"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it that the word signifying "And I will be glorified," occurs in Hag. i. 8 without the letter which is the symbol for five, though it is sounded as if that letter was there? It indicates the absence of five things from the second Temple which were to be found in the first, (1.) The ark, i.e., the mercy-seat of the cherubim; ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time for? The old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It's out of my way. And where the devil she can have got to, I can't make out. She sits here from year's end to year's end, the old hag; her legs are bad and yet here all of a sudden she is ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lane as I pursu'd my journey, I spy'd a wrinkled Hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself. Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red; Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seem'd withered; And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapped The tatter'd remnants ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... natural grit came to his rescue, and it was well it did, for the presence had assumed shape, and now sat on the window-ledge in the form of a hag, glaring at him from out of the depths of her unfathomable eyes, in which, despite their deadly greenness, there lurked a tinge of red caused by small specks of that hue semioccasionally seen floating across her ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... quite dead, but he was neither startled nor horrified; he was bitterly disappointed, and again and again he ground his heel into the thick Sine carpet under his feet. What was it to him whether this hideous old hag were dead in one way or another? She had died with her secret. There she lay in her shapeless bag-like gown of snuff-colored stuff, under the brilliant lights and the gorgeous mirrors, upon the delicate satin cushions, her white eyes staring wide, her hands clenched still in ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... starting as from an uneasy dream, he looked on Life with wide-open eyes and soul that understood. He found her far less fair than in the heydey of his youth, when he reveled in her voluptuous charms and loved her well. Her face was hard and stern as that of some hag from Hell; the sunlight had faded from her hair, the cestus of red roses become a poisonous serpent, her fragrant breath a consuming flame, her robe of glory, a sackcloth suit, begrimed with ashes, torn by thorns and stained with blood. "Thou hast changed, O Life!" he ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... "You damned old hag," he screamed, now quite beside himself, "one of your rotten tribe's in that lookout tower, d'you understand? If you don't bring that punt across I'll have him crucified before your eyes! ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the present," she screamed, infuriated. "Look at what the present has given me—a mouthful of blood and teeth. I, who was beautiful, am spoiled for ever; I am become an old hag. Pharaoh burst the ball with his hand, and threw the pieces at me. I saw him do it, and you set him there. Wretch, I will pay you back for this evil trick," and springing at Kaku, she tore of his astrologer's cap, and the wig beneath it, and beat his ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... in a subdued voice. All the others said it was a fraud, but I thought it wonderful. "Antoine" wanted to go beyond the barrier and touch it, which was mean of him, I think. Presently a villainous-looking old hag, who was exhibiting the creature, came over, and whispered in "Antoine's" ear. I only caught "cinq francs," but his face looked interested at once, and he and Jean disappeared behind the curtain and the head disappeared too, so we went outside, and bought "farings" at the next ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... 'He!' screeched the old hag, 'he niver tol' me a word. He cum an' he go'd; but he kep his red rag to himself, he did. Duvel! he was a ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... provided, while the packs, for few have attained to the dignity of tin boxes, brought about by the hawkers, contain the most wretched assortment of goods imaginable. The moment, therefore, that the cargo of a vessel hag been purchased by the retail dealers, all that is really elegant or fashionable is eagerly purchased, and the rejected articles, even should they be equally excellent, when once consigned to the dingy precincts of a Bombay shop, lose all their lustre. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... 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 ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... sitting down and speaking no word. His eyes, however, roved discreetly to and fro. Eschtah's three wives presented great differences in age and appearance. The eldest was a wrinkled, parchment-skinned old hag who sat sightless before the fire; the next was a solid square squaw, employed in the task of combing a naked boy's hair with a comb made of stiff thin roots tied tightly in a round bunch. Judging from the youngster's actions and grimaces, this combing process was ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... He will surely spy All else—to me, me only, magic-blind! And, hark! the hag with drugs, she said, would try To heal love's madness and my ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... was with 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. It was but seldom ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... at