack remarked, making a wry face, as he caressed the protuberance on his forehead; "it feels as big as a walnut, let me tell you, and hurts like fun. The sooner I'm back in camp, so I can slap some witch hazel on that lump, the better it'll please ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Native Land." The motto which he chose for the title-page was "We are Seven," from Wordsworth. My informant read the tales in manuscript, and says some of them were very striking, particularly one or two Witch Stories. As soon as the little book was well prepared for the press he deliberately threw it into the fire, and sat by to see ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... come to him smilingly, with soft hands, with wisdom and comfort passing that of life, she came with terrible empty eyes. He could see her gaunt profile, her black brows. She was like an engraving he had once seen of the witch Saul had used at En-dor, to call up Samuel, who was dead. She had the same awful majesty, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... crowing of the cock. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... information from a diviner about these unfortunate asses. What a contrast between the thoughts of the two, as they looked at each other! Saul begins by consulting Samuel as a magician; he ends by seeking counsel from the witch at Endor. Samuel's words are beautiful in their smothering of all personal feeling, and dignified in their authority. He at once takes command of Saul, and prepares him by half-hints for something great to come. The direction to 'go ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dwarf, but a gallant knight. At that moment his memory came back to him, and he knew he was Conal, one of the Knights of the Red Branch, and he remembered now that the spell of dumbness and deformity had been cast upon him by the Witch of the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... moonflower on the bookcase behind Alexander was a thing of beauty. Alexander liked beauty. He had said so, and the Great Hall below them bore it out. It was a lovely room. Those four bronze Lani in the fountain were works of art. One of them looked remarkably like Copper. Copper in bronze. The little witch had probably posed for the casting. Maybe it had even been made from ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... Odour of Sanctity to fail once," said the Churchwarden, coolly. "Hardly ever go out without it. There ain't a witch or an imp or a bad spirit of any kind whatever can stand up against my Odour of Sanctity, if he once gets a couple of good whiffs of it out of this little bottle. Just a few drops from the bottle, and a few sniffs, and whoof! they're ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... our widening V-shaped wake glowed with opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions, went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake three ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... in truth a witch," said he; "you must have some genius in your service, who listens to every wish you express, in order to fulfil it without delay! This letter contains an invitation from the cardinal. He gives a great entertainment to-morrow, and begs of me that I will bring you to it. The ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Because one of the fairies there had seen, just one second too late to save the Princess, what he was up to, and had made a strong little charm in a great hurry to prevent his vanishing. This Fairy was a White Witch, and of course you know that White Magic is much stronger than Black Magic, as well as more suited for drawing-room performances. So there the Magician stood, 'looking like a thunder-struck pig,' as some one unkindly said, and the dear White ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... Europe, away we dashed in the little witch of a pilot, a craft of some eighty tons' burthen, but, viewed from a short distance, not looking more than half that size, so snug was her build, as well as from the absence of every kind of hamper; her shrouds were without ratlins, and her deck without even the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... that Vitellius Germanicus shall be no more, by the day of the said calends." He was even suspected of being accessary to his mother's death, by forbidding sustenance to be given her when she was unwell; a German witch [714], whom he held to be oracular, having told him, "That he would long reign in security if he survived his mother." But others say, that being quite weary of the state of affairs, and apprehensive of the future, she obtained without difficulty ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... I thought, was a very graceful invitation for Andrew Drever to give to a stranger who had only a few moments before implied that his mother was a witch. But it was a kindness such as he was ever showing; and I must add that Captain Gordon was one of those easy-mannered sailors who at once give an agreeable impression. I myself liked him from the very first, and I had afterwards many reasons for rejoicing in ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... She is a Caliph's daughter. 'Tis not forgotten. The axe would close her life. Her fair neck would give slight trouble to the headsman's art. But for thy sister, but for Miriam, she is a witch, a Jewish witch! They would ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the forest under the mora tree had proved so delightful that I was eager for more rambles and talks with her, but the variable little witch had a great surprise in store for me. All her wild natural gaiety had unaccountably gone out of her: when I walked in the shade she was there, but no longer as the blithe, fantastic being, bright as an angel, innocent and ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... The witch-light danced in the steady glance she turned upon him; she threw her head back and her slim throat showed white and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... he mayn't be just the old-fashioned water-witch, but it ain't right; it's tamperin' with the secrets of the Most High, that's ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... great plain south of Nazareth is Esdraelon, the 'battle-field of Palestine'; these rounded mountains here in the eastern part of the Valley of Esdraelon are Tabor, Little Hermon, and Gilboa;—on the north is Tabor, at whose base Napoleon fought; the next is Little Hermon, where lived the witch of Endor; and the one south of Little Hermon is Gilboa, where Saul and his sons were slain; that range of mountains forming the southern wall of Esdraelon is Carmel, where Elijah held his trial with the priests of Baal; here below us, winding in its serpentine course, ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... of a sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place, ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman, a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that profession. I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked with her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and soundest ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Anthony Croft sitting in the kitchen doorway had seemingly missed the heights of life he might have trod, and had walked his close on fifty years through level meadows of mediocrity, a witch in every finger-tip waiting to be set to work, head among the clouds, feet stumbling, eyes and ears open to hear God's secret thought; seeing and hearing it, too, but lacking force to speak it forth again; ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... could only mumble something which sounded like "yeast." They asked a pussy-cat and she said if they would come home with her first she would look it up in a book she had there. But Hazel did not want to go. "For," she whispered to Bushy-Tail, "she has eyes like a witch." ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... force you to perdition! execrable witch," cried he, "that knew no better how to prepare a slave to receive her lord!" As he spoke, he struck her again; but it was with his gauntlet hand, and the eyes of the unfortunate woman opened no more. The blow fell on her temple, and a ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... tar, Captain Whitmore; quizzing the old witch, his sister; and making love to his charming daughter. Upon my word, sir, she is a delightful creature, and sings and plays divinely! Her personal charms I might have withstood, but her voice has taken me by ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... one, a plenty: sort of a gashly critter like a witch, with teeth all same like a lobo. Kind 'at'd stick a knife in yuh ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the medicine-man than decades of preaching and reasoning would have done. No man living could have done the thing with like effect, nor any woman save one of her complete self-possession and natural authority. The younger villagers chuckle over the jest of it to this day, and the old witch-doctor himself was crouching at her feet and, as one may say, eating out of her hand, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... bringing her here to destroy his daughter's happiness. So that was why she held off from Mr. Hope,' cried Albinia, burning with such indignation, that on some one she must expend it, but a tirade against the artfulness of the little French witch was cut ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who trembled with something more than cold. "M'anam go'n Dhia! She was a witch woman, or worse, Turlough Wolf. She leaped out of the snow in my path, told me to bear that skin to Yellow Brian, and vanished in a burst of fire. How could she not ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... and don't want to go on with it. Dr. Astroff hardly ever used to come here; it was all we could do to persuade him to visit us once a month, and now he has abandoned his forestry and his practice, and comes every day. You must be a witch. ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... she answered in the same tongue. "There was no witch-fire there," she continued, pointing to the tower; "when it came not, Olooya came! Olooya found white chief sick and alone. White chief could not get up! Olooya ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... into a ship (I'll show you how to make one out of paper, exactly like W), and sailed up into the sky, for the ship was a Ship of Stars—you make X's for stars; but that's a witch-ship; so it stuck fast in Y, which is a cleft ash-stick, and then came a stroke of lightning, Z, and burnt them all up!" He ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... answered this in the affirmative, she presently laid a hand on my shoulder. In the other she had a stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the witch of the place. She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said, "Come, come, ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad, The nights are wholesome—then no planets strike, No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... preserved or ruined, whether it be art or accident? And therefore many times the impostor is prized, and the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see [the] weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often refer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician. And therefore the poets were clear-sighted in discerning this extreme folly when they made AEsculapius and Circe, brother and sister, both children of the sun, as in the ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... beautiful to me as my being merges into harmony with them and dilates with the emotion of intenser and fuller life. The Sistine Madonna is generally regarded as beautiful. But what is the beauty in the unspeakable witch on the canvas of Frans Hals? Harmony of color and of composition is employed by Raphael in the rendering of a figure and in the expression of an emotion both of which relate themselves to the veneration of mankind. Maternity, Christian or pagan, divine ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... more successful, at last, in dealing with this strange woman. I do not know if she is a witch or an epileptic, or what—but she has convinced me that Alibi ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... ells high, of his royal apparel, of his crown graven with the Name of God. At the end of seven days Joshua appeared with twelve thousand troops. When the mother of King Shobach, who was a powerful witch, espied the host, she exercised her magic art, and enclosed the Isrealitish army in seven walls. Joshua thereupon sent forth a carrier pigeon to communicate his plight to Nabiah, the king of the trans-Jordanic tribes. He urged him to hasten to his help ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... marriage bells Tuning the air with fragrance of sweet sound; But the low dirge that ever rose and died, Recurring without pause or any close, Like one verse chaunted aye in sleepless brain. Down to the shore it drew her from the heights, Like witch's demon-spell, that fearful moan. She knew that somewhere in the green abyss His body swung in curves of watery force, Now in a circle slow revolved, and now Swaying like wind-swung bell, when surface waves Sank their ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... eclipsed when not long afterward Howland and Aspinwall, now converted to the clipper, ordered the Sea Witch to be built for Captain Bob Waterman. Among all the splendid skippers of the time he was the most dashing figure. About his briny memory cluster a hundred yarns, some of them true, others legendary. It has been argued that the speed of the clippers was due more to the men who commanded ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... a doublet of paganism, occurring in paynim host, paynim knight, etc. The correct name for the individual fairy is fay, Fr. fee, Vulgar Lat. *fata, connected with fatum, fate. This appears in Ital. fata, "a fairie, a witch, an enchantres, an elfe" (Florio). The fata morgana, the mirage sometimes seen in the Strait of Messina, is attributed to the fairy Morgana of Tasso, the Morgan le Fay of our own ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Philadelphia Art-Union, Huntington's Christiana and Her Children, by Andrews; and for the same purpose, Mr. Perkins, of Boston, has allowed the New-England Art-Union to make use of his magnificent picture of Saul and the Witch of Endor, painted by Alston, and generally considered one of the finest historical productions of that eminent artist. Each of the Unions, we believe, will also publish some less important works ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Autumn, which imparts a human interest to the bald entries set against each year of these annals, there are several allusions to the Supreme Being. For instance, at a time of great drought the Duke of Lu wished, in accordance with custom, to burn a witch and a person in the last stage of consumption; the latter being sometimes exposed in the sun so as to excite the compassion of God, who would then cause rain to fall. A Minister vigorously protested against this superstition, pointing out that the proper way to meet ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... ran up the stairs he was confronted by what he took to be an old witch in a purple wrapper. She barred his way in a decidedly militant manner, her sunken black eyes flashing anger. She seemed about to ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... for months after drank of that well was sure to be ill. To this, one of them, however, added