"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no," said the Empress. "You must be content to take your supper and repose in quarters more fitting your rank; and," added Irene, "with no worse quartermaster than one of the Imperial family who hag ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... I should judge, sir. The old hag was rocking to and fro, crooning to herself until one of the two—the live one, I should call him—hurled a curse at her in Spanish and told her to dry up or he'd kill her. All a bluff, for he ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... dealings!" Then she donned a gown of fine white wool and rubbed her forehead, till she made a great mark as of a scar and anointed it with an ointment of her own fashion, so that it shone with prodigious sheen. Now the old hag was lean bodied and hollow eyed, and she bound her legs tightly round with cords[FN412] just above her feet, till she drew near the Moslem camp, when she unwound them, leaving their marks deeply embedded in her ankles. Then she anointed the wheels with dragon's blood ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... high-peaked hat with a pine tassel on top, was a weird figure as she bent over the low fire stirring her kettle and muttering incantations. She read such amazing things in the extended palms that the Truth Seekers' eyes began to pop out of their heads. The grinning, toothless old hag (Nyoda had blackened all her teeth but one), was so realistic that they had to look closely to make sure that it was their beloved friend and not a ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... madden at her charms. For the gay grape can joys celestial move, And what so sweet below as Woman's love? With such high transport every moment flies, 55 I curse Experience that he makes me wise; For at his frown the dear deliriums flew, And the changed scene now wears a gloomy hue. A hideous hag th' Enchantress Pleasure seems, And all her joys appear but feverous dreams. 60 The vain resolve still broken and still made, Disease and loathing and remorse invade; The charm is vanish'd and the bubble's broke,— A slave to pleasure is a slave to smoke!' Such ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are women who, of their own will, give up the freedom of the world to enter a convent after they have tasted life! Oh, I would rather be the poorest, the ugliest peasant hag, toiling for daily bread, than one of these cold cloistered souls, so that the free air of heaven, be it with the winds or the rain, might beat upon me, so that I might live and love as I like, do right as I like; ay, and do wrong if ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... carpenter's journeyman, could guess his innermost thoughts. For he had not spoken to him once—simply the night before last, at the entrainment in Vienna, he had furtively observed his leavetaking from his mother. How had the confounded fellow come to suspect that the wizened, shrunken little old hag whose skin, dried by long living, hung in a thousand loose folds from her cheek-bones, had made such an impression on his captain? The man himself certainly did not know how touching it looked when the tiny mother gazed up at him from below and stroked his broad chest with her ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... he to the frightened black, "the next time you bring me cigars that neither draw nor smoke, I'll make your back smoke for it. Mind that, now;—there's not a single one of them worth a rotten maize stalk. Tell that old coffee-coloured hag of Johnny's, that I'll have no more of her cigars. Ride over to Mr Ducie's and fetch a box. And, d'ye hear? Tell him I want to speak a word with him and the neighbours. Ask him to bring the neighbours with him to-morrow morning. And mind you're home again by two o'clock. Take the mustang ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... laughed and chatted in their rebuked and quiet manner, though one who knew the habits of the people might have detected that everything was not going on in its usual train. Most of the young women seemed to be light-hearted enough; but one old hag was seated apart with a watchful soured aspect, which the hunter at once knew betokened that some duty of an unpleasant character had been assigned her by the chiefs. What that duty was, he had no means of knowing; but he felt satisfied it ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... The old hag showed her toothless gums in a hideous smile, the woman that was left in the dried shell still tickled at the reference to marriage. But her look changed to one of intense pain as Pinkey, trembling ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... to that old hag! All the books she offers you are miserable stuff, fit at best for the pastry-cooks. Oh! you don't know how success is won nowadays. I'll tell you. There is an assurance society between the book, the piece, and the judge. Praise me, and I'll praise you. If you will praise us, we will ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... beard and less discretion, hearing this string of abuse, repaid the old woman in her own coin, saying, "Have you done, you grandmother of witches, you old hag, you child-strangler!" ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... The hag is astride This night for to ride, The devil and she together; Through thick and through thin, Now out and then in, Though ne'er so foul be ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Lyce done that Horace should have prayed the gods to strip her of her charms, and to degrade her from a haughty beauty into a maudlin hag, disgusting and ridiculous? Why cast such very merciless stones at one who, by his own avowal, had erewhile witched his very soul from him? Why rejoice to see this once beautiful creature the scoff of all the heartless young fops of Rome? If she had injured him, what of that? ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... estates and the boorish magnates of the city bourgeoisie—was quite without any cultural direction at all. The chief concern of the American people, even above the bread-and-butter question, was politics. They were incessantly hag-ridden by political difficulties, both internal and external, of an inordinate complexity, and these occupied all the leisure they could steal from the sordid work of everyday. More, their new and troubled political ideas ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... wrinkled, leathery old hag, with her damp, coarse mouth, her skinny hands, and her cunning, ignorant eyes, was her grandmother—Stefanone was her grandfather—her mother had been a peasant, like them, beautified by one of nature's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... they reached the cave, and one of the men entered, to see what should be found there. And he beheld a hag, horrible to look upon, seated on a rock, and before he could speak, she struck him with her club, and changed him into a stone; and in like manner she dealt with the other three. At the ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... tired horse to the stable of the little venta, where, with his usual gallantry, he assisted a hideous old hag to find a place in the stalls. While uttering a gay compliment, he deftly secured for his mount a feed of corn which was much in excess of that usually provided for ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... also the occupants of it. Two frowsy girls and a middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect of animals habituated to harsh usage, and expecting and dreading it now. From another corner stole a withered hag with streaming grey hair and malignant eyes. John Canty ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bonhomme Briggs." There are rough stepping-stones at some of the crossings, and the passage of these, after nightfall, resembles greatly that of a "shaking" bog, where the traveler has to leap from tussock to moss-hag with agile audacity; the consequences of a false step being, in both cases, about