a wild pace, as if he would drive his pony straight athwart the terrible moss, taking hag and well-eye as it came. But glancing behind and seeing that Kirsty was not looking after him, he turned the creature's head in a safer direction, and left ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... very, very quiet, hoping that the light would not come near him, and he trembled every time it bent its course that way; but at length his fears seemed about to be realised—it drew near, and he saw the face of a hideous looking hag, dressed in coarse and vile garments, who held a bloody dagger in the right hand, and kept the left in a kind of bag, tied to her person, in which she had evidently accumulated great store. Her eyes were ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... made 'a discovery of the wicked 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 ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... word here and now that you will do the next thing that I ask of you, whatever it is, if it is in your power," said the hag when she heard the story, "and I will tell you ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... particular case. Nor did he ever seem to be bored by conversations. But sometimes, after benignantly speeding, for instance, one of the Watchetts on her morning constitutional, he would slip down into the basement and ejaculate, 'Cursed hag!' with a calm and natural earnestness, which frightened Hilda, indicating as it did that he must ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... because it is really a game of "see the thimble." Suppose that at the end of such a game the thimble had not been found at all; suppose its place was unknown for ever: the result on the players would not be playful, it would be tragic. That thimble would hag-ride all their dreams. They would all die in asylums. The pleasure is all in the poignant moment of passing from not knowing to knowing. Mystery stories are very popular, especially when sold at sixpence; but that is because the author of a mystery story reveals. He is enjoyed not because he ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... find the Sagamore, Mayaro. For our Oneidas have told us that he knows where the castles of the Long House lie, and that he can guide our army unerringly to that dark, obscure and fearsome Catharines-town where the hag, Montour, reigns in her ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 if you ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... with whom Meriem came in contact was, almost without exception, either indifferent to her or cruel. There was, for example, the old black hag who looked after her, Mabunu—toothless, filthy and ill tempered. She lost no opportunity to cuff the little girl, or even inflict minor tortures upon her, such as pinching, or, as she had twice done, searing ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you mean, and I can lay no claim to such a character. Any hag with golden eyes will always find me as affectionate as ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... looked round the room for help; I saw the tables, the chairs, the places where she stood or sat, empty, deserted, dead. I could not stay where I was; I had no one to go to but to the parent-mischief, the preternatural hag, that had "drugged this posset" of her daughter's charms and falsehood for me, and I went down and (such was my weakness and helplessness) sat with her for an hour, and talked with her of her daughter, and the sweet days we had passed together, and said ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... suspicion beforehand 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
... returned, And that good ring of sovereign virtue wore, Which, on the finger placed, all spells o'erturned; For that fair damsel he had left before, To his surprise, so foul a dame discerned, That in this ample world, examined round, A hag so old ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... taken for the first time to a real play, and it was to that paradise of juvenile spectators, Astley's, where we saw a Highland horror called "Meg Murdoch, or the Mountain Hag," and a mythological after-piece called "Hyppolita, Queen of the Amazons," in which young ladies in very short and shining tunics, with burnished breastplates, helmets, spears, and shields, performed sundry warlike evolutions round her Majesty Hyppolita, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... said, as he put on his great coat, "it is a curious fact that, with all his incredulity, he is exceedingly superstitious. You can hardly believe how troubled he is about some gibberish of that old hag that sets charms for lame horses, etc. I'm not at all sure but that she set charms in the other way for ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Behold a hag whom Life denies a kiss As he rides questward in knighterrant-wise; Only when he hath passed her is it his To know, too late, ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... respectful importance. 'He could take it upon his conscience to say, his honour would have exceeding pleasure in seeing him. Would not Mr. Waverley choose some refreshment after his journey? His honour was with the folk who were getting doon the dark hag; the twa gardener lads (an emphasis on the word twa) had been ordered to attend him; and he had been just amusing himself in the mean time with dressing Miss Rose's flower-bed, that he might be near to receive his honour's ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... it would be?' growled the old hag. 'From shelter we shall proceed to demand supper, and from supper money to take us on our way. Upon my word, if I could be sure of finding some one every day whose head was as soft as his heart, I wouldn't wish for a more agreeable life ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... hag jerked open the door after I rang the bell. I asked her nice and polite if a lady named Caroline Smith was in the house? 'No,' says she, 'and if she was, what's that to you?' I told her I'd come a long ways to see Caroline. 'Then go a long ways back without seeing Caroline,' says this withered ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... which still survive on Hogarth's canvas. Substitute him for the luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat, who represents the successful candidate in the first picture of the series. A drunken voter is dropping lighted pipe ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is picking his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his neighbour's broken head; an alderman—a very mountain of roast ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... said the prince; but with that the witch dragged it away again, and came back with an old, wrinkled, toothless hag, whose hands trembled with age. 'You can have no other princess,' said she. 'Will you ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing—filthy of breath, dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on her great neck. Bles shuddered ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... on is of a different description. Along Water Street are women conspicuously dressed in gaudy colours. Their heavily-painted faces are bloated or pinched; they shiver in the raw night air. Liz speaks to one, who replies that she would like to talk, but dare not, and as she says this an old hag comes to the door and cries: "Get along; don't hinder her work! During the evening a man to whom Em has been talking has told her: —"You ought to join the Salvation Army; they are the only good women who, bother us down here. I don't want to lead that sort ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... child,' he 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 do ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... threatened with the worst fate that can befall a helpless maiden—the loss of her honor. Her loud shrieks penetrated not beyond the precincts of that massive building—her calls for help were answered only by the taunting laugh of the black hag outside, who loaded her with alternate abuse, threats, and curses. At last, exhausted and despairing, poor Fanny threw herself upon the carpet, and prayed—oh, how earnestly!—that no harm might happen to her, which could call the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... starve ourselves to death," he continued, ringing the bell. The old hag appeared, and he ordered her to bring on breakfast forthwith, and above ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... trusty friend AEschere is dead... The cruel hag has wreaked on him her vengeance. The country folk said there were two of them, one the semblance of a woman; the other the specter of a man. Their haunt is in the remote land, in the crags of the wolf, the wind-beaten cliffs, and untrodden bogs, where ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry: he was bound to take to himself one of them: and whichever one he selected would cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would rescue him from the claws of Lady Busshe, and her owl's hoot of "Willow Pattern", and her hag's shriek of "twice jilted". That flying infant Willoughby—his unprotected little incorporeal omnipresent Self (not thought of so much as passionately felt for)—would not be scoffed at as the luckless with women. A fall indeed from his original ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hag he limpit, An' ay the tither shot he thumpit, Till coward death behind him jumpit, Wi' deadly feide; Now he proclaims, wi' tout o' trumpet, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... compromised. She's an enduring old hag, and I'm sorry I ever met her. Why wasn't I born and bred and dead ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... "I ain't goin' to chase you. I'm goin' to stand pat. When you git ready you c'n come to me—up to the camp. Meanwhile I'll put the old hag where the dogs won't bite her, an' while you stay away she don't eat—see? She ain't nothin' but a rack o' bones nohow, an' a few days'll ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... The koir sang an anthem i' the efternune, an' Sandy sang anither at the same time, the rest o' the fowk harkenin' to the competition. Sandy gaed squawlin' an' squawkin' up an' doon amon' the quivers, an' through the middle o' what he ca'd the cruchits, juist like a young pairtrick amon' a pozel o' hag. Mistress Glendie, that sits at the tap o' oor seat, is a bit o' a singer, an' she put back her lugs an' skooled like a fountin' mule at Sandy, oot at the corner o' her specks; but Sandy never lut dab. His een, when he hadna his nose buried in his book, ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... got even with us, for a time, at least; for while pretending to assist us in our exploration of the ruins, by lending us a number of women to do such digging as we required, he got an old hag to drug our coffee, one day; and, while we were all lying insensible, had us carried up to his village. Matters looked rather bad for us for a few days, but we eventually contrived to escape—how, I must tell you some ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... their young were near them. The former 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 must be in some measure ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... could not be sure of, especially if as many false things are told about them, as are told about me; but when I was a tadpole in the pond, that old hag of an owl was still hooting away, in the treetops, scaring children, as in ages gone. She is older than I. Go and see her. If age makes wise, she is ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... With so much profit, so much fame, to part: "So long successful in my art," she cried, "And this proud man, so young and so untried!" "Nay," said the Doctor, "dare you trust your wives, The joy, the pride, the solace of your lives, To one who acts and knows no reason why, But trusts, poor hag! to luck for an ally? - Who, on experience, can her claims advance, And own the powers of accident and chance? A whining dame, who prays in danger's view, (A proof she knows not what beside to do;) What's her experience? In the time ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... I heard our cottage door smashed in and the sound of horrible voices. The roar of a gun rang up the stairs, and the crash of someone falling and the smoke came through my bedroom door, and then wailing mixed with curses. "Out of the way, old hag!" I heard, and then another shriek; and then I stood upon the stairs-and looked down at them. The moon was shining through the shattered door, and the bodies and legs of men went to and fro, like branches in a tempest. Nobody seemed to notice me, although I had cast over my night-dress—having ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... "What is this old hag doing here? Where is Robert? Where is Thomas? I ordered them to stay till I came. Mr. Turner, why did not you stay? What! has not the coroner been here yet? The coroner must see the body, I tell you. Good God! What a parcel of blockheads you all are! How many times ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... penchant for spreading gossip. Think you I am ignorant of the fact that because of it Rome spewed you out for a meddlesome pest? Do you deceive yourself that Cartagena will open her ears to your garbled reports? The hag, Marcelena, lies! She has long hoped to gain some advantage from me, I have told you— But go now above and learn from His Grace, whom you have had the impudence to keep waiting all morning, how tongues that wag too freely can be silenced." He checked himself suddenly, as if he feared he had said ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... at the feet of the awful jesting hag, Circumstance, I could only cry 'Winnie! my poor Winnie!' while over my head seemed to pass Necessity and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... charm. Who wants a wife?" The ugly crone with blinks Doth hideous look, till every bidder shrinks. A sorry spectacle, mis-shapen, gross, She is, and bidders now are at a loss How much to ask to take the hag to wife. At last one cries: "Five bilti,[20] for relief Of herald I will take, to start the bid!" "And four of bilti, I'll take, with the maid!" "Three and a half!" one cries with shaking head, "And she is yours, my man!" the herald said, And ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... papers! Hola! wife!" continued Arroyo, turning to the hag who still stood by the fainting victim, "here's a little work for you, as I am somewhat fatigued. I charge you with making this spy confess who sent him here, and what design he had in coming. Make him speak ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... struggled a dog, with whom she was harnessed to the cart. Poor wretch! I thought, and the husband recently dead, too! I could not think of her as a widow, for, in truth, she did not look human enough. She was not over thirty years of age, but a coarser-looking hag I never saw the picture of. Presently a man in crossing the street indulged in some pleasantry at her expense, when she threatened to call her husband to chastise him. Husband? Yes, sure enough, there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... all! We sing merrily fol de rol de rol! Some build high walls of their houses On the bog of the sands of gold. We stand before them and sing Fol de rol de rol. Pickpockets hover about us And honour us with covetous glances. We shake our empty pockets and sing Fol de rol de rol. When death, the old hag, steals to our doors We snap our fingers at her face, And we sing in a chorus with gay flourishes Fol de rol de ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... 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 ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... There was the irresistible outbreak against "that putrid carcase, that mother of all evil—the French Revolution." It reminded him of the accursed things that crawled in and out of the mouth of the vile hag in Spenser's Cave of Error; and he repeated the nauseous stanza. Mackintosh was to be the faithful knight of the romance, the brightness of whose sword was to flash destruction ...
— Burke • John Morley
... brother Henry and often sighed for him) cared to risk a shot from his strong eyes. They were like blue stones, full of the cold glitter of their fire. It was at times like this, when a man stands naked confronting his purpose, that one saw the hag riding on the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... hagged is given as monopolized by the sense of 'bewitched', or of 'lean and gaunt', related to haggard. This does not suit. The intention is probably an independent use of the p.p. of the transitive verb 'to hag'; defined as 'to torment or terrify as a hag, to trouble as ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... "She's a damned old hag." He rose and took up his hat and cane. "Well, I'll wait a week, and then if you don't relent the proceedings will begin. I shan't get the divorce. Not my line. But he asked me to talk to you and I was glad to ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... laughed Hawker; "how quietly he talks! One can see that he hasn't had a bastard child fathered on him by a gipsy hag. Come along, old fellow; there's fifty pounds' worth of work for you this week, if I ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... frantic Irish song. Laughingly, Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys rested her finger on the keys and looked around. These stolid Trojans had caught fire. There was the little Doctor purple all above his stock; there was the Vicar with inflated cheeks and a hag-ridden stare; there was Mr. Moggridge snapping his fingers and almost capering; there was Miss Limpenny with her under-jaw dropped and her eyes agape. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... comfortable announcement of a Tory morning paper,—the very incarnation of spiteful imbecility. Such is the self-complacency of the old Tory hag, that in her wildest moments would bite excessively,—if she only had teeth. She has, however, in the very simplicity of her smirking, let out the whole secret—has, in the sweet serenity of her satisfaction, revealed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... 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, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I 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 ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... on the sea, his company being nine. Then he went upon an island, where he saw a withered old woman on her hands at the door of a house. "Whence is the hag?" asked Patrick; "great is her infirmity." A young man answered, and said: "She is a descendant of mine," said the young man; "if you could see the mother of this girl, O cleric! she is more infirm still." "In what way did this happen?" enquired Patrick. "Not difficult to tell," said the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... you see me die like a dog? The neighbors! for all I know, they have got me at their finger-ends now,—the vile rabble! That old hag, Madame Justine, at the ribbon-shop below,—some demon possessed her to look out that night when SHE came crawling home. She noted her well with her greedy eyes; some one so like my dear first wife, she told me. There is mischief and death in her eyes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the world makes you visit that old hermit?" said Eliza Ray, her schoolmate, one morning. "Bridget, our hired girl, says she is sure such a looking old hag must ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... entrance, the dingy parlours of "Mme. Levin, Modes et Toilettes," on the first landing the wailing-rooms of a hag-ridden teacher of vocal culture, on the next several dusty chambers perennially unrented, and gained at the top an open door whose panels sported a simple rectangle of cardboard advertising the tenancy of (in engraved script) Miss Lucy Spode, (in ink) ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... within reach of the old woman's hand. She looked like some grand white angel, who had stepped down from a cathedral altar, as she stood erect and stately with a gravely pitying expression in her lovely eyes, confronting the sable-draped, withered, leering hag, who fixed upon her a steady look of the most cruel ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... great Cross and a holy one that will turn off my charms," said the old hag, with a sneer, "whatever it may do against yours. But on the back of his hand,—that will be a mark to know him by,—there is pricked a bear,—a white bear that he slew." And she told the story of the fairy bear; which Torfrida duly stored ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... how long a hag may live,' said Elizabeth, 'but she could not have been less than a hundred and thirty years old in the time ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... '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 ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... their mother. When I saw the boy at Venice, who perfectly recognized me, his only garb was a wretched yellow cotton gown. His little feet, on which I had admired the little shiny boots, were WITHOUT SHOE OR STOCKING. He looked at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his hand; and with her he disappeared down one of the thronged ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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, I commenced the work, which was ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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; so Angelica, queen of Cathay, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... it's a right wicked place," she exclaimed in horror, as she passed by some of the foul-smelling closes, or courts, as we call them, where dishevelled hag-like old women sat on door-steps, and filthy, squalid children played in the gutter, where ill-favoured young people of both sexes hung idly about the entrances, chaffing or quarrelling with each other. "Ye police people must be a poor set out, an' ye can no do away with such dens as these!" Mrs. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... sliding up and down My limbs, as they were public roads, impart A 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 below— Hast opened secretly, we'll work the charm. Now ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... have entered into 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 ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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 ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... I dreamt that some one had shut me up in prison for some great offence; they had condemned me to many years' imprisonment, condemned me to spend all my youth behind iron-barred windows and they would only let me free again when I had become a wrinkled old hag. Would you love me if I was in prison? Would you come and stand outside my iron bars and speak to me ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... that are of all words the farthest from my mind. For I know well that I grow old, and have put off that beauty with which I was adorned of yore, and that held thee to me. 'Carline' Eric Brighteyes named me, and 'carline' I am—an old hag, no more! Now, forgive me, and, in memory of all that has been between us, let me creep to my place in the ingle and still watch and serve thee and thine till my service is outworn. Out of Ran's net I came ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... edge of the little lake trembled for a moment, and a very old woman forced her way among them, and passed by Hanrahan, walking with very slow steps. Her face was of the colour of earth, and more wrinkled than the face of any old hag that was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in wisps, and the rags she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by all weathers. She passed by him with her eyes wide open, and her head high, and her ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... the 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 fierce, so fleet ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... very early). Lost Hope. The Deserted House. deg. The Tears of Heaven. Love and Sorrow. To a Lady Sleeping. Sonnet. (Could I outwear my present state of woe.) Sonnet. (Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon.) Sonnet. (Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good.) Sonnet. (The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain.) Love. Love and Death. . The Kraken. The Ballad of Oriana. . Circumstance. . English War Song. National Song. The Sleeping Beauty. . Dualisms. We are Free. The Sea-Fairies. deg. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... had been led by two of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept murmuring to herself a Saxon rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance which her spindle was performing upon the floor. The hag raised her head as Rebecca entered, and scowled at the fair Jewess with the malignant envy with which old age and ugliness, when united with evil conditions, are apt to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... 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, when the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... his barn, it was witchcraft; if his cattle died of a murrain—if disease fastened upon his limbs, or death entered suddenly and snatched a beloved face from his hearth—they were not visitations of Providence, but the works of some neighbouring hag, whose wretchedness or insanity caused the ignorant to raise their finger and point at her as a witch. The word was upon every body's tongue. France, Italy, Germany, England, Scotland, and the far north successively ran mad upon this subject, and for a long series of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... given her that comfort. I never can forget the look in her eyes as I held her hand and said, 'Baby shall be taken care of.' She tried to thank me, and died soon after quite peacefully. Well, I went today and hunted up the poor little wretch. Found her in a miserable place, left in the care of an old hag who had shut her up alone to keep her out of the way, and there this mite was, huddled in a corner, crying 'Marmar, marmar!' fit to touch a heart of stone. I blew up at the woman and took the baby straightaway, for she had been abused. It was high ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... always been up against, I didn't wonder that she stole or committed any crime. She had had a regular Cinderella stepmother who had licked her when she was a kid because she took food from the pantry when she was hungry. The old hag called it stealing and warned the school teacher, and the other kids got hold of it and of course you know what it does to any one to get a black eye. She had the name of a thief wished on her until she got to be one. She was expelled from school; put in a reformatory; ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... perplexed, & at times almost cast down. I am beset with perplexities. The old hag of a wealthy relation, who took my aunt off our hands in the beginning of trouble, has found out that she is "indolent and mulish"—I quote her own words—and that her attachment to us is so strong that she can never be happy apart. The Lady, with delicate Irony, remarks that, if I am not an ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... poised securely on her head, the driver of an ox-cart, who stopped his team while we sang "America," three women going to market, a party of daintily dressed, sweet-faced senoritas with their chaperone, a dirty, wild-looking old hag who almost frightened me, a young mother carrying a naked baby in her arms, and boys—well, it was no use to count them. What do you think? Are we not ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... 