that he remembered his mother saying that whoever in bad health drank of the well was sure to get better. But the majority agreed that the former was the right version of the story—for was she not a witch, an old hating witch, whose delight was to do mischief? One said he had heard that she took the shape of a young woman sometimes, as beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all, for she struck every man ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... in the back, ground. He had been seen going from one to another of his partisans, advising them to keep calm, in order that they might retain the cold, keen coup d'oeil which in warfare generally decides the victory. Briefly, such was the plotting and intriguing that never had any witch's cauldron brimful of drugs and nameless abominations been set to boil on a more hellish fire than that of this ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... gardens like slow rockets and burst into purple blooms and stood there huge and radiant on six-foot stalks and softly sang strange songs. Others came up beside them and bloomed and began singing too. A very old witch came out of her cottage by the back door and into the garden ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely alone with his aged sister, who was thought a witch. A tailor in the neighborhood declared that he had often seen her at night, on the roof of the house, waiting for the hour of the witches' sabbath. This fact seemed the more extraordinary because it was known to be the miser's custom to lock up his sister ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... investigate the hidden things of another world, you might as well measure with the palm of your hand the waters of the Isis. Indeed, good sir, you err in this, and give men too much pretence to confound your honourable name with witch-advocates, free-thinkers, and atheists, even with such as this man Bletson, who, if the discipline of the church had its hand strengthened, as it was in the beginning of the great conflict, would have been long ere now cast out of the pale, and delivered ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... to drop in at a certain coffee-house at Charing Cross, kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King, might—indeed, he could not have failed to—have made the acquaintance of a "little witch" (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes, dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime favourite of all ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... exasperated him beyond bearing. He felt shut up in it, and yet would not leave it. Somebody certainly might come even to-night. Fred himself perhaps, if he could escape from the rigid guardianship he was under; or was that miraculous Australian Nettie a little witch, who had spirited the whole party in a nutshell over the seas? Never was man delivered from a burden with a worse grace than was Dr Rider; and the matter had not mended in these ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... m'teoulin can, when speaking, make themselves heard to whom they will, at any distance. They, can confer with one another secretly when miles away, or make themselves known to many. I was informed by an Indian in all faith that an old witch who died in 1876, twelve miles from Pleasant Point, was heard to speak in the latter place when at her last. A very intelligent Passamaquoddy told me that when Osalik (Sarah) Hequin died he himself heard all she said, though sixty-five miles distant. I am certain ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... No wither'd witch shall here be seen, No goblins lead their nightly crew; The female fays shall haunt the green, And dress thy grave with ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... be fleyt (frightened) at ye. Ye're no sic a witch as that comes till, though ye div ken a body's fit upo' the flags! My blin' luckie deddy can du mair nor that!" said Malcolm, irritated by her persistency, threats ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... preferred the simplest, like his own, would have highly disapproved. The most grateful names to Allah are Abdallah (Allah's Slave) and Abd al-Rahman (Slave of the Compassionate); the truest are Al-Harith (the gainer, "bread winner") and Al-Hammam (the griever); and the hatefullest are Al-Harb (witch) and Al-Murrah (bitterness, Abu Murrah being a kunyat or by-name of the Devil). Abu al-Shamat (pronounced Abushshamat)Father of Moles, concerning which I have already given details. These names ending in -Din (faith) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... for her. And there was the spinet, with its mysterious music, the drives about, and she was learning to ride on a pillion; and Patty knew so many stories about everything, merry and sad and awesome, for her grandmother's sister had been thrust into prison at Salem for being a witch. And Patty also knew some fairy stories, chief among them a version of "Cinderella," and that fascinating "Little ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... unboastful charms! whom white-robed Truth Right onward guiding through the maze of youth, Forbade the Circe Praise to witch thy soul, And dash'd to earth th' intoxicating bowl: Thee meek-eyed Pity, eloquently fair, 5 Clasp'd to her bosom with a mother's care; And, as she lov'd thy kindred form to trace, The slow smile wander'd o'er her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the leaves are shed In headlong troops and nightmare herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... them little trouble, and Mamma Gerard loved him as if he were her own. The orphan was now inseparable from little Maria, a perfect little witch, who became prettier every day. The engraver, having found in a cupboard the old bearskin cap which he had worn as a grenadier in the National Guard, a headdress that had been suppressed since '98, gave it to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... strange premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not help giving heed. But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in miracles to accept the supernatural in any shape,—assuredly when it comes from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her revelations of the future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to those words of the old zingara with an irresistible ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was a young witch whose blue eyes, As she stood naked by the river springs, Drew down a god: I watched his radiant form Growing less radiant, and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... bush. It is a dreadful place and she keeps a fierce dog! But perhaps she keeps a boat, too. She must keep a boat," cheerfully, "because she lives right by the water and I know she fishes. If she would only let us have the boat! But I warn you she may refuse. She is like the witch in 'Hansel ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Wagner's finest works, had remained unsung—they en merely howled. Evelyn should be the first to sing them. His eyes glowed with subdued passion as he thought of an afternoon, some three years hence, in the great theatre planned by the master himself, when he should see her rush in as the Witch Kundry. The marvellous evocation of Arabia flashed upon him.... Would he ever hear her sing it?... Yes, if she would consent to go away with him he would hear her sing it. But would she go away with him? Her love of her father, and her religion, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... for them—and probably have expressed more of it than I intended—for my preliminary chapter has caused the greatest uproar that has happened here since witch-times. If I escape from town without being tarred and feathered, I shall consider it good luck. I wish they would tar and feather me; it would be such an entirely novel kind of distinction for a literary man. And, from such judges as my fellow-citizens, I should look upon it ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... has bad dreams, looks black around the eyes, or feels tired, while the disease is assigned such names as "when they dream of snakes," "when they dream of fish," "when ghosts trouble them," "when something is making something else eat them," or "when the food is changed," i.e., when a witch causes it to sprout and grow in the body of the patient or transforms it into a ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... three years past there came to these parts one who called himself Doctor Doboobie, although it may be he never wrote even MAGISTER ARTIUM, save in right of his hungry belly. Or it may be, that if he had any degrees, they were of the devil's giving; for he was what the vulgar call a white witch, a cunning man, and such like.—Now, good sir, I perceive you are impatient; but if a man tell not his tale his own way, how have you warrant to think that he can tell ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... chief's wife took the boy to the headmen, and the witch- doctors. They drew on his body the sign of the otter—he who is cunning and brave, who is at home on land or in the water. They made him a warrior, he who was a boy, because there was always meat in the hut of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... here a-new, Here, on thy Lips— Exhausted Treasures that wou'd purchase Crowns, To buy thy Smiles—to buy a gentle Look; And when thou didst repay me—blest the Giver? Oh, Abdelazer, more than this I've done— This very Hour, the last the King can live, Urg'd by thy Witch-craft, I his Life betray'd; And is it thus my Bounties are repaid? Whate'er a Crime so great deserves from Heav'n, By Abdelazer might have been forgiven: [Weeps. But I will be reveng'd by penitence, And ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... hath driven me to such a fatall necessity, as that I cannot hide the misery which you have caused. Sure, the hostil goddes have, to plague me, ordayned that fatal marridge, by which you are bound to one so infinitly below you in degree. Were that bond of ill-omind Hymen cut in twayn witch binds you, I swear, Madam, that my happiniss woulde be to offer you this hande, as I have my harte long agoe. And I praye you to beare in minde this declaracion, which I here sign with my hande, and witch I pray you may one day be called upon to prove the truth on. Beleave me, Madam, that there ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... silent—you will not say? . . . Oh! I understand it all. He—I know he would never have ventured it. But it is your 'noble lady Damia'—that old woman, who has told you what to say. You are her echo, and as for Marcus. . . . Confess, confess at once, you witch. . . ." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... crowds of people whirled through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead,—if they don't come from Salem, they ought to,—and not more than one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought for their convenience. They know that without hands or feet, without horses, without steam, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me like that, you sorceress, you witch! Disdain you! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as though it were swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more. Look how she laughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It does one's heart good to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?" he demanded. "What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... He should not only resist and attack the world; he should hate it. He early learned to love the pleasure of hating. He hated himself if no more promising victim loomed on the horizon. He early became the foremost Persecutor and Vice-Crusader of the new world. He made witch-hunting one of the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... places; and to protect yourself from this trick of his, it is necessary to learn that by joining your hands in a particular way, so as to leave a diamond-shaped aperture between the crossed fingers, you can extinguish the witch-fire at any distance simply by blowing through the aperture in the direction of the light and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and peeped and pried here and there, like a young witch. Presently she took a few steps toward him, with her finger mysteriously to her lips, and beckoned him. He entered into the pantomime—she seemed so earnest in ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Hallowe'en, You big stiff." or "On Monday next comes All-Hallows-Even, My grandmother's maiden name was Stephens." or "On Hallowe'en you may see a witch If you don't look out, you funny fellow." or "Harry and I are giving a Hallowe'en party; Harry says you owe him four dollars; please be prompt. or "Monday night the ghosts do dance; Why didn't you enlist and go ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... and rout The Death-fires danc'd at night; The water, like a witch's oils. Burnt green ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... not, however, stupid, but rather quick-witted and adroit. He won the Queen partly indeed by presents (how pitifully characteristic of her!), but also by 'witch-craft of his wit' or intellect. He seems to have been soft-spoken, ingratiating in manner, and given to smiling on the person he addressed ('that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain'). We see ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... on Witchcraft" which Cotton Mather studied, I thought, "Well, that goblin is laid at last!"—and while I mused the tables were turning, and the chairs beating the devil's tattoo all over Christendom. I have a neighbor who dug down through tough strata of clay to a spring pointed out by a witch-hazel rod in the hands of a seventh son's seventh son, and the water is the sweeter to him for the wonder that is mixed with it. After all, it seems that our scientific gas, be it never so brilliant, is not equal to the dingy ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Dacotahs works in a similar manner. Before a party starts on the war-trail, the chief, with various ceremonies, takes his club and stands before his tent. An old witch bowls hoops at him; each hoop represents an enemy, and for each he strikes a foeman is expected to fall. A bowl of sweetened water is also set out to entice the spirits of the enemy.(1) The war-magic of the Aryans in India does not differ much in character from ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... terrified by the neighbourhood of such dangerous commotions, resolved to go by water to the castle of Windsor; but as she approached the bridge, the populace assembled against her: the cry ran, DROWN THE WITCH; and besides abusing her with the most opprobrious language, and pelting her with rotten eggs and dirt, they had prepared large stones to sink her barge, when she should attempt to shoot the bridge; and she was so frightened, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... episode of the heart. It would be strange were it otherwise. He had in no ordinary degree a rich and sensuous nature, and his responsiveness was so quick that the barriers of prudence were apt to be as shadowy to him as to the author of "The Witch of Atlas." But he was the earnest student for the most part, and, above all, the poet. His other pleasure, in his happy vagrant days, was to join company with any tramps, gipsies, or other wayfarers, and in good ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... apparitions—of spectres that flit about lonely roads on moonlight nights, or haunt peaceful people in their own homes; of funeral processions, with long trains of mourners, watched from a distance, but which, on nearer approach, melt into a line of mist; of wild witch-dances in deserted houses, and balls of fire bounding out of doors and windows—stories which cause the flesh of children to creep upon their bones, and make cowards of them where there is no reason for fear. For you may lay it ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... oblivious of what she had done by the irresistible charm of what she was. You forgot all about her books,—you only felt the intense delight of life with her; she was penetrating and sympathetic, and entered into your feelings so entirely that you wondered how 'the little witch' could read you so readily and so rightly,—and if, now and then, you were startled, perhaps dismayed, by her wit, it was but the prick of a diamond arrow. Words and thoughts that she flung hither and thither, without design or intent beyond the amusement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself—only ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... five Pence. That's too much, you nasty Jade. Nay, 'tis too little, no Body will sell you for less. Upon my Life it cost me as much within a Trifle. You Witch, you tell a Lie, that you may sell it for twice or three Times as much as it cost you. Ay, I'll sell it for a hundred Times as much if I can, but I can't find such Fools. What if I should ask the Price of yourself? What do you value ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... good for him, and the face of a pretty girl had bewitched him, stirring up desire. He wanted to kiss her lips... There were no women in the Ypres salient. Nothing pretty or soft. It was hell up there, and this girl was a pretty witch, bringing back thoughts of the other side—for life, womanhood, love, caresses which were good for the souls and bodies of men. It was a starved life up there in the salient... Why shouldn't she give him her lips? Wasn't he fighting for ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... was named Nanny Town, after his wife. Here two mountain streams plunged over a rock nine hundred feet high into a romantic gorge, where their waters met in a seething caldron called "Nanny's Pot." Into this, as the negroes believed, the black witch Nanny could, by her sorcery, cast the white soldiers who pursued them. As for old Cudjoe himself, the English declared that he must be in league with the devil, whom he resembled closely enough to be his ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... thou bearded old witch," she cried; "make way, I say, before the wife of Halil Patrona. Why, thou art not worthy to kiss the dust off her feet. Stand aside if thou wilt ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... from outside and laid on the table, where the doctor attended to them. Some ghastly sights were disclosed when the stretcher-bearers ripped off the blood-stained clothes and laid bare the hideous wounds. At the end of the room, an old woman, with a face like the witch of Endor, apparently quite unmoved by anything that was happening, was grinding coffee in a mill and making a black concoction which she sold to the men. It was no doubt a good thing for them to get a little stimulant. In another room the floor was covered with wounded waiting ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... the city we were met by an old female mendicant, who, by her beggings and importunities, disturbed him in his story. "Pack yourself off, old witch!" said he, and walked by. She shouted after him the well-known retort,—only somewhat changed, since she saw well that the unfriendly man was old himself,—"If you did not wish to be old, you should have had yourself hanged in your youth!" ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the sides of the bucket all the way up, as the shortening rope brought it near; but when he drew it over the well's brink wonder and grief held him fast, for the bucket was as empty as vanity. From behind him came a noise of laughter, and there was the old witch running round and round in a circle; and everywhere a hedge of thorns came shooting up to enclose him and keep him fast ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... sovereign from his meagrely-furnished purse. 'It is only right you should do something; indeed, anything is better than wasting your life in such a hole as this. But what if you do get any answers to your advertisement? Who is to give you a character, since that old witch at Mauleverer Manor has chosen to put up her ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... drabbled tail." The good woman who treated Susanna Martin on this occasion with such hospitable kindness received the impression, as appears by the import of her deposition, that, because Martin came into the house so wonderfully dry, she was therefore a witch. The only inference we are likely to draw is, that she was a particularly neat person; careful to pick her way; and did not wear skirts of the dimensions ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... home to me the fact that I was really in a Catholic country. I had never thought of going to Ammergau, and so, when reading of these shows, I had entertained no more hope of seeing one than of assisting at an auto-da-fe or a witch-burning. I went to the box-office to buy seats. But they were all sold. The forestallers had swept the board. I was never able to determine whether I most pitied or despised these pests of the theatre. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... of hand, magic, witchcraft, were the subjects of the evening. Miss Pole was slightly sceptical, and inclined to think there might be a scientific solution found for even the proceedings of the Witch of Endor. Mrs Forrester believed everything, from ghosts to death-watches. Miss Matty ranged between the two—always convinced by the last speaker. I think she was naturally more inclined to Mrs Forrester's side, but a desire of proving herself ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a turmoil of thoughts that seethed in his brain, like a brew in a witch's cauldron—some of them dark and some golden bright, and some of them red with lust for many things—he proceeded down street to McCoppet's place, to find himself locked out of the private den, where the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... small waterfalls as it tumbles over the rocks, and is bordered by green and flowering trees. Amongst these, is one with a smooth, satin-like bark, of a pale golden colour, whose roots have something snakish and witch-like in their appearance, intertwining with each other, grappling as it were with the hard rock, and stretching out to the most ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... her by herself to be coddled by her maid, as Uncle John (vulgarly) said. Or perhaps was there somebody else coming, some old friend whom he knew nothing of, somebody, some one or other like that old witch in the carriage whom Pippo ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... graceful branches by the shore; music of the softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors and sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm; without, are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But the witch herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin in the painted banquet-halls and among ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... have reason to. Grandmother Parker was a good woman if ever there was one, and she was bewitched. And would it have said in the Bible—'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' if ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... future had lost their existence to him, and he was living in the glorified present. He no more coolly realized the situation than would one in an ecstatic trance. In one sense he verified the popular superstition, and was bewitched; and, with the charming witch ever near to weave a new spell a dozen times a day, how could he disentangle himself? He was too innocent, too unhackneyed, to understand what was going on in his ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... about like a feather. Her face was brown and puckered and lined in a most wonderful fashion. Where a wrinkle could be, there a wrinkle was, and her nose and chin were of the true nutcracker order, as a witch's should be. Only her eyes betrayed the powerful vitality that still animated the tiny frame, for these were large and dark, and had in them a piercing look which seemed to gaze not at any one, but through and beyond. Her figure, dried ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... there can still be seen near Thrums the pool where these unfortunates used to be drowned, and in the session book of the Glen Quharity kirk can be read an old minute announcing that on a certain Sabbath there was no preaching because "the minister was away at the burning of a witch." To the storm-stayed shows came the gypsies in great numbers. Claypots (which is a corruption of Claypits) was their headquarters near Thrums, and it is still sacred to their memory. It was a clachan of miserable little huts built entirely of clay from the dreary and sticky pit ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... hope that she might never again see sign nor sight of any such a hijjis baste hobblin' anywheres on her road; to which he had rejoined that she might go to blazes and welcome for anythin' he had to say agin it, and that bedad a crosser-tempered ould weasel of a wizened-up ould witch wouldn't be apt to land there in a hurry. At last, being very tired, she escaped for a while from these fluctuations of wrath and ruth into a nook of sleep, but the bitter cold routed her out of it soon after sunrise, and she took the road again, cramped ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... soothsayers of the court; and by the aid of significant glances and shrugging of shoulders, and interchange of signs and whispers, with feminine telegraphy and secret service, most of those interested arrived at the sage conclusion that their lord had fallen under the spells of a witch or enchantress. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... taken to Auerbach's Cellar, where four jolly companions are assembled for a drinking-bout. He is simply disgusted with the grossness and vulgarity of it all. He is too old—so the Devil concludes—for the role he is playing and must have his youth renewed. So they repair to an old witch, who gives Faust an elixir that makes him young again. The scene in the witch's kitchen was written in Italy in 1788, by which time Goethe had come to think of his hero as an elderly man. The purpose of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... red coals, goodman,— For there the child shall lie, Till the black witch comes to fetch her, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... palefaced^, tallow-faced; faint, dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c v.. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a corpse, white as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... we need new drugs. As for that witch which hath haunted all of us, "Maladicta," Lilly in his Astrology has a remedy. "Take unguentum populeum, and Vervain and Hypericon, and put a red-hot iron into it: You must anoint the back-bone, or wear it ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... in the good greenwood when the goblin and sprite ranged free, When the kelpie haunted the shadowed flood, and the dryad dwelt in the tree; But merrier far is the trolley-car as it routs the witch from the wold, And the din of the hammer and the cartridges' clamor as they banish the swart kobold! O, a sovran cure for psychic dizziness Is a breath of the air of the world of business! —Idyls of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... not advise you to venture it. Do not go in." "Why not?" asked the King's son. The maiden sighed and said, "My step-mother practises wicked arts; she is ill-disposed toward strangers." Then he saw very well that he had come to the house of a witch, but as it was dark, and he could not go farther, and also was not afraid, he entered. The old woman was sitting in an armchair by the fire, and looked at the stranger with her red eyes. "Good evening," ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... head off!'} exclaim the impetuous 'Smother the old witch!' } Hedzoff, the ardent Smith, and 'Pitch her into the river!'} ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for you to tread on. You will no be for going right intil the cave? Would it no do you to shout when you got to the mouth of it? I dinna like that cave with the red sides till it. I'm thinking maybe there was red sides to the cave where the witch of Endor dweft. Are you no sure that there isna something of that kind, something no right ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... afterwards captured by the English, who, to their lasting dishonor, burned her as a witch, her example nerved the French to further resistance. The English gradually lost ground and in 1453 A.D., the year of the fall of Constantinople, abandoned the effort to conquer a land much larger than their own. They retained of the French territories only ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... culo ne' ceci rossi. The phrase seni recocto may imply one who enjoys a green and vigorous old age, as if made young again, as the old woman was by wine, of whom Petronius speaks, Anus recocta vino; or AEson, who was re-cooked by Medaea. That witch, says Valerius Flaccus, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... he; then quoted: "'The daughters of the dream witch come and go,' don't they? 'The black bat hide the starren of the night.' That's it, isn't it?... No—so far as I know! But they are a queer lot. Nobody ever knows what they'll be at next in the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the rosewood shelf, you left your new piano shut, something seemed to worry you. Do you remember it, dear one?' 'All of it, yes, yes.' 'Then you came singing down to that old oak, and kissed the place where I had carved our names with many vows. Tell me, you little witch, who were you thinking of all that time?' 'All the while of you,' she sighed. 'And do you, oh, do you remember that you fell asleep under the oak, and that a little acorn fell into your bosom and you tossed it out in a pet? Ah, Olive dear, I found ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... I am afraid of a Teenchy Duck," said the Prince of the Seven Golden Cows. "I will never give it up." Then, speaking to his servants, he said: "Heat the oven, heat it to a white heat, and throw this witch in." ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... "That old witch! where does she keep her money? It is as good as lost; I can make a better use of it. With four pools at fifty francs each, I could win two hundred thousand francs, and that's much surer than the turning up of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... woman looked as if she had come from a witch's Sabbath, if ever girl, scarce more than child, walked as if she had plucked the fruit of the Tree and savoured it bitter, it was the girl before him. Despair—it seemed to him—rode her like a hag. Dejection, fear, misery, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the Leicester School (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the final Story about a little Indian ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thought, was a very graceful invitation for Andrew Drever to give to a stranger who had only a few moments before implied that his mother was a witch. But it was a kindness such as he was ever showing; and I must add that Captain Gordon was one of those easy-mannered sailors who at once give an agreeable impression. I myself liked him from the very first, ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... piazza were Madam Conway and Theo, the former of whom chided her for staying so late at the cottage, while Theo asked what queer things the old witch-woman ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... dropped her flowers to clap her hands softly. "Tata, I have guessed his distemper rightly. Let no one say that I am not a witch for cleverness! Ah, you can have the best fun that ever any maid could have! If you could but make him believe something about that Danishman ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... ole black cat widdee yella eyes Slink round like she atter ah mouse, Den yo' bettah take keer yo'self en frien's, Kase dey's sho'ly a witch en de house." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... a sample of the sort of deportment which my future daughter-in-law is expected to outgrow I might as well be shown just what this kind of behavior is like. Let us acquiesce and go to the little witch, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... our rifles, and believe him to be capable to going to considerable lengths to get them; hence his extreme anxiety to keep us here all night. Therefore, when I found that there was no hope of persuading him to let us have a guide to-night, I informed him that we were four very great and powerful witch-doctors, as he must already have seen; and that, if he wished us to remain in the village all night to-night, it would be necessary to light four large fires—one for each of us—to propitiate the evil spirits, so that they should not enter the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... were a witch, the stake would surely be hers; but she is a crafty and wily woman who has lured you on with ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... that she is a witch, Outram," answered the priest with fervour, "a servant of the Evil One, such as are written of in the Scriptures. Last night I saw her praying to her gods; she did not know that I was near, for the place was lonely, but I saw her and I never wish to see anything so horrible again. I will tell you ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... ancestors would have burned me for a witch? Perhaps they would: I think quite likely they burned women who made better martyrs. But I didn't have to call in Flibbertigibbet. The programme is a carefully guarded secret, to be sure; but it is ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Keep right on utilizing your vocal chords. Chatter on incessantly. Be a consistent ass until the last man is out and the umpire crawls into his cyclone cellar. Then go home and bathe what's left of your voice in witch hazel, and get ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... related to perform many supernatural acts by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the places where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense, anoint thee, Witch, will mean, Away, Witch, to your infernal assembly. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word aroint in no other authour till looking into Hearne's Collections I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... see them now going to school together, he carrying her satchel. Then—she had a long bout of slow fever, I remember. Pottle attended her, and it's a wonder—h'm! But wasn't that about the time when that little witch, Ada Vere, came here, and turned both the boys' heads, and carried off poor Willy, and half broke Arthur's heart? H'm! Well, I don't know what I can do about it. Hum! pretty it all looks here! If there ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... if I recollect my discussion with you going down to Southampton. Very well, my dear Hal, and your appearance especially, which, in that witch's travelling-cap of yours, is so extremely agreeable to me that you recur to me in it constantly, and as often I execrate your bonnet. How much I do love beauty! How I delight in the beauty of any one that I love! How thankful I am that I am not ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... who was also more than suspected of being somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother did know it—that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly to that place where alone she could ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... betwixt two cities; and so of the rest: Reason, therefore, can sooner be led, by imagination, to step from one room into another, than to walk to two distant houses, and yet rather to go thither, than to fly like a witch through the air, and be hurried from one region to another. Fancy and Reason go hand in hand; the first cannot leave the last behind: And though Fancy, when it sees the wide gulph, would venture over, as the nimbler, yet it is with-held by Reason, which will refuse to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Moloch have been grafted upon them, and so forth, until the very Druid himself is lost in a mass of crystallisations from without. The insular Druids, to which our national traditions refer, were far more likely to be mere "wise men," or "witch doctors," with perhaps a spice of the conjuror. This, at all events, seems to be the case at the time when we first acquire any positive information concerning them. Theirs it would be to summon the rain clouds and to terrify ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... another) behold three thousand courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.—"O divine Athenais! what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.—THAT a goddess?—a pretty goddess forsooth;—a witch, rather, who, for a while, kept our gracious monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond ear-rings?"* The same tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gray hair and grimy face of a hideous old woman showed themselves slowly at the end of the passage, rising from the strong-smelling obscurity of the kitchen regions. "What do you want?" said the half-seen witch of the London slums. "Does Madame Marillac live here?" Stella asked. "Do you mean the foreigner?" "Yes." "Second door." With those instructions the upper half of the witch sank and vanished. Stella gathered her skirts together, and ascended a filthy ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... the dog's shadow, the man will immediately die. Then came the endless procession of sorcerers and sorceresses. In one of these tales Bernadette evinced a passionate interest; it was the story of a clerk of the tribunal of Lourdes who, wishing to see the devil, was conducted by a witch into an untilled field at midnight on Good Friday. The devil arrived clad in magnificent scarlet garments, and at once proposed to the clerk that he should buy his soul, an offer which the clerk pretended to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... But time and tide o'er all prevail— On Christmas eve a Christmas tale— Of wonder and of war—'Profane! 135 What! leave the lofty Latian strain, Her stately prose, her verse's charms, To hear the clash of rusty arms: In Fairy Land or Limbo lost, To jostle conjurer and ghost, 140 Goblin and witch!'—Nay, Heber dear, Before you touch my charter, hear; Though Leyden aids, alas! no more, My cause with many-languaged lore, This may I say:—in realms of death 145 Ulysses meets Alcides' WRAITH; Aeneas, upon Thracia's shore, The ghost of murder'd Polydore; ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... which he leaped down to the road, into a little grotto of Antiparos. Some old rough rails and boards that dropped over it are sheathed in plates of transparent silver. The trunks of the black alders are mailed with crystal; and the witch-hazel, and yellow osiers fringing its sedgy borders, are likewise shining through their glossy covering. Around every stem that rises from the water is a glittering ring of ice. The tags of the alder and the red berries of last summer's wild roses glitter now like a lady's pendant. As for the brook, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... she got her message ready. She plied the man with wine and strong liquor till evening, when he slept so fast that nothing could wake him. While he was asleep she opened his letters and read all that the governor had written. Then this wicked old woman wrote to Alla that his wife Constance was a witch who had bewitched him and all his people, but now her true character became plain, and she had given birth to a horrible, fiend-like creature, who, she said, was his son. This she put in place of the governor's letter, and dispatched ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... for life, seem scarcely consistent with his duties as knight of the Grail, and, save for their mutual love, neither hero nor heroine have much claim upon our sympathies. But the grouping of the characters is admirable; the truculent witch Ortrud is a fine foil to the ingenuous Elsa, and Lohengrin's spotless knighthood is cast into brilliant relief by the dastardly treachery of Telramund. The story of 'Lohengrin' lacks the deep human interest of 'Tannhaeuser,' and the music never reaches the heights to which the earlier work sometimes ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Witches apprehended, examined, and executed for notable villanies, by them committed both by land and water, with a strange and most true triall how to know whether a woman be a witch or not: with the plate. Extra rare, 4to. 3 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the woods with its long dark shadows and its aroma of pine and balsam. Gradually the forest with its dells and its thickets, its ferns and witch-hazel, its bird-song and its chattering squirrels, its sense of freedom and peace, was left behind and they emerged into dusty roadways bordered by ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... twenty-three when they returned to New York, Kathi having begged some more money from Vienna. She was already a worn, old witch of a woman, dressed gayly in remnants of past grandeur and always painting her face. She and her son held together in a partnership strained and rasping, but unbreakable, united by the mysterious tie of blood and a deep-rooted moral resemblance. They led a ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Ellen, dear!" exclaimed Margery "if that isn't you! Aren't you come in the very nick of time! How do you do? I am very glad to see you uncommon glad, to be sure. What witch told you to come here just now? Run in; run into the parlour, and see ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... false alarm, and is precipitated into the area. Or, to come to the actresses, she may be the fairy who resides for ever in a revolving star with an occasional visit to a bower or a palace. Or the actor may be the armed head of the witch's cauldron; or even that extraordinary witch, concerning whom I have observed in country places, that he is much less like the notion formed from the description of Hopkins than the Malcolm or Donalbain of the previous scenes. This society, in short, says, "Be you ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... generation, may be punished for the sins of our fathers," rejoined Nicholas. "You have Scripture against you, Dick. The only thing I see in favour of your argument is, the instance you allege of Alizon. She does not look like a witch, certainly; but there is no saying. She may be only the more dangerous for her rare beauty, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The old witch winks— The fat begins to fry; There's nobody home but Jumping Joan, Father and mother ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Port Lincoln. Here a little open boat was obtained, and Mr. Scott, Eyre's courageous companion, undertook to attempt to reach Adelaide and obtain further supplies. This he successfully accomplished, returning in the Water Witch with stores and provisions, two more men, and some kangaroo dogs. Thus reinforced, the party reached Fowler's Bay in the great Bight of South Australia. The map shows that a journey of more than 200 miles must ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... quarter millions of Irish Catholics. History concedes to Catholic Ireland the cleanest record in respect of religious tolerance to be found anywhere in Europe. We never martyred a saint, and amid all the witch-hunting devilries of Scotland and England we burned only one witch, a namesake of my own. Deny or suppress all this. Imagine into the eyes of every Catholic neighbour the slumbering but unquenched fires of Smithfield. But be good enough to respect mathematics. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... to touch? so that men seeing her face, And how she sighed out little Ahs of pain And soft cries sobbing sideways from her mouth, Fell in hot love, and having lain with her Died soon? one time I could have told it through: Now I have kissed the sea-witch on her eyes And my lips ache with it; but I shall sleep Full soon, and a good space ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... knew that of all things it is most impossible to run counter to the superstitions of her people. Perhaps she retained a touch of these herself. But, as she said, "The grace of the Lord can overcome all the wiles of the Evil One! And Mary Lyon would like to see witch or warlock, ghost or ghostling, that would come in her road when she went forth under His banner." On the darkest night she marched unafraid, conquering and to conquer, having the superstitions born in her, but knowing all the same (and all the better ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... safe!" exclaimed the incensed waiting-woman, while Magdalen Graeme left the apartment; "I say, duck her in the loch, and then we will see whether she is witch or not, as every body in the village of Lochside will say and swear. I marvel your ladyship could bear so long with her insolence." But the commands of the Lady were obeyed, and the old dame, dismissed from ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... past winter from diphtheria; it was sad to see how painfully the mother clung to the two that death had left her; she could not bear them out of her sight for an instant. A very weird-looking cummer was the grand-dame—with a broken, piping voice—tremulous hands, and jaws that, like the stage witch wife's, ever munched and mumbled. She seldom spoke aloud, except to groan out a startlingly sudden ejaculation of "Oh, Lord," or "O dear;" these widows' mites cast into the conversational treasury did not greatly enhance ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... jolly old tar, Captain Whitmore; quizzing the old witch, his sister; and making love to his charming daughter. Upon my word, sir, she is a delightful creature, and sings and plays divinely! Her personal charms I might have withstood, but her voice has taken me by surprise. You know that ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... here in the Highlands the distribution is very marked. South of the village I invariably find one species of birds, north of it another. In only one locality, full of azalea and swamp-huckleberry, I am always sure of finding the hooded warbler. In a dense undergrowth of spice-bush, witch-hazel, and alder, I meet the worm-eating warbler. In a remote clearing, covered with heath and fern, with here and there a chestnut and an oak, I go to hear in July the wood sparrow, and returning by a stumpy, shallow pond, I am sure to find ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... fellow in the School Whose batting simply was a dream: A dozen times by keeping cool And hitting hard he saved the Team. But oh! his fielding was so vile, As if by witch or goblin cursed, That he was called by Arthur ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... late that night thinking it over, and, arter looking at it all ways, he made up 'is mind to go and see Mrs. Prince, an old lady that lived all alone by 'erself in a cottage near Smith's farm. He'd set 'er down for wot he called a white witch, which is the best kind and on'y do useful things, such as charming warts away or telling gals about their future 'usbands; and the next arternoon, arter telling 'is wife's mother that fresh air and travelling was the best cure for ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... hour runs the te-rain?' He rose to his feet, looked round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of Huneefa as the low sun stole across the floor. 'Is there money to be paid that witch?' ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... gaunt hands the leaves are shed In headlong troops and nightmare herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... his daughter, was entertained by Madame au salon, and who was overheard to declare, as he got into his grand carriage, that "that Frenchwoman was the finest woman, by Jove, he'd ever seen!" to the tiny witch Elise, whom nobody could manage, but who, at the first rustle of Madame's gown, would cease from her mischief, fold her small hands, and, sinking her bead-like black eyes, look as demure as such a sprite could. We all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... a stable, Mr. Brice, before they ruined gentleman's sport with these trotters ten years ago. Yes sir, we used to be at Lexington one week, and Louisville the next, and over here on the Ames track after that. Did you ever hear of Water Witch and Netty Boone?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... chamber, in her hand, she walked undauntedly to Slipslop's room; where she entered just at the instant as Adams had discovered, by the two mountains which Slipslop carried before her, that he was concerned with a female. He then concluded her to be a witch, and said he fancied those breasts gave suck to a legion of devils. Slipslop, seeing Lady Booby enter the room, cried help! or I am ravished, with a most audible voice: and Adams, perceiving the light, turned hastily, and saw the lady (as she did him) just as she came ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... which neared the stream presently there came a glow and then the shine of a great fire ahead, with massed figures that leaped and sprang, fantastic as a witch's carnival, and a roar of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... brooding Where the pine-tree column Rises dark and solemn To the airy lair, Where, the day eluding, Night is couched dream laden, Like a deep witch-maiden ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... "Yesum, one witch tried ter ride me onct. I wus in de bed, an' she thought dat I wus 'sleep. I feels her when she crawls up on my lef' leg an' stops de circulation. I knows how ter fix her do' so I gits up an' puts ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... where it affords a meal to the foul hyenas; but the Batoka reverently bury their dead, and regard the spot henceforth as sacred. The ordeal by the poison of the muave is resorted to by the Batoka, as well as by the other tribes; but a cock is often made to stand proxy for the supposed witch. Near the confluence of the Kafue the Mambo, or chief, with some of his headmen, came to our sleeping-place with a present; their foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an unusual seriousness marked their demeanour. Shortly before our arrival they had been accused of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... meeting, mingling, parting tides, ever came and went; where chariots rushed past in hot haste, or moved stately by in jubilant procession; where at night lonely forms would steal through the city of the silent, with but the moon to see them go, bent on ghastly conference with witch or enchanter; and—" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the century had as its principal subject a woman accused of the power to cause sickness. In an age when weapon salve was wiped on the weapon and not the wound, and when astrology was intimately associated with the practice of medicine, it is not surprising to find, also, the witch and her power to cause disease. Goodwife Wright stood accused of such powers in the colony's general court ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... of second sight you have," said Jim admiringly. "A few hundred years ago you'd have got yourself ducked as a witch or something." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... indeed he repeated it an hundred times every day; in truth, he talked of nothing else, and seemed not only to be satisfied in general of his being bewitched, but actually to have fixed with good certainty on the person of the witch, whom, had he lived in the days of Sir Matthew Hale, he would have infallibly indicted, and very possibly have hanged, for the detestable sin of witchcraft; but that law, and the whole doctrine that supported it, are now out of fashion; and witches, as a learned divine once chose ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... into his heart, doubtless—he crossed himself like this.... And it was so hard for him to make that cross, brothers; he said, "My hand was simply like a stone; it would not move." ... Ugh! the horrid witch.... So when he made the cross, brothers, the russalka, she left off laughing, and all at once how she did cry.... She cried, brothers, and wiped her eyes with her hair, and her hair was green as any hemp. So Gavrila looked and looked ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... "He stays, he stays!" and I heard the words repeated among the groups of negresses, who loved her; it seemed to be the burthen of a general song, the glad realisation of some prophecy; for, ere the night was an hour old, the old witch, who had had the tuition of Josephine, had already made a mongrel sort of hymn of the affair, whilst a circle of black chins were wagging ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... since you were taken sick. Nellie! I say, Nellie! you witch of Endor! bring some wine-whey here. Irene, how do you ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... who sat around the card-table in the cabin of the "Merry Witch" regarded the fifth man with a steady, implacable look of scorn. The solitary one could not face that terrible glance. His head drooped, and his gaze rested upon some cards which he idly fumbled as he waited, numbed and ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... John of England!' screamed the young man, like a witch in the air; then Burgundy began his ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... I get my pieces to do out of school; and when I come home mother lectures me, and sends me to my bedroom. But I am free to-night. I have been good all day; and it is on account of you, Nora; just because you are a little Irish witch; and I sympathize with you to the bottom of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... upon block Island and killing many of his men after a peace concluded betwixt them certifyed to Newhaven by the Massachusetts Commissioners by a Complaints made by Awsuntawney the Indian Sagamore near Milford and two other western Indians against the said Montackett Sachem for hiering a witch to kill Uncas with the said Milford Sachem and his son giveing eight fathom of wampam in hand promising a hundred or a hundred and twenty more when the said murthers were committed; Notice whereof being given to the said Montackett Sachem and hee Required to attend the Commissioners ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... Daddy Hannah, the black root-and-yarb doctor, who could throw spells and weave charms and invoke conjures. He wore a pair of shoes which had been worn by a man who was hanged, and these shoes, as is well known, leave no tracks which a dog will nose after or a witch follow, or a ha'nt. Small boys did not gibe at Daddy Hannah, you bet you! There was Major Burnley, who lived for years and years in the same house with the wife with whom he had quarreled and never spoke a word to her or she to him. But the list is overlong for calling. With us, in that ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... give a fairly shrewd guess at its plot. This is an agreeable affair of a maid, reputed Catholic heir to the English Crown, and used as pretext for an abortive rising against KING JAMES I. You can see that in practised hands (as here) and decorated with a pretty trimming of sentiment, abductions, witch-finding and other appropriate accessories, this furnishes a theme rich in romance. Perhaps I was a thought disappointed that more was not made of the actual conspiracy, and that, having started "too near ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... And spy some crumb and dash to win it, And with a witty chirping twit Our sheltering Time—there's nothing in it! In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's, We nest, content, our season flighty, Nor guess we brush the powerful wires Might witch the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... is such a witch that she could have magnetized the Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to influence—you yourself," replied Rastignac, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... opening the boxes, and showing them that all I had was perfectly useless to them, they consented to receive some beads off Sekwebu's waist, and I promised to send four yards of calico from Tete. As we came away from Monina's village, a witch-doctor, who had been sent for, arrived, and all Monina's wives went forth into the fields that morning fasting. There they would be compelled to drink an infusion of a plant named "goho", which is used as an ordeal. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of a grey rock which smokes like a hot cinder after a shower, and where no man would care to venture a naked sole before sunset. On the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick bulging trunk rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles a dismal bunch of dead leaves above the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has a spring of fresh water issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine. Resembling an emerald green wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat upon the sea, it bears ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... years ago in the newspapers. A young farmer in Warwickshire, finding his hedges broke, and the sticks carried away during a frosty season, determined to watch for the thief. He lay many cold hours under a hay-stack, and at length an old woman, like a witch in a play, approached, and began to pull up the hedge; he waited till she had tied up her bottle of sticks, and was carrying them off, that he might convict her of the theft, and then springing from his concealment, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... myself to the Reynolds for there own. Mrs. Reynolds is not happy with Reynolds' slams of doors and crossness be cause they have no child. They will be pretty sprised to see me to night and glad with my big shiny bag witch I have borrowed from my once very loved father. I have my pink dress witch will soon be a rose in it and my other things. I wore my hat and coat even if it is warm. You will not miss me much because ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... period to the book on which he was then engaged, and he invariably refers to it as his Life. On 21st January 1843 he writes to John Murray, Junr.: "I meditate shortly a return to Barbary in quest of the Witch Hamlet, and my adventures in the land of wonders will serve capitally to fill the thin volume of My Life, a Drama, By G. B." Again and again Borrow refers to My Life. Hasfeldt and Ford also wrote of it as the "wonderful life" and ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... imp, a witch, an emissary of the Evil One," he vehemently declared; and turned away, murmuring, as it seemed to me, those sacred words of Scripture, "Be sure your sin ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... perpetration of outrages upon each other, shocking to humanity. If an individual, and especially a chief, was supposed to be hostile to his plans, or doubted the validity of his claim to the character of a prophet, he was denounced as a witch, and the loss of reputation, if not of life, speedily followed. Among the first of his victims were several Delawares,—Tatepocoshe (more generally known as Teteboxti,) Patterson, his nephew, Coltos, an old woman, and an aged man called Joshua. ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... religious persecution, witchcraft, during all the years we did these "inevitable" things, were defended in the same way, and those who resented all criticism of them pointed in triumph to the cannibal feast, the dead child, the maimed witness, the slain heretic, or the burned witch. But the fact did not prove the wisdom of those habits, still less their inevitability; for we have ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... and gusty words, Kisses and wine again, And her lips and brow were red with stains From the hairy mouths of men, Red as the stain on the brow of Cain That burned with his Maker's hate, Or the lips of the witch that Adam loved Ere God ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... the trial of Aim Bodenham, who was executed at Salisbury as a witch in 1653, Aubrey says:-] Mr. Anthony Ettrick, of the Middle Temple, a very judicious gentleman, was a curious observer of the whole triall, and was not satisfied. The crowd of spectators made such a noise that the judge [Chief Baron Wild] ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... fairies, and sing them old songs. Jean would crawl close to Randal and hold his hand, for fear the Red Etin, or some other awful bogle, should get her: and in the dancing shadows of the firelight she would think she saw Whuppity Stoorie, the wicked old witch with the spinning-wheel; but it was really nothing but the shadow of the wheel that the old nurse drove with her foot—birr, birr—and that whirred and rattled as she span ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... the skin, or sore wounded in the flesh, If in the blood thou wert shot, or in the bone thou wert shot, If in the joint thou wert shot, there will be no jeopardy to your life. If some deity shot it, or some devil shot it, 25 Or if some witch has shot it, now I am willing to help thee. This is a remedy for a deity's shot; this is a remedy for a devil's shot; This is a remedy for a witch's shot. I am willing to help thee. Flee there into ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... then, I say. You are not the first woman, my dear, who has quarrelled with a wish fulfilled. It is a way your sex has of rewarding gods and men.—Here, you old witch, here is a treasure-trove for you. You can sell it for ten francs ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeated it, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a "witch," instead of a brother of ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... minute, but the influence of the Intendant was all-powerful over him. He gave way. "Damn De Repentigny," said he, "I only meant to do honor to the pretty witch. Who would have expected him to take it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... rat-holes in the garret, and Sara detested rats, and was always glad Emily was with her when she heard their hateful squeak and rush and scratching. One of her "pretends" was that Emily was a kind of good witch and could protect her. Poor little Sara! everything was "pretend" with her. She had a strong imagination; there was almost more imagination than there was Sara, and her whole forlorn, uncared-for child-life was made up of imaginings. She imagined and pretended things ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to drink"; or simply to an inherited tendency to apoplexy. Did Donatello have furry, leaf-shaped ears, or was this merely his companions' teasing? Did old Mistress Hibben, the sister of Governor Bellingham of Massachusetts, attend witch meetings in the forest, and inscribe her name in the Black Man's book? Hawthorne does not say so, but only that the people so believed; and it is historical fact that she was executed as a witch. Was a red letter A actually seen in the midnight sky, or was ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... meane? my Doues are back returnd, Who warne me of such daunger prest at hand, To harme my sweete Ascanius louely life. Iuno, my mortall foe, what make you here? Auaunt old witch and trouble ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... had mowed down the forest, walls of lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion—through everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little pellet of some dark green substance that he took from a flat silver ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Marilla fairly stopped them with witch hazel. Their little fat hands and their shoulders were swollen already. She kissed them, but she couldn't take them both and they wanted to be cuddled. So she sat down and hugged them and really ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... called Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils." A commentator on Skinner, quoted in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, says that the English word Lullaby is derived from Lilla, abi (begone, Lilith)! In the demonology of the Middle Ages, Lilis was a famous witch, and is introduced as such in the Walpurgis night scene in Goethe's ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her, one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's conspire, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... I get rid of the pain I can do as I like. When I've got red hot needles eating into my toes, am I likely to like anything? Of course not, you may just as well take medicine then as anything else, but as to taking orders from a pack of ill-bred bumpkins, full of witch magic as a dog of fleas, I see myself! Don't stand grinning there, Charles, like a dirty, shock-headed barmaid's dropped hair pin! I won't stand it! I can't see why all my sons should have thin legs, neither you nor I, Sarah, ever ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... woman with a face like that of a witch. Von Holzen pointed upward to the room above them. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... was my perpetual fool that caused all this; and now he stands yonder, laughing at his mischief, as the devil is pictured, grinning behind the witch upon ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the melancholy event appears to have been more generally ascribed to witchcraft. An examination being instituted, a waxen image was discovered in his chamber with a hair of the color of the earl's drawn through the body; also, an old woman in the neighbourhood, a reputed witch, being required to recite after a prompter the Lord's Prayer in Latin, was observed to blunder repeatedly in the same words. But these circumstances, however strong, not being deemed absolutely conclusive, the poor old woman was apparently ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... it now? so flap ee hand, and make wry mouth oo-self, sauci doxi. Now comes DD. Why sollah, I did write in a fortnight my 47th; and if it did not come in due time, can I help wind and weather? am I a Laplander? am I a witch? can I work miracles? can I make easterly winds? Now I am against Dr. Smith. I drink little water with my wine, yet I believe he is right. Yet Dr. Cockburn told me a little wine would not hurt me; but it is so hot and dry, and water is so dangerous. The worst thing ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... wild. Fishermen. Divers. Raft Fowl. Bull-necks. Redheads. Tropick-birds. Pellican. Cormorant. Gannet. Shear-water. Great black pied Gull. Marsh-hens. Blue Peter's. Sand-birds. Runners. Tutcocks. Swaddle-bills. Mew. Sheldrakes. Bald Faces. Water Witch, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... projected it was the writer's purpose to take up the subject of English witchcraft under certain general political and social aspects. It was not long, however, before he began to feel that preliminary to such a treatment there was necessary a chronological survey of the witch trials. Those strange and tragic affairs were so closely involved with the politics, literature, and life of the seventeenth century that one is surprised to find how few of them have received accurate or complete record in history. It may be said, in fact, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... is an old witch" was the announcement that met Crefton's inquiring scrutiny, and he hesitated a moment before giving the statement wider publicity. For all he knew to the contrary, it might be Martha herself to whom he was speaking. It was possible that Mrs. Spurfield's maiden name had been Pillamon. And the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... down my throat. The faithful old creature shrieked for joy when I opened my eyes again, and then told me that my daughter had not suffered herself to be racked, but had freely confessed her crimes and fyled herself as a witch. This seemed pleasant news to me in my misery, inasmuch as I deemed the death by fire to be a less heavy punishment than the torture. Howbeit when I would have prayed I could not, whereat I again ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the witch," said her father "and sends us, living, to the happy hunting-grounds. Will you ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... inertrans lining. Jupiter gas is hellishly reactive at room temperature. The metallic complexes especially; but think what a witch's brew the stuff is in every respect. Once it's been refined, of course, we have less trouble. That particular pipe ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... along the dark, chilly streets to his hotel, "what a perfectly dazzling little witch she is! Was there ever such another sparkling, bewildering little fairy ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... domestic affection and fidelity to trusts. Two characters in particular are original creations,—"Dominie Sampson" and "Meg Merrilies," whom no reader can forget,—the one, ludicrous for his simplicity; and the other a gypsy woman, weird and strange, more like a witch than a sibyl, but intensely human, and capable of the strongest attachment ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... returne from Macedony to Larissa was spoyled and robbed, and how he fell acquainted with one Meroe a Witch. ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... that clattered in her shaking hands. Then she sat down and proceeded to oil them all. Before she had finished, out from the tub, the water of which had kept a slow motion ever since she had ceased stirring it, came the head and half the body of a huge gray snake. But the witch did not look round. It grew out of the tub, waving itself backwards and forwards with a slow, horizontal motion, till it reached the princess, when it laid its head upon her shoulder, and gave a low hiss in her ear. She started—but with joy; and, seeing the head resting on her shoulder, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... Abel, sartinly. But I'll never read like thee," he added, despairingly. "Drattle th' old witch; why didn't she give I some schooling?" He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and Abel, too well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil reference to his mother, said with ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... said, he went. But he wasn't much better on the train than he had been in the station. He was as nervous and fidgety as a witch, and he acted as if he did so wish it would be over and over quick. But at the junction—at the junction a funny thing happened. He put me on the train, just as Mother had done, and spoke to the conductor. (How I hated to have him ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... on the witch," Matilda warned her brother, "but she has a sense about nursing that can ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... has again proceeded to a new and unexplored region in India, in the prosecution of his important botanical labors. THE AUTHOR OF THE AMBER WITCH, the Pomeranian pastor, Meinhold, has been condemned to three months' imprisonment, and a fine of one hundred thalers, besides costs, for slander against another clergyman named Stosch, in a communication published in the New Prussian Zeitung. The sentence was rendered ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... solitary hovel, known as Black Mary's Hole. This spot, which still retains its name, acquired the appellation from an old crone who lived there, and who, in addition to a very equivocal character for honesty, enjoyed the reputation of being a witch. Without inquiring into the correctness of the latter part of the story, it may be sufficient to state, that Black Mary was a person in whom Jack Sheppard thought he could confide, and, as Edgeworth Bess was incapable of much further exertion, he ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tooth, long and narrow In a closely wrought triangle, Set three mussel-pearls of purple, Smooth and polished with much rubbing. To an arrow of witch-hazel, New, and fashioned very slender, Set the shark's tooth, long and narrow, With its pearl-inlaid triangle. From the wing of living heron Pluck one feather, white and trusty; With this feather wing the arrow, That it swerve not as it flyeth. ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... the whole morning with that tiresome Bergenheim on my hands, and I verily believe he made me count every stick in his park and every frog in his pond. Tonight, when that old witch of Endor proposed her infernal game of whist, to which it seems I am to be condemned daily, you-excused yourself upon the pretext of ignorance, and yet you play as good ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... the heath; but it is more likely that “Tab” had a reference to the cat, “Tabby” being the term for a brindled cat. And Bishop Harsnet, in his curious book on “The Superstitions of the Day” (1605), says a witch, or elf, “can take the form of hare, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Polly's Solomon. She talks to him till she's made him most a witch, and she thinks he ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... a hallucinator," Horace said. He leaned forward and gave it to us in not much more than a whisper. "This witch used her HC to pass five dollar bills off as hundreds, getting change. But they caught her at it." He laughed harshly. "And tried her for it," he added. "Get the picture on that ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a misprint for hagge, will be evident from the circumstance, that in the first folio we have a similar error in the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV. Sc. 2., where instead of "you witch, you hagge," it is misprinted "you witch, you ragge." It is observable that hagge is the form in which the word is most frequently found in the folios, and it is the epithet the poet applies to a witch ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... a silly idea, but it still haunted her and would not be shaken off. Granny Thomas was a very old woman who lived at Burnley Cove and was reputed to be something of a witch. That is, people who were not Sparhallows or Burnleys gave her that name. Sparhallows or Burnleys, of course, were above believing in such nonsense. Janet was above believing it; but still—the sailors along shore were careful to "keep on the good side" ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... never say again that there are not two sides to a story. If I am ever tempted to believe one side without waiting to hear the other, I shall surely feel again the hands of that old witch ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... illuminative treatment of this subject I would refer my readers to the essays of Professor Karl Pearson, The Chances of Death, Vol. II.—"Woman as Witch: Evidences of Mother-Right in the Customs of Mediaeval Witchcraft"; "Ashiepattle, or Hans Seeks his Luck"; "Kindred Group Marriage," Part I.; "The Mother-Age Civilisation," Part II.; "General Words for Sex ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of pretty clothes and pyramids of hats." But still she refused to go on board the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely witch laughed in his face and still persisted that she ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... reasoning would have done. No man living could have done the thing with like effect, nor any woman save one of her complete self-possession and natural authority. The younger villagers chuckle over the jest of it to this day, and the old witch-doctor himself was crouching at her feet and, as one may say, eating out of her hand, within ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... down, but not convinced; and he seemed determined to spit out all his venom. Well, says he, at any rate you will not deny that the English have not got a language of their own, and that they came by it in a very odd way. Of this at least I am certain, for the whole history was related to me by a witch in Lapland, whilst I was bargaining for a wind. Here the company were all in unison again ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... - - d confounded Bitch, Ugly and cunning as a Witch. Her Bill shall be preferr'd by Law; The House we wish we'd never saw. One Pound five and ten Pence; Grant her Repentance; We'll never come here again; And let her ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... his Scots body-guard was not in sight. "That's unusual," he said. Then, looking round: "Where is our other councillor? Gone?" he laughed. "Faith, I did not see her go. And now we can swear that where the dear witch is will Morris, my Scotsman, be found. Well, well! They have their way with us whether we will or no. But, here, I'll have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doctors to the population is very small, and the people still have great confidence in their quacks and witch-doctors. The elementary rules of sanitation are generally neglected, water supplies are polluted, filth is piled up in the streets and the courtyards, as it was in England and Western Europe generally until a century ago, and the framing of regulations ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of witchcraft superstitions, they used to think that when the cream did not readily turn to butter, the churn had been tampered with by some witch, like Mabel Martin's mother in Whittier's poem. Witches were sometimes supposed to work a baleful charm on the milk by putting under the doorsill some magical object, such as a picture of ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... a justice in Lancashire has so much skill in witches as I have? Nay, I'll speak a proud word; you shall turn me loose against any Witch-finder in Europe. I'd make an ass of Hopkins if he ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... farmer folk Mary was merely "queer," but as the man in the buggy sat looking down at her he realized the promise of something strangely gorgeous. As she shifted her position a shaft of mellow sunlight struck her face and it was as though her witch—or fairy—godmother had switched ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... to pasture every morning and back to the village every evening. She had to pass a small cottage, almost hidden with flowers, where lived a mysterious woman whom the foolish and ignorant children of the neighborhood called "old witch," simply because she had a hump on her back and was rarely seen, except when she rushed out to drive away some naughty child trying to steal her flowers through the fence. She attended to her garden very early in the morning before other people were out of bed, and ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!" I cried, "if you can construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... defended by the Tower, was terrified by the neighbourhood of such dangerous commotions, resolved to go by water to the castle of Windsor; but as she approached the bridge, the populace assembled against her: the cry ran, DROWN THE WITCH; and besides abusing her with the most opprobrious language, and pelting her with rotten eggs and dirt, they had prepared large stones to sink her barge, when she should attempt to shoot the bridge; and she was so frightened, that she returned ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... Of sifted sun And forest star-grass, cool With shadows tunnelling: Witch-work that tauntingly Webs my bare floor: Ah, Pan ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... if it would make the old man comfortable for life; and why not my soul too? Don't that belong to me as much as any other part of me? Why am I to be condemned to sacrifice my prospects in life to a girl of whose honesty I am not even sure? What is this intolerable fascination? Witch! I almost believe in mesmerism now!— Again, I say, why should I not sell my soul, as I'd sell my coat, if the bargain's but ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of Camilla gave way to the feelings of the dutiful and affectionate son, as they met Mrs. Thorpe, who had descried them from above, in the passage. "Ah, Mother! How do you do?" said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand. "Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch. Here is Morland and I come to stay a few days with you, so you must look out for a couple of good beds somewhere near." And this address seemed to satisfy all the fondest wishes of the mother's heart, for she received him with the most ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... broken buttes, between which one caught wild views of a tortured country; twisted strata, strange distorted cedar and cactus, uncanny shapes of rock pinnacles, in colors somber and strange. They stopped at noon in the shadow of a weathered overhanging rock, with the profile of a witch. The atmosphere of dissension had by this time permeated the crew and this meal, usually so jovial, was eaten with no general conversation and all were glad to take to the boats as soon as the ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... all? The little motherless darlin', with the goold hair I combed the knots out iv many's the time? The little witch that run barefoot an' barelegged ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the old Witch House? I met on the street this morning Johnnie Evans and his mother, who came way down from Boston just to see that, and Witch Hill, and some other places here in Salem that they had been reading about together this vacation. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... "Aroint thee, foul witch!" cried Thord. They should see, said he, that Helga would turn out fine. But Cormac answered, "Said it may be, for sooth it may be: I will never ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... glass, the bullets clanging against the metal work as they struck and struck and struck. The men leaned from the cabs towards each other, frantic with excitement, shouting curses, the engines rocking, the steam roaring; confusion whirling in the scene like the whirl of a witch's dance, the white clouds of steam, the black eddies from the smokestack, the blue wreaths from the hot mouths of revolvers, swirling together in a blinding maze of vapour, spinning around them, dazing them, dizzying them, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... that hour of pass ing day—all things had eyes wistful and unblessed. In those moments glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning had abandoned the earth. But not for long. Winged with darkness, it stole back; not the soul of meaning that had gone, but a witch-like and brooding spirit harbouring in the black trees, in the high dark spears of the rushes, and on the grim-snouted snags that lurked along the river bank. Then the owls came out, and night-flying things. And in the wood there began a cruel bird-tragedy—some dark pursuit in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... farthing, if she came not of her own good will,' murmured Richard, turning towards his mare. 'But come, mistress Rees, you know you couldn't do it, even if you were the black witch the neighbours would have you—though I, for my part, will not hear a word against you—never since you set my poor old dog upon his legs again—though to be sure he will die one of these days, and that no one can help—dogs have such ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... if you knew how horrid it all was. Just now, as I was sitting alone, I felt like a poor little princess shut up in an enchanted tower. Giles is the magician, and Etta is the wicked witch. I was making up quite ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Ho! What woman! Who but that scullery-wench, that onion-monger, That slatternly, pale bakress, that foul witch, The coroneted Fish-Wife of Fiori, Her Majesty, ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... mile broad, and lieth north-east by east. The captain went here ashore and found the ground to be full of pease, strawberries, whortleberries, &c., as then unripe, the sand also by the shore somewhat deep, the firewood there by us taken in was of cypress, birch, witch-hazel and beech. A young Indian came here to the captain, armed with his bow and arrows, and had certain plates of copper hanging at his ears; he showed a willingness to ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... relapse into heresy which doomed her to death. At the close of May, 1431, a great pile was raised in the market-place of Rouen where her statue stands now. Even the brutal soldiers who snatched the hated "witch" from the hands of the clergy and hurried her to her doom were hushed as she reached the stake. One indeed passed to her a rough cross he had made from a stick he held, and she clasped it to her bosom. As her eyes ranged over the city from the lofty scaffold she ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... torture, not brutal but exquisitely refined, of perfected pain, achieved by the stimulation of recondite nerves of very delicate sensibility. Lawyers wear archaic robes and use a strange language in their mysteries, conveying to us a belief that Justice is an ancient witch whose evil eye can be averted only by the incantation and grotesque posturing of her initiate priests. But I am not sure that financiers do not understand the art of hypnotic suggestion best of all. I have worshipped in cathedrals, sweated ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... trembling, fantastic shadow on the wall at her back. Her head, shorn of the false "front" she wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to mere points of blackness; her mouth, sunken and drawn over toothless gums, was like the mouth of a witch. The wind, blowing in gusts through the open door, inflated her gray shawl and the skirt of her dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her garments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced and gibbered behind her. And, as she gazed down on the girl, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... weather and her power over youth and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near foreground the beginnings of that fight with patriarchal institutions which led the priestess to be branded by the new Christian civilization as the evil-working witch of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... presentments, and tell nothing of the spirit living in those marvellous eyes. This was a thing of vital force, for ever changeful. Even the colour of her eyes was varying, and yet there was a curious persistency of gaze, a power of fixing. The Guestrow citizens called Wilhelmine von Graevenitz witch and sorceress because of these strange eyes; they said she could freeze men with a look, that she had a serpent's gaze that grew cold and petrifying, when she chose, and yet those who loved her (they were not many) knew that her eyes could dance with laughter like a child's, that ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... have guessed. The names of these hardy adventurers must by no means go unrecorded: shepherd's purse, wild pepper-grass, pansy, common chickweed (Stellaria media), mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium viscosum), knawel, common mallow, witch-hazel, cinque-foil (Potentilla Norvegica,—not argentea, as I should certainly have expected), many-flowered aster, cone-flower, yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dandelion, and jointweed. Six of ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... cleaned—(here his voice would drop to a whisper)—"What do you think!—why out popped the sleeve-link that was in his cuff this minute!" And for the hundredth time the bit of gold would be examined by each child in turn. Or it was the witch story—about the Yahoo wild man with great horns and a lashing tail, who lived in the swamp and went howling and prowling about for plunder and prey. (This was always given with a low, prolonged growl, like a dog in pain—all the children shuddering.) And then followed the oft-told tale ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in Ayrshire, on the banks of "bonny Doon," in a clay biggin not far from "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," the scene of the witch dance in Tam O'Shanter. His father was a hard-headed, God-fearing tenant farmer, whose life and that of his sons was a harsh struggle with poverty. The crops failed; the landlord pressed for his rent; for weeks at a time the family tasted no meat; yet this life of toil was lightened by love and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... a room, rent one Irwadi month in arrears, in a cold-water tenement near the river which demarked the Old and the New Quarters. The facade of the old building was dark now. His landlady was probably asleep, although you never could tell with that old witch. Ramsey knew it wouldn't be the first time she stayed up through half the night to await a ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... murmurings such as she had never heard before, and that made her start in terror; the stifled hum of marching men, the neighing and snorting of steeds, the clash of arms, hoarse words of command, given in guttural accents; an evil dream of a demoniac crew, a witch's sabbat, in the depths of those unholy shades. Suddenly a single cannon-shot rang out, ear-rending, adding fresh terror to the dead silence that succeeded it. It froze her very marrow; what could it mean? ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... changed for another on his initiation into the secret society, this secret society having also, as usual, a secret language. About the age of three or five years the boy is decorated, under the auspices of the witch doctor, with certain scars on the face. These scars run from the root of the nose across the cheeks, and are sometimes carried up in a curve on ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... naturally, as though I was very surprised; but you could not deceive Mlle. Rosamunda. A more artful little witch never played at fairies ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Both Swedes and Quakers composed the jury; there were no hysterics; the matter was dispassionately canvassed; impressions and prejudices were not accepted as evidence; and in the end the verdict was that though she was guilty of being called a witch, a witch she nevertheless was not. The distinction was so well taken that no more witch trials or panics occurred. This was in 1684, eight years before the disasters in New England. But newspapers did not exist in those days, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... for a minute, but the influence of the Intendant was all-powerful over him. He gave way. "Damn De Repentigny," said he, "I only meant to do honor to the pretty witch. Who would have expected him to take it up in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Gross, that lives in yon tow'r, The ugliest witch i' the north country, Has trysted me ae day up till her bow'r, An' monny fair ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... and long-suffering metis and Indians to prompt and decisive action. He intended to go off again in a few hours to Prince Albert to direct the siege against that town. Only those who had witnessed the wantonness and the capture of the "white witch" followed. Most of the rebels were too busy improving the shining hour of unlimited loot. A half-breed on one side and an Indian on the other, each with a dirty mitt on Dorothy's shoulder, led her to the Judgment Hall of the dusky prophet, Louis David Riel, "stickit priest," and now malcontent ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... ever since. Her term of service is long out; but there is nothing that could drive her from this plantation. She wanders about as she pleases, and has a cabin in the woods yonder; for she will not live in the quarters. They say that she is a white witch; and the Indians, who reverence the mad, lay maize and venison ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... of remark, that Coke, in the trial of Mrs. Turner, told her that she was guilty of the seven deadly sins: she was a whore, a bawd, a sorcerer, a witch, a Papist, a felon, and a murderer.[*] And, what may more surprise us, Bacon, then attorney-general, took care to observe, that poisoning was a Popish trick.[**] Such were the bigoted prejudices which prevailed: poisoning was not of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... cap I doff, Stooping. 'T is the white-witch. 'Hail,' Quoth the witch, 'thou shalt prevail An thou wilt; I swear to thee All thy days shall glorious shine, Great and rich, ay, fair and fine, So what followeth rest my fee, So thou'lt give thy ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... is named the Castle of Weeds,' replied the lady, 'and the lands about it for many miles belonged to my husband, the Earl Mador. And he was a bold and very valiant man; and he slew Maelond, the eldest son of Domna, the great witch of Glaive, and ever thereafter things were not well with him. For she and her eight evil sisters laid a curse upon him. And that in spite of this, that he slew Maelond in fair fight, for all that he was a false and powerful wizard. And Domna came to my husband, when he was worn ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... Rudolph had received the Protestant Kepler, driven from Tubingen because Lutheran doctors, knowing from Holy Writ that the sun had stood still in Ajalon, had denounced his theory of planetary motion. His mother had just escaped being burned as a witch, and the world owes a debt of gratitude to the Emperor for protecting the astrologer, when enlightened theologians might, perhaps, have hanged ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bark upon the ocean. Now he seemed as if about to turn a somerset and circumnavigate the beam from which he hung, creaking and groaning dismally all the while, like an unhappy soul in purgatory. The loose shutters of the upper story of the tavern chattered like the teeth of a witch-ridden old crone. But cheerful fires of hickory and maple were burning within doors; a merry group was gathered in the old oak parlor, and little recked the guests of the elemental war without. In fact, they knew nothing of it, till the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... them all; but what was it, in either of the white twain, to the bursting ties of that lovely quadroon, raised like a lily in the household heat of kindness and the breath of purity, to be cast forth like a witch, on a moment's information, and consigned ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... water and drunk: if the body ejected the poison it was a sign of innocence. This method was the surest and least troublesome—for the investigation, sentence, and punishment were carried out simultaneously—unless the witch-doctor had been influenced, which sometimes happened, for there were various ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... and reflected with pride that not a man in the room could boast such a taking little witch for his daughter. Then he grew grave, and returned ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said, "I feel all through me that somethin' terrible is comin'. That woman back thar has clean give me the shivers. I'm more afraid of her than I am of Timmendiquas or Thayendanegea. Do you think she is a witch?" ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and Yusuf came to pay us a visit, and related divers sorts of wonders of this and other countries of Africa. The first matter concerned us. Eight days ago died in Tintalous an old witch, or prophetess, a negress, who foretold our arrival, and said to En-Noor, "A caravan of Englishmen is on the road from Tripoli, coming to you." This woman for many years was a foreteller of future events. The next thing we heard referred to the secret societies ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... conceive to be the more probable, for that the sap of the oak is of an unkind tincture to most trees. But for this improvement, I would rather advise inoculation, as the ordinary elm upon the witch-hazel, for those large leaves we shall anon mention, and which ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... to plan something. It's no good asking Mrs. Wylie. We'll have to do something ourselves. I'm afraid the people she's with lock her up, or something. P'raps they daren't let her go out, if there's some wicked fairy, or a witch, or something like that, that wants to run ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... a string of horrors that fairly froze their blood. She was a wrinkled-up and wizened personage—she must have been eighty—and as she mumbled the grim story through her toothless gums, she seemed a very old witch to them. Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element, and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people might about ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and damp, while they seemed glad of the company of the men, whinnying low and rubbing themselves against them as they came into the stalls. I heard one thrall say to another that the whole stable had surely been witch ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... crazy?" he demanded, clutching the floating bills, and then catching her about the waist. "You act like a witch! Where did all this money come from? ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... a field I saw an old witch-hare this night; And she cocked a lissome ear, And she eyed the moon so bright, And she nibbled of the green; And I whispered "Wh-s-st! witch-hare," Away like a ghostie o'er the field She fled, and ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... at her. There was a funny little smile twitching the corners of her mouth. Her beauty was irresistible. Even the iron barrier of his churlish avoidance was severely shaken. She was hard to withstand, this witch with her friendly eyes and frank speech, despite her ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... as the gentlemen, a dreadful riot ensued. Gillstoups, porter bottles, and penny pies flew like balls and bomb-shells in battle. Mrs Fenton, with her mutch off, and her hair loose, with wide and wild arms, like a witch in a whirlwind, was seen trying to sunder the challengers, and the champions. Finding, however, her endeavours unavailing, and fearing that murder would be committed, she ran like desperation into the streets, crying for help. I was just at the time ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... of the cock. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... ship (I'll show you how to make one out of paper, exactly like W), and sailed up into the sky, for the ship was a Ship of Stars—you make X's for stars; but that's a witch-ship; so it stuck fast in Y, which is a cleft ash-stick, and then came a stroke of lightning, Z, and burnt them all up!" He stopped, ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... better say, Though better figured on that day,[261] A horse, which might appear to us, Who deal in rhyme, a Pegasus; A rider, who, when once got on, Might pass for a Bellerophon, 930 Dropt on a sudden from the skies, To catch and fix our wondering eyes, To witch, with wand instead of whip, The world with noble horsemanship, To twist and twine, both horse and man, On such a well-concerted plan, That, Centaur-like, when all was done, We scarce could think they were not one? Could she not to our itching ears Bring the new names of new-coin'd peers, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Nay, why should I not tell it? Is it true, Thorolf, that for three nights thy father sat in woman's weed, doing sorceries with the witch of Smalserhorn, ere he dared face ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... prove false, I will stab him to the heart, with my own hand, though he be my father's brother's grandson, and the best warrior of our tribe; but no, no, Phadraig, the boy is young, and his blood is hot and fiery; and the charms of that witch might well move a colder spirit—but he is true as steel, and wise and wary for one so young. He may sun himself in her smiles, or revel on her lips, but trust me, Eachin of the iron hand, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... South of the village I invariably find one species of birds, north of it another. In only one locality, full of azalea and swamp-huckleberry, I am always sure of finding the hooded warbler. In a dense undergrowth of spice-bush, witch-hazel, and alder, I meet the worm-eating warbler. In a remote clearing, covered with heath and fern, with here and there a chestnut and an oak, I go to hear in July the wood sparrow, and returning by a stumpy, shallow pond, I am sure ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... simple-minded young gentleman, who was unconsciously bred in the belief that he and his own kin had no superiors anywhere, never noticed it. To be sure they quarreled a good deal, but truth to say Phil was never more fascinated with the little witch, whom he felt himself strong enough to protect, than when she showed a pretty temper. He rather liked to be ordered about by the little tyrant. And sometimes he wished that Murad Ault, the big boy of the school, would be rude to the small damsel, so that he could ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "dutchman" in the place of a lost suspender button; how to make bird-traps; and how to "skin the cat." Eph initiated him into the mysteries of magic and witchcraft, and showed him how to locate a subterranean vein of water by means of a twig of witch-hazel. Eph also confided to Johnnie that he himself could stanch the flow of blood or stop a toothache instantly by force of a certain charm, but he could not tell how to do this because the secret could be imparted only from man to woman, or vice versa. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... jostle of sweet and bitter memories. So near, so near again! The same warm seductive witch. He strove ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... to earth, and stamped with impatience, for he thought it shame to go afoot into the presence of the maid. Presently he remembered that his witch-mother had given him a magic potion which would enable a man to take the face and form of another at will. So he proposed that Sigurd should take his appearance and win Brunhild for him by proxy, for he knew that Greyfell would dare anything ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... majesty, and, of course, there was a great crush. The king and queen returned the tickets, but everybody else was there. I remember that the Duke of Cleveland appeared as Henry VIII.; the Duke of Gloucester as a fine old English gentleman; the Duchess of Buccleugh as the Witch of Endor; Lady Edgecombe as a nun; the Duchess of Bolton as the goddess Diana; Lady Stanhope as Melopomene; the Countess of Waldegrave as Jane Shore; Lord Galway's daughter, Mrs. Monckton, as an Indian princess, in a golden robe, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... An event so miraculously corresponding with the prediction of the witches astonished Macbeth, and he stood wrapt in amazement, unable to make reply to the messengers: and in that point of time swelling hopes arose in his mind, that the prediction of the third witch might in like manner have its accomplishment, and that he should one day reign king ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the other hand, not a gnome, witch, Norna's Head, or other intimation of the underworld. The shore looked like many other Italian shores. It looked not very unlike what we Yankees call salt-marsh. At all events, we should not break our heads against a wall! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... sprite! Elf of eve! and starry Fay! Ye that love the moon's soft light, Hither—hither wend your way; Twine ye in the jocund ring, Sing and trip it merrily, Hand to hand, and wing to wing, Round the wild witch-hazel tree. ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... have art enoof, and, to gi' the witch her due, beauty enoof to make a mon play the rule, an' she tak it into ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... she exclaimed, and was about to burst into tears. But he arrested their course by saying, playfully, "Come, Loo Loo, kiss my hand, and say, 'Thank you, Sir, for buying me.' Say it just as you did six years ago, you little witch!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... he said bluffly. "I ask you. Leave it alone. I've got the price. Ever try witch hazel ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... but Samuel mourns for Saul, that Jehovah had repented of having made him king over Israel. There is another narrative intimately connected with this one in subject and treatment, thought and expression, namely, that of the witch of Endor. When Saul, shortly before the battle in which he fell, surveyed the hostile army, he was seized with anxiety and terror. He inquired of Jehovah, but received no answer, neither by dreams, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... not Madame Beattie who came to the stair-head and looked down; it was Rhoda Knox. After the glance she went away, though in no haste, and summoned Madame Beattie, who appeared in a silk negligee of black and white swirls like witch's fires and, after one ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... you need just now is not a discourse, but a bath and court-plaster and witch-hazel and cold-water bandages," Mr. Bronson said; "so to bed with you. You 'll need all the sleep you can get, and you 'll feel stiff and sore ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... left the room with the boy's arm linked in his. And the woman's face on the wall smiled behind them—the smile of a witch, mysterious, derisive, aloof, yet touched with that same magic with which Piers had learned even in his infancy to charm away the evil spirit that lurked ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... could be of any assistance either to Bakuma, the white men or himself. Indeed he had been waiting the arrival of these goods to secure the subjection of Bakahenzie to his will. He determined that the trial should be now. Merely to demand would, he felt, arouse the obstinacy of the chief witch-doctor, who would never, unless compelled by force or cunning, give up the reins of power which to him was the raison d'etre of his life. Birnier must attack through the line of least resistance. With the carriers bearing the mail was a case of ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... education, their daily professional and business needs, is increasing and will continually increase. The phraseology of Supernaturalism may remain on men's lips, but in practice they are Naturalists. The magistrate who listens with devout attention to the precept "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" on Sunday, on Monday, dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge of bewitching a cow brought against some old woman; the superintendent of a lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for rational modes of treatment ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... of wound-nursing, Storri went to the San Reve. He found that lady of the gray-green eyes sitting sullen and silent, wrapped in resentful anger like a witch's cloak. One thing in his favor; the San Reve had not heard of his return, and supposed him just back from ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... were treated as the effect of witchcraft by the Indians, and the afflicted were carried into the woods and left alone with none near them except the medicine man whose business it was to expel the witch. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... baptized at St. Thomas's Church. Callon's son Langi, and half a dozen other boys, lived with Mr. Gomes, and ran after him all day—nice little fellows, who fraternized with our boys at the school-house. There were also five men, the chief of whom was Bulan (Moon), one of the manangs, or witch-doctors, of the tribe. These manangs, being as it were the priests of Dyak superstitions, and getting their living by pretended cures, interpretations of omens and the voices of birds, were of course the natural enemies of truth and enlightenment. Bulan, however, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... found the equivocal Predictions, on which his Hero so fatally depended. "He had learned of certain wysards, how that he ought to take heede of Macduffe;—and surely hereupon had he put Macduffe to death, but a certaine witch, whom he had in great trust, had tolde that he should neuer be slain with man borne of any woman, nor vanquished till the Wood of Bernane came to the Castell of Dunsinane." p. 244. And the Scene between Malcolm and Macduff ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
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