the same. I began to think, regretfully of certain rugged continental paves execrated in days gone by; they, at least, had a firm bottom, more ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Koshchei the Deathless, The Stealer of Fair Princesses—his connexion with Punchkin and "the Giant who had no Heart in his Body"—Excursus on Bluebeard's Chamber; 4. The Water King or Subaqueous Demon—Female Embodiments of Evil: 1. The Baba Yaga or Hag, and 2. The Witch, feminine counterparts of ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... in dark disgrace sits down, The butt and laughing-stock of all the town, As one, eat up by Leprosy and Itch, Moonstruck, Posses'd, or hag-rid by a Witch, A Frantick Bard puts men of sense to flight; His slaver they detest, and dread his bite: All shun his touch; except the giddy boys, Close at his heels, who hunt him down with noise, While with his head erect he threats the skies, Spouts ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... the woman; "Zenith, the beautiful, once! Zenith, the hag, the crone, the madwoman, now! Look at me well, Sir Jasper Kingsland—for the ruin is ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... like; in the Forum, or the Circus, at evening, when 'society' was dining, and the poor people and slaves thronged the open places for rest and air, and there he used to listen to the fortune-tellers, and among them, no doubt, was that old hag, Canidia, immortalized in the huge joke of his comic resentment. He goes home to sup on lupins and fritters and leeks,—or says so,—though his stomach abhorred garlic; and his three slaves—the fewest a man could have—wait on ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the folk, getting down the Black Hag (so he confided to Edward). The two gardener lads had been ordered to attend his Honour. So in order to amuse himself, he, the majordomo of Bradwardine, had been amusing himself with dressing Miss Rose's flower beds. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... foul hag, in screaming wild alarms O'er a dead carcase muttering her charms, 410 (And with her frequent and tremendous yell Forcing great Hecate from out of hell) Shoots in the corpse a new fictitious soul; With instant glare the supple eyeballs roll, Again it moves and speaks, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... sleeps in the loft of the other part where the boys sleep;' answered the old woman, and then looking at me with a grin which I thought gave her the appearance of an ugly old hag, she said, 'Why ye ain't afeard on ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... continued stirring the pot boiling on the huge wood fire. Her eyes were bleared with the smoke, and her face was wrinkled and dried, with a few white hairs straggling over her brow, while the long yellow tusks which protruded beyond her thin lips gave her a peculiarly hag-like look. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... said woman desyred that the declarant should imploy her to spick for her to the Queen of Farie, and strik and battle in her behalf with the said Queen (which was her own words).'[130] Among the Salem witches in 1692, 'this Rampant Hag, Martha Carrier, was the person, of whom the Confessions of the Witches, and of her own Children among the rest, agreed, That the Devil had promised her, she should ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... compared with Goya, that their methods and themes are dissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcieres de San Millan) are in the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter—a hideous crew. At once you think of the Caprichos of Goya. The hag with the distaff, whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkey profile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsive creature in spectacles—Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't varied since his days—these ladies and their ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... inquired about her misfortune, and she told him the sad tale of the journey and Henriette's kidnapping.... Their talk was broken in upon by the entry of the hag Mere ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... lantern of the spirit, Which none see by but those who bear it, That makes them in the dark see visions And hag themselves with apparitions, Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt Of their own misery ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... based on a "Bank of Air," "wind-capital," as Cadell, Constable's partner, calls it, and the bubble was just about to burst, though Scott had no apprehension of financial ruin. A horrid power is visible in Scott's second picture of la mauvaise pauvre, the hag who despises and curses the givers of "handfuls of coals and of rice;" his first he drew in the witches of "The Bride of Lammermoor." He has himself indicated his desire to press hard on the vice of gambling, as in "The Fortunes of Nigel." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... amazing intimacy with the hidden things of the underworld had seemed, indeed, to border on the supernatural; she, the Tocsin—the woman whose face he had never seen before! The woman whose face he had never seen before—and who now was that wretched hag that hobbled along the street before him, begging, whining, and importuning the passers-by to purchase of her ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... you mean, and I can lay no claim to such a character. Any hag with golden eyes will always find me as ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... singularly interesting chill. The circumstance and passion of the time, The cast and manner of the place—the spirit Of this confederate environment, Command the rights we come to celebrate Obedient to the Inspired Hag— The seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, Who rules all destinies from Minna street, A dollar a destiny. Here at this grave, Which for my purposes thou, Jack of Spades— (To Grimghast) Corrupter than the thing that reeks ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... and mountains, their meetings taking place "on the mead, on the oak sward, under the lime, under the oak, at the pear tree." Thus the fairy rings which are often to be met with on the Sussex downs are known as hag-tracks,[4] from the belief that "they are caused by hags and witches, who dance there at midnight."[5] Their love for sequestered and romantic localities is widely illustrated on the Continent, instances of which have been collected together by Grimm, who remarks how "the fame of particular ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... I can quickly mend me self, if you'll but say the Word: And if you will prefer your wrinkled Wife before my Youth and Beauty, with all my heart, for I'm resolv'd I'll never lead this Life! To be abus'd by an old Withered Hag! I have no patience when I think of it: A dirty homely Joan! For my part, I admire how thou coud'st love her: She frets, I'll warrant you, because she lies alone: But who that is not Mad, wou'd lie with such a sapless piece of wither'd Flesh as she, when he may lie by such ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... stood the forlorn and wind-swept house where John Manning lay. An unkempt and hideous old crone as black as night opened the door for him. He left in the hall his hat and overcoat and a little square box he had brought in his hand; and then he followed the ebony hag up-stairs to Colonel Manning's room. Here at the door she left him, after giving a sharp knock. A weak voice ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... black paint, and after a few more speeches and ceremonies, I was handed over to the hideous old hag, whose neck was still decorated with the two ears of my companion. To say that I would have preferred the torture would be saying too much, but that I loathed the creature to excess was certain. However, I said nothing, but allowed her ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... screwing