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 a plaid. Then he wad ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... high road to become a capital fellow; and that I no longer feel inclined to pitch him into a lime-kiln at the mere thought of his putting out a hand to Paula. At the same time," and he started to his feet, "even if I help him to bring the poor little girl away from that demented old hag, I cannot and will not continue to be her physician. There are plenty of quacks about in this corpse of a town, and they may ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... saw the rock he groaned. "Little will it help us," he cried, "to escape the jaws of the whirlpool. For in that cave lives a sea-hag, and from her cave she fishes for all things that pass by, and never ship's crew boasted that they came ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... plain can be; On every stick there's a witch 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 some 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 gleam from ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast Italian buildings of Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their decay than the older and austerer mediaeval towers, which rise up proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... have really been, and was no such effect of his office as the immunity from beggars which we enjoyed in his charge. The worst boy in Tarifa (we did not identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and we were safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however pockmarked. The lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as though our guide had them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the principal church (no guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... the hole to pull the hag out, but as it was very old, it fell apart, and O wonder of wonders! as many as a hundred pieces of gold coin fell with a jingle on the ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... man, whose legs and 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... riot at Evansville 'cause we took on a couple of female trapeze women that came from Honduras, via New Orleans, and a revival of religion, all in one bunch, and pa is beginning to get haggard, like a hag. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... leetle Ken's done tuck ter ther bottle," she said with forced cheerfulness to the hag-like Mirandy Sloane. "Mebby when I gits back thar'll be a mite more flesh on them puny leetle bones of his'n." Her words caught sob-like in her throat as she wheeled resolutely and caught up her ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... acomia^; disfigurement &c (blemish) 848; want of symmetry, inconcinnity^; distortion &c 243; squalor &c (uncleanness) 653. forbidding countenance, vinegar aspect, hanging look, wry face, spretae injuria formae [Vergil]. [person who is ugly] eyesore, object, witch, hag, figure, sight, fright; monster; dog [Coll.], woofer [Coll.], pig [Coll.]; octopus, specter, scarecrow, harridan^, satyr^, toad, monkey, baboon, Caliban, Aesop^, monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "I'm an old hag, I admit," goody Liu pursued with a laugh; "but when I was young, I too was pretty and fond of flowers and powder! But the best thing I can do now is to keep to such fineries as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was a lonely gaard, standing apart from the road, on a high hill. As we drove up, a horrid old hag came out to receive us. "Can I get three horses soon?" I asked. "No," she answered with a chuckle. "How soon?" "In a few hours," was her indifferent reply, but the promise of paying fast rates got them in less than one. My friend wanted a glass of wine, but the old woman said she had nothing ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... breath was out of his body, a cocoa-nut should be cracked, and its kernel disengaged from the shell and placed upon his stomach under the grave-clothes. Having descended to the Shades, he beheld Miru, the horrible hag who rules them, and whose deformities need not now be detailed. She commanded him to draw near. "The trembling human spirit obeyed, and sat down before Miru. According to her unvarying practice she set for her intended victim a bowl of food, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... something rapidly in French—too rapidly for me to follow, and then motioned us to sit down as he placed two wooden chairs for us. Mother sank down, almost too wearied to return the greeting which the old hag by the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... N. sorcerer, magician; thaumaturgist[obs3], theurgist; conjuror, necromancer, seer, wizard, witch; hoodoo, voodoo; fairy &c. 980; lamia[obs3], hag. warlock, charmer, exorcist, mage[obs3]; cunning man, medicine man; Shaman, figure flinger, ecstatica[obs3]; medium, clairvoyant, fortune teller; mesmerist; deus ex machina[Lat]; soothsayer &c. 513. Katerfelto, Cagliostro, Mesmer, Rosicrucian; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... The old hag laughed hoarsely to herself until the scraggy sinews of her withered neck stood out like whipcord. She was still chuckling and coughing when the merchant came back into ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle |
