... she could have succeeded in this, for the squire looked high, and over high, for the wife of his heir; he detested all foreigners, and moreover held all Roman Catholics in dread and abomination something akin to our ancestors' hatred of witchcraft. All these prejudices were strengthened by his grief. Argument would always have glanced harmless away off his shield of utter unreason; but a loving impulse, in a happy moment, might have softened his heart to what he most detested in the former days. But the happy moments came not now, and ... — Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Read full book for free!
... their very high sense of his most honourable conduct, and in grateful acknowledgment of the unparalleled and most successful exertions he has made, and continues to make for them." The library is rich in the subjects which the great author loved, such as Demonology and Witchcraft. In a volume of a collection of Ballads and Chapbooks is this note written by Scott in 1810: "This little collection of stall tracts and ballads was formed by me, when a boy, from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. ... — How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley Read full book for free!
... great many things, my dear M. Maxence," he replied; "and yet, as I do not wish to be suspected of witchcraft, I will tell you where all my science comes from. At the time when your house was closed to me, after seeking for a long time some means of hearing from your sister, I discovered at last that she had for her music-teacher an old Italian, the Signor ... — Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau Read full book for free!
... audible within; low, but distinct. The notary is trying that old charge of witchcraft, which the Inquisitors, whether to justify themselves to their own consciences, or to whiten their villainy somewhat in the eyes of the mob, so often brought against their victims. And then Eustace's heart sinks within him as he hears a woman's ... — Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley Read full book for free!
... shape of dust and wind. But if you painted "C.M.B.," the initials of the three Kings of the East, on all the doors and walls, no witch would be able to get in and throw something into your plate. Or you need only say to yourself, "God bless it," before you began to eat or drink, and then no witchcraft could harm your food, for the saints would hold their hands ... — Absolution • Clara Viebig Read full book for free!
... merited the punishment of traitors. "These traitors," cried the Protector, "are the sorceress, my brother's wife, and Jane Shore, his mistress, with others their associates; see to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft!" Upon which he laid bare his arm, all shrivelled and decayed; but the councillors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and, above all, Lord Hastings, who, as he had since Edward's death engaged in an intrigue with Jane ... — The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson Read full book for free!
... broken bones and bullet holes the Indian can understand, but measles, pneumonia, and smallpox are witchcraft. Winnenap' was medicine-man for fifteen years. Besides considerable skill in healing herbs, he used his prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted the medicine-man to decline the case when the patient has had treatment from any other, say the white doctor, whom many ... — The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin Read full book for free!
... lessons through the teachings of experience—that strictest of school-masters. Now, you see, I have my lecturing-cap on, and am almost equal to you or Dr. Lardner in my way. But it takes you to define fascination! I suppose Mrs. Heavyside, however, could help you there—for nothing short of witchcraft could account to me for her elopement with that dreary man! To leave her sweet children, too, as if all the men on earth could be worth to a true mother her teething ... — Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield Read full book for free!
... possessed great skill as far as simples were concerned. But it was their practice to profess to cure diseases, rather by jugglery and witchcraft, than by those means which were simple and near at hand. Could they be brought to look upon a disease as purely natural, which they cannot, and treat it accordingly, their materia medica would possess wonderful efficacy in their hands. The great use which they make of their ... — Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones Read full book for free!
... gods are themselves unchangeable, still by witchcraft and deception they may make us think that they ... — The Republic • Plato Read full book for free!
... South will not let them admonish her "in the Lord." Indeed, whatever may be true of slavery, the South looks on the great body of zealous anti-slavery people as being in as false and unnatural a state of excitement as the Massachusetts people were in the times of witchcraft. A great delusion is over the minds of many at the North, like one of our eastern sea-fogs. It always makes a Southerner merry, when listening, in New York or Boston, for example, to a lecture, if the speaker concludes a sentence with some allusion to "freedom," and ... — The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams Read full book for free!
... that of a chant sung by an old woman to incite the men to avenge the death of a young man who died from a natural cause, but whose death she attributed to witchcraft and sorcery; the natives, who listened to her attentively, called her chanting goranween, or abusing. She stood with her legs wide apart, waving her wanna, or long digging stick in the air, and rocking ... — Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey Read full book for free!
... my own experience," said Count Victor. "Are you sure her honesty is on more substantial grounds than her reputation for witchcraft? I demand your pardon for expressing these suspicions, but I have reasons. I cannot imagine that the attack of the Macfarlanes was connived at by your servants, though that was my notion for a little when Mungo locked me up, for they ... — Doom Castle • Neil Munro Read full book for free!
... "It's like witchcraft," he said to himself. "Why should this one woman be different from all other women? Perhaps it's the colour. That ruddy auburn hair, the loveliest I ever saw, means temper. But I conquered the chestnut, and I'll conquer Miss Tempest—or make her ... — Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon Read full book for free!
... marvellous and strange about their dance. It was as though gray shadows had played a game which the eye could scarcely follow. It was as if they had learned it from the mists that hover over desolate morasses. There was witchcraft in it. All those who had never before been on Kullaberg understood why the whole meeting took its name from the crane's dance. There was wildness in it; but yet the feeling which it awakened was a delicious longing. No one thought any more ... — The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof Read full book for free!
... though privately carried, could not long be kept a secret, came to the ears of the old man, Brabantio, who appeared in a solemn council of the senate, as an accuser of the Moor Othello, who by spells and witchcraft (he maintained) had seduced the affections of the fair Desdemona to marry him, without the consent of her father, and against the ... — Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb Read full book for free!
... corner walls, A glittering row, Hang pit irons less for use than show, With horse-shoe brightened as a spell, Witchcraft's evil powers ... — Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack Read full book for free!
... you all, tell me what they deserve That do conspire my death with devilish plots Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd Upon my body with ... — The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition] Read full book for free!
... said,—when Robert Calef the Boston merchant's book was burned in the yard of Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather, President of the College and Minister of the Gospel. You remember the old witchcraft revival of '92, and how stout Master Robert Calef, trader, of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and judges what a set of fools and ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various Read full book for free!
... by Duke John V. to his son Peter, who resided here and rebuilt the castle. When attacked by his mortal illness, the physicians attributed his malady to witchcraft, and declared it could only be remedied by counter-spells. The Prince refused to have recourse to such means, saying, "I had rather die by the will of God, than live by the will of the Devil."—"J'aime mieux mourir de par Dieu, que de vivre de par ... — Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser Read full book for free!
... will shore say you used witchcraft on the burro; he said Noddy was done for—being buried under that slide the ... — Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy Read full book for free!
... civilisation excited Hans even more than it did myself, since having never seen anything of the sort, he thought it so strange that, as he informed me, he imagined that it must have been built by witchcraft. In it I had a most delightful and much-needed bath. Even Hans was persuaded to follow my example—a thing I had rarely known him to do before—and seated in its shallowest part, splashed some water over his yellow, wrinkled anatomy. Then we returned to our ... — She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard Read full book for free!
... humane. He had seen at the grand custom in Dahomey 2,500 men killed, and a pool made of their blood into which the king's wives threw themselves naked and wallowed. "One day fifteen were to be tortured to death for witchcraft. I bought them all for an old dress-coat," said the captain. "I didn't want them, for my cargo was made up; it was only to save the poor ... — Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland Read full book for free!
... Today many people are turning to magical powers and are having communion with evil spirits and the devil. This is what witchcraft is. Fortune tellers, spiritualist readers etc. are all of the devil and should never be considered nor tampered with. Many have, in fun, or wanting to know something, imbibed an evil spirit and were tormented by it day and night. God will protect His people if they will look to Him ... — The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles Read full book for free!
... which in mind, if not also in visual appearance, resemble man. Epicurus succeeded in barring the door, and admitted nothing more. But the Stoics presently found themselves admitting or insisting that the same consensus proved the existence of daemons, of witchcraft, of divination, and when they combined with the Platonic school, of more ... — Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray Read full book for free!
... Hathorne, John, of fanatical memory, was as characteristically a latter-day Puritan as his father had been a pioneer. He served in the council and the field, but he left a name chiefly as a magistrate. His duty as judge fell in the witchcraft years, and under that adversity of fortune he showed those qualities of the Puritan temperament which are most darkly recalled; he examined and sentenced to death several of the accused persons, and bore himself so inhumanely in court that the husband of one of the sufferers cursed ... — Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry Read full book for free!
... had often heard ascribed to women, but never saw I aught like that, and I trow it seemed witchcraft. "'Tis something about the young tobacco plants," quoth she. "The king would not pass the measure to cease the planting, and the assembly of this spring broke up with no decision. Major Beverly, who is clerk of the assembly, hath turned against the government since Bacon died, and all ... — The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins Read full book for free!
... I imagine, lord, like others. At least, a few days ago they were seen travelling toward the bridge of St. Benezet in the company of certain Jews, whom, I am informed, they had rescued from the just reward of their witchcraft. I have a note of all the facts, which include the slaying of sundry good Christians on behalf of the ... — Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard Read full book for free!
... talk of witchcraft in the village. "He hunts with evil spirits," some of the people contended, "wherefore his hunting is rewarded. How else can it be, save that he hunts with ... — Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London Read full book for free!
... scenery where Avon Dhu or the River Forth has its birth, he observes: "The opinions entertained about these beings are much the same with those of the Irish, so exquisitely well narrated by Mr. Crofton Croker." Again, in his 'Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,' Scott says: "We know from the lively and entertaining legends published by Mr. Crofton Croker, which, though in most cases, told with the wit of the editor and the humour of his country, contain points of curious antiquarian information" as to what the opinions of the Irish are. ... — A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker Read full book for free!
... Italy in 996, became archbishop of Ravenna in 998, and the following year was elected to the papal chair. Far ahead of his age in wisdom, he suffered as many such scholars have even in times not so remote by being accused of heresy and witchcraft. As late as 1522, in a biography published at Venice, it is related that by black art he attained the papacy, after having given his soul to the devil.[443] Gerbert was, however, interested in astrology,[444] although this was merely ... — The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith Read full book for free!
... therefore, has been rather to escape disaster than to achieve any brilliant success. The charm of State Trials lies largely in matters of detail:—that Hale allowed two old women to be executed for witchcraft; that Lord Russell was obviously a traitor; that an eminent judge did not murder a woman in the early part of his career; and that a sea-captain did murder his brother in order to inherit his wealth, are in themselves facts of varying importance. What the trials in these cases tell us, ... — State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various Read full book for free!
... all the long winter. Early in the spring he sailed eastward to the Gulf of Riga and spread fear and terror along the coast of Finland. And the old saga tells how the Finlanders "conjured up in the night, by their witchcraft, a dreadful storm and bad weather; but the king ordered all the anchors to be weighed and sail hoisted, and beat off all night to the outside of the land. So the king's luck prevailed more ... — Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks Read full book for free!
... a man of iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defense of what he considered his right. The dispute remained for years undecided, and came to a close only with the death of old Matthew Maule, who was executed for the crime of witchcraft. ... — The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds. Read full book for free!
... The belief in witchcraft is still prevalent in some quarters, and as late as 1863 a man was drowned at Hedingham, in Essex, Eng., for being a wizard, his accusers and persecutors being village tradesmen. See Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, Phila., Lippincott & ... — Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer Read full book for free!
... believe in witchcraft?" was asked while interviewing the aged negro. "No" was the answer. "I had a cousin that was a full blooded Indian and a Voodoo doctor. He got me to help him with his Voodoo work. A lot of people both ... — Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration Read full book for free!
... asylum, near Bonn. Periods of complete sanity, when he received his friends and wrote to them, alternated with periods of absolute despair. Under the weight of his affliction, his soul, like Giles Corey's body in the Salem witchcraft times, was gradually crushed to death, and at the age of forty-six he died. Clara, who had been away on a concert tour to earn much-needed funds, hastened back from London just in time to give him her own arms as his resting-place in his ... — The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes Read full book for free!
... You have struck the post, Cayugas! Senecas! Mohawks! It is a lie! Let this young sorceress speak to the Oneidas; they are hers; the Tuscaroras are hers, and the Onondagas and the Lenape! Let them heed her and her dreams and her witchcraft! It concerns not you, O Mountain-snakes! It concerns only these and False-Faces! She is their prophetess; let her dream for them. I have dreamed for you, O Elder Brothers! And I have dreamed ... — The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers Read full book for free!
... Mahomet's being bewitched by the Jews. Having made a waxen image of him, they hid it in a well, together with a comb and a tuft of hair tied in eleven knots. The prophet fell into a very wasting condition, till he had a dream that informed him where these implements of witchcraft were, and accordingly had them taken away. In order to untie the knots Gabriel read to him the two last chapters of the Koran, consisting of eleven verses; each verse untied a knot, and, when all were untied, ... — The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various Read full book for free!
... that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce! won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen; O, Hamlet, what a falling off was there! From ... — Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce Read full book for free!
... clergyman at Agawam (Mass.). Sincere in his bigotry, pitiable in the superstition that darkens his life, honestly persuaded that he and his are the victims of witchcraft, and that duty forces him to punish those who have afflicted the Lord's saints.—Josiah Gilbert Holland, The Bay ... — Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer Read full book for free!
... told you frequently that there is no such word as 's'pose.' I don't suppose anything about it. It's enough to make one believe in witchcraft. Miss Sybil Lamotte held her head above us; above plenty more, who were the peers of Mr. John Burrill. Last year, as everybody knows, she refused Robert Crofton, who is handsome, rich, and upright in character. This Spring, they say, she jilted Raymond Vandyck, and people who ought to ... — The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch Read full book for free!
... Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him. "Those two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is given here below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can fly on the shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue empyrean where the sublime marvels are wrought of the intellectual life; they, by the power of art, can soar whither your immense love carries you, whither opium transports me. Then none can understand them but ... — Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac Read full book for free!
... grew pale and shuddered. The fear of witchcraft was great in Angers, the peril, if accused of it, enormous. Even the Canons ... — Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman Read full book for free!
... Tette authorities, and had a stockade at the confluence of the Zambesi and Luenya, a few miles below that village. Asking the Makololo whence they came, Bonga rejoined, "Why do you come from my enemy to me? You have brought witchcraft medicine to kill me." In vain they protested that they did not belong to the country; they were strangers, and had come from afar with an Englishman. The superstitious savage put them all to death. "We do not grieve," said their ... — A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone Read full book for free!
... unconscious witnesses in favour of philology. If any who have not passed through these institutions should happen to utter a word in disparagement of this education, an unanimous and yet calm repudiation of the statement at once follows, as if classical education were a kind of witchcraft, blessing its followers, and demonstrating itself to them by this blessing. There is no attempt at polemics . "We have been through it all." "We know ... — We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche Read full book for free!
... which you see, was our brother, which some women by witchcraft have brought into this condition which you see: we therefore entreat you ... — The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake Read full book for free!
... a woman in a village is that of gooseherd; while those original minds who in other circumstances would take to authorship or painting have to wait, if they are peasants, till they are old, when they can take to fortune-telling and witchcraft. Herr Riehl admits that the lot of women when they are peasants is not a happy one. He does not make the admission because he thinks it of much consequence, but because it illustrates his argument that the less "feminine" women are the less power they exercise. He ... — Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick Read full book for free!
... gestures as he did, but when more light appeared, it vanished. Eremites and anchorites have frequently such absurd visions, revelations by reason of much fasting, and bad diet, many are deceived by legerdemain, as Scot hath well showed in his book of the discovery of witchcraft, and Cardan, subtil. 18. suffites, perfumes, suffumigations, mixed candles, perspective glasses, and such natural causes, make men look as if they were dead, or with horse-heads, bull's-horns, ... — The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior Read full book for free!
... 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, ... — Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... individual fantasies. But the time was like the time of witchcraft. The air magnified and multiplied every appearance, and exceptions and idiosyncrasies and ludicrous follies were regarded as the rule, and as the logical masquerade of this foul fiend Transcendentalism, which was evidently unappeasable, and was about to devour manners, morals, religion, ... — Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke Read full book for free!
... stretched out in a box, is carried to a lonely place; some are buried deep, others close to the surface. There is an immense show of grief, with keening and crocodiles' tears, perhaps to benefit the living by averting a charge of witchcraft, which would inevitably lead to "Sassy" or poison-water. The wake continues for five days, when they "pull the cry," that is to say, end mourning. If these pious rites be neglected, the children incur the terrible reproach, "Your father he be hungry." ... — Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton Read full book for free!
... future occasion. In the meantime, if our present reference should kindle the curiosity of the reader, and he may not be disposed to await our time, we beg to recommend him to Glanville's well-known work on witchcraft, which not only contains Dr. Plot's narrative of the Woodstock disturbances, but a multitude of argument for all who are sceptical of this and similar mysteries. This is an age of inquiry, and we do not see why such follies should be left unturned—from Priam's shade to the murderous dreams ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various Read full book for free!
... the morning must replenish from the barrel in the cellar. But over all a grave earnestness prevails; there is little laughter or mirth, and no song to cheer the tired workers. If stories are told they are of Indian horrors, of ghosts, or of the fearful pranks of witchcraft. ... — The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various Read full book for free!
... what witchcraft of a stronger kind, Or cause too deep for human search to find, Makes earth-born weeds imperial man enslave,— Not little souls, but e'en the ... — Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings Read full book for free!
... the reply: 'nothing since I got rid of that infernal portrait. I was wrong, my friend, not to let you burn it. The devil fly away with the thing, say I! I am no believer in witchcraft and the like, but I am more than half persuaded some evil spirit is lodged in the portrait of ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various Read full book for free!
... gayety is not there; slow tunes, very slow ones, wherein the spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent; doleful, not nice and tearful. Then comes the Heaven-born fiddler,* who can make himself cry. with his own fiddle. David had a touch of this witchcraft. Though a sound musician and reasonably master of his instrument, he could not fly in a second up and down it, tickling the fingerboard and scratching the strings without an atom of tone, as the mechanical monkeys do that boobies ... — Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade Read full book for free!
... willed to him, as hereinabove specified) the two mahogany bookcases numbered 11 and 13, and the contents thereof, being volumes of fairy and folk tales of all nations, and dictionaries and other treatises upon demonology, witchcraft, mythology, magic and kindred subjects, to be his, his heirs, ... — The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field Read full book for free!
... and as the sands upon the seashore. It is advisable to restrict the genuine Bradfords to those of wealth and position. Now, this genealogical mania is a kind of midsummer madness that lasts in Warwick the year through, a lineal descendant, so to speak, of the witchcraft delusion; but it offers a certain kind of mental pemmican to impoverished minds. Those much vaunted ancestors were very worthy people, but, bless you! there was n't a social swell ... — The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins Read full book for free!
... will doe the best I can: But I thinke it the difficiller, since ye denie the thing it selfe in generall: for as it is said in the logick schools, Contra negantem principia non est disputandum. Alwaies for that part, that witchcraft, and Witches haue bene, and are, the former part is clearelie proved by the Scriptures, and the last by dailie experience ... — Daemonologie. • King James I Read full book for free!
... Persons, that, as far as I have been able to learn, ever suffer'd as Criminals, although it has been a Settlement near sixty Years; One of whom was a Turk that committed Murder; the other, an old Woman, for Witchcraft. These, 'tis true, were on the Stage, and acted many Years, before I knew the Place; but as for the last, I wish it had been undone to this day; although they give a great many Arguments, to justifie the Deed, which I had rather they should have a Hand in, than myself; seeing I could never ... — A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson Read full book for free!
... yourself; aye and I will bestow it most plentifully, if you happen to feel any desire after more. I hate to be ungrateful; you shall have no opportunity to utter your musty maxim upon me—'That the sin of ingratitude is worse than the sin of witchcraft.' You shall have weight for weight, measure for measure, chicken; aye, my market woman, and a lumping pennyworth. ... — Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft Read full book for free!
... caused by the constant rubbing against it of the head of a person whilst seated on the rock. This and other circumstances led us to conjecture that the cave was frequented by some wise man or native doctor who was resorted to by the inhabitants in cases of disease or witchcraft. We saw many footmarks about, and found other signs of the close presence of the natives, ... — Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey Read full book for free!
... leaders of philosophical fashion. But there is a principle of belief in human nature which revenges itself on the infidel. There are no men more liable to groundless fears, than those who reject the object of legitimate awe. The man who will not believe in a deity, has often believed in witchcraft; and those who will not acknowledge a Providence, have often trembled before a conjurer. At this period, Frederick had grown peculiarly anxious and irascible—a temper for which the ambassador accounts by a sudden impulse of superstition. He says—"Amongst several other incredible ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various Read full book for free!
... enables a man to see himself. Behold!" And I held it up so that Lomalindela might see the reflection of his own visage in it. He took it doubtingly and hesitatingly in his hand—for there is nothing a South African savage dreads so much as magic or witchcraft—and a low, awestricken ejaculation of "Au!" escaped him at ... — Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood Read full book for free!
... woman must be at the same time mistress and nurse, and her strength is not sufficient. That is why we have hysteria, nervous attacks, and, among the peasants, witchcraft. Note that among the young girls of the peasantry this state of things does not exist, but only among the wives, and the wives who live with their husbands. The reason is clear, and this is the cause of the intellectual ... — The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy Read full book for free!
... Geierstein,' and more 'Tales of a Grandfather'—until he was suddenly struck down by paralysis. But he had no sooner recovered sufficient strength to be able to hold a pen, than we find him again at his desk writing the 'Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,' a volume of Scottish History for 'Lardner's Cyclopaedia,' and a fourth series of 'Tales of a Grandfather' in his French History. In vain his doctors told him to give up work; he would not be dissuaded. "As for bidding ... — Character • Samuel Smiles Read full book for free!
... to the Castle," answered Sir Guy. "There is now great desire to see her and hear her, and to try and test the truth of her mission. The Generals scoff aloud at the thought of going to battle with a maid for leader. The Churchmen look grave, and talk of witchcraft and delusion. The ladies of the Court are in a fever to see her. As for the King and his Ministers, they are divided in mind 'twixt hope and fear; but truly matters are come to such desperate pass with us that, if some help come not quickly, the King will ... — A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green Read full book for free!
... was turned, they were again the men of Agincourt; when she turned upon them, her white breastplate blazing out like a star, the sunshine striking dazzling rays from her helmet, they trembled before the sorceress; an angel to her own side, she was the very spirit of magic and witchcraft to her opponents. Classidas, or which captain soever of the English side it might happen to be, blaspheming from the battlements, hurled all the evil names of which a trooper was capable, upon her, while ... — Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant Read full book for free!
... King—moved the spirit of Chaka the Lion into the body of Sompseu and made him as Chaka was and gave him power to name you to rule over the Zulus. So it came about that to the English Queen through the spirit of Chaka you swore certain things; that slaying for witchcraft should be abolished; that no man should die without fair and open trial, ... — Finished • H. Rider Haggard Read full book for free!
... the Lord, Samuel replied: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying his voice?... Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,—for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry." The prophet here sets forth, as did Isaiah in later times, the great principles of moral obligation as paramount over all ceremonial observances. He strikes a blow at all pharisaism and all self-righteousness, ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord Read full book for free!
... soon deluded by such plausible pretenses as were agreeable to their own inclinations, and were prevailed on by them. But when I was informed of this, I instructed the multitude again, that those who fled to them for refuge ought not to be persecuted: I also laughed at the allegation about witchcraft, [13] and told them that the Romans would not maintain so many ten thousand soldiers, if they could overcome their enemies by wizards. Upon my saying this, the people assented for a while; but they returned again afterwards, as irritated by some ill people against the great ... — The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus Read full book for free!
... might never be warm, is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is 'well authenticated?' and does not such an assertion promote the popular superstition of witchcraft? ... — Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney Read full book for free!
... Salem Witchcraft. Comprising More Wonders of the Invisible World, collected by Robert Calef; and Wonders of the Invisible World, by Cotton Mather. With Notes and Explanations, by Samuel P. Fowler. Salem. H.P. Ives and A.A. Smith. 12mo. ... — Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various Read full book for free!
... all, between the belief of the ignorant Russians, or Spaniards, or Portuguese, or other European people, and these unhappy blacks," exclaimed Harry one day when we were discussing the subject. The fearful curse of the country, however, is the belief in witchcraft. When a person is seized with illness, he always believes that some enemy has caused it, and is not satisfied until the witch or wizard is discovered, who is immediately compelled to swallow poison, or is barbarously put to death in some ... — The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston Read full book for free!
... understand the African races without knowing something of the terror of witchcraft, magic, and ill-luck which hangs like a cloud over their lives. Differing from each other in many ways, the African tribes are alike in this, that their religion is one of fear, dread of unseen powers that work against man's peace and well-being unless propitiated ... — Chatterbox, 1906 • Various Read full book for free!
... up a carved image in the house of the Lord, and built altars in the two courts of the house, to all the host of Heaven, and us'd inchantments and witchcraft, and familiar spirits, and for his great wickedness was invaded by the army of Asserhadon King of Assyria, and carried captive to Babylon; the book of the Law was lost till the eighteenth year of his ... — Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton Read full book for free!
... reward. When war failed to give from its bloody and remorseless jaws the victims for whom a ready market awaited, they turned to duplicity, treachery, and cruelty. "And men's worst enemies were those of their own household." The person suspicioned of witchcraft was speedily found guilty, and adjudged to slavery. The guilty and the innocent often shared the same fate. The thief, the adulterer, and the aged were seized by the rapacity that pervaded the people, and were hurled into the hell ... — History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams Read full book for free!
... common sense the Cap'n wanted to pounce on the paper, tear it up, announce his practical ideas on the witchcraft question, and then kick Mr. Gammon and his gander into the middle of the street. But as town officer he gazed at the end of that monitory finger and took ... — The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day Read full book for free!
... of heresy, of course, could not well be made, for in the infancy of our race there were neither Courts of Arches nor General Assemblies. But it was always possible to accuse Why-Why of malevolent witchcraft. The medicine-men had not long to wait for an opportunity. An old woman died, as old women will, and every one was asking "Who sent the evil spirit that destroyed poor old Dada?" In Why-Why's time no other explanation of natural death by disease ... — In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... was monstrously civil, saying that he hoped any little misunderstanding we had had would not prevent our being good friends in future. That a'n't all; the people of the neighbouring county hearing as if by art witchcraft that I had licked Hunter, and was on good terms with the brewer, forthwith began to come in crowds to look at me, pay me homage, and be my customers. Moreover, fifty scoundrels who owed me money, and would have seen me starve rather than help me as long as they considered me a down pin, remembered ... — The Romany Rye • George Borrow Read full book for free!
... ingredient which, on account of the harm it does him, he fancies may be useful to the perfection of his poison, though in fact it be of no use at all? If a bone snatched from the jaws of a fasting bitch be thought necessary in incantation; or if witchcraft have recourse to the raiment of the owl because it resorts to the tombs and mausoleums of the dead and wails and hovers about at the time that the rest of animated nature sleeps; certainly the savage may imagine that the ants, whose sting causes a fever, and the teeth of ... — Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton Read full book for free!
... cultivate a thousand-dollar jag. His poke is full of gold-dust and his heart is full of sin, And he's dancing with a girl called Muckluck Mag. She's as light as any fairy; she's as pretty as a peach; She's mistress of the witchcraft to beguile; There's sunshine in her manner, there is music in her speech, And there's concentrated honey in ... — Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service Read full book for free!
... marched up to the bazaar. No sooner did I appear than all the water-carriers called out, 'That villain, Yussuf, is about to take away our bread. May Shitan seize him. Let us go to the cadi and complain.' The cadi listened to their story, for they accused me of witchcraft, saying that no five men could lift the skin when it was full. He sent one of his beeldars to summon me before him. I had just filled my skin at the river, when the officer came from this distributor of bastinadoes. I followed him to the court, laden as I was. The crowd opened to let me pass, ... — The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat Read full book for free!
... universal belief that hunters are able to render themselves invisible, in moments of danger, by the operation of charms and witchcraft. ... — The Talking Beasts • Various Read full book for free!
... little Spanish fleeces, and our own Westmoreland and Cumberland skins, that beat every thing in the world for size. And then to see them turned into cloth as fast as steam can do it! My word, squire, there never was magic or witchcraft like the steam and metal witchcraft ... — The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr Read full book for free!
... ran, too, and felt curiously weak and shaken; though I suspected that this wriggling thing now swimming back to shore was the poison snake of the Ksaurora, and no Antouhonoran witchcraft at all, as I had seen skins of the brilliant and oddly marked little serpent at Guy Park, whither some wandering Southern Tuscaroras had ... — The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers Read full book for free!
... as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower in the dim English sunshine above, and in ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various Read full book for free!
... waned, the love for little Zoe grew and strengthened in the organist's heart. It seemed a kind of possession, as if a spell had been cast on him; in old times it might have been set down to witchcraft; and, indeed, it seemed something of the sort to himself, as if a power he could not resist compelled him to seek out the child—to think of it, to dream of it, to have it so constantly in his mind ... — Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker Read full book for free!
... which no man escapes that gets within their reach, but they never injure women. One of these of a prodigious size was caught having gold rings in its ears, which was supposed to have been done as some species of witchcraft or incantation by the Kafrs to clear the river from these dangerous animals. In confirmation of this opinion, we read in an Arabian author named Matude, giving an account of prodigies, that about the year 863 a brazen crocodile was ... — A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr Read full book for free!
... motions in equality of action and reaction, is A QUESTION which must be reserved for the casuists of other generations.... I cannot expect that on a sudden you and your friends will come to my conclusion, that the present philosophy of the Schools and Universities of Europe, based on faith in witchcraft, magic, &c., is a system of execrable nonsense, by which quacks live on the faith of fools; but I desire a free and fair examination of my Aphorisms, and if a few are admitted to be true, merely as courteous concessions ... — A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan Read full book for free!
... savage finds himself a little unwell, and mentions the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately perceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned personage, called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately sent for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The male inhabitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, the learned ... — Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... a law of degeneracy, of a "fatal drift towards the worse," is as obsolete as astrology or the belief in witchcraft. The human race has become hopeful, sanguine.—SEELEY, Rede Lecture, 1887. Fortnightly Review, July, ... — A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton Read full book for free!
... 'minus' less, because women had less faith than men; which represented them as of more violent and unbridled animal passions; which explained learnedly why they were more tempted than men to heresy and witchcraft, and more subject (those especially who had beautiful hair) to the attacks of demons; and, in a word, regarded them as a necessary evil, to be tolerated, despised, repressed, and if ... — Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley Read full book for free!
... a heathen—hemmed in on every side by fear and superstition. Her gods are gods of fear. She believes in witchcraft, is afraid of a world full of evil spirits. Under a pagan religion her place is next to the mere animals. She goes with her husband to the hunt, not as a companion, but as the drudge, the human pack-horse; she prepares the food, and her husband ... — The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various Read full book for free!
...witchcraft triumphed o'er me? Was it a ghostly show, so soon withdrawn? I dream, the devil stands himself before me—wake, to find ... — Faust • Goethe Read full book for free!
... Beyond th' enchanted sense, and darting back Swept with a sweet vibration near her face. Thrice o'er her brow she drew her languid hand, That, if it were a dream, she might dispel The gay enchantment; and thrice murmured o'er The spells learned of her nurse in infancy, Which would all witchcraft render innocent; But that great cavern of the northern world Was not by nurse's spells to be dissolved, Growing more ... — The Arctic Queen • Unknown Read full book for free!
... rose suddenly from her seat in the window-sill, the living dread of shepherds, for she travelled the country with a brilliant reputation for witchcraft, and thus she broke in upon the narrative: "I vow, young man, ye tell us the truth upset and down-thrust. I heard my douce grandmother say that on the night when Elphin Irving disappeared—disappeared I shall call it, for the bairn can but be gone for a season, to return ... — Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... Dunstan had a curious clock, which was considered a very wonderful piece of mechanism, almost a work of witchcraft. Standing out on the side of the church, in full view of the passers-by, were two figures of Hercules, holding clubs, with which they struck on two bells the hours and the quarters. All children took delight in watching these gigantic figures, but none so much ... — Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood Read full book for free!
... seneschal, whose office, though of little use, was still filled up in the more ancient establishments. "I saw him myself once, but I shook until the very flesh seemed to crawl over my bones. They say he neither eats nor drinks, but is kept alive in the body by glamour and witchcraft. He'll stay here until his time is done, and then his tormentors will fetch him to his prison-house again. Ye should not have tarried ... — Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby Read full book for free!
... with which they were beset, they had spiritual troubles also. They fully believed in witchcraft as did all their contemporaries, in a personal devil who was busily plotting the ruin of their souls, in an everlasting hell of literal fire and brimstone, and in a Divine election, by which most of them had been irrevocably doomed from before the creation of the world to eternal ... — The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport Read full book for free!
... sir, more against Engleton and the passengers," replied the guard. "He played his hand, if you come to look at it; and I wish he had shot worse, or me better. And yet I'll go to my grave but what I covered him," he cried. "It looks like witchcraft. I'll go to my grave but what he was drove full of slugs ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... Sir A. Lyall writes, [209] "are terribly vexed by witchcraft, to which their wandering and precarious existence especially exposes them in the shape of fever, rheumatism and dysentery. Solemn inquiries are still held in the wild jungles where these people camp out ... — The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell Read full book for free!
... Now. Humility. Poetics. Summum Bonum. A Pearl, a Girl. Speculative. White Witchcraft. Bad Dreams Inapprehensiveness. Which? The Cardinal and the Dog. The Pope and the Net. The Bean-Feast. Muckle-mouth Meg. Arcades Ambo. The Lady and the Painter. Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. Beatrice Signorini. Flute-music, with an Accompaniment. "Imperante Augusto ... — Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp Read full book for free!
... ideas, but has forgotten half of them, and those that he possesses have not got that hold on him that the corresponding or super-imposed Christian ideas have over the true Negro; although he is quite as keen on the subject of witchcraft, and his witchcraft differs far less from the witchcraft of the Negro than ... — Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley Read full book for free!
... the charms and incantations which could avert their malevolence or compel them to be serviceable to men. Sumerian religion, in fact, was Shamanistic, like that of some Siberian tribes to-day, and its ministers were Shamans or medicine-men skilled in witchcraft and sorcery whose spells were potent to parry the attacks of the demon and drive him from the body of his victim, or to call him down in vengeance on the ... — Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce Read full book for free!
... dissolute bryngyng vp, maketh the chylde to the teacher, callynge the same gentlenes, when in deede it is a marring. Might not an accion of euyl handlyng children meruelous iustli be laid against such mothers? For it is plainely a kynde of witchcraft & of murther. They be punyshed by the lawe, y^t bewitche their childr[en], or hurt their weake bodies with poisons: what do thei deserue which corrupt y^e chiefe parte of the inft w^t most vngracious venome? It is a lighter matter to kyl the body then the mind? If a child shulde ... — The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus Read full book for free!
... sell vegetables or fruit, they are ruthlessly seized and carried to slavery in a distant land. Even the laws are perverted to this shameful purpose. If a chief wants European commodities, he accuses a parent of witchcraft; the victim is tried by the ordeal of poisoned water;[A] and if he sicken at the draught, the king claims a right to punish him by selling his whole family. In African legislation, almost all crimes are punished with slavery; and thanks to the white man's rapacity, ... — An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child Read full book for free!
... of darkness had oozed out, and a number of them paid the penalty upon the gallows, and the rest scampered off to Meissen, Leipsic, and Herse. At these places they were not long in letting the inhabitants know, by their depredations, witchcraft, devilry, and other abominations, the class of people they had in their midst, and the result was their speedy banishment from Germany; and in 1418, after wandering about for a few months only, they turned their steps towards Switzerland, reaching Zurich on August ... — Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith Read full book for free!
... in witchcraft, I. his book, I. at the execution of George Burroughs, I. on "Devil's ... — History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews Read full book for free!
... other hand, his opinions on all subjects, on public affairs and public men, on such questions of speculation or ethical interest as astrology and witchcraft, often strikingly expressed in language always racy and sincere, are scattered through the published volumes of his writings, all printed without note or comment. It may at least be a tribute to Fountainhall's memory to present ... — Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder Read full book for free!
... a care of him yourself; for surely there is witchcraft betwixt his lips: He is a wolf within the sheepfold; and therefore I will be earnest, that you may ... — The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden Read full book for free!
... unique position in the opinion of the school, which was divided about evenly between the extremes represented by Sylvia and Judith. The various accomplishments of the new-comers were ground both for uneasy admiration and suspicion. They could sing like birds, and, what seemed like witchcraft to the unmusical little Americans about them, they could sing in harmony as easily as they could carry an air. And they recited with fire, ease, and evident enjoyment, instead of with the show of groaning, ... — The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield Read full book for free!
... be the king's permission," I said, "I will not strike my tents till the third day, and I will see this man. The mercy of the king is godlike, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover, both the bottles, and another, ... — The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... Bull of Innocent VIII (1484), witchcraft and the persecution of witches grew into a great and revolting system. The chief representatives of this system of persecution were German Dominicans; and Germany and, curiously enough, those parts of Italy nearest Germany were the countries most afflicted by ... — The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt Read full book for free!
... dropped my spade and she, seeing how I stared upon her, burst into a peal of laughter. "Ah, ah!" cried she. "Here is pretty, soft name and should fit me as well as another. Why must you stare so fool-like; here is no witchcraft, for in the caves yonder 'Joan' meeteth me at every turn; 'tis carven on walls, on chairs, on table, together with 'Damaris' and many woful, lovesick ... — Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol Read full book for free!
... name. To talk about the souls of animals or the spirits of animals would have been very dangerous in the Middle Ages, when the Church had supreme power; it would indeed have been to risk or to invite an accusation of witchcraft, for demons were then thought to take the shape of animals at certain times. To discuss the mind of an animal would have been for the Christian faith to throw doubt upon the existence of human souls as taught by the Church; for if you grant that animals are able to ... — Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn Read full book for free!
... possible," and it is reported of him that he said that were he to live five hundred years he would always repeat "no novelties in theology, in philosophy or logic, not even in grammar." In Africa priestcraft, in its primitive form of witchcraft, has continued for unnumbered ages to perpetuate the elementary creed of ancestor worship whose chief article is that the ways of the fathers must remain the ways of the children, and that to depart from the old and established ... — The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen Read full book for free!
... moral leaders of mankind behind the intellectual in opposing the novel tendencies. The clergy did all they could to perpetuate the squalid belief in witchcraft, but found no place for experimental science in their scheme of learning, and judged it offensive to the Maker of all things. But their opposition could do no more than hamper the new scientific impulse, which was far too potent to be ... — The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson Read full book for free!
... between living men and their long-deceased forefathers. They entertain a great dread of the dead, and do everything they can to exorcise and appease their souls, bringing them offerings. All this business is attended to with much black magic and witchcraft by the Shamans, who are also doctors. When any one dies the spirit of the dead must be driven out of the tent, so the Shaman is summoned. He comes decked out in a costly and curious dress, and with religious enthusiasm performs a dance which ... — From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin Read full book for free!
... "Now works the witchcraft!" said Wilhelm; "the magical power of the ale! Now begins the bacchand! Give your hand to the prettiest girl, and she will immediately give you ... — O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen Read full book for free!
... assertions; may intimidate or give the lie to the witnesses they may produce against us; may stamp as forgeries your letters which have unluckily fallen into their hands; but if this charge of witchcraft be once brought against you, it will not fall to the ground. The King will listen to it, because it flatters his prejudices; and even my voice would fail to save you from condemnation—from ... — The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth Read full book for free!
... forestalling, which two last are only particular modes of monopolizing, have been considered as chimeras, as imaginary practices that have never existed, and that cannot possibly exist. They have been likewise assimilated to witchcraft, an ideal belief, arising in the times of ignorance. It is now become the creed of legislators and ministers, that trade should be left to regulate ... — An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair Read full book for free!
... law: every one trembled and obeyed. To enter into a detail of all his cruelties would fill volumes; it will be sufficient to mention the last act of his life. His mother died, and he declared that she had perished by witchcraft. Hundreds and hundreds were impaled, and, at last, tired of these slow proceedings, he ordered out his army to an indiscriminate slaughter over the whole country, ... — The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat Read full book for free!
... other? She like a galvanized corpse out of some Hoffman's Tale—he the preacher of feminist gospel for all the world, and a super-revolutionist besides! This ancient, painted mummy with unfathomable eyes, and this burly, bull-necked, deferential...what was it? Witchcraft, fascination.... "It's for her money," he thought. ... — Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad Read full book for free!
... changes, and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually arous'd—(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to think of it—that age! its events, persons—Shakspere ... — Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman Read full book for free!
... of penance in the Greek church, published by Beveridge. He condemns apostacy to perpetual penance, deprived of the sacraments till the article of death: if only extorted by torments, for nine years; the same law for witchcraft; nine years for simple fornication; eighteen for adultery; twenty-seven for {555} murder, or for rapine. But he permits the terms to be abridged in cases of extraordinary fervor. Simple theft he orders to be expiated by the sinner giving all his substance ... — The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler Read full book for free!
... Demonology and Witchcraft. Letters addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq., by Sir Walter ... — History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino Read full book for free!
... giving an account of horrid Murders, Storms, Prodigies, Tempests, Witchcraft, Ghosts, Earthquakes, &c., with frontispieces and cuts, 4to. and 8vo. ... — Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin Read full book for free!
... manifesting his power on the deceptive and miracle-working line is modern Spiritualism. Multitudes of people of all classes are believers in this soul-destroying doctrine. The system is generally acknowledged to be but a modern form of what was anciently styled witchcraft, necromancy, magic, etc., while the mediums of to-day are of the same class as those formerly known as "witches," "sorcerers," "magicians." This they themselves often admit. The system is so well known both in doctrine and in its pernicious effects that I will not devote ... — The Revelation Explained • F. Smith Read full book for free!
... Aquitaine's sister, who was more lovely than sunlight. Her imagination fired by such stories as these, Bernadette often found it difficult to get to sleep; and this was especially the case on the evenings when the books were left aside, and some person of the company related a tale of witchcraft. The girl was very superstitious, and after sundown could never be prevailed upon to pass near a tower in the vicinity, which was said to be haunted by the fiend. For that matter, all the folks of the region were superstitious, devout, and simple-minded, the whole ... — The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola Read full book for free!
... "What witchcraft is this!" cried the King, spurring his steed cruelly. But the animal, like the dogs, obeyed the Hermit's will rather ... — John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown Read full book for free!
... cannibalism and infanticide, polygamy, judicial torture, 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. ... — Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell Read full book for free!
... Bromide will never say whether he prefers dark or white meat; though he inflict upon you the words, "Why, if two hundred years ago people had been told that you could talk through a wire they would have hanged the prophet for witchcraft!" though he repeats the point of his story, rolling it over on his tongue, seeking for a second laugh; though he says, "Dinner is my best meal"—he cannot help it. You know he is a Bromide, and you expect ... — Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess Read full book for free!
... respectful attention which heightens the self-respect of its recipients. Neglect is insolent, and contempt is injurious. He who suffers them is hurt and lowered. One blessed magic there is, as guileless as it is supreme. This charm, this witchcraft, is ... — The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger Read full book for free!
... his brother many years, and died dishonored, and stripped of all the great power he had once wielded. At one time he wrought so strongly upon the Indians through their superstition of witchcraft, that they put many to death at his accusal. One of the victims was the Wyandot chief Leatherlips, whom six Wyandot warriors came from Tippecanoe to try where he lived near the site of Columbus. They found him guilty and sentenced him to death, of course upon no evidence. A white man who wished ... — Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells Read full book for free!
... educated up to that pitch of interest in the secrets of science which seems to have made a lunatic of you. If they could understand what we are saying now, they would think that you wanted the kid's body for some devilry or witchcraft business, and we should as like as not get left by them. Then who would carry your precious specimens back to the boats? I would not lift a finger to help you, and I am not over sure that I could even guide you back, if it came to that. No, this thing cannot ... — In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford Read full book for free!
... astral vision, though certain ointments rubbed over the whole body will very greatly assist the astral body to leave the physical in full consciousness—a fact the knowledge of which seems to have survived even to mediaeval times, as will be seen from the evidence given at some of the trials for witchcraft. But the application to the physical eye might very easily so stimulate its sensitiveness as to make it susceptible to some of ... — Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater Read full book for free!
... it is this great and estimable man. This spirit he consulted not only in the spiritual, but in the temporal concerns, of his life. And yet he sentenced to death a number of persons, because they were reputed to be witches. But what true Quaker believes in witchcraft? or does he not rather believe, that the Spirit of God, it rightly understood, would have protested against condemnation for a crime, which does ... — A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson Read full book for free!
... king accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the same time found himself at the foot of a mountain on the sea-shore. The king immediately began to rage against his doctor for this piece of treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a livelihood in this strange country. Accordingly he applied himself to some people whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these people conducted him to ... — Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison Read full book for free!
... seventeenth century belief in witchcraft was almost at its height over the whole of Europe, and in Scotland the hunt after witches and warlocks was peculiarly vindictive. To obtain confession, the most incredible tortures—as cruel as anything practised by Red Indians on their prisoners—were inflicted on accused persons, ... — Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang Read full book for free!
... whoever they could get, and start off all together. They said a person was liable to get bewildered in there alone, and in old times folks had been lost. I expect there was considerable fear left over from the old Indian times, and the poor days o' witchcraft; anyway, I 've seen bold men act kind o' timid. Some women o' the Asa Bowden family went out one afternoon berryin' when I was a girl, and got lost and was out all night; they found 'em middle o' the mornin' next day, not half a mile from home, scared most to death, an' sayin' they'd ... — The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett Read full book for free!
... that Judge Sewall's children should be timid; they ran in terror to their father's chamber at the approach of a thunderstorm; and, living in mysterious witchcraft days, they fled screaming through the hall, and their mother with them, at the sudden entrance of a neighbor with a rug ... — Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle Read full book for free!
... would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, obtained secure possession of the entire island, with no reversionary fear over our heads, (as, up to Waterloo, we always had,) that possibly at a general peace we might find it diplomatically prudent to let it ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various Read full book for free!
... Salem, in effacing all memorials of the witchcraft persecution, except a picturesque old house at the corner of North and Essex Streets, where there are said to have been preliminary examinations for witchcraft,—a matter which concerns us now but slightly. The youthful associations of a genius are valuable ... — The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns Read full book for free!
... extinguish the fire. The logs burst into buds, and all the different kinds of wood put forth fruit, each tree bearing its own kind. The furnace was transformed into a royal pleasance, and the angels sat therein with Abraham. When the king saw the miracle, he said: "Great witchcraft! Thou makest it known that fire hath no power over thee, and at the same time thou showest thyself unto the people sitting in a pleasure garden." But the princes of Nimrod interposed all with one voice, "Nay, our lord, this is not witchcraft, it is the power of the great ... — The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg Read full book for free!
... for King and fatherland—never had such a life (for no life ever approached that of the Maid's) been so ludicrously, so violently and wilfully misrepresented. Her most innocent words and actions were turned into accusations of sorcery, witchcraft, vice, and every kind of wickedness. Her harmless and pure youth was made to appear a childhood of sorcery and idolatrous superstition; she was accused in her earliest years of having trafficked with evil spirits: it was alleged that she had ... — Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower Read full book for free!
... thunderbolt; he causes disease and death, sweeps off a nation's flocks and herds by murrain, or depopulates a continent by pestilence; ferocious wild beasts, serpents, toads, mice, hornets, mosquitoes, are his creation; he invented and introduced into the world the sins of witchcraft, murder, unbelief, cannibalism, sodomy; he excites wars and tumults, stirs up the bad against the good, and labors by every possible expedient to make vice triumph over virtue. Ormazd can exercise no control over him; the utmost that he can do is to keep a perpetual watch on his ... — The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson Read full book for free!
... superstition among the slaves. Many of them believe in what they call "conjuration," tricking, and witchcraft; and some of them pretend to understand the art, and say that by it they can prevent their masters from exercising their will over their slaves. Such are often applied to by others, to give them power to prevent their ... — Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb Read full book for free!
... scattered abroad after the flesh has been eaten, and the head alone preserved. The brains belong to the chief, or injured party, who usually preserves them in a bottle, for purposes of witchcraft, &c. They do not eat the bowels, but like the heart; and many drink the blood from bamboos. The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are the delicacies of epicures. Horrid and diabolical as these ... — John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik Read full book for free!
... superstition about the fairies—which, at the worst, was a very foolish affair—began to decline. But that decline brought a dark night to thousands of poor, innocent men and women; for then came the era of witchcraft, and persons of every rank, convicted of this imaginary crime, were hurried to the scaffold or ... — Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth Read full book for free!
... could have heard nothing about the Abbott of Hirschau and his striking bells. Indeed, when one considers the superstition of the age, we cannot but grant it was almost fortunate a clock such as ours was not then invented, for people were great believers in witchcraft and were liable to attribute to evil spirits anything they did not understand, and forthwith ... — Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett Read full book for free!
... rites to protect the household against witchcraft, the evil eye, and other machinations of his satanic majesty. The father rose first, and, taking the charmed water and a brush, treated the whole family to a generous sprinkling, which was usually acknowledged ... — Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed Read full book for free!
... justice, as the abominable trade which they drove in philtres and decoctions certainly entitled them to that appellation, and to the pains and penalties reserved for those who practised what was termed 'witchcraft.' ... — The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow Read full book for free!
... around us, we see, in contrast to the gracious and fostering reception of the mere mechanism by which science is made manifest, the utmost intolerance to science itself. The mathematics in especial are deemed the very cabala of the black art. Accusations of witchcraft were never more abundant; and yet, strange to say, those who openly professed to practise the unhallowed science, [Nigromancy, or Sorcery, even took its place amongst the regular callings. Thus, "Thomas Vandyke, late of Cambridge," is styled (Rolls Parl. 6, p. ... — The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton Read full book for free!
... putting one hand on her sister's arm, "it hath an air of witchcraft! Dost not feel cold ... — The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye Read full book for free!
... sound so far below, is the sound of a stream the eye cannot reach—of a waterfall echoing for ever among the black rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history of the old Castle—but that little is of war, and witchcraft, and imprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals him—he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at midday. There and then it was that we first saw a Starling. We heard ... — Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson Read full book for free!
... countries," Angro-mainyus sends there the curse of murrain, fatal to all cattle. To every land which Ahura-mazda creates for his worshippers, Angro-mainyus immediately assigns some plague or other. War, ravages, sickness, fever, poverty, hail, earthquakes, buzzing insects, poisonous plants, unbelief, witchcraft, and other inexpiable sins, are introduced by him into the various happy regions created without any such drawbacks by the good spirit; and a world, which should have been "very good," is by these means converted into a scene of ... — The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson Read full book for free!
... when she cried out fearfully, "I'm a witch, I'm a witch! Have pity upon me, and give me the sacrament quick, and I will confess everything to you!" And when I said to her, "Confess, then!" she owned that she, with the help of the Sheriff, had contrived all the witchcraft in the village, and that my child was as innocent thereof as the blessed sun in heaven. Howbeit that the Sheriff had the greatest guilt, inasmuch as he was a warlock and a witch's priest, and had a spirit far stronger than hers, called Dudaim, which spirit had given her such a blow on the head ... — The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold Read full book for free!
... take the impress of her image like wax. What did Seraphina think of me? I knew nothing of her but her features, and it was enough. Strange, this power of a woman's face upon a man's heart—this mastery, potent as witchcraft and mysterious like a miracle. I should have to go and tell her. I did not suppose she could have understood all of Sebright's argumentation. Therefore, it was for me to explain to what a pretty pass I had brought ... — Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer Read full book for free!
... even of that," and she smiled mockingly; "sometimes I have a fancy it may be witchcraft. I only know I am haunted—have been haunted four long weeks by a face, a ... — The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan Read full book for free!
... made a waxen image of him, they hid it in a well, together with a comb and a tuft of hair tied in eleven knots. The prophet fell into a very wasting condition, till he had a dream that informed him where these implements of witchcraft were, and accordingly had them taken away. In order to untie the knots Gabriel read to him the two last chapters of the Koran, consisting of eleven verses; each verse untied a knot, and, when all ... — The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various Read full book for free!
... outlived his brother many years, and died dishonored, and stripped of all the great power he had once wielded. At one time he wrought so strongly upon the Indians through their superstition of witchcraft, that they put many to death at his accusal. One of the victims was the Wyandot chief Leatherlips, whom six Wyandot warriors came from Tippecanoe to try where he lived near the site of Columbus. They found him guilty and sentenced him to death, of course upon no evidence. A white man who wished ... — Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells Read full book for free!
... the wicked princess, the ogre, the metamorphosed prince, and all the heroes of that line come into play and action. As they read the stories which compose this book they will meet with all the familiar actors of the fairy world in different scenes indeed, and with new deeds of daring, witchcraft, or charming benevolence, but still the same characters of the old-fashioned fairy lore. The graceful pencil of Miss Rosina Emmet has given a pictorial interest to the book, and the many pictures scattered through its pages accord well with the good old-fashioned character of the tales." ... — Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett Read full book for free!
... watched by the elders, and offenders were judged in kirk-sessions. Witchcraft, Sabbath desecration, and sexual laxities were the most prominent and popular sins. The mainstay of the system is the idea that the Bible is literally inspired; that the preachers are the perhaps inspired interpreters of the Bible, and that the country must imitate the old ... — A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... bloody banners. The Huns under Attila, ravaging Southern Europe, were thought to be literal demons who had made an irruption from the pit. The metaphysician was in peril of the stake as a heretic, the natural philosopher as a magician. A belief in witchcraft and a trust in ordeals were universal, even from Pope Eugenius, who introduced the trial by cold water, and King James, who wrote volumes on magic, to the humblest monk who shuddered when passing the church crypt, and the simplest peasant who quaked in his homeward path at seeing a will o' the ... — The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger Read full book for free!
... all, and the witnesses would all be examined before he himself was called to make his defence. He was nervous and anxious. Even while he was sitting there, Giovanni might be finding out some new accusation against him or the officer of archers might be accusing him of witchcraft and of having a compact with the devil himself. He was innocent, but he had broken the law, and no doubt many an innocent man had sat on that same bench before him, who had never again returned to his home. It was not strange that his lips should be parched, and that his heart ... — Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford Read full book for free!
... of the broom bush, which you saw growing on the old castle of Auchinleck. The wood has a curious appearance when sawn across. You may either have a little writing-stand made of it, or get it formed into boards for a treatise on witchcraft, by way of ... — Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill Read full book for free!
... Priscilla's family. He was master of a merchantman in Boston and commander of armed vessels which supplied marine posts with provisions. Like his sister, Elizabeth, he had thirteen children. He was once accused of witchcraft, when he was present at a trial, and was imprisoned fifteen weeks without being allowed bail. [Footnote: History of Witchcraft; Upham.] He escaped and hurried to Duxbury, where he must have astonished his mother by the recital of his adventures. He left an estate ... — The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble Read full book for free!
... the Sorrentine Peninsula is full of local superstitions, the vast majority of which can easily be traced to the influence of Catholicism, whilst comparatively few seem to be the legacy of ancient Greek or Roman mythology. Belief in witchcraft is universal in these parts, but the witch herself (strega) is regarded somewhat in the light of a beneficent "wise woman," who can arrest the far more dreaded spell of the Evil Eye, rather than as the malevolent ... — The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan Read full book for free!
... that every period of life has its privileges, and that even the most despicable creatures alive may find some pleasures. Now observe this comment; who are the most despicable creatures? Certainly, old women. What pleasure can an old woman take? Only witchcraft. I think this argument as clear as any of the devout Bishop of Cloyne's metaphysics: this being decided in a full congregation of saints, only such atheists as you and Lady Fanny can deny it. I own all the facts, as many witches have ... — Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville Read full book for free!
... must be confessed, that our friend Sampson, although a profound scholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as to doubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born indeed at a time when a doubt in the existence of witches was interpreted as equivalent to a justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such legends had been impressed ... — Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... you stand convicted of many and hideous crimes — witchcraft, sorcery, treachery to your King, vile cruelty to his subjects — crimes for which death alone is scarce punishment enough. You well merit a worse fate than the gallows. You well merit some of those lingering agonies that you have inflicted upon your wretched victims, and ... — In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green Read full book for free!
... godlessness; devilish men, who serve nobody but the Devil, that is, the spirit which in their language they call Menetto; under which title they comprehend everything that is subtle and crafty and beyond human skill and power. They have so much witchcraft, divination, sorcery and wicked arts, that they can hardly be held in by any bands or locks. They are as thievish and treacherous as they are tall; and in cruelty they are altogether inhuman, more than barbarous, ... — Narrative of New Netherland • Various Read full book for free!
... sensual shall wear the shaggy vesture of the goat, or foam and whet his horrid tusks, a wild and untame'd boar. But virtue prepares its possessor for the skies. Upon the upright and the good, attendant angels wait. With heavenly spirits they converse. On them the dark machinations of witchcraft, and the sullen spirits of darkness have no power. Even the outward form is impressed with a beam of celestial lustre. By slow, but never ceasing steps, they tread the path of immortality and honour. Then, mortals, love, ... — Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin Read full book for free!
... them," and that he "wishes the poetry hereof was mended." Such justice, such self-repression, such fairness make me almost forgive him for riding around the scaffold on which his fellow-clergyman was being executed for witchcraft, and urging the crowd not to listen to the poor martyr's dying words. I can even almost overlook the mysterious fables, the outrageous yarns which he imposed upon us under the ... — Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle Read full book for free!
... tell me what they deserve That do conspire my death with devilish plots Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd Upon my body ... — The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition] Read full book for free!
... on the wheel, being condemned on his own confession. It does not appear that he was put to the torture to make him confess. If this had been done his admissions would, of course, have been as valueless as those of the victims in trials for witchcraft. ... — Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... bodily disease is widely spread." Silver rings, made from the offertory money, are very generally worn for the cure of epilepsy. Water that had been used in baptism was believed in West Scotland to have virtue to cure many distempers; it was a preventive against witchcraft, and eyes bathed with it would never see a ghost. Dalyell puts the evidence very succinctly. "Everything relative to sanctity was deemed a preservative. Hence the relics of saints, the touch of their clothes, of their tombs, and even portions of structures consecrated to divine ... — Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme Read full book for free!
... road the day before I crossed the river; but no one would listen to my project. They all said I must have the king's sanction first, else people, from not knowing my object, would accuse me of practising witchcraft, and would tell their king so. They still all maintained that the river did come out of the lake, and said, if I liked to ask the king's leave to visit the spot, then they would go and show it me. I gave way, thinking it prudent to do so, but resolved in my mind ... — The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke Read full book for free!
... that I have noticed since our coming to this land. It does not seem to me that they are accustomed to worship animals, stars, clouds, or other things which many idolatrous pagans are wont to adore. I believe, nevertheless, that they have many other customs with regard to sacrifices and witchcraft, for they actually practice these; but there is little advantage in wasting the time or burdening the mind therewith, for any rational person will be able to understand sufficiently the rest after reading what is herein written. Among them, up to the present day, I have not observed any sin ... — The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair Read full book for free!
... of the illiterate," says another ecclesiastical historian, Dr. W. R. W. Stephens, "was in many respects merely a survival of the old paganism thinly disguised. There was a prevalent belief in witchcraft, magic, sortilegy, spells, charms, talismans, which mixed itself up in strange ways with Christian ideas and Christian worship.... Fear, the note of superstition, rather than love, which is the ... — Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles Read full book for free!
... I admired you at first sight; every time I was with you I admired you, and loved you more and more. It is my heaven to see you and to hear you speak. Whether you are grave or gay, saucy or tender, it is all one charm, one witchcraft. I want you for my wife, and my child, and my friend. Mary, my love, my darling, how could I marry any woman but you? and you, could you marry any man but me, to break the heart that ... — A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade Read full book for free!
... are scattered abroad after the flesh has been eaten, and the head alone preserved. The brains belong to the chief, or injured party, who usually preserves them in a bottle, for purposes of witchcraft, &c. They do not eat the bowels, but like the heart; and many drink the blood from bamboos. The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are the delicacies of epicures. Horrid and diabolical as these practices may appear, it ... — John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik Read full book for free!
... the couch of Hastings; his acuteness perceived that whatever Edward's superstition, and he was a devout believer in witchcraft, some more worldly motive actuated him in his resentment to poor Sibyll. But as we need scarcely say that neither from the abstracted Warner nor his innocent daughter had Hastings learned the true cause, he wearied himself with vain conjectures, and knew not that Edward involuntarily did homage ... — The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton Read full book for free!
... avarice? If Shakespeare intended to give visible substance to his numerous ghosts, he merely conformed himself to the state of knowledge in his day, when Demonology was sanctioned by royal authority, and when the calendars at the assizes were filled with victims of superstition, under charges of witchcraft! It is, however, time that we banish such credulity from the minds even of the lowest vulgar, as disgraceful to religion, education, morals, ... — A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips Read full book for free!
... of a whole world, or rather of several intermingled worlds, set apart in this sleepy hollow in the hills, of beast lore and wood lore and farm craft, at times touching almost the border of witchcraft—passing lightly here, not with the probing eagerness of those who know nothing, but with the averted glance of those who fear to see too much. He told her of those things that slept and those that prowled when the dusk fell, of strange hunting cats, of the yard swine and the ... — The Unbearable Bassington • Saki Read full book for free!
... it can certainly be done very ill. My aim, therefore, has been rather to escape disaster than to achieve any brilliant success. The charm of State Trials lies largely in matters of detail:—that Hale allowed two old women to be executed for witchcraft; that Lord Russell was obviously a traitor; that an eminent judge did not murder a woman in the early part of his career; and that a sea-captain did murder his brother in order to inherit his wealth, are in themselves facts of ... — State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various Read full book for free!
... I have told you frequently that there is no such word as 's'pose.' I don't suppose anything about it. It's enough to make one believe in witchcraft. Miss Sybil Lamotte held her head above us; above plenty more, who were the peers of Mr. John Burrill. Last year, as everybody knows, she refused Robert Crofton, who is handsome, rich, and upright in character. This Spring, they say, she jilted ... — The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch Read full book for free!
... the age of nine or ten, was Olympe Mancini, who, in spite of her childish lack of beauty, was destined to enslave the handsomest King in Europe; and, after a life of discreditable intrigues, in which she incurred the stigma of witchcraft and murder, to end her career in obscurity, shunned by all who had known her in ... — Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall Read full book for free!
... subterranean passage which is said to exist all the way between Cockhoolet Castle and Edinburgh—the private telegraph of those days, when wires in the air or under the sea by which to send messages would have cost the inventors their lives as guilty of witchcraft. While shaking hands with this old woman and speaking to her, you lost sight of her and the present time and felt the air of the sixteenth century blow in your face. Mary came up before you in moving habit as she lived—the young Mary who caught all hearts, not heartless ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various Read full book for free!
... incident about this Doctor Mather, as follows: "How exceedingly strange that such a work as this should have been written by the man who, in 1692, at Salem, when nineteen people were hanged and one was pressed to death for witchcraft, appeared among the crowd, openly exulting in the spectacle! Probably his zeal against the witches was as much the offspring of his benevolence as his 'Essays to do Good.' Concede his theory of witches, and it had been cruelty to man not to ... — From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer Read full book for free!
... waxed and waned, the love for little Zoe grew and strengthened in the organist's heart. It seemed a kind of possession, as if a spell had been cast on him; in old times it might have been set down to witchcraft; and, indeed, it seemed something of the sort to himself, as if a power he could not resist compelled him to seek out the child—to think of it, to dream of it, to have it so constantly in his mind and thoughts, that from there it found its way into his heart. To us, ... — Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker Read full book for free!
... about enjoying his own flesh, and the pleasures which he has in common with the brutes, then there is no mistake about the sort of life which he will lead—'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.' An ugly list, my friends; and God have mercy on the man who gives way to them. For disgraceful ... — Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley Read full book for free!
... "Holy Saint Patrick, 'tis witchcraft!" she cried under her breath. "How in the name of devils—or saints—did he ever get this taken, developed, printed, and framed—between the middle of last night and the ... — Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer Read full book for free!
...WITCHCRAFT, Illustrated by Copies of the Plays on the Lancashire Witches, by Heywood and Shadwell, viz., the "Late Lancashire Witches," and the "Lancashire Witches and Tegue O'Divelly, the Irish Priest." ... — Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various Read full book for free!
... Louhi joyfully took the luck-bringing Sampo and hid it in the hills of Lapland. She bound it with nine great locks, and by her witchcraft made three roots grow all around it, two deep beneath the mountains and one beneath ... — Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind Read full book for free!
... old man, who was called by every body Creep-and-Crawl; for that was his name. He would always make the best out of everything, and when he could not make anything out of it he resorted to witchcraft. ... — A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen Read full book for free!
... slave trade seemed to be philanthropic and humane. He had seen at the grand custom in Dahomey 2,500 men killed, and a pool made of their blood into which the king's wives threw themselves naked and wallowed. "One day fifteen were to be tortured to death for witchcraft. I bought them all for an old dress-coat," said the captain. "I didn't want them, for my cargo was made up; it was only to save the ... — Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland Read full book for free!
... convicted of certain crimes were also subject to the same form of execution adulterating and uttering base coins (Alan Napier, cutler in Glasgow, was strangled and burned at the stake in December 1602) sorcery, witchcraft, incantation, poisoning (Bailie Paterson suffered a like fate in December 1607). For bestiality John Jack was strangled on the Castle Hill (September 1605), and the innocent animal participator in his crime burned ... — She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure Read full book for free!
... In those days witchcraft was implicitly believed in, so, when they saw the old creature hobble towards them, they experienced feelings of alarm that had never yet affected their manly bosoms in danger or in war. Their faces ... — The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... give a strict account of himself; and, if so unfortunate as to lose a chief, or other great personage, is sure to pay the penalty by parting with his own life. The duties of the "Medicine Man" among the Indians are so mixed up with witchcraft and jugglery, so filled with the pretence of savage quackery, so completely rude and unfounded as to principle, that it is impossible to define the practice for any useful end. About five years since, a young gentleman of scientific habits, who was attached to an exploring ... — The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters Read full book for free!
... disease, made moan to him, and he cured him. Thinks that by reason he is the youngest of seven sons, he performs that cure with better success than others, except the King. Has no skill in sorcery, witchcraft, or enchantment, nor ever used ... — Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence Read full book for free!
... two hundred years. She was a Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since the year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock who was foremost in the time of the Salem witchcraft craze. And this little old house which she left to my ... — Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various Read full book for free!
... tried again—the cupola again broke down; he tried the third time—-the cupola fell to pieces a third time. Good Eremey Lukitch grew thoughtful; there was something uncanny about it, he reflected... some accursed witchcraft must have a hand in it... and at once he gave orders to flog all the old women in the village. They flogged the old women; but they didn't get the cupola on, for all that. He began reconstructing the peasants' huts ... — A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev Read full book for free!
... of the house and her daughter had similar bags attached to their necks, containing charms, which, they said, prevented the witches having power to harm them. The belief in witchcraft is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of the Alemtejo, and I believe of other provinces of Portugal. This is one of the relies of the monkish system, the aim of which, in all countries where it has existed, seems to ... — The Bible in Spain • George Borrow Read full book for free!
... Miss Galindo! I can't follow you. Besides, I do believe dissent to be an invention of the Devil's. Why can't they believe as we do? It's very wrong. Besides, its schism and heresy, and, you know, the Bible says that's as bad as witchcraft." ... — My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell Read full book for free!
... of purpose. Matthew Maule, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defense of what he considered his right. The dispute remained for years undecided, and came to a close only with the death of old Matthew Maule, who was executed for the crime of witchcraft. ... — The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds. Read full book for free!
... the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the Sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land: another age went mad for fear of the Devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the Philosopher's Stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence in very many countries of Europe to destroy an enemy by slow poison. ... — Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay Read full book for free!
... that he once had the same set of ideas, but has forgotten half of them, and those that he possesses have not got that hold on him that the corresponding or super-imposed Christian ideas have over the true Negro; although he is quite as keen on the subject of witchcraft, and his witchcraft differs far less from the witchcraft of the Negro than his ... — Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley Read full book for free!
... fellow men when the inexorable dangers of our frontier demand that we work together. To practice it, one must devote time and mental effort to untried things when our thin margin of safety makes concentrated and combined effort necessary for survival. That is why witchcraft... — Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay Read full book for free!
... ignored the devil, and he plays a part in human affairs which, as Carlyle pointed out in later days, cannot be permanently overlooked. The old horned and hoofed devil, indeed, for whom Defoe had still a weakness, shown in his History of the Devil, was becoming a little incredible; witchcraft was dying out, though Wesley still felt bound to profess some belief in it; and the old Calvinistic dogmatism, though it could produce a certain amount of controversy among the Methodists, had been made obsolete by the growth of rationalism. Still the new public ... — English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen Read full book for free!
... precious piece of jewelry; it was made of pure gold, minutely chased and threaded with curious workmanship, in form like a melon, and bearing what seemed to be characters of some foreign language: there might be a spell, or even witchcraft, in it, and the sooner it was out of her keeping the better. Nevertheless she took very good care of it, wrapping it in lamb's-wool, and peeping at it many times a day, to be sure that it was safe, until it made ... — Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore Read full book for free!
... be afraid, dear madam. I was not thinking of any witchcraft; but only wishing your children the bright mirror of a clear and settled mind. I think such a mirror would show them that what they take for loyalty and patriotism in their own feelings and conduct, is no ... — The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau Read full book for free!
... The underground channel goes under a corner of your mount. When the snows melt and the waters are strong in mountain and in valley, then rises the water in this channel, deep under the mount, and heaves at the rocks above it and throws down your wall. That is all the witchcraft of it. So long as 'twas your stones and battlements that fell I cared no whit, but when my lady told me that she would have her garden there I could not bear to think of the peril for her and the younkets. I am no witch, my lord, unless it be Satan ... — Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey Read full book for free!
... least two years, from April, 1661, to April, 1663, or later. The noises, and copious phenomena of moving objects apparently untouched, were attributed to the unholy powers of a wandering drummer, deprived by Mr. Mompesson of his drum. A grand jury presented the drummer for trial, on a charge of witchcraft, but the petty jury would not convict, there being a want of evidence to prove threats, malum minatum, by the drummer. In 1662 the Rev. Joseph Glanvil, F.R.S., visited the house, and, in the bedroom of Mr. Mompesson's little girls, the chief sufferers, heard and saw much the same phenomena ... — The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... up the works of the flesh, in many things, as in witchcraft, hatred, variance, strife, emulation, fornication, and many others. But can any imagine, that he there should strike at that flesh which hangeth on our bones, or rather at that malignity and rebellion that is in the mind of man against the Lord, by reason of which ... — The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan Read full book for free!
... on Witchcraft," published in 1831, have long been out of print. Although frequently importuned to prepare a new edition, I was unwilling to issue again what I had discovered to be an insufficient presentation of the subject. In the mean ... — Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham Read full book for free!
... impatience exclaimed, "Away, with Christ, and the word of God; what have we to do with them!" and when we pointed out to Asaad some text of Scripture, which we thought applicable in any case, she would endeavour to close the book, or catch it from him, as if it taught paganism, or witchcraft. During her stay we dined, and as Asaad took the meat upon his plate, and ate it without a scruple, in this season of Lent, it was remarked with what a gaze of wonder she regarded him. She seemed to say in her heart, "All is over—my ... — Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox Read full book for free!
... that goes to the making of 'The Arabian Nights'!" said Narkom, waxing excited as his thoughts were thus shoved back to the amazing affair he had in hand. "All your 'Red Crawls' and your 'Sacred Sons' and your 'Nine-fingered Skeletons' are fools to it for wonder and mystery. Talk about witchcraft! Talk about wizards and giants and enchanters and the things that witches did in the days of Macbeth! God bless my soul, they're nothing to it. Those were the days of magic, anyhow, so you can take it or leave it, as you like; ... — Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew Read full book for free!
... bed, and dragged myself to the window, expecting to see her dead and shattered at the bottom. There she stood, cool as crystal, shaking the leaves from her dress. She looked up and saw me, and if ever I saw an elfish look—do you believe in witchcraft, Margaret? my nurse did; she told me some strange tales when I was ... — Fernley House • Laura E. Richards Read full book for free!
... Narbonne had been, a pagan possession. William, going with his brothers to succour their mother, captures Baucent, a horse sent by the princess to Thibaut, and falls in love with her, his love being returned. She is forced to marry Thibaut, but preserves herself by witchcraft as a wife only in name. Orange does not fall into the hand of the Christians, though they succeed in relieving Narbonne. William meanwhile has returned to Court, and has been solemnly dubbed knight, his enfances then ... — The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury Read full book for free!
... catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet here, so little removed from the arteries of the latest civilization, was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like witchcraft seemed to hold a very ... — The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki Read full book for free!
... had a wicked, graceless boy living with them, who might be able to do the tricks by his great subtlety and cunning. Sir Thomas said it might be the boy; but that Mr. Josselin, who had travelled much hereabout, had told him that the Indians did practise witchcraft, and that, now they were beaten in war, he feared they would betake themselves to it, and so do by their devilish wisdom what they could not do by force; and verily this did look much like the beginning of their enchantments. "That the Devil helpeth ... — The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier Read full book for free!
... women are seen sitting on opposite sides of a cross road facing each other, it is to be presumed that they are up to witchcraft and contemplate mischief. What in that case must you do? Go by another road, if there is one, and if not, with a companion, should such turn up, passing the crones arm-in-arm with him; but should there be no other road and no other man, then walk straight on repeating the counter-charm, ... — Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various Read full book for free!
... vineyards, was attributed vaguely to him, he could but wonder whether it had been indeed thus, and the shadow of a fancied crime abode with him. People turned against their favourite, whose former charms must now be counted only as the fascinations of witchcraft. It was as if the wine poured out for them had soured in the cup. The golden age had indeed come back for a while:—golden was it, or gilded only, after all? and they were too sick, or at least too serious, to carry through their parts in it. The monk Hermes was whimsically reminded of that after-thought ... — Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater Read full book for free!
... animal was sitting. He bit at the spot struck, as a dog does at a stick or stone thrown at him; then leaping away, broke through the opening circle and escaped unhurt. The men were afraid to attack him, perhaps on account of their belief in witchcraft. When the circle was reformed, we saw two other lions in it; but we were afraid to fire lest we should strike the men, and they allowed the beasts to ... — Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester Read full book for free!
... to the circumstances. Causing cattle to abort: heavy fine. Arson: fine. False witness: heavy fine. Maiming: fine. Adultery: fine, sometimes death. Rape: fine, sometimes death. Using love philters: death or fine, according to circumstances. Poisoning, and practices with an evil intent (termed "witchcraft"): death and confiscation. Murder: death or fine, according to circumstances.... Treason, as contriving the death of a chief, conveying information to the enemy: death and confiscation. Desertion from the ... — Sex and Society • William I. Thomas Read full book for free!
... appearance caused by the constant rubbing against it of the head of a person whilst seated on the rock. This and other circumstances led us to conjecture that the cave was frequented by some wise man or native doctor who was resorted to by the inhabitants in cases of disease or witchcraft. We saw many footmarks about, and found other signs of the close presence of the natives, but ... — Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey Read full book for free!
... to be one man Of wonderful endowments:—birth and fortune, Youth, strength, and beauty, almost superhuman, And courage as unrivalled, were proclaimed His by the public rumour; and his sway, Not only over his associates, but His judges, was attributed to witchcraft, Such was his influence:—I have no great faith 250 In any magic save that of the mine— I therefore deemed him wealthy.—But my soul Was roused with various feelings to seek out This prodigy, if only ... — The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron Read full book for free!
... kill you as Achon killed Matas; but with a fair cut, and not from behind, it being my custom to present my heart and not my back to the point of the sword.—I have spoken my mind, my lords. And so use witchcraft if you like. Consult the fortune-tellers. Grease your skins with ointments and drugs to make them invulnerable; hang round your necks charms of the devil or the Virgin. I will fight you blest or curst, and I will not have you searched to see if you are wearing any wizard's ... — The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo Read full book for free!
... superstitions. The belief in witchcraft had long ago passed away with the smoke of the fagots from old and New England, but it survived far into this century in Kentucky and the lower halves of Indiana and Illinois—touched with a peculiar tinge of African magic. The pioneers believed in it for good and evil. Their veterinary practice ... — Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay Read full book for free!
... for every case of real malady many were imputed or charged upon poor creatures, who were driven to madness by groundless charges of witchcraft and sorcery, and being loups-garous in secret. Many innocent people were in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries burnt at the stake ... — The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian Read full book for free!
... darksome depths of a thick forest lived Kalyb the fell enchantress. Terrible were her deeds, and few there were who had the hardihood to sound the brazen trumpet which hung over the iron gate that barred the way to the Abode of Witchcraft. Terrible were the deeds of Kalyb; but above all things she delighted in carrying off innocent new-born babes, and putting them ... — English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel Read full book for free!
... speaking, either add a fourth, or omit the third. In a capital trial, in which I had pleaded for Titinia, the daughter of Cotta, when he attempted to reply to me in defence of Serv. Naevius, he suddenly forgot every thing he had intended to say, and attributed it to the pretended witchcraft, and magic artifices of Titinia. These were undoubted proofs of the weakness of his memory. But, what is still more inexcusable, he sometimes forgot, even in his written treatises, what he had mentioned but a little before. Thus, in a book ... — Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero Read full book for free!
... regard magic, magicians, witchcraft, and charms as fables and illusions, the effects of imagination in weak minds, who, foolishly persuaded of the excessive power possessed by the devil, attribute to him a thousand things which are purely natural, but the physical reasons for which are unknown to them, or which are the effects ... — The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet Read full book for free!
... magician breathed, the earth he touched, the wood that was to burn him. During this ceremony, the judge-Advocate hastily read the decree, dated the 18th of August, 1639, declaring Urbain Grandier duly attainted and convicted of the crime of sorcery, witchcraft, and possession, in the persons of sundry Ursuline nuns of Loudun, and others, ... — Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet Read full book for free!
... beings. She feels her heart beating faster in her bosom, thanks to this affection, and from that minute a transformation takes place within her. Landry, who has been observing her, is of opinion that she must be something of a witch. Landry is very simple-minded. There is no witchcraft here except that of love, and it was not difficult for that to work the metamorphosis. It has worked many ... — George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic Read full book for free!
... are owing to bad observation, to the post hoc, ergo propter hoc; and bad observers are almost all superstitious. Farmers used to attribute disease among cattle to witchcraft; weddings have been attributed to seeing one magpie, deaths to seeing three; and I have heard the most highly educated now-a-days draw consequences for the ... — Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale Read full book for free!
... elfin vapors swirled and swayed While the wild pipes of witchcraft played Such clutching music 'twould impel A prophet's self to dance to hell— So ... — Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis Read full book for free!
... the generalizations were deduced. A number of other very important cases which I included in my plan of proofs and illustrations I have been obliged to leave out for lack of space. Such are: Demonism, Primitive Religion, and Witchcraft; The Status of Women; War; Evolution and the Mores; Usury; Gambling; Societal Organization and Classes; Mortuary Usages; Oaths; Taboos; Ethics; AEsthetics; and Democracy. The first four of these are written. I may be able to publish them soon, separately. My next task ... — Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner Read full book for free!
... as you love life and happiness, do not say aught against Mr. Parris or witchcraft. We stand on the brink of something terrible, and no one knows ... — The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick Read full book for free!
... seemed to muse. "Of course, if you were only practiced in witchcraft you could make a wax image of him and then stick pins in it until ... — The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston Read full book for free!
... called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly, very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet, and the other a fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon her for the sin of witchcraft. And she was imprisoned for a week in the steeple of the parish church, and sparingly supplied with food, and not permitted to sleep, until she herself became as much persuaded of her being a witch as her accusers; and in this lucid and happy state of mind was brought forth to make a clean ... — Waverley • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... lifted, indicating the southern route. "Here we do not come again; there is too much witchcraft in this place." ... — The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton Read full book for free!
... more against Engleton and the passengers," replied the guard. "He played his hand, if you come to look at it; and I wish he had shot worse, or me better. And yet I'll go to my grave but what I covered him," he cried. "It looks like witchcraft. I'll go to my grave but what he was drove full of slugs ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... party were rescued except Rebecca, who was carried off by Bois-Guilbert and accused of witchcraft. You will have to read the novel, Ivanhoe, to learn of the further adventures of her, Rowena, the Black ... — The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various Read full book for free!
... at Williams and Mary College before the Royal Governor, in 1702, and, in 1736, the students were presenting Addison's "Cato." In 1714, in Massachusetts, Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, famed for his witchcraft injunctions, protested against acting in Boston, and warned the people in this fashion: "Let not Christian Boston goe beyond Heathen Rome in the practice of ... — Representative Plays by American Dramatists - 1765-1819 • Various Read full book for free!
... Fetishism, Ancestor-worship, Hero-worship, and Demonology of primitive savages, are all, I believe, different manners of expression of their belief in ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic interpretation of out-of-the-way events, which is its concomitant. Witchcraft and sorcery are the practical expressions of these beliefs; and they stand in the same relation to religious worship as the simple anthropomorphism of children, or ... — Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley Read full book for free!
... which the sultan offered him. He heard that the sultan entertained the fear that he might poison or kill him by a charm, and that he had repeatedly consulted his learned men, or councillors, how he should protect himself against his witchcraft. ... — Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston Read full book for free!
... to Casembe for a guide to Luapula, he replied that he had not seen me nor given me any food; I must come to-morrow: but next day he was occupied in killing a man for witchcraft and could not receive us, but said that he would on the 12th. He sent 15 fish (perch) from Mofwe, and a large basket of dried cassava. I have taken lunars several times, measuring both sides of the moon about 190 times, but a silly map-maker may alter the whole ... — The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone Read full book for free!
... Professor Maitland talks of building walls round her, he emphasises the advantage that society gives against witchcraft. Of four people whose lives have been destroyed or grievously injured by hypnotism, whose circumstances are known to the writer, three were childless married men (two were unhappily married), and the fourth case was a bachelor's, a poor ... — Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris Read full book for free!
... postman should have a coat-of-arms capable of expressing the strange honour and responsibility of the man who carries men's souls in a bag; the chemist should have a coat-of-arms symbolizing something of the mysteries of the house of healing, the cavern of a merciful witchcraft. ... — The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... mean all this? Some ugly witchcraft must be here! —Once more the Ass, with motion dull, Upon the pivot of his skull Turned round his long ... — The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth Read full book for free!
... sect is the history of opposition to knowledge, unless that knowledge come through it. This study, therefore, the offspring of "pagans and heathens," was not even given a trial. It was denounced as sorcery and witchcraft; the devil was conjured up as the father of all such students, and the result was that through this bitter persecution, the study was outlawed, and fell into the hands of vagrants, tramps, and gipsies. In spite of this persecution it is interesting and significant to notice that almost ... — Palmistry for All • Cheiro Read full book for free!
... The necromancy, divination, and witchcraft, forbidden in the Old Testament and practised by the heathen of those times, were all of a similar character. A necromancer was one who had, or pretended to have communication with the dead,—who sought "for the living to the dead,"(9) ... — A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss Read full book for free!
... his father at the trade of a cooper. Joseph, Jr., grew up with the reputation of being an idle and ignorant youth, given to chicken-thieving, and, like his father, extremely superstitious. Both father and sons believed in witchcraft, and they frequently "divined" the presence of water by a forked stick or hazel rod. Orlando Sanders of Palmyra, a well-preserved gentleman of over eighty, tells us that the Smith family worked for his father and for himself. He gives them the credit ... — Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various Read full book for free!
... those days of witchcraft and apparitions of all kinds, and even in the present, among the ignorant and uneducated of the lower classes, any female seen at night in a lonely place, and supposed to be a spirit, was termed a white woman, no matter what the color of her dress ... — The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton Read full book for free!
... dear Mrs. Jameson, in the land of romance, the birthplace of wild traditions, the stronghold of chivalrous legends, the spell-land of witchcraft, the especial haunt and home of goblin, specter, sprite, and gnome; all the beautiful and fanciful creations of the poetical imagination of the Middle Ages. You are, I suppose, in Germany; intellectually ... — Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble Read full book for free!
... his second wife, Joan of Navarre, was imprisoned here. It was a favourite residence of the Court in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here the wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was tried for witchcraft. Dutch prisoners were confined here in 1666 and contrived to set fire to some of the buildings. It is the home of the Wykeham Martin family, and is one of the most picturesque castles in ... — Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield Read full book for free!
... are too apt to believe that things like this are not to be found here, because they are not to be found in their own country. Major Wardlow, when in charge of the Seoni district, denied the existence of witchcraft for a long time, but he ... — Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman Read full book for free!
... was witchcraft or mere folly," said the pasha, who was much more enlightened than most of his audience. "It seems to me that this giaour is very probably the dupe of others. But, in any case, he must not go unpunished. ... — Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng Read full book for free!
... absence of parents, and the forcible seizure and re-vaccination of children left to answer the door, can be prevented simply by abolishing the half-crown and all similar follies, paying, not for this or that ceremony of witchcraft, but for immunity from disease, and paying, too, in a rational way. The officer with a fixed salary saves himself trouble by doing his business with the least possible interference with the private citizen. The man ... — The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw Read full book for free!
... agreed not to molest them, and rested at the island, an unwelcome guest, through all the long winter. Early in the spring he sailed eastward to the Gulf of Riga and spread fear and terror along the coast of Finland. And the old saga tells how the Finlanders "conjured up in the night, by their witchcraft, a dreadful storm and bad weather; but the king ordered all the anchors to be weighed and sail hoisted, and beat off all night to the outside of the land. So the king's luck prevailed ... — Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks Read full book for free!
... later Neoplatonism, the theurgic and theosophic apparatus of Iamblichus and his friends. I have said nothing yet about the extraordinary development of magic in all its branches, astrology, necromancy, table-rapping, and other kinds of divination, charms and amulets and witchcraft, which brought ridicule upon the last struggles of paganism. These aberrations of Nature-Mysticism will be dealt with in their later developments in my seventh Lecture. St. Augustine, after mentioning ... — Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge Read full book for free!
... buds, and all the different kinds of wood put forth fruit, each tree bearing its own kind. The furnace was transformed into a royal pleasance, and the angels sat therein with Abraham. When the king saw the miracle, he said: "Great witchcraft! Thou makest it known that fire hath no power over thee, and at the same time thou showest thyself unto the people sitting in a pleasure garden." But the princes of Nimrod interposed all with one voice, "Nay, our lord, this is not witchcraft, it is the power of the great ... — The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg Read full book for free!
... designed the unrestrained liberty of belief, not in a political point of view merely, but in a moral. His argument was not unlike more modern ones,(413) which show that civilization and improvement have been caused by free-thinking; and he adduces the growing disbelief in the reality of witchcraft, in proof of the way in which the rejection of dogma had ameliorated political science, which until recently had visited the supposed crime with the punishment of death.(414) After thus showing the duty of free-thinking,(415) he argued ... — History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar Read full book for free!
... who increases flesh, increases worms; he who increases riches, increases care; he who increases wives, increases witchcraft; he who increases female servants, increases lewdness; he who increases men servants, increases robbery; but he who increases his knowledge of the law, increases life; he who increases his study in college, increases wisdom; he who increases ... — Hebrew Literature Read full book for free!
... was, and overlooked, From high, the sullen water far beneath, On which a dull red image of the moon 705 Lay bedded, changing oftentimes its form Like an uneasy snake. From hour to hour We sate and sate, wondering, as if the night Had been ensnared by witchcraft. On the rock At last we stretched our weary limbs for sleep, 710 But could not sleep, tormented by the stings Of insects, which, with noise like that of noon, Filled all the woods; the cry of unknown birds; The mountains more by blackness visible And their ... — The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth Read full book for free!
... were twice the Sum, Sir Francis: Therefore be brief, call in the Lady, and take your Post—if she's a Woman, and, not seduc'd by Witchcraft to this old Rogue, I'll make his Heart ake; for if she has but one Grain of Inclination about her, I'll vary a Thousand ... — The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre Read full book for free!
... paper; and by an act empowering his majesty to borrow six hundred thousand pounds of the sinking fund. In this session the parliament repealed the old statutes of England and Scotland against conjuration, witchcraft, and dealing with evil spirit's. The commons likewise prepared a bill to restrain the disposition of lands in mortmain, whereby they became unalienable. Against this measure petitions were presented by the two universities, the colleges of Eton, Winchester, ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett Read full book for free!
... sting, May be by man employ'd on one, whose trust He wins, or on another who withholds Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, Point of the universe, ... — The Divine Comedy • Dante Read full book for free!
... well nigh all who came within her radius. Never any member of her sex quite like this one. Had she been born in the Middle Ages, superstition would have had it that Venus herself was revisiting the haunts of men in fresh guise. But she would then probably have perished at the stake, accused of witchcraft by her political opponents. As it was, even in the year 1848 a sovereign demanded that a professional exorcist should "drive the devil out ... — The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham Read full book for free!
... low boom rolls suddenly across the court, the rich tone of some temple bell telling the twelfth hour. Instantly the witchcraft ends, like the wonder of some dream broken by a sound; the chanting ceases; the round dissolves in an outburst of happy laughter, and chatting, and softly-vowelled callings of flower-names which are names of girls, and farewell cries of 'Sayonara!' as dancers and spectators alike betake ... — Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn Read full book for free!
... be purged by fire. Therefore, when any ambassadours, princes, or other personages whatsoeuer come vnto them, they and their giftes must passe betweene two fires to be purified, lest peraduenture they haue practised some witchcraft, or haue brought some poyson or other ... — The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt Read full book for free!
... very much in order in mediaeval times in England. In the eleventh century there lived a woman who had emigrated from the Hebrides, and who had the reputation for witchcraft, chiefly based upon the unusually exquisite needlework on her bed curtains! The name of this reputed sorceress was Thergunna. Bequests in important wills indicate the sumptuous styles which were usual among people of position. The Fair Maid of Kent left to her son her "new bed curtains ... — Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison Read full book for free!
... tribal institutions. The rum, the guns, the utensils and the gewgaws were irresistible temptations. Every chief and every tribesman acquired a potential interest in slave getting and slave selling. Charges of witchcraft, adultery, theft and other crimes were trumped up that the number of convicts for sale might be swelled; debtors were pressed that they might be adjudged insolvent and their persons delivered to the ... — American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips Read full book for free!
... same way an endless number of other similar ones have originated in the childish imaginations of the poor Indian and half-breed inhabitants of different parts of the country. It is to be remarked, however, that the Indian men all become sceptics after a little intercourse with the whites. The witchcraft of poor Cecilia was of a very weak quality. It consisted of throwing pinches of powdered bark of a certain tree, and other substances, into the fire while muttering a spell—a prayer repeated backwards—and ... — The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates Read full book for free!
... transformation of Aunt Jen, the hard crabapple of our family, after the entrance of the Maitland children into the household of Heathknowes. Not that my aunt had much faith in Irma. She had an art, which my aunt counted uncanny, indeed savouring of the sin of witchcraft. It mattered not at all what Irma was given to wear—an old tartan of my grandmother's Highland Mary days when she was a shepherdess by the banks of Cluden, a severe gown designed on strictly architectural principles by the unabashed shears ... — The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett Read full book for free!
... man of hard common sense the Cap'n wanted to pounce on the paper, tear it up, announce his practical ideas on the witchcraft question, and then kick Mr. Gammon and his gander into the middle of the street. But as town officer he gazed at the end of that monitory finger and ... — The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day Read full book for free!
... to convince you and quite certainly rid you of the idea of witchcraft, you can stay here, if you please, ... — Stories by Foreign Authors • Various Read full book for free!
... may bear, in some instances, unjustly upon her. She may be deprived of natural rights. No one can deny that she did thus suffer, and was grievously oppressed, by the laws against Witchcraft, in the early history of New England. Nor is it impossible that taxation may wrong her; that divorces may separate her, without right, from her partner; that fines, imprisonment, and even capital punishment, may ... — The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey Read full book for free!
... him, and took him to the said house of the king, who asked him anew many questions concerning the Spaniards, which he does not remember, except that they threatened him that, if he did not tell the truth, they would kill him, and whether the said letter was witchcraft. Upon this witness asserting that he had told the truth, they took him to the prison and thrust both his feet in the stocks, put a chain about his neck, bound his hands, and set a Moro named Tumanpate to guard him. While in this condition, a Moro named Haguandatan entered the ... — The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson Read full book for free!
... its lessons through the teachings of experience—that strictest of school-masters. Now, you see, I have my lecturing-cap on, and am almost equal to you or Dr. Lardner in my way. But it takes you to define fascination! I suppose Mrs. Heavyside, however, could help you there—for nothing short of witchcraft could account to me for her elopement with that dreary man! To leave her sweet children, too, as if all the men on earth could be worth to a true mother her teething baby's little ... — Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield Read full book for free!
... love with the gypsy. He loved her goat almost as dearly. It was a charming animal, gentle, intelligent, clever; a learned goat. Nothing was more common in the Middle Ages than these learned animals, which amazed people greatly, and often led their instructors to the stake. But the witchcraft of the goat with the golden hoofs was a very innocent species of magic. Gringoire explained them to the archdeacon, whom these details seemed to interest deeply. In the majority of cases, it was sufficient to present the tambourine to the goat in such or such a manner, in order to obtain from ... — Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo Read full book for free!
... willing to make use of these mysterious powers in their beneficent and curative forms, there exist all over Hindostan abundant proofs of the dread of 'zadoo,' or witchcraft, among all classes, Moslems as well as Hindoos, when it appears to threaten them with evil. If a cultivator has transplanted his tobacco or other valuable plant, he collects old cracked earthen cooking-pots, and places a spot of limestone ... — Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various Read full book for free!
... or Indoor Production) Chorus of Spirits of the Old Manse Prologue by the Muse of Hawthorne In Witchcraft Days (First Episode) Dance Interlude ... — Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay Read full book for free!
... emancipation of the world, should have been the first to apply a remedy for this monstrous madness. Englishmen and their descendants were drowning and hanging witches in New England, long after John Wier had rebuked and denounced the belief in witchcraft. ... — The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley Read full book for free!
... according to the tenets of that peculiar form of magic cultivated by Hilda, the comprehension became obscured by whatever partook of human sympathy. It was a magic wholly distinct from the malignant witchcraft more popularly known to us, and which was equally common to the ... — Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton Read full book for free!
... more light appeared, it vanished. Eremites and anchorites have frequently such absurd visions, revelations by reason of much fasting, and bad diet, many are deceived by legerdemain, as Scot hath well showed in his book of the discovery of witchcraft, and Cardan, subtil. 18. suffites, perfumes, suffumigations, mixed candles, perspective glasses, and such natural causes, make men look as if they were dead, or with horse-heads, bull's-horns, and such like brutish shapes, the room full of snakes, adders, dark, light, green, red, of all colours, ... — The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior Read full book for free!
... has lately come to this place, and has embraced the religion of Christ, came to Peter Jones, and asked him, what he should do with his implements of witchcraft, whether throw them in the fire, or river, as he did not want anything more to do with them. What a proof of his sincerity! Nothing but Christianity can make them renounce witchcraft, and many of them are afraid of it ... — The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson Read full book for free!
... Sight, and Supernatural Appearances; Magical Practices and Conjuration; Daemonology, Spectres, and Vampires; Popular Superstitions, Popish Credulity, Delusions, Ecstacies, Fanaticisms, and Impostures; Astrology, Divination, Revelations, and Prophecies; Necromancy, Sorcery, and Witchcraft; Infatuation, Diabolical Possession, and Enthusiasm; Proverbs, Old Sayings, and Vulgar Errors; the Household Book of Sir Ed. Coke, Original MS.; Early English Poetry, MS. temp. James I.; Grammatical Treatises printed by W. de Worde; Facetiae; Works on Marriage Ceremonies, ... — Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various Read full book for free!
... "Although vervain, therefore, as the enchanter's plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in their incantations, yet, as Aubrey says, it 'hinders witches from their will,' a circumstance to which Drayton further refers when he speaks of the vervain as ''gainst witchcraft much avayling.'" Now we understand why the children of Shakespeare's time hung vervain and dill with a horseshoe over ... — Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al Read full book for free!
... Robert Calef the Boston merchant's book was burned in the yard of Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather, President of the College and Minister of the Gospel. You remember the old witchcraft revival of '92, and how stout Master Robert Calef, trader of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and judges what a set of fools and worse than fools ... — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) Read full book for free!
... year, and to report his diligence in this matter to the Council before the 15th of August, under pains of rebellion. On the 4th of June following, he appears in a curious position in connection with a prosecution for witchcraft against several women, and an abridgement of the document, as recorded in the Records of the Privy Council, is of sufficient interest to justify a place here. It is the complaint of Katherine Ross, relict of ... — History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie Read full book for free!
... blood out uv his veins an' fillin' 'em full uv water in the place. Why, there ain't a Shawnee or Miami in all these woods thet would he mean enough to take sech an' advantage ez askin' to be helped out by a squaw thet knowed witchcraft. Ez fur thet Paris feller, he wouldn't a-lived ... — The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler Read full book for free!
... is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is 'well authenticated?' and does not such an assertion promote the popular superstition of witchcraft? ... — Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney Read full book for free!
... truth, not by rules of art, but by an instinctive repugnance and extreme detestation which a noble nature has of the power of pleasure, in which they think that there is nothing sound, and her seductive influence is declared by them to be witchcraft, and not pleasure. This is the use which you may make of them. And when you have considered the various grounds of their dislike, you shall hear from me what I deem to be true pleasures. Having thus examined the nature of pleasure from both ... — Philebus • Plato Read full book for free!
... my life; and if I ever was reputed to be a witch, I may thank false witnesses, and the injustice of the law, and a presumptuous and ignorant judge. All the world knows the life of penance I lead, not for any acts of witchcraft, which I have never done, but for other great sins which I have committed as a poor sinner. So get out of the hospital, you rascally sheep-skin thumper, or by all the saints I'll make you glad to quit it at a run." And with that she began to screech at ... — The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Read full book for free!
... like Porto Rico, the Dominican Republic is absolutely free from the practise of those barbarous negro rites, of which dances like these often form part, and which are known in Haiti under the name of "voudou," in Cuba under that of "witchcraft" and in the British West Indies under that of "obeah," and which sometimes lead even to human sacrifices. This is all the more remarkable in Santo Domingo as the adjoining Republic of Haiti has been the ... — Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich Read full book for free!
... revenges itself on the infidel. There are no men more liable to groundless fears, than those who reject the object of legitimate awe. The man who will not believe in a deity, has often believed in witchcraft; and those who will not acknowledge a Providence, have often trembled before a conjurer. At this period, Frederick had grown peculiarly anxious and irascible—a temper for which the ambassador accounts by a sudden ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various Read full book for free!
... no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee! Quiet consummation have; And renowned ... — The Hundred Best English Poems • Various Read full book for free!
... answers were very full and satisfactory; then they called for Arnold again, and questioned him as to the same points, and he answered with the same exactness, "so that some began to think there was witchcraft in the case." ... — Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... once more saw this he said to himself, 'What a bad business this is! Can they all have been so heavy-hearted that they have all three hanged themselves? No, I can't believe that it is anything but witchcraft! But I will know the truth,' he said; 'if the two others are still hanging there it is true but if they are not it's ... — The Red Fairy Book • Various Read full book for free!
... yield scarcely two days alike. I enquired into the cause, of him, but his answers were, he could not tell; I also enquired of other distillers, and could procure no more satisfactory answer—some attributed it to the water, others to witchcraft, &c. &c. ... — The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry Read full book for free!
... to the cell each happened to be in, and he wrote a crime opposite each number. The first was highway robbery, the next forgery, and after that followed treason, smuggling, barn-burning, bribery, poaching, usury, piracy, witchcraft, assault and battery, using false weights and measures, burglary, counterfeiting, robbing hen-roosts, conspiracy, and poisoning his grandmother ... — The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton Read full book for free!
... Othello's account of his courtship in his famous speech before the Senate is intended to be exhaustive. He is accused of having used drugs or charms in order to win Desdemona; and therefore his purpose in his defence is merely to show that his witchcraft was the story of his life. It is no part of his business to trouble the Senators with the details of his courtship, and he so condenses his narrative of it that it almost appears as though there was no courtship at all, and as though Desdemona ... — Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley Read full book for free!
... "Oh, there's no witchcraft about it; and, though no one has thrown that letter from above, though there is not the smallest hole in the ceiling, ... — The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc Read full book for free!
... privileges, replied, "with an air of a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that much might be said on both sides." It is likely, however, that De Quincey may have connected it in his mind with the discussion of witchcraft at the beginning of Spectator No. 117, where Addison balances the grounds for belief and unbelief somewhat as ... — The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey Read full book for free!
... then, you fancy 'Christabel' as little as the other, seeing that it is a tale of witchcraft. How would you relish that grand anthem to nature's God, written in the vale ... — Beulah • Augusta J. Evans Read full book for free!
... any injury done to, or any mark made upon, the astral body in the course of its wanderings will be reproduced in the physical body. We find traces of this in some of the evidence given at trials for witchcraft in the middle ages, in which it is not infrequently stated that some wound given to the witch when in the form of a dog or a wolf was found to have appeared in the corresponding part of her human body. The same strange law ... — The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater Read full book for free!
... stretching his hands somewhat forward. "It is on such clear and mellow nights that your shop is most itself. Then they appear most perfect, those moons of green and gold and crimson, which from afar oft guide the pilgrim of pain and sickness to this house of merciful witchcraft." ... — The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... with due rigour; while, on the point to which I refer, and which affects so deeply the dearest interests of whole communities, evidence has been acted upon so vague as to make some people fancy that we have retrograded to the age of witchcraft. Be it recollected that we shall not have the same excuse as some of our continental neighbours had for running into frightful errors—for we have their dear-bought experience laid broadly before us; and to profit duly by it, it only requires a scrutiny by a tribunal, wholly, if you please, non-medical, ... — Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest Read full book for free!
... derived—at least in one case—'femina' from 'fe' faith, and 'minus' less, because women had less faith than men; which represented them as of more violent and unbridled animal passions; which explained learnedly why they were more tempted than men to heresy and witchcraft, and more subject (those especially who had beautiful hair) to the attacks of demons; and, in a word, regarded them as a necessary evil, to be tolerated, despised, repressed, and if ... — Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley Read full book for free!
... Hydriotaphia as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with him that "man is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in search of materials for humiliation and abasement, he will find in the history of witchcraft in this country, from the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, large and abundant materials, whether it affects the species or the individual. In truth, human nature is never seen in worse ... — Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts Read full book for free!
... as the Pennsylvania Dutch. He grew up in his fundamental, religious sect having never known any other environment. He was exposed to the sun, soil, and wind from the early days of his childhood, and along with the elements he also was exposed to the evils of the hexerei. The hexerei, or witchcraft, was something that was never doubted or scoffed at by his people. Then why should he, a good Pennsylvania Dutchman, doubt or scoff at ... — The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson Read full book for free!
... good woman whom I knew, for I hadn't any women belonging to me, nor any place but that to put her in. She stayed there till spring working for her keep, growing brighter, prettier, every day, and fonder of me I thought. If I believed in witchcraft, I shouldn't think myself such a cursed fool as I do now, but I don't believe in it, and to this day I can't understand how I came to do it. To be sure I was a lonely man, without kith or kin, had never had a sweetheart in my life, or been ... — On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott Read full book for free!
... black-whiskered face into a caricature, yelling a Greek monologue in a refrain consisting of five notes repeated over and over, and dancing around in a wide ring with one leg shorter than the other and his arms executing symbols of witchcraft. ... — The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy Read full book for free!
... this reason: "In fact, a fair dame at whose shrine I, the priest of the Nine, offer up the incense of Parnassus; a dame whom the Graces have attired in witchcraft, and whom the Loves have armed with lightning; a fair one, herself the heroine of the song, insists on the amendment, and dispute her commands ... — The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham Read full book for free!
... gleam of wicked light Turns half a low-lying water bright That moans beneath the shivering night With sense of evil sound and sight And whispering witchcraft's bated breath, Her wan face quickened as she said: "This knight that won the sword—his head I crave or hers that brought it. Dead, Let these be one ... — The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne Read full book for free!
... on vellum; Fine copies of Works from the Presses of Caxton, Machlinia, Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Julyan Notary, Verard, etc.; an extensive Collection of Old English Poetry; Romances; Historical and Theological Tracts; early Voyages and Travels; curious Treatises on Witches and Witchcraft; some of the earliest Dictionaries and Vocabularies in the English Language, etc. Likewise several Manuscripts on vellum, most beautifully illuminated, etc.' The number of lots in this sale was sixteen hundred and sixty-five, and the sum realised three thousand three hundred and thirty-three ... — English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher Read full book for free!
... permission," I said, "I will not strike my tents till the third day, and I will see this man. The mercy of the king is godlike, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover, both the bottles, and ... — The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
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