up of his whole life. Time had to be found. The hours had to be packed closer to make room for her. He grasped after fresh opportunities to make money with a white-hot assiduity. He worked harder. For he was hag-ridden by his unfaithfulness. He drew up a remorseless programme of his days, and after that Francey might only walk home with him from the hospital. And there was an hour on Sunday evening when he was too ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... found a little inn at the edge of the water, where they partook of omelette and native wine, served in a pretty loggia; after which they sauntered about the place, purchasing a piece of lace of one and another picturesque old hag, and picking up some quaint bits of pottery in a dingy shop under the arcades. Later, having done their duty by the sights, they chartered a big boat, propelled by two strapping oarsmen and a couple of very splendid sails, and voyaged peacefully down a sleepy canal, and ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... is a political defeat. I cannot keep these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest loss I have had since that Dutch painter went—a fellow who would paint a hag of 70 with as much enjoyment as a Venus ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... like to see the vile hag put down. She is in possession of the family plate, that is mine by right, as well as a thousand valuable relics, and great riches besides, all of which the old profligate gifted shamefully away. And it is said, besides all these, that she has ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... extremity to the other, Thomas became as bold as he had at first been humble. The lady warned him he must become her slave if he wished to prosecute his suit. Before their interview terminated, the appearance of the beautiful lady was changed into that of the most hideous hag in existence. A witch from the spital or almshouse would have been a goddess in comparison to the late beautiful huntress. Hideous as she was, Thomas felt that he had placed himself in the power of this hag, and when she bade him ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... wish to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that sulky old gipsy hag." ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the condition of the people. These, as I saw, looked on us sullenly enough, more so than before, I thought, perhaps because we were unguarded. Indeed, turning round I caught sight of a man shaking his fist and of an old hag spitting after us, and wished that we were out of the land of Goshen. But when I reported it to the Prince he only laughed and ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... Had Taken Orders in France The Heart of the Wood An Croaibhin Complain Because He Is a Poet He Cries Out Against Love He Meditates on the Life of a Rich Man Forgaill's Praise of Columcille The Deer's Cry The Hymn of Molling's Guest, the Man Full of Trouble The Hag of Beare The Seven Heavens The Journey of the Sun The Nature of the Stars The Call to Bran The Army of the Sidhe Credhe's Complaint at the Battle of the White Strand A Sleepy Song that Grania Used to Be Singing Over Diarmuid the Time ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... should return to him. Then with her comely figure hidden by a dirty old woman's cloak, and her fair young face defaced by patches and by liniments, so that none might covet her, she addressed the young man at the gate in a cracked and trembling voice; and they were scarcely civil to the "old hag," as they called her. She said that she bore important tidings for Sir Counsellor himself, and must be conducted to him. To him accordingly she was led, without even any hoodwinking, for she had spectacles over her eyes, and made believe ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... week as they won't feed me any longer, I who can still work against any one of them, and—you've got my blanket, you ugly old rascal," and collapsing beneath the weight of her recited woes, the hag burst into ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... turning upon the leering old hag beside him. "Explain! For surely I heard music more beautiful ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... show her that I appreciate her she comes again just after the clock strikes, in form even more winsome than before, and smiles upon me as only a goddess can. Once, in a sullen mood, I looked upon her as if she were a hag. When she returned she was a hag; and not till after I had done full penance did she become ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... "don't you think this white satin frock that the Claude hag is going to make me might be my coming-out frock? It will be ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and reserved as she never used to be, with the sheen of her glossy hair almost vanished, and all of her pretty insouciance gone, he saw no more the gay girl, the wifely comrade, whom he had married. In her place sat the immemorial hag, the married man's bane, the blood-sucker, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... was annoyed by the uproar the birds were making and he was angered by the raven's stroke, but he did not want to enter into a battle with the birds. He was on his way to the house of the Hag of the Wood who was then known as the Hag of the Ashes. Now as this is the first time you have heard of the Hag of the Ashes, I'll have to tell you how the King of the Cats had heard of her and how he knew where her house was ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Memorandum. This Rampant Hag, Martha Carrier, was the person, of whom the Confessions of the Witches, and of her own Children among the rest, agreed, That the Devil had promised her, she should be ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... would say, "avoid me to-day. If I were superstitious, I should even beg for an interest in your prayers. I am in the black fit; the evil spirit of King Saul, the hag of the merchant Abudah, the personal devil of the mediaeval monk, is with me—is in me," tapping on his breast. "The vices of my nature are now uppermost; innocent pleasures woo me in vain; I long for Paris, for my wallowing in the mire. See," he would continue, producing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sea deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land deils, when a's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country, I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewie Moss. I got a glisk o' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as gray's a tombstane. An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered naebody. Nae doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by there wi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would hae lowped upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Out of the way, hag!" the man puffed. "Let me at yon slave. Out!" He struck at Deborah with a short mace but Kenkenes caught his arm ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... have him, the guilty man!" cried Louis XI. abruptly. "If you are robbed again to-night, I shall know to-morrow who did it. Make that old hag you call your sister ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... at the widow's gate. "Come out," he saith, "thou hag, thou quiver-pate: I trow thou hast some friar or priest with thee." "Who clappeth?" said this wife; "ah, what say ye? God save ye, masters: what is your sweet will?" "I have," said he, "of summons here a bill: Take ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... prepared for the scene that met us when we drove into the porte cochere. The place seemed deserted, not a servant was to be seen but one old wrinkled hag, who hobbled up to the door saying something in Dutch that made Madame van Hunker clasp her hands and exclaim: 'All fled! ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the little room a-top of this. Where's that old hag now? She ought to be here to show you your room," and reaching a heavy stick, which stood by his bedside, he knocked impatiently on the bare boarded floor, calling Mrs. Finch! Mrs. Finch! so loudly at the same time, that Valmai seriously feared he ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... adopted five or six orphan-asylum kids, and I suppose the poor thing thinks she's having a good time." Even to the most prejudiced eye Annabel could not have looked beautiful at that moment. The venom that poisoned her spirit, disfigured her face like a scar. Hag-ridden by those unlovely twins, jealousy and hate, she looked for the instant ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... flights—flights on a hippogriff, and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty; therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... a big, bare kitchen, the other door of which was closed. There was no sign of anyone about, and Brocton, still with his sword ready for me, bawled out, "Where are you, you old hag?" ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... honey." The first time I partook of this dainty I had unfortunately seen it in course of preparation, which somewhat marred the relish with which I might otherwise have eaten it. The confectioner was a toothless old hag, who mixed the ingredients in a wooden dish dirtier than anything I ever saw before, and filled with reindeer hairs, which, however, were not conspicuous when well mingled with the half-churned grass and moss. She extracted the oil from the blubber by ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... give their shares or sell them to one Thorbiorn Angle, a man of good house, but violent, unpopular, and unscrupulous. This man, after trying the obvious ways of persuasion, cajolery, and assassination, for getting the island into his hands, at last, with the help of a certain hag, his foster-mother, has recourse to sorcery. By means of her spells (as the story goes) Grettir wounds himself in the leg in the third year of his sojourn at Drangey, and though the wound speedily closes, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... with few attendants, all night towards Nordhausen,—eighty miles off, foot of the Bracken Country, where the Richelieu resources are;—Soubise with few attendants, face set towards the Brocken; himself, it is like, in a somewhat hag-ridden condition. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... green table, columns of tri-colored chips, and five ever-changing cards that came and went and came again before his tired eyes like the changing, weaving colors of the kaleidoscope. Midnight struck, then one o'clock, then two, three, and four. Still his passion rode him like a hag, spurring the jaded body, rousing up the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... any kind even under favorable circumstances is a great wear and tear on the disposition. Commuters who go in and out of town every day are a notoriously hag-ridden lot, and the men who go on the road are not much better. But there is one enormous difference. It is the privilege of the commuter to growl as much as he likes about the discomforts of the road and the stupidity of the men who make up the time tables, ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Thorbeorn, who had heard it all through the wall, whatever he may have thought, he was very indignant, and angry with her too. "Put such mummery out of your head. We are not Christians for nothing, I should hope. A scandalous hag with her bell-wether voice and airs of a great lady! What has she to do with good women, well brought up? A woman's duty is to leave match-making to her parents, and the future to God and His Angels. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... actually found myself in the presence of a woman. Not such an one, either, as might be expected to be found—if indeed one would expect to find a woman at all—amid such surroundings; not an old, withered, vindictive- looking hag, repulsive alike in appearance and manner, but a woman, youthful, handsome, and to all appearance gentle, though her demeanour was somewhat ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... legend says, as grim Sir Ranulph view'd A wretched hag her footsteps drag beneath his lordly wood. His bloodhounds twain he called amain, and straightway gave her chase; Was never seen in forest green, so ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... But now when time has made the imposture plain (Late though he follow'd truth, and limping held her train), What new delusion charms your cheated eyes again? The painted harlot might a while bewitch, But why the hag uncased, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... secretary of the company, followed T. A. Buck, its president, into the big, bright show-room. T. A. Buck's hands were thrust deep into his pockets. His teeth worried a cigar, savagely. Care, that clawing, mouthing hag, perched on his brow, tore ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... earnest Joe; "the like of them to be getting twenty pounds! mightn't he as well have said twenty thousand? and tin pounds on Tim too! More power to you, Jonas Brown; tin pounds for a poor boy's warming his shins, and gagging over an owld hag's bit of turf!" ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... thickening darkness surged, and close at hand Those first fierce cloudy fringes of the storm, The Armada sails, gathered their might; and Spain Crouched close behind them with her screaming fires And steaming shambles, Spain, the hell-hag, crouched, Still grasping with red hand the cross of Christ By its great hilt, pointing it like a dagger, Spear-head of the ultimate darkness, at the throat Of England. Under Philip's feet at last Writhed all the Protestant Netherlands, dim coasts Right over against ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... There's the nose and chin, exactly, of the extraordinary hag you gave your silk pocket-handkerchief to at parting. Now, I never saw such a miserable old woman ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... I flung down a knife with which I had armed myself; for the old hag on bringing in the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the room, banging the door, so that it shook and rattled as though it had listened to the conversation and fully sympathised with the old hag. ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... the captain, "We are on the wrong track. The scream came from the other side. Head them off! Run, men, run! Here, this passage, and then straight ahead! Devil take the old beggar! Shut up, you hag, or ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... college. He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He had a feck o' books wi' him—mair than had ever been seen before in a' that presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had wi' them, for they were a' like to have smoored in the Deil's Hag between this and Kilmackerlie. They were books o' divinity, to be sure, or so they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang in the neuk of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... state of Nevada could not have worked the Paymaster at a profit. For that reason alone he had been fully justified in letting her freeze herself out; and if Virginia had taken his advice—but then, the poor girl had been distracted. She had been worn out and discouraged, hag-ridden by her mother and facing a trip to the city; and she had sold out for what she could get. She was a good girl, a brave girl, and a sweet and lovely one too; and it was foolish to blame her for anything. The thing to do, after all, was to find ways and means of bringing her back to her own. ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... bleeding, drawing teeth, and setting a limb; the other, from his knowledge in the diseases of horses, being often consulted in human ailments. There was also a gis sefid, or grey wig, an old woman of a hag-like and decrepit appearance, who was looked up to as an oracle in all cases where the knowledge of the barber and farrier was of no avail, and who had besides a great many nostrums and recipes for all sorts of aches. Each came to me in ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... struck her upon the head with his sword, so that he flattened her helmet and her head-piece like a dish upon her head. "Thy mercy, goodly Peredur, son of Evrawc, and the mercy of Heaven." "How knowest thou, hag, that I am Peredur?" "By destiny, and the foreknowledge that I should suffer harm from thee. And thou shalt take a horse and armour of me; and with me thou shalt go to learn chivalry and the use ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... "Confound the old hag! Would you believe it, Bob, that Mrs Rowbottom has wanted to grapple with me these last two years—wants to make me landlord of the Goose and Pepper-box, taking her as a fixture with the premises. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... been deserted for weeks. At the third, the door was opened, and within, an aged woman, ugly, bent, decrepit. Here we measured. The next house, and the next, and the next, were shut. And then another open house contained another veritable hag. Passing several other houses, tightly closed, we found a third old woman, and I saw that we were destined to secure nothing but decrepit hags, as representatives of the fair sex. At the next closed house, I stopped, and turning to an official, who spoke ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... that terrible prophetic song the old hag sings in the dark slum—how it haunted me, too! I could not shake it out of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... todo?" cries Aud. "Here is an old brimstone hag that should have been stoned with stones, and hated me besides. Vainly she tried to frighten me when she was living; shall she frighten me now when she is dead and rotten? I trow not. Think shame to your beard, goodman! Are these a man's shoes I see you shaking in, when your ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a wretched place—out of order, with doors and windows and floors shattered, broken, and decayed. There were none of womankind belonging to the family, and in such a house a decent woman-servant would have been out of her place. Sometimes there was one hag there and sometimes another, and sometimes feminine aid less respectable than that of the hags. There had been six sons. One had disappeared utterly, so that nothing was known of him. One had been absolutely expelled by the brethren, and was ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... the hag, peering at them again. "Well, fancy that now! Och, you may well ask, and I'll be telling you. 'Tis a poor life being a Banshee—long hours and not so much as sixpence in it for a full night's work, and I got that sick of it! So I changed me trade. 'Sure, you'll never make a go of it,' ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... says the old merchant, "and don't you want your fairing too? I went from one end of the market to the other before I could get what you wanted. I bought the silver saucer from an old Jew, and the transparent apple from a Finnish hag." ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... erect, old woman was Martha, and an agreeable contrast to the grim, decrepit hag, which my fancy had conjured up, as the depository of all the horrible tales in which I doubted not this old place was most fruitful. She welcomed me and her master with a profusion of gratulations, alternately kissing our hands and apologising for the liberty, until ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... you are ettling at—but you must clap your hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural population of England, male and female, and take whatever comes first—be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag, tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age (for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and perennial poverty;—Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... there? who was it tried To force the entrance I've denied? An 'twere a friend, I'd gladly borne it, But no—'twas Want! I could have sworn it. I heard thy voice, old witch, I know thee! Avaunt, thou evil hag, beshrew thee! God's curse! why seekest thou to find me? Away to all black ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... throwing every feature, from brow to chin, into bold relief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcely saw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever witnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag—it being the general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long past the noon of life; but instead, I saw a woman who could not have been over thirty-five or forty, with a figure of regal magnificence, and a face that would have been, but for one circumstance, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... ix. Love, Pride and Forgetfulness x. Chorus 'The varied earth, the moving heaven' xi. Lost Hope xii. The Tears of Heaven xiii. Love and Sorrow xiv. To a Lady sleeping xv. Sonnet 'Could I outwear my present state of woe' xvi. Sonnet 'Though night hath climbed' xvii. Sonnet 'Shall the hag Evil die' xviii. Sonnet 'The pallid thunder stricken sigh for gain' xix. Love xx. English War Song xxi. National Song xxii. Dualisms xxiii. [Greek: ohi rheontes] xxiv. Song ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... example great, Shall make the rough way smooth, the crooked straight; Shall for our ease the raging floods restrain, And sink the mountain level to the plain. Discord, whom in a cavern under ground With massy fetters their late patriot bound; 540 Where her own flesh the furious hag might tear, And vent her curses to the vacant air; Where, that she never might be heard of more, He planted Loyalty to guard the door, For better purpose shall our chief release, Disguise her for a time, and call her Peace.[116] Lured by that name—fine engine of deceit!— Shall ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... out of the house nowadays, and carries his arm in a sling? Can you imagine that he is a backslidden communist, and is sure he will go to hell (if there be such an excellent institution) for the luxury in which he lives? And can you believe that, though it is gaily expressed, the thought is hag and skeleton in every moment of vacuity or depression? Can you conceive how profoundly I am irritated by the opposite affectation to my own, when I see strong men and rich men bleating about their sorrows and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... few minutes of eight o'clock when, at last, I turned into the squalid street at the end of which stands Springer's. In the sunshine of the mild March morning the facade of the tall buff building looked for all the world like a gaunt, ugly, unkempt hag, frowning between bleared old eyes that seemed to coax—nay, rather to coerce me ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the arms, flung herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were there still; now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror—looking back and walking stealthily and making horrible grimaces—that might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... level snow over the rivers and marshes. On approaching Pello, we saw our first reindeer, standing beside a hut. He was a large, handsome animal; his master, who wore a fur dress, we of course set down for a Lapp. At the inn a skinny old hag, who knew a dozen words of Swedish, got us some bread, milk, and raw frozen salmon, which, with the aid of a great deal of butter, sufficed us for a meal. Our next stage was to Kardis, sixteen miles, which we made in four hours. While in the midst of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the voice of a man from across the corridor—"Shut up, you hag!" And after that bedlam broke loose. The woman—Samuel realized at last that the scream had come from a woman—broke forth into a torrent of yells and curses. Such hideous obscenities, such revolting blasphemies he had never heard in his ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise he had ten going pleas before the Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat-hag on the Kye-skairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long, and dying on a sudden in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... haws, First promis'd that she'd help me with her art, To gain a bonny thrawart lassie's heart. As she had trysted, I met wi'er this night; But may nae friend of mine get sic a fright! For the curst hag, instead of doing me good— The very thought o't's like to freeze my blood! Rais'd up a ghaist, or deil, I kenna whilk, Like a dead corse in sheet as white as milk; Black hands it had, and face as wan ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending while I am near that they are only locks of wool. That's what you'll come to fifty years hence: I know you are not so now. I'm not wandering; you're mistaken, or else I should believe you really were that withered hag, and I should think I was under Peniston Crag; and I'm conscious it's night, and there are two candles on the table making the black press shine ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... a conversation going on about the mare; the man who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter was "hag-rid;" for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... request, both men and every other living being, as well as earths, and stones, and trees, and metals, just as we have all seen these things weep when they are brought from a cold place into a hot one. As the messengers were returning, they found an old hag named Thaukt sitting in a cavern, and begged her to weep Baldur out ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... making and her getting famous and proud through the length of the land and I mind well the cackle of a laugh she gave. 'The loveliest lace, is it? Now, isn't that the great wonder surely? The wizenedy, wrinkled old hag with the God-help-you face makes the loveliest lace—' Then she stopped short off and clapped a claw over her mouth and the scar on her pockmarked face was a pitiful thing ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... you have not seen? Then, younger brothers mine, forsooth, Like nursery children you have looked For ancient hag and snaggle-tooth; But no, not so; the witch appears In all ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... astride, The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut come caper, he gives a twitch. As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hag!" exclaimed Woodward, addressing his companion; "I never had a perfect conception of the face of an ogress until now! Did you observe her walrus tusks, as they projected over her misshapen nether lip? The hag appears to be an impersonation of ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he by slumber, that he never awoke when that venerable institution called the college woman—the hag whom the virtue of unerring dons insists o imposing as a servant on resident students—entered, made up the fire, swept up the room, and arranged the breakfast-table. It was only as she jogged his arm to ask him for an additional penny to buy more milk, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... and he had the exceedingly bad taste to array her in an old calico gown bought from an emigrant woman, instead of the neat and graceful tunic of whitened deerskin worn ordinarily by the squaws. The moving spirit of the establishment, in more senses than one, was a hideous old hag of eighty. Human imagination never conceived hobgoblin or witch more ugly than she. You could count all her ribs through the wrinkles of the leathery skin that covered them. Her withered face more resembled an old skull than the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... "You have made me a tigress. I must cower and hide through life like a wild beast in a jungle. And you are dying and going to hell," she hissed in his ear, "and by and by, when I get to be an old ugly hag, I will come and torment you there forever ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... from a strange old dusty mirror that stood away in some corner, I got in front of the fire, spied where the mirror was, threw myself upon it, and bounded from its face upon the oval pool of dim light on the ceiling, assuming, as I passed, the shape of an old stooping hag, who poured something from a phial into a basin. I made the handle of the spoon with my own nose, ha! ha!" And the shadow-hand caressed the shadow-tip of the shadow-nose, before ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... 'With my black spade I dig the earth where all shall lie. 'Tis I will be the Black Hag of the Pack, and you shall strip them and I will dig their graves. Be it known to you that I am ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... That senseless in a corner stood, Till metamorphos'd by his grasp, It grew an all-devouring asp; Would hiss, and sting, and roll, and twist. By the mere virtue of his fist: But, when he laid it down, as quick Resum'd the figure of a stick. So, to her midnight feasts, the hag Rides on a broomstick for a nag, That, rais'd by magic of her breech, O'er sea and land conveys the witch; But with the morning dawn resumes The peaceful state of common brooms. They tell us something strange and odd, About a certain magic rod,[3] That, bending ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... your possessions," jeered the hag; "it is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland in order to rob them of that which is ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the two men were at the door of Arithelli's lodgings. The landlady met them on the stairs, hag-like in the disarray of the early morning, and evidently terrified out of such humanity as she possessed by the fear of infection. She had gone up with the early morning coffee and found Arithelli raving ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... of Beowulf, which in the fight with Grendel has analogies with the plainer kind of goblin story, rather alters its tone in the fight with Grendel's mother. There are parallels in Grettis Saga, and elsewhere, to encounters like this, with a hag or ogress under water; stories of this sort have been found no less credible than stories of haunting warlocks like Grendel. But this second story is not told in the same way as the first. It has more of the fashion and ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you?"—"O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they'll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?" The poor girl asked this question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the common people of this generally ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... hag!" Mr Arthur answered, with unnecessary fierceness. "I don't see what Satan has been about, all these years, that he's not taken her away to her ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the door, and in less than a minute changed, she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag: who, with yellow skin hanging about her face and enormous eyes, swung herself on crutches toward the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment, till she ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... arms, raised on high, are each dressed up and capped with a wig under which peers a mask; between these phantoms tremendous fighting and battling take place, and many a sword-thrust is exchanged. The most fearful of all is a certain puppet representing an old hag; every time she appears, with her weird head and ghastly grin, the lights burn low, the music of the accompanying orchestra moans forth a sinister strain given by the flutes, mingled with a rattling tremolo which sounds like the clatter of bones. This creature evidently plays an ugly ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to drown you in dark. Lady Macbeth as a child might have been like that—or Antigone with the doom on her, or perhaps Elektra. No, I expect Elektra took after her mother: red-haired girl, I fancy. But there you are. She was a lovely, solemn, deep-eyed, hag-ridden goose. Not a word to say—thought mostly of pudding. I found that out by supposing that she thought of me. Then I was piqued, and we parted. I suppose she's vast now, and glued to an upper ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... it grinned, A foul and withered shape, that cast Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind Went rattling through it as it passed; It filled the heart with a strange dread, Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound, And gibbered like the wandering dead In some ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... question, he delivered himself of a comprehensive anathema which included Miss Blake, River Hall, the late owner, and ourselves. He further wished he might be essentially etceteraed if he believed there was another solicitor, besides Mr. Craven, in London who would allow such a hag to ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... on the subscription list of THE WATCHMAN; yet more than half convinced, that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme. But for this very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life so completely hag-ridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was the dictate of duty. Accordingly, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Orchard.—What is the derivation of orchard? Is the last syllable "yard," as in vineyard, rickyard? If so, what is "orch?" By the way, is the provincial word "hag-gard" hay-yard? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... "You accursed hag," said the baronet, whose vexation at meeting her was for the moment beyond any superstitious impression which he felt, "what brought you here? What devil sent you across my path now? Who are you, or what are you, for you look ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... frantically he loaded and fired again; but what at first might have been thought the faint far echo of a hail he in the end set down reluctantly to a trick of the hag-ridden wind; to whose savage voice he durst not listen long; in such a storm, on such a night, a man had but to hearken with a credulous ear to hear strange and terrible voices whispering, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... A very poor room in Galway with outer and inner door. Noises of a fair outside. A Hag sitting by the fire. Another standing by ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... could only be induced to admit La Corriveau into her secret chamber and take her into her confidence, the rest—all the rest," muttered the hag to herself, with terrible emphasis, "would be easy, and my reward sure. But that reward shall be measured in my own bushel, not in yours, Mademoiselle des Meloises, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to kape the pot bilin' for wakes to come, and guv us a good sup o' whiskey into the bargain. Here, take a drap," she said, pulling out a black bottle and holding it up to Mrs. Jocelyn. "What yer glowrin' so ghostlike for? Ah, let me alone, ye ould hag," she said angrily to the red-faced woman, who seemed in great trepidation, and tried to put her hand over the drunken creature's mouth. "Who's afeard? Money'll buy judge and jury, an' if this woman peaches on us I'll bate her brains out wid ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... fond of the sister," remarked the Comandante; "and mother too, for that matter, hag as she is! Still, my dear Roblado, a man likes his own life better than anything else. Near is the shirt, etcetera. He knows well that to stay here is to get into our hands some time or other, and he knows what we'll do with him if he should. Though he has made some ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... that the minx (she dared to call Jessie a minx) was going, she'd have known where, or her name would have been somebody else's. And yet she admits that Jessie was looking ill and worried. Stupid old hag!" ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... anybody—and I am not to be insulted by you, you ruffian! How dare you come here and affront a lady in her own house—a lady whose shoestrings your betters are ready to tie, you brute? If you want to be a landed proprietor, go and marry some ugly old hag that's got it, and no eyesight left to see you're no gentleman. Sir Charles's land you'll never have; a better man has got it, and means to keep it for him and his. Here, Polly! Polly! Polly! take this man down to the kitchen, and teach him manners ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... hobbled toward Thor, her eyes gleaming under her falling fringes of gray hair. Thor stood, unable to move as the hag came toward him. She laid her hands upon his arms. Her feet began to trip at his. He tried to cast her from him. Then he found that her feet and her hands were as strong against his as bands ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... acted, as appears by the same authority, as early as 5th January 1592. She is noticed in "Westward Hoe!" 1607, where Clare says: "O Master Linstock, 'tis no walking will serve my turn: have me to bed, good, sweet Mistress Honeysuckle. I doubt that old hag Gillian of Braineford has bewitched me." Sig. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... in that forlorn and hag-ridden figure we more naturally see a symbol of the generations that slay the slayer and shall themselves be slain. It is thus that each generation comes knocking at the door—comes, rather, so suddenly and unannounced, clutching at the Tree of Life, and with the glittering sword of youth ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... forget the photographs. Some of these, of devastated streets and the like, have rather lost their novelty. Unfortunately, however, for Mr. WELLS as propagandist he has also included a number of the most revealing portraits yet available of the men who are hag-riding a once great nation to the abyss. I can only say that for me those portraits put the finishing touch to Mr. WELLS'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... tender passions! yes, they would become those impenetrable features! Why, thou deceitful hag! I placed thee as a guard to the rich blossoms of my daughter's beauty. I thought that dragon's front of thine would cry aloof to the sons of gallantry: steel traps and spring guns seemed writ in ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... lodge and laid off her mantle, which was entirely composed of the scalps of women. Before folding it, she shook it several times, and at every shake the scalps uttered loud shouts of laughter, in which the old hag joined. Nothing could have frightened him more than this horrific exhibition. After laying by the cloak she came directly to him. She informed him that she had known him from the time he left his father's lodge, and watched his movements. She told him ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... cried, clasping me in his arms, 'excuse a man who might be your father! This is the best news I ever had since I was born; for that hag of a mulatto was no less a person than my wife.' He sat down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy. 'Dear me,' said he, 'I declare this tempts me to believe in Providence. And what,' he added, 'can I ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... lips, old as I am. So, my attendance should to-morrow prove More tranquil here; for thou should'st leave, I judge, Ulysses' mansion, never to return. 30 Then answer'd Irus, kindling with disdain. Gods! with what volubility of speech The table-hunter prates, like an old hag Collied with chimney-smutch! but ah beware! For I intend thee mischief, and to dash With both hands ev'ry grinder from thy gums, As men untooth a pig pilf'ring the corn. Come—gird thee, that all here may view the strife— But how wilt thou oppose one young as I? Thus on the threshold of ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... a startling place. In one bedroom was a lunatic hag with some food by her side. We left her severely alone. Poor soul, we could not move her! In the kitchen we discovered coffee, sugar, salt, and onions. With the aid of our old Post Sergeant we plucked some of the chickens and put on ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... instrument of the devil.' The culprit was evidently a wild Irishwoman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin, who made the complaint, 'had no proof that could have done her any hurt;' but the 'scandalous old hag,' whom some thought 'crazed in her intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strange answers, which were taken as confessions, sometimes, in excitement, using her native dialect. . . . It was plain the prisoner was a Roman Catholic; she had never learned the Lord's ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of the Genii, by H. Ridley, is a wealthy merchant of Bag dad, who goes in quest of the talisman of Oroma'nes, which he is driven to seek by a little old hag, who haunts him every night and makes his life wretched. He finds at last that the talisman which is to free him of this hag [conscience] is to "fear God ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... could only be brought to concede something to the Warden by the force of the impledgment of his mother; and, again, that she was the duenna of an heiress, who could only be got through the confinement of the old hag. Be who she might, however, Christie's Will declared, upon the faith of the long shablas of Johnny Armstrong, that he would carry her off through fire and water, as sure as ever Kinmont Willie was carried away by old Wat of Buccleuch ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... recompence for sin. Besides, to affirm that God saveth defiled man for the sake of his defiled duties—for so, I say, is every work of his hand—what is it but to say, God accepteth of one sinful act as a recompence and satisfaction for another? (Hag 2:14). But God, even of old, hath declared how he abominates imperfect sacrifices, therefore we can by no means be saved from sin but by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the flower of all political parties, with whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of equal friendship, she was to have for her perpetual companion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and of temper which, naturally savage, had now been exasperated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Frances ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... expedition was nearly at an end, and I had no reason to economize my provisions, I gave some to the villagers, and the women especially who had hardly ever tasted rice or tinned meat, were delighted. One old hag actually made me a declaration of love, which, unfortunately, I could not respond to in ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Where are the children of the man who has carried me away by violence?" Said the crone, "He has not children." Said the queen, "Woe is me, that I should have come to one who is childless!" Then said the hag, "Thou needest not lament on account of that, for there is a prediction that he shall have an heir by thee, and by none other. Moreover, be not sorrowful, for he ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... confine ourselves to bandy. He is gone, my friends, where his legs would never be called in question." They go on to the discussion of his nose, and Mrs. Jiniwin inclines to the view that it is flat. "Aquiline, you hag! Aquiline," cries Mr. Quilp, pushing in his head and striking his nose with his fist. There is nothing better in the whole brutal exuberance of the character than that gesture with which Quilp punches his ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... "decomposing animal matter," as we euphemise it now-a-days. The hot pebbles, at high-tide mark,—crowned with a long black row of herring and mackerel boats, laid up in ordinary for the present—are beautifully variegated with mackerels' heads, gurnets' fins, old hag, lobworm, and mussel-baits, and the inwards of a whole ichthyological museum; save at one spot where the Cloaca maxima and Port Esquiline of Aberalva town (small enough, considering the place holds fifteen hundred souls) murmurs from beneath a grey stone arch toward the sea, not unfraught with ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... answered, flashing a curious glance upon me. "In truth, I do not quite know why; but from no lack of suitors, since, were she but a hideous hag, an empress would find these. Olaf, you may have learned that I was not born in the purple. I was but a Greek girl of good race, not even noble, to whom God gave a gift of beauty; and when I was young I saw a man who took my fancy, also of old race, yet but a merchant ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... to be. I know that very well. I ought to be a Dido and Niobe and Cassandra rolled into one. I'm a brute not to be dead or look a hag. I've gone through horrors, and the secrets I know could put dozens of people in prison, if not electrocute them. But you see I'm not the right type of person for the kind of life I've had, as I should be if I were in a story book, and the author had created me to suit my background. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... slay thee. See, Gagool, mother of evil, thou art so old that thou canst no longer love thy life. What can life be to such a hag as thou, who hast no shape, nor form, nor hair, nor teeth—hast naught, save wickedness and evil eyes? It will be mercy to make ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... by Loveday, leaving Aurelia standing in the middle of the hall, the old hag gazing on her with a malignant leer. "Ho! ho'! So that's the way! He has begun that work early, has he? What's your name, my lass? Oh, you need give yourself airs! I cry you mercy," and she ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a start) "What you have now!" I don't like that phrase! He knows I have this money just as well as I do! The old hag's been blabbing! ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and answered curtly that Ingeborg had a heart of gold. He laughed boisterously, and said one could not raise anything on that; adding, with an air of authority, that he believed I spoke the truth, for it was not likely the hag would have kept anything from her oldest boarder. 'I dare say the real truth is,' he wound up, 'that you are hard up, like me, and want to do the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... feeling uneasy, except that, while Pepita had promised me when I entered the house not to tell the old woman who we were, I was convinced that she had done so by the glances of scowling hatred which the old hag threw at us whenever she came into the room. Still I was uneasy, and shortly made some excuse to leave the room and saunter round and about the house, to assure myself that Pepita had spoken truly when she had said that there was no one there ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... proportion kept, it exhibited the negative result of a growing annoyance. "God knows why they all show at once," she exclaimed discontentedly, seated—as customary—before the eminently truthful reflection of a newly discovered set of lines. "I'm not old enough to begin to look like a hag." ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... travelled through the woman's body, and she gave utterance to a harsh inarticulate sound. She came confusedly forwards, groping with hands outstretched. Balder, though not wont to fail in courtesy to the sorriest hag, could scarce forbear recoiling; especially because he fancied that an expression of affectionate interest was struggling to get through the scarred incrustation of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne |
