"Hobgoblin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beetling brows, retreating face, and heavy under jaws,—all eyes and teeth,—and hung so loosely on its short, weak neck, sunk beneath its enormous hunchback,—for it is wofully round-shouldered,—while its long, thin legs, shrunken as if from disease, are drawn up beneath its breast, and what a hobgoblin ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... seemed to pass over his mind, as if he imagined, that he was there to amuse the company. He rose from the piano-forte, and seated himself in another part of the room; where he began to make grimaces, and talk loud while others were singing. Finally he disappeared, like a hobgoblin, laughing, 'Ho! ho! ho!' I asked a person beside me who this strange being was. 'That was Hoffmann,' was the answer. 'The Devil!' said I. 'Yes,' continued my informant; 'and if you should follow him now, you would see him plunge into an obscure and unfrequented wine-cellar, and there, amid boon ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... resort for the "good people" or fairies, who in Ireland are supposed to delight in old, crazy, deserted mansions for their midnight revels. All attempts to repair it were in vain; the fairies battled stoutly to maintain possession. A huge misshapen hobgoblin used to bestride the house every evening with an immense pair of jack-boots, which, in his efforts at hard riding, he would thrust through the roof, kicking to pieces all the work of the preceding day. The house was therefore left to its fate, and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... slip of the pen was that! How absurd in me to talk about burying the bones of Byron, who, I have just seen alive, and incased in a big, round bulk of flesh! But, to say the truth, a prodigiously fat man always impresses me as a kind of hobgoblin; in the very extravagance of his mortal system I find something akin to the immateriality of a ghost. And then that ridiculous old story darted into my mind, how that Byron died of fever at Missolonghi, above twenty ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a bug, and when we stop to think of it, this shows how little there is in a name. For when we say bug, or for that matter bogy or bugbear, we are garbling the sound which our very, very forefathers uttered when they saw a specter or hobgoblin. They said it bugge or even bwg, but then they were more afraid of specters in those days than we, who imprison will-o'-the-wisps in Very lights, and rub fox-fire on our watch faces. At any rate here was a bug ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... allegiance is due to the church or to the woman who returns his love, overlooking what may perhaps be the fact that it is not so much a question of loyalty to the church as of loyalty to conscience; a foolish consistency, possibly "a hobgoblin to little minds," but, nevertheless, one to be weighed in the consideration of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... he was ill. He seemed daily to lose more of the boyishness which all his life had made him want to dance in the sun. That loss was to Ruth like a snickering hobgoblin attending the specter of death. Staying by him constantly, forgetting, in the intensity of her care, even to want credit for virtue, taking one splash at her tired eyes with boric acid and dashing back to his bed, she mourned and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... studding of nails avail the box, for the fall split it in three pieces; and I hid them under rubbish, for mortar and stones are plentiful down there. You should have seen my shade stretch under the moon like a tall hobgoblin. The nearest sentinel on the wall challenges me. 'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?' 'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs—little knowing how I meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... east, and the following morning, at a very early hour, he began to have most unpleasant dreams. He thought a hobgoblin was seated on his chest, and several brownies were pulling him where he did not wish to go, and finally that a gnome of enormous dimensions was dragging him into a dark cavern, where he could never again behold the daylight. At last, in great perturbation, he opened his dazed eyes. The ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... effaced all traces of their feast, and swept up the crumbs, came out of Mincing Lane to walk to Holloway; and if two of the hobgoblins didn't wish the distance twice as long as it was, the third hobgoblin was much mistaken. Indeed, that modest spirit deemed himself so much in the way of their deep enjoyment of the journey, that he apologetically remarked: 'I think, my dears, I'll take the lead on the other side of the road, and seem not to belong to you.' Which he did, cherubically strewing ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... She was poised, half turned as though for flight, yet hung so, without a quiver in an endless listening pause. The man tried in vain to remember the name of a single saint, so held was he by the breathless expectancy in the eyes of the little hobgoblin. His nerves gave way with a loud snap when she suddenly leaped up at him with snapping fingers and some whispered, half-heard exclamation of "Now! Now!" and turning he plunged down the hill in panic-stricken flight. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... be worth a straw in the world at present. I am better where I am. Truth will never be had where there are many poets, nor fair dealing where there are many lawyers; no, nor health where there are many physicians." At this moment, a little grey-headed hobgoblin, who had heard that a living man was arrived, flung himself at my feet, weeping abundantly. "Dear me," said I, "what are you?" "One who is grievously wronged every day in the world," said he. "May God move your soul to procure justice for me." "What is your name?" ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... state that Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth with astonishing celerity—at the rate of one year per night, if I remember correctly; and—must I confess it?—before the week came to an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was only little less of a reality to me than ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... name into his brain was like an electric shock. He cursed his inactivity. Great God! had he become a child again, to tremble before imagined evil, a mere hobgoblin of the mind? He had already wasted time enough; now he must wring from the lips of that misshapen savage the last vestige of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... there is no breakfast like a student's, no dinner like a lawyer's, no afternoon's nunchion like a vine-dresser's, no supper like a tradesman's, no second supper like a serving-wench's, and none of these meals equal to a frockified hobgoblin's. All this is true enough. Accordingly, at my Lord Lucifer's first course, hobgoblins, alias imps in cowls, are a standing dish. He willingly used to breakfast on students; but, alas! I do not know by what ill luck they have of late years joined the Holy Bible to their studies; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... gripped my fellow's arm, as he came abreast of me, and stopped him sharply. Below us in the middle of a steep hollow, a pit in the hill-side, a light shone out through some aperture and quivered on the mist, like the pale lamp of a moorland hobgoblin. It made itself visible, displaying nothing else; a wisp of light in the bottom of a black bowl. Yet my spirits rose with a great bound at sight of it; for I knew that I had stumbled on ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... has the privilege of bringing refreshments with her if inclined; the committee suggesting that they be in keeping with the shades of night: skeleton salad, ghost sandwiches, assorted spooks or witches' delight. A roasted hobgoblin will be served soon after the meeting opens. Please be on time, and hold your honorable body in readiness for this or any other sacrifice that may be demanded ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... ago he was requested by the late Duke of Newcastle to make inquiries, which convinced him that the hobgoblin fears expressed that night in regard to the construction of this 375 miles of railway ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... nave, or which the cross aisle, of this singular edifice, so perfect is the confusion of its parts. The pavement demands attention, being inlaid so curiously as to represent variety of histories taken from Holy Writ, and designed in the true style of that hobgoblin tapestry which used to bestare the halls of our ancestors. Near the high altar stands the strangest of pulpits, supported by polished pillars of granite, rising from lions' backs, which serve as pedestals. In every corner of the ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... were bloody-minded fellows, and that the people of this happy country ought to do any thing rather than submit to have its streets stained with the blood of their monarch. I was in the habit of hearing all the ridiculous stories of invasion, rapine, and murder, and of listening to all the hobgoblin accounts of what we were to expect from our fellow creatures on the other side of the channel, and my young mind was worked up to such a pitch, that I longed to become one of the number of those who were going to resist and to punish them if ever they dared to invade our happy ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... woodbine hanging from the eaves, Their crimson curtains rent and thin. As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality: A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... discovered among the rubbish of a library, is circulated among them. The parson is more busy than common just now, being a little flurried by an advertisement of a work, said to be preparing for the press, on the mythology of the middle ages. The little man has long been gathering together all the hobgoblin tales he could collect, illustrative of the superstitions of former times; and he is in a complete fever lest this formidable rival should take ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... awoke at six o'clock on the morning of the 14th of August, and being told a hobgoblin story, which made me rub my eyes, and doubt my own hearing. What I thought of it is neither here nor there. Suffice it that Adam Beck—may he be branded for a liar!—succeeded, this day, in misleading a large number of Her Majesty's officers (as his attested document ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... is yet sweet, to work out the buttermilk thoroughly, and to add salt with such discretion as not to ruin the fine, delicate flavor of the fresh cream,—all this is quite simple, so simple that one wonders at thousands and millions of pounds of butter yearly manufactured which are merely a hobgoblin-bewitchment of cream into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... hobgoblin he put hand on de head ob li'l black Mose, an' he mek dat same remark, and dat whole convintion ob ghostes an' spicters an' ha'nts an' yever-thing, which am more 'n a millium, pass by so quick dey-all's hands feel lak de wind whut blow outen de cellar whin de day am ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... friends; though Monsieur Heger could speak so well of Emily at a time, be it remembered, when it was Charlotte's praises that were sought, when Emily's genius was set down as a lunatic's hobgoblin of nightmare potency. He and she were alike too imperious, too independent, too stubborn. A couple of swords, neither of which could serve to sheathe ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... ceremony into the knight's chamber, and told him abruptly that the enemy had brought to, and waited for his coming up, in order to begin the action. "I've hailed his consort," said he, "a shambling, chattering fellow. He took me first for a hobgoblin, then called me names, a tiger, a wrynoseo'ross, and a Persian bear; but egad, if I come athwart him, I'll make him look like the bear and ragged staff before we ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Poltergeist, who would otherwise vex and disturb the young couple. My dictionary, the one that has 2412 pages, says that a Poltergeist is a "racketing spectre," probably what we who are not dictionary makers would call a hobgoblin. In Brands' Antiquities I find reference to this old custom at the marriage of a Duke of York in Germany, when great quantities of glass and china were smashed at the palace doors the night before ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... were the most strange and terrible monsters that had ever been since the world was made, or that have been seen in after days, or that are likely to be seen in all time to come. I hardly know what sort of creature or hobgoblin to call them. They were three sisters and seem to have borne some distant resemblance to women, but were really a very frightful and mischievous species of dragon. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what hideous beings these three sisters ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... GOODFELLOW. Are you not he That did your best to spill Lord S-L-SB-RY? Gave the Old Tory party quite a turn, And office with snug perquisites did spurn? And now you'd make Strong Drink to bear no barm (Or proper profit.) You would do us harm. Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sly PUCK, Are right; you always bring your friends bad luck. Are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... horror that the hobgoblin should address him by name, was succeeded by a second of relief as he ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... it—an enormous price! You don't understand what I am talking about, your ladyship. Go; take mon petit garcon with you; and may God do so to you as you deal with him. Take care of him. My cards will tell me everything, and sometime, when I have turned into a hideous hobgoblin, those whom I shall haunt will remember me! And now, mon petit garcon"—turning again to Marie,—"let me kiss your ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... about this time a most marvelous mirror in the world. It belonged to the worst hobgoblin that ever lived, and had been made by his ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... large rivulet on the west, stands the ancient castle of Yester. Sir David Dalrymple, in his annals, relates that 'Hugh Gifford de Yester died in 1267; that in his castle there was a capacious cavern, formed by magical art, and called in the country Bo-Hall, i.e. Hobgoblin Hall.' A stair of twenty-four steps led down to this apartment, which is a large and spacious hall, with an arched roof; and though it hath stood for so many centuries, and been exposed to the external air for a period of fifty or sixty years, it is still as ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... make themselves very absurd by always trying to say nonsensical things to you. Men of this sort appear to have an impression that you are still children amused with a Jack-in-the-box which springs up in a very conceited hobgoblin way. Everybody likes a joke, and at times feels a childlike pleasure in speaking nonsense; but, believe me, sense is much ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime make the drink to bear no barm; Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck: ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... small base coin, which was odiously applied to them—at length settled in the well-known term of Huguenots, which probably was derived, as the Dictionnaire de Trevoux suggests, from their hiding themselves in secret places, and appearing at night, like King Hugon, the great hobgoblin of France. It appears that the term has been preserved by an earthen vessel without feet, used in cookery, which served the Huguenots on meagre days to dress their meat, and to avoid observation; a curious instance, where a thing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Robin Goodfellow, or Hobgoblin, possesses the frolicksome qualities of the French Lutin. For his full character, the reader is referred to the Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The proper livery of this sylvan Momus is to be found in an old play. "Enter Robin Goodfellow, in a suit of leather, close to ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... like to know if you really were so sick at heart that you hanged yourself there, or if it is only a hobgoblin that's before me!' said the man. 'Ah, well! you may hang there for me, whether you are a hobgoblin or not,' and on ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... by an illiterate rabble, as to demur, and hawk, and hesitate, before he could get to the end of one short sentence. Theo-phrastus was such another coward, who beginning to make an oration, was presently struck down with fear, as if he had seen some ghost, or hobgoblin. Isocrates was so bashful and timorous, that though he taught rhetoric, yet he could never have the confidence to speak in public. Cicero, the master of Roman eloquence, was wont to begin his speeches ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... him to understand that plenty lay beyond the dark waters, and quickly swinging herself to his back she started to ride him up and down along the edge of the lagoon, petting and whispering to him of good things beyond. Slowly her eyes grew wide; she seemed to be riding out of dreamland on some hobgoblin beast. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... may be sent us to meet our particular need, or that health may return to us, or that this and that person may behave more kindly and considerately, but go our way to some perfectly commonplace bit of work, do it as thoroughly as we can, and simply turn our back upon the hobgoblin whose grimaces fill us with such uneasiness. He melts away in the blessed daylight over the volume or the account-book, in the simple talk about arrangements or affairs, and above all perhaps in trying to disentangle and relieve another's troubles and anxieties. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of humour,' said Mr Mantalini, breaking an egg. 'It is a pretty, bewitching little demd countenance, and it should not be out of humour, for it spoils its loveliness, and makes it cross and gloomy like a frightful, naughty, demd hobgoblin.' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... no apprehension, let him come in, I fear him not, whether he be alguazil or hobgoblin. Stand, however, at the doorway, that you may be a witness of what takes place, as it is more than probable that he comes at this unreasonable hour to create a disturbance, that he may have an opportunity of making an unfavourable ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... better—but that's in the blood. Old King Harry, his father's grandfather, I have heard say, was a weary set-out for that. Go thy ways, Avena, and stand not staring at me. I'm neither a lovesome young damsel nor a hobgoblin, that thou shouldst set eyes on me thus. Three ells of red samitelle, and two ounces of violet silk this hue—and a bit of gold twist shall harm no man. Amphillis, my maid, thou art not glued to the chamber floor like thy mistress; ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... depths, where every imperfectly-seen object appeared doubly frightful—all combined to invest it with mystery and terror. No one willingly lingered here, but hurried on, afraid of the sound of his own footsteps. No one dared to gaze at the rocks, lest he should see some hideous hobgoblin peering out of their fissures. No one glanced at the water, for fear some terrible kelpy, with twining snakes for hair and scaly hide, should issue from it and drag him down to devour him with his shark-like teeth. Among the common folk, this part of the ravine was known as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and they remain until this day the purest and most appetising introduction to the book passion. They created two worlds of adventure with minute vivid details and constant surprises—the foot on the sand, for instance, in Crusoe, and the valley of the shadow with the hobgoblin in Pilgrim's Progress—and one will have a tenderness for these two first loves even until the end. Afterwards one went afield and sometimes got into queer company, not bad but simply a little common. There was an endless series of Red Indian stories in my school-days, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... get several naps, curled up in the bottom of the boat. At last, about eleven o'clock, just as Pierre was getting very nervous, and dreading every minute that one of the white ladies of Normandy (those dames blanches who are so cruel to the discourteous) should appear to him, or a hobgoblin or a ghost, in all of which he was, like most Norman peasants, a firm believer, to his intense relief he heard the carpenter whistling in the distance, and a minute or two later Smith arrived, hot and tired, and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... Montfort is no hobgoblin ghost in a white sheet, with a pumpkin head! He was a very elegant gentleman in his time, and I believe his favorite wear is black velvet. By the way, his portrait is in the long gallery upstairs. Have you been there, my dears? There are some ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... nor body, but the wall, On which the moonbeams fell in silvery showers, Chequered with all the tracery of the Hall; He shuddered, as no doubt the bravest cowers When he can't tell what 'tis that doth appal. How odd, a single hobgoblin's nonentity Should cause more fear than a whole ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon him, at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of information never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his nest, sat with him by the hour on a ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... newly-born child and placed it in his daughter-in-law's lap and then drove her out of the house and into the jungle. The poor woman walked along until she came to a great, dark forest. In it she met the wife of a hobgoblin, [23] who asked, "Lady, Lady, whose wife are you, and why do you come here? Run away as quickly as you can. For, if my husband the hobgoblin sees you, he will tear you to pieces and gobble you up." The poor woman said ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... 827) a sort of demon is described as “Old Shaggy,” “the horror of the land,” “reared on a heather clump,” “living on the lee side of a stone,” corresponding much to the home and haunts of our Tab-shag. Brogden {113} says “Shag-foal” means “a hobgoblin supposed to haunt certain places,” and a writer in the “Archæological Review” (for January, 1890) says that “Shag” is an old term for an elf, or Brownie, or “goblin dwarf.” He adds, “The Hog-boy, or Howe-boy, of the Orkneys, in Lincolnshire ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... temper, and insists on justice without vindictiveness: wars and revolutions take nothing from his tranquillity, and he sets Hafiz and Shakespeare against Luther and Knox. Careless of formal consistency—"the hobgoblin of little minds"—he balances his aristocratic reserve with a belief in democracy, in progression by antagonism, and in collective wisdom as a limit to collective folly. Leaving his intellectual throne as the spokesman of a practical liberty, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... without — who might tell what spirits roamed abroad, melancholy and malignant? Peering into that dark boundary of forest, the eye vainly endeavoured to pierce the gloom. Fancy peopled its confines with flitting shapes, and beheld a grinning hobgoblin in the grotesque stump of many a half-burnt tree, on which the light momentarily flickered. The ear listened eagerly for sounds in the distant solitude; and one almost expected to hear shrieks of laughter or of terror borne upon the night-wind ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... in the old place, with the old nod and smile to welcome her, but somehow he managed to put things on a different footing—he spared her his long metaphysical discourses, and talked to her more as the child that she was, laughing, joking, and telling her queer hobgoblin and fairy stories, some of which she knew before indeed, but which he related with a quaint simplicity and naivete, which gave them a fresh charm for her; and under this new aspect of things, she brightened up, began to lose her fits of dreaminess, to chatter as in old times, and cheered many an ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... ship for, in its aspect, someway siding with them, as it were; and laugh, too, at the odd-looking blacks, particularly those old scissors-grinders, the Ashantees; and those bed-ridden old knitting women, the oakum-pickers; and almost at the dark Spaniard himself, the central hobgoblin of all. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... answer the purpose was the abode of some spectre or group of spectres. So dexterous was the invention of those who worked upon my apprehensions, that they managed to transform a real into a fictitious being. His name was Palethorp; and Palethorp, in my vocabulary, was synonymous with hobgoblin. The origin of these ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... seen no balloon from which she could have fallen on that spot. When he brought his distracted gaze down, it rested on a child holding on with a brown little paw to the pink satin gown. He had run out of the grass after her. Had Davidson seen a real hobgoblin his eyes could not have bulged more than at this small boy in a dirty white blouse and ragged knickers. He had a round head of tight chestnut curls, very sunburnt legs, a freckled face, and merry eyes. Admonished by his mother to greet the gentleman, he finished off Davidson by addressing ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Scott, who felt highly flattered by the Monk's request, and wrote to him that his ballads were quite at his service. Lewis replied, thanking him for the offer. "A ghost or a witch," he wrote, "is a sine qua non ingredient in all the dishes of which I mean to compose my hobgoblin repast." Later in the same year Lewis came to Edinburgh and was introduced to Scott, who found him an odd contrast to the grewsome horrors of his books, being a cheerful, foppish, round-faced little man, a follower of fashion and an assiduous tuft-hunter. "Mat had queerish eyes," writes his protege: ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... maidens of the Villagree, Skim milke, and sometimes labour in the querne, And bootlesse make the breathlesse huswife cherne, And sometime make the drinke to beare no barme, Misleade night-wanderers, laughing at their harme, Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Pucke, You do their worke, and they shall haue good lucke. Are not you he? Rob. Thou speak'st aright; I am that merrie wanderer of the night: I iest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... course, but I would not let her answer me. "Don't speak a word," I cried, "it will only make your toothache worse; and don't look as if some hobgoblin had jumped up on the kitchen table. I guess I know my duty, and just what kind of a breakfast I will have in the morning, if you sit up all night groaning with the toothache." And I was out of the room before she had more than begun to say ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... himself to be dragged from the shrine. "Ah! Ha! Ha! A surprising fellow! Such activity was never shown by man. Truly Jimbei is of the hobgoblin kind." Jimbei was once more transformed. His costume of priests' attendant had been resumed. The carrying boxes, now much heavier, were ready to shoulder. Gravely he indicated the burden. "Four thousand ryo[u] there; a thousand ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... to recognise that, whatever be their personal convictions, there may be some "soul of goodness" in views diametrically opposed to their own, and, moreover, they must not be scared by what Emerson called that "hobgoblin of little minds"—the charge ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... to fatuity, and conscientiously did the very best he could for her mental and moral welfare, according to his light. Alas! "when the light that is in one is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Jacquelina rewarded his serious efforts with laughter, and flattered him with the pet names of Hobgoblin, Ghoul, Gnome, Ogre, etc. Yet she did not dislike her solemn suitor—she never had taken the matter so seriously as that! And he on his part bore the eccentricities of the elf with matchless patience, for he loved her, as I said, to fatuity—doted on her with a passion that increased with ripening ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... suggested Betty. "Then he wouldn't have anything to do but drag the prince and princess across the stage to the ogre's tower, and the costume could be so hideous that no one could tell whether a human or a hobgoblin ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... deadly sins; gluttony, sloth, and lust, are manifest; the dejectedness of a slave is likewise given him, and the ignorance of one bred up in a desert island. His person is monstrous, and he is the product of unnatural lust; and his language is as hobgoblin as his person; in all things he is distinguished from other mortals. The characters of Fletcher are poor and narrow, in comparison of Shakspeare's; I remember not one which is not borrowed from him; unless you will except that strange mixture of a man in the "King and no King;" so that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... old Hobgoblin Hall, * * * With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... The hobgoblin extravaganza Mr. Prokofieff wrote unfolds itself with rapidity. Theater habitues eavesdropping on the rehearsal mumble in the half-dark that there was never anything like this seen on earth or in heaven. Mr. Anisfeld's scenery explodes like a succession of medieval skyrockets. A phantasmagoria ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Hobgoblin nor foul fiend Can daunt his spirit; He knows he at the end Shall life inherit. Then fancies fly away, He'll fear not what men say; He'll labour night and day To ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... simplicity in reading a novel openly in her mother's presence; he observed that she did not follow the example of the famous Serena, in "The Triumphs of Temper." "Zeluco!" he exclaimed, in an ironical tone of disdain: "why not the charming 'Sorrows of Werter,' or some of our fashionable hobgoblin romances?" ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... as no doubt the bravest cowers, When he can't tell what 'tis that doth appall. How odd a single hobgoblin's nonentity Should cause more fear than a whole host's ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... hide. Robin Goodfellow says, "I'll go put on my devilish robes—I mean my Christmas calf's-skin suit—and then walk to the woods." "I'll put me on my great carnation nose, and wrap me in a rousing calf-skin suit, and come like some hobgoblin." And a character of the 18th century "clears the ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... possess a book of Mr. Max Beerbohm's caricatures, one of which depicts the unfortunate poet in question. To say it represents an utterly incredible hobgoblin is to express in faint and inadequate language the license of its sprawling lines. The authorities thought it strictly safe and scientific to circulate the poet's photograph. They would have clapped me in an asylum if I had asked ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... bloody. Blume, to bloom. Bluntie, a stupid. Blypes, shreds. Bobbed, curtsied. Bocked, vomited. Boddle, a farthing. Bode, look for. Bodkin, tailor's needle. Body, bodie, a person. Boggie, dim. of bog. Bogle, a bogie, a hobgoblin. Bole, a hole, or small recess in the wall. Bonie, bonnie, pretty, beautiful. Bonilie, prettily. Bonnock, v. Bannock. 'Boon, above. Boord, board, surface. Boord-en', board-end. Boortress, elders. Boost, must needs. Boot, payment to the bargain. Bore, a chink, recess. Botch, an angry tumor. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... possessed and entering into the swine, as shown in the cathedral-windows of Strasburg. So, too, in the windows of Chartres Cathedral we see a saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long devil-scaring formula in Latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic, with a little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing from HIS mouth. These examples are but typical of myriads in cathedrals and abbeys and parish churches throughout Europe; and all served to impress upon the popular mind a horror ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... she could think of to do had been done, when there was no other pretext, even after a desperate search for one, that could be used to postpone turning out her light and getting into bed, she had to confess to herself that she was afraid to do it. And with that confession, the whole pack of hobgoblin terrors she had kept at bay so valiantly since shutting her husband's door behind ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... speaking of, and how entirely they resulted from leaving industry to private and unorganized management, just consider the working of our system. Overproduction in special lines, which was the great hobgoblin of your day, is impossible now, for by the connection between distribution and production supply is geared to demand like an engine to the governor which regulates its speed. Even suppose by an error of judgment an excessive production of some commodity. The consequent slackening ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... that far-famed castle, where the ghost of Hamlet's father was wont to walk and tell its tale of horrors to any one it might chance to meet and had time to stop and listen to it. Seen in the bright glow of the morning sun, the castle had a pleasing, cheerful aspect, with nothing of the dark, gloomy, hobgoblin style of architecture about it, such as Mrs Radcliffe delighted to describe. It stands on a narrow neck of land a little to the north of the town, and is of a quadrangular form, with three Moorish-looking towers and a square one of modern style at the four corners. It is surrounded by a fosse and ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... subterranean diapason of a demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal attack upon the hobgoblin—and the massacre began. ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... town were half frightened out of their wits, at the idea of living in such a dismal, pagan-looking place; especially when they got together in the servants' hall in the evening, and compared notes on all the hobgoblin stories they had picked up in the course of the day. They were afraid to venture alone about the forlorn black-looking chambers. My ladies' maid, who was troubled with nerves, declared she could never sleep alone in such a "gashly, rummaging old building;" and the footman, who was a kind-hearted ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... many scores of rotten boroughs; in fact, the whole system was in such a state of congestion that it could not be tolerated any longer, and we had a small, but which might have been a very large revolution, in amending that state of things. Last year you, who had seen this hobgoblin for years, who had thought, I have no doubt, many of you, that I was very unwise and very rash in the mode in which I had proposed to extend the suffrage; last year you found out that it was not so monstrous ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... very remarkable from their size and blackness, which, contrasted with the livid whiteness of the head, made their appearance all the more striking. They were, at least, a foot in diameter, and, seen under such conditions, looked decidedly eerie and hobgoblin-like. All around the combatants were numerous sharks, like jackals round a lion, ready to share the feast, and apparently assisting in the destruction of the huge cephalopod. So the titanic struggle went on, in perfect ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Friend," there are several stories well adapted to one class of children, but entirely unfit for another. In the story called the Hobgoblin, Antonia, a little girl "who has been told a hundred foolish stories by her maid, particularly one about a black-faced goblin," is represented as making a lamentable outcry at the sight of a chimney-sweeper; first she ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... fools. In Tahiti they were called Eatooa, that is, possessed by a divine spirit; and in the Sandwich Isles they were worshipped as men into whom a divinity had entered. In German the plica polonica is called Alpzopf, or hobgoblin's tail. All nations believed that the malign beings which animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated by ceremonies and incantations. The Redskins are always in fear of the assaults of evil spirits, and have recourse to incantations, and to the most absurd sacerdotal rites, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... will you scare your friends with these hobgoblin terrors, (43) bidding us all beware of handsome faces, whilst you yourself—yes, by Apollo, I will swear I saw you at the schoolmaster's (44) that time when both of you were poring over one book, in which you searched for something, you and Critobulus, head to head, shoulder to shoulder ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... is all bosh, and in the same list with the Friday business, and seeing the moon over your left shoulder, and all that string of superstition that has come down to us, or rather, up to us from the Dark Ages, when mankind believed in no end of hobgoblin things." ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... it's very certain a ghost could not have carried you in his arms to your room—it makes me laugh, the very idea! You are not very heavy, but rather too substantial for a ghost, I should think! And he must have been a very smart hobgoblin to know so well which was your room—that seems to me as if he must be an acquaintance of our very earthly-looking castellan. And just as if a ghost could make such a mark upon your wrist! Bah! what a clumsy contrivance! I've read of these amiable spirits ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... matters, either with Aristophanes and Menander in Greek, or with Plautus and Terence in Latin, or with any other in any other tong. But I wil not stand greatly with you in your owne matters. If so be the Faerye Queeue be fairer in your eie than the nine Muses, and Hobgoblin runne away with the garland from Apollo, marke what I saye: and yet I will not say that I thought, but there an end for this once, and fare you well, till God or some good aungell putte you ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... May Night Fantasy" is a moonlit revel of elves caught by a musical reporter, a surreptitious "chiel amang 'em takin' notes." A single hobgoblin bassoon croaks ludicrously away, the pixies darkle and flirt and dance their hearts ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... gouty, that one old plodding brain can outstrip us all. Lord, I beseech thee, may they lie and starve in some miserable spittle, where they may never see the face of any true spirit again, but be perpetually haunted with some church-yard hobgoblin in ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... where it found a sequel in another pipe, that descended to the ground on the opposite side of the wall. Now, on this opposite side was the garden of the prison; in this garden was a watchman, and this watchman was the hobgoblin of Tomlinson's scheme,—"For suppose us safe in the garden," said he, "what shall we ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... truth to the dead. I am going to tell the truth about them. There are three theories by which men account for all phenomena—for everything that happens: First, the supernatural. In the olden time, everything that happened some deity produced, some spirit, some devil, some hobgoblin, some dryad, some fairy, some spook, something except nature. First, then, the supernatural; and a barbarian, looking at the wide, mysterious sea, wandering through the depths of the forest, encountering the wild beasts, troubled ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... two in diameter, bending at right angles just above ground and stretching horizontally, while what were once limbs now grow trunks from the grotesque butt. A remnant of fence like this along an almost obliterated trail in an ancient wood gives a hobgoblin character to the place. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... in the remote ages, which they have interwoven with their own fancies; others upon the exploits and experiences of their ancestors; though the greater number are pure fictions, fairy tales and hobgoblin stories, handed down from generation to generation. It would require a large volume to contain them all, and years to translate them with accuracy. I can therefore only give a few examples from those most frequently narrated, ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden |
