"Witchcraft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... N. sorcery; occult art, occult sciences; magic, the black art, necromancy, theurgy, thaumaturgy^; demonology, demonomy^, demonship^; diablerie [Fr.], bedevilment; witchcraft, witchery; glamor; fetishism, fetichism, feticism^; ghost dance, hoodoo; obi, obiism^; voodoo, voodooism; Shamanism (Esquimaux), vampirism; conjuration; bewitchery, exorcism, enchantment, mysticism, second sight, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... appointed, who had himself suffered from the caustic tongue of the prosecutrix, and so was already prejudiced against her. The defendant, knowing this, turned the tables on her opponent by bringing an accusation of witchcraft against her, and Catherine Kepler was imprisoned and condemned to the torture in July, 1620. Kepler, hearing of the sentence, hurried back from Linz, and succeeded in stopping the completion of the sentence, securing his mother's release the following year, as it was made ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... him doing in the verses) would now give you the notes of birds in trees, and even hens feeding in a farmyard (which was a corner into which I meant to take my companion), and now melt you into grief and pity, or mystify you with witchcraft, or put you into a state of lofty triumph like a conqueror. The phrase of smiting ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Massachusetts with Winthrop in 1630? Here we face, unless I am mistaken, that troublesome but fascinating question of Physical Geography. Climate, soil, food, occupation, religious or moral preoccupation, social environment, Salem witchcraft and Salem seafaring had all laid their invisible hands upon the physical and intellectual endowment of the child born in 1804. Does this make Nathaniel Hawthorne merely an "Englishman with a difference," as Mr. Kipling, born in India, is an "Englishman with a difference"? ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... attack upon Christianity, but we may take it as intended to ridicule magical arts, and those who believed in them. He was likely to feel keenly on this subject, for having married a rich widow, Pudentilla, her relatives accused him of having obtained her by witchcraft, and even dragged him into a court ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... manifesting his power on the deceptive and miracle-working line is modern Spiritualism. Multitudes of people of all classes are believers in this soul-destroying doctrine. The system is generally acknowledged to be but a modern form of what was anciently styled witchcraft, necromancy, magic, etc., while the mediums of to-day are of the same class as those formerly known as "witches," "sorcerers," "magicians." This they themselves often admit. The system is so well known both in doctrine and in its pernicious effects that I will not devote further space to the ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... crossed in love, seeks the aid of the witches to aid him in his work of vengeance on the woman who has cast him off. The story is told with great vividness, and the author has made an effective use of all the malevolent powers of witchcraft, seconded by the elemental forces of thunder and lightning, to aid him in telling a story of great dramatic power. Leet Livvy, on the other hand, is as sober and restrained as one of the verse-tales of Crabbe, and the only resemblance ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... forth the chief of the State to woo and wed the reluctant sea; but the stormy bride of the Doge is the bowing slave of the Sultan. She comes to his feet with the treasures of the world—she bears him from palace to palace—by some unfailing witchcraft she entices the breezes to follow her {5} and fan the pale cheek of her lord—she lifts his armed navies to the very gates of his garden—she watches the walls of his serai—she stifles the intrigues of his ministers—she quiets the scandals of his courts—she extinguishes ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... here and there, in dusty corners, he muttered, "What on earth did he mean? The fortune-teller—how could he know of that? There's witchcraft at work somewhere. But there aren't any papers in this mill. I know it. I ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... there is a devil in this pile of blotted papers. You have read them, and know what I mean,—that conception in which I endeavored to embody the character of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the written records of witchcraft. Oh, I have a horror of what was created in my own brain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that dark idea a sort of material existence! Would they were out of ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Sevres set only sufficient for twelve! Truly it is untoward, but I wish, my dear aunt, you would not let it trouble you so much. If you will allow the two extra plates to be placed before Bertha and myself, we will endeavor to render them invisible by our witchcraft. Do compliment us by permitting ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... thought of the old tales of witchcraft—the thing was so utterly unlike any animal he knew, and he tightened his hold on the reins for fear of the fear of his horse. Educated man as he was, he admits he asked himself if this could be something that his horse ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... will bestow it most plentifully, if you happen to feel any desire after more. I hate to be ungrateful; you shall have no opportunity to utter your musty maxim upon me—'That the sin of ingratitude is worse than the sin of witchcraft.' You shall have weight for weight, measure for measure, chicken; aye, my market woman, and a lumping pennyworth. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... He is obliged to give a strict account of himself; and, if so unfortunate as to lose a chief, or other great personage, is sure to pay the penalty by parting with his own life. The duties of the "Medicine Man" among the Indians are so mixed up with witchcraft and jugglery, so filled with the pretence of savage quackery, so completely rude and unfounded as to principle, that it is impossible to define the practice for any useful end. About five years since, a young gentleman ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... see how it is you know Shakespeare and everything, and have learned so much since you left school; which always seemed to me witchcraft before,—part of your general uncanniness," ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... American history. He was born in England in 1652, but came to America while still a child. He graduated from Harvard College in 1671 and finally became a justice of the peace. He was instrumental in the Salem witchcraft decision, but later bitterly repented. He made in 1697 a public confession of his share in the matter and begged that God would "not visit the sin... upon ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Teachers to the feast. Fourteen Chiefs, in turn, made speeches to the assembled multitude; the drift of all being, that war and fighting be given up on Tanna,—that no more people be killed by Nahak, for witchcraft and sorcery were lies,—that Sacred Men no longer profess to make wind and rain, famine and plenty, disease and death,—that the dark Heathen talk of Tanna should cease,—that all here present should adopt the Worship of Jehovah as ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... vervain, therefore, as the enchanter's plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in their incantations, yet, as Aubrey says, it 'hinders witches from their will,' a circumstance to which Drayton further refers when he speaks of the vervain as ''gainst witchcraft much avayling.'" Now we understand why the children of Shakespeare's time hung vervain and dill with a horseshoe over ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... 20 — we had seen mountains on the west and north, but a long way off: Now the whole of that part of the horizon seemed to be filled with colossal mountain masses, which were right over us. What in the world was the meaning of this? Was it witchcraft? I am sure I began to think so for a moment. I would readily have taken my most solemn oath that I had never seen that landscape before in my life. We had now gone the full distance, and according to the beacons we had passed, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... all accounts, while there are, among the numerous tribes, diversities and degrees of superstition, there is yet, throughout the native pagan population of Africa, a marked general agreement of belief in the survival of the soul, in spectres, divination, and witchcraft; and there is a general similarity of funeral usages. Early travellers tell us that the Bushmen conceived the soul to be immortal, and as impalpable as a shadow, and that they were much afraid of the return of deceased spirits to haunt them. They were accustomed to pray to their departed countrymen ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... I said faintly, and the words of Anthea came unbidden to mind, "to sleep—oh! who would forget? You plead merely with some old dream of me—not all me, you know. Gold is but witchcraft. And as for sorrow—spread me a magical table in this nettle-garden, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... "Get the priests of the locally venerated gods to put him on trial for blasphemy, heresy, impersonating a prophet, practicing witchcraft without a license, or any other ecclesiastical crimes you or they can think of. Then, after he's been given a scrupulously fair trial, have the soldiers of King Yoorkerk behead him, and stick his head up over a big sign, in all native languages, 'Rakkeed the False ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... this temper of mind that I consider the subject of witchcraft. When I hear the relations that are made from all parts of the world, not only from Norway and Lapland, from the East and West Indies, but from every particular nation in Europe, I cannot forbear thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce with evil spirits, as that ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... appeared, and was instantly secured, and placed in close confinement. On the next day he was brought before the assembled conclave in the chapter-house, and examined. His defence was unavailing. I charged him with the terrible crime of witchcraft, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... being offended, stopped the volcano of Antuco. This silly belief is curious, because it shows that experience has taught them to observe that there exists a relation between the suppressed action of the volcanos, and the trembling of the ground. It was necessary to apply the witchcraft to the point where their perception of cause and effect failed; and this was the closing of the volcanic vent. This belief is the more singular in this particular instance because, according to Captain Fitz Roy, there is reason to believe ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... demon? Well, in those parts they have were-tigers, or think they have, and I must say that in this case, so far as sworn and uncontested evidence went, they had every ground for thinking so. However, as we gave up witchcraft prosecutions about three hundred years ago, we don't like to have other people keeping on our discarded practices; it doesn't seem respectful to our mental and ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... prettiness and pride; That oftener does her giddy fancies change, Than glittering dew-drops in the sun do colours— Now, shame upon it! was our reason given For such a use; to be thus puff'd about? Sore there is something more than witchcraft in them, That masters ev'n ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... the authorised test for a witch. If she sank and was drowned, she was innocent of the charge of witchcraft; if she swam on the surface, she was guilty, and liable to the legal penalty for her crime. Either way, in nine out of ten cases, the end was death: for very few thought of troubling themselves to save one who proved her innocence after this ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Hans stood the lay brother who had accompanied him. In his mind there were dark thoughts. "This cannot be a true miracle," he thought, "since it is revealed to malefactors. This does not come from God, but has its origin in witchcraft and is sent hither by Satan. It is the Evil One's power that is tempting us and compelling us to see that which has ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... certain crimes were also subject to the same form of execution adulterating and uttering base coins (Alan Napier, cutler in Glasgow, was strangled and burned at the stake in December 1602) sorcery, witchcraft, incantation, poisoning (Bailie Paterson suffered a like fate in December 1607). For bestiality John Jack was strangled on the Castle Hill (September 1605), and the innocent animal participator in his crime ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... of the other stories considered in this connection, and there can be no doubt as to whence the Hroar-Helgi story acquired it. The witch in the saga is called a "seikona." Concerning the kind of witchcraft practised by a "seikona," P.A. Munch has the following: "Som den virksomste, men og som den skjendigste, af al Troldom ansaa vore Forfdre den saakaldte Seid. Hvorledes den udvedes, er ikke ret klart fremstillet ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... Dubiety. Now. Humility. Poetics. Summum Bonum. A Pearl, a Girl. Speculative. White Witchcraft. Bad Dreams Inapprehensiveness. Which? The Cardinal and the Dog. The Pope and the Net. The Bean-Feast. Muckle-mouth Meg. Arcades Ambo. The Lady and the Painter. Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. Beatrice Signorini. Flute-music, with an ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the hardest of experiences, and so far as the crediting of statements is concerned, to at first believe everything that is not true, and reject most that is. The supernatural, the phenomena of alleged witchcraft and diabolism, and of "luck," "hoodoo," "fate," etc., find ready disciples among those who reject disdainfully the results of the working of natural law. When the railroads were first built across the plains the Indians repeatedly attempted to stop moving trains by holding the ends ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... have faith in witchcraft?" he ejaculated, incredulously. "Why, girl, that's positively against the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... taken up for dead, and the priest vanished as silently as he had come. The soldiers of the watch found Esmeralda, and said, "This is the sorceress who has stabbed our captain." So Esmeralda was brought to trial on the charge of witchcraft, and every day the priest from Notre Dame ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... attributed vaguely to him, he could but wonder whether it had been indeed thus, and the shadow of a fancied crime abode with him. People turned against their favourite, whose former charms must now be counted only as the fascinations of witchcraft. It was as if the wine poured out for them had soured in the cup. The golden age had indeed come back for a while:—golden was it, or gilded only, after all? and they were too sick, or at least too serious, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of evil example. Again, the study of history, and especially of that of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, leaves no shadow of doubt on my mind that the belief in the reality of possession and of witchcraft, justly based, alike by Catholics and Protestants, upon this and innumerable other passages in both the Old and New Testaments, gave rise, through the special influence of Christian ecclesiastics, to the most horrible persecutions and judicial murders of thousands ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Dunstan had a curious clock, which was considered a very wonderful piece of mechanism, almost a work of witchcraft. Standing out on the side of the church, in full view of the passers-by, were two figures of Hercules, holding clubs, with which they struck on two bells the hours and the quarters. All children took delight in watching ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... this, Margaret—I got out of bed, and dragged myself to the window, expecting to see her dead and shattered at the bottom. There she stood, cool as crystal, shaking the leaves from her dress. She looked up and saw me, and if ever I saw an elfish look—do you believe in witchcraft, Margaret? my nurse did; she told me some strange tales when I was ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... bully of the night. He had a whistle in keeping with his breadth of shoulder, and he used it like a mating cock. He whistled my tune, the signal. It was not accident, I think, neither was it design. It was his unconscious, blundering black art, his intuition that was witchcraft. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... old woman, called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly, very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet, and the other a fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon her for the sin of witchcraft. And she was imprisoned for a week in the steeple of the parish church, and sparingly supplied with food, and not permitted to sleep, until she herself became as much persuaded of her being a witch as her accusers; and in this lucid and happy state of mind was brought forth to make a clean ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish? Contemplation Chelas and Lay Chelas Ancient Opinions upon Psychic Bodies The Nilgiri Sannyasis Witchcraft on the Nilgiris Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes Mahatmas and Chelas The Brahmanical Thread Reading in a Sealed Envelope The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... own roofs, on the plea that death would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, obtained secure possession of the entire island, with no reversionary fear over our heads, (as, up to Waterloo, we always had,) that possibly at a general ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... ill. My aim, therefore, has been rather to escape disaster than to achieve any brilliant success. The charm of State Trials lies largely in matters of detail:—that Hale allowed two old women to be executed for witchcraft; that Lord Russell was obviously a traitor; that an eminent judge did not murder a woman in the early part of his career; and that a sea-captain did murder his brother in order to inherit his wealth, are in themselves facts of varying importance. What the trials ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... effected this through the influence which a belief in her supernatural power and celestial inspiration exerted upon the army of Charles; and as, on the other hand, the cruel fate she herself personally encountered from her enemies, was the consequence of an opposite belief in her witchcraft, or possession by the devil; the unhappy maiden presents herself to us, in a strictly historical point of view, as one of those wild visionaries whom solitude occasionally rears, become suddenly the sport of the tumultuous feelings of two rival hosts, elevated by the one to a saint and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... 31 deg. 40' south, northeast of Montevideo. Frightful storms had buffeted the little ships about for weary weeks together, and all hands thought they were the victims of some magician on board, perhaps the 'Italianate' Doughty, or else of native witchcraft from the shore. The experienced old pilot, who was a Portuguese, explained that the natives had sold themselves to Devils, who were kinder masters than the Spaniards, and that 'now when they see ships they cast sand into the air, whereof ariseth a most gross thick ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... right hand I sat, being filled with joy, as well as rather too much drink, began boasting to me of the glories of his tribe, of his possessions, of the valor of his warriors, and above all of the great wisdom and learning of his medicine-man, who was beyond all wizards, and upon whom witchcraft was powerless, and who prepared a poison for such of the chief's enemies as it was not expedient to openly destroy; and this poison, he explained to me, was of a secret and mysterious nature, and unknown to any ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... repercussion, by means of which any injury done to, or any mark made upon, the astral body in the course of its wanderings will be reproduced in the physical body. We find traces of this in some of the evidence given at trials for witchcraft in the middle ages, in which it is not infrequently stated that some wound given to the witch when in the form of a dog or a wolf was found to have appeared in the corresponding part of her human body. The same strange law has sometimes led to an ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... analogous to those in music, and rendered it altogether worthy to utter the manifold thoughts and feelings of himself and his lady Christabel. He even ventures, with an exquisite sense of solemn strangeness and licence (for there is witchcraft going forward), to introduce a couplet of blank verse, itself as mystically and beautifully modulated as anything in the music of Gluck ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Destroy their witchcraft and idolatry, and on their ruins inculcate the divine doctrines of Christ, and we shall soon see that they will possess sentiments that exalt the human character, and that nothing has contributed more to their mental degradation than ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Kent's oil-house; he wanted to be secreted until we sailed, as he wished to make his escape; for, he said, his master wanted to cut his head off, or to make him chop nut, i.e. to oblige him to eat a poisonous nut, which produces speedy death, because he had free-mason (meaning witchcraft), and that his master had been sick ever since he had last ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... The building was about one hundred years old, and was occupied, 1695, by Alexander Smith as a tavern. The estate at one time was owned by Lieut.-Governor William Stoughton, who was acting governor and took a prominent part in persecuting those accused of witchcraft. He was a man of large wealth, and devised a portion of his property to Harvard College, Stoughton Hall being ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... belief of the ignorant Russians, or Spaniards, or Portuguese, or other European people, and these unhappy blacks," exclaimed Harry one day when we were discussing the subject. The fearful curse of the country, however, is the belief in witchcraft. When a person is seized with illness, he always believes that some enemy has caused it, and is not satisfied until the witch or wizard is discovered, who is immediately compelled to swallow poison, or is ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... a law of degeneracy, of a "fatal drift towards the worse," is as obsolete as astrology or the belief in witchcraft. The human race has become hopeful, sanguine—SEELEY, Rede Lecture, 1887. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... at present), but from finding in it a striking proof of the possible effect on the imagination, from an idea violently and suddenly impressed on it. I had been reading Bryan Edwards's account of the effects of the Oby witchcraft on the Negroes in the West Indies, and Hearne's deeply interesting anecdotes of similar workings on the imagination of the Copper Indians (those of my readers who have it in their power will be well repaid for the trouble of referring to those works for the passages alluded to); ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... (For Outdoor or Indoor Production) Chorus of Spirits of the Old Manse Prologue by the Muse of Hawthorne In Witchcraft Days (First Episode) Dance Interlude Merrymount (Second ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... other? She like a galvanized corpse out of some Hoffman's Tale—he the preacher of feminist gospel for all the world, and a super-revolutionist besides! This ancient, painted mummy with unfathomable eyes, and this burly, bull-necked, deferential...what was it? Witchcraft, fascination.... "It's for her money," ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... scholars, Walsingham and Whethamstede, Otterbourne and Elmham, inditing bald chronicles; students applying their minds to scholastic philosophy; divines confounding their wits with theological mysteries; and men with inclinations to science, as Thomas Northfield, losing themselves in witchcraft, divination and the barbarous jargon of astrology, while rendering themselves, at any moment, liable to be apprehended by order of the doctors and notaries who formed the Board of Commissioners ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the middle ages, and how pertinaciously it held its ground through all the changes and development of society, until at length we find all the circumstances of the ancient priapic orgies, as well as the mediaeval additions combined in that great and extensive superstition,—witchcraft. At all times the initiated were believed to have obtained thereby powers which were not possessed by the uninitiated, and they only were supposed to know about the form of invocation of the deities who were ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... told them that the King of England had ordered the governor of New York to poison them. This invention had great effect. The Iroquois capital, Onondaga, was filled with wild rumors. The credulous savages were tossed among doubts, suspicions, and fears. Some were in terror of poison, and some of witchcraft. They believed that the rival European nations had leagued to destroy them and divide their lands, and that they were bewitched by ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... for he seemeth Much too martial—nor a soldier Either, as he looks too modest; He may be a necromancer, An adept in all dark witchcraft, Alchemy, and other black arts. Wait, I'll catch thee;" and he turned their Talk to hidden buried treasures, And to midnight exorcisms. "Yes, my friend, here near the city Lies a sandbank in the river. At the time of Fridolinus Heaps of gold coin ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... of love, too, Ariel beats old god Cupid all to nothing. For it is through some witchcraft of his that Ferdinand and Miranda are surprised into a mutual rapture; so that Prospero notes at once how "at the first sight they have chang'd eyes," and "are both in either's power." All which is indeed just what Prospero wanted; yet he is himself fairly startled at the result: that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Mount Holly, about eight miles from this place, nearly three hundred people were gathered together to see an experiment or two tried on some persons accused of witchcraft. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... and shave the head for the death of a relative, in spite of Kabir's contempt of the custom. Still, the sect has in the past afforded to the uneducated classes a somewhat higher ideal of spiritual life than the chaotic medley of primitive superstitions and beliefs in witchcraft and devil worship, from which the Brahmans, caring only for the recognition of their social supremacy, made no attempt to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... compact, the articles to which are absolute servility of the Devil on the one part, and complete possession of the soul of Faust on the other. Faust is little better than a wizard from the first, for if knowledge had given him what he: sought, he had never had recourse to witchcraft! Helen, however, partakes in some sort of the triumphant nobility of an avenging deity who has cozened hell itself, and not in vain. In the whole majesty of her great wrong, she loses the originally vulgar character of the witch. It is not as the consequence of a poison-speck in her ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... o' cairts, an' bogles, an' witchcraft, an' astronomy, but sic a thing as this ye bring me noo, I never did hear tell o'! What can the warl' be comin' till!—An' dis the father o' ye, laddie, ken what ye spen' yer midnicht hoors gangin' teachin' to the lass-bairns o' ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... divine on the one hand, nor human on the other, but which are outside of nature. This is the demoniacal view, or that which supposes that evil spirits, departed souls, or spirits neither good nor bad, surround the earth, and can be reached by magic, witchcraft, sorcery, magnetism, or what is now called Spiritualism. This theory supposes that the works of Jesus were performed by the aid of spiritual beings. The ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of "witches," however, went on in Scotland and in England long after toleration had been secured for Nonconformists. As late as 1712 a woman was executed for witchcraft in England.[67] ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... to a lyneage of the name of Maitland, there is a loch called the Dowloch, of old resorted to with much superstition, as medicinal both for men and beasts, and that with such ceremonies, as are shrewdly suspected to have been begun with witchcraft, and increased afterward by magical directions: For, burying of a cloth, or somewhat that did relate to the bodies of men and women, and a shackle, or teather, belonging to cow or horse; and these being cast into the loch, if they did float, it was taken for a good omen of recovery, and a part ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... that a system exists amongst bakers, which we described many years ago in these pages. There are three towns, triangularly arranged, about ten miles from each other. One or more bakers in each has a van, in which he sends bread every day to the other two. As there is no witchcraft in the making of bread, it might be as well for the inhabitants of each town to be supplied by the bakers of their own place exclusively, and then the expense of the carriage would be saved. Such, however, is the keenness of competition in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... Hands; and I find I am likely to do nothing else, for I know not how long yet to come: because, if I lay the Book down, it comes after me.——When it has dwelt all Day long upon the Ear, It takes Possession, all Night, of the Fancy.——It has Witchcraft in every Page of it: but it is the Witchcraft of Passion and Meaning. Who is there that will not despise the false, empty Pomp of the Poets, when he observes in this little, unpretending, mild Triumph of Nature, the whole Force of Invention and Genius, creating new Powers of Emotion, and transplanting ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... the magic of this music, he had heard of the witchcraft these weak chicken-people could weave, of their strange, magic power to steal strong men's minds from them and make them like children before wolves. But he had never heard this music with his own ears. He looked at them, his eyes strangely bright. "You know I cannot ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... the Scotch judge—pursued under divers forms by the supposed apparition of a man he had hanged, until he died of fright—as recorded by Sir Walter Scott in Demonology and Witchcraft. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... of the house and her daughter had similar bags attached to their necks, containing charms, which, they said, prevented the witches having power to harm them. The belief in witchcraft is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of the Alemtejo, and I believe of other provinces of Portugal. This is one of the relies of the monkish system, the aim of which, in all countries where it has existed, seems to have been to beset the minds of the people, that they might be more easily ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... (St. Pernell) came to be looked upon, in this country, as the symbol of bad health under all its forms. Now, if we suppose that the poet mistook, and wrote "soster" instead of "doughter," we immediately understand the drift of the latter part of the spell, which was, not only to drive away witchcraft, but guard all the folks in that house ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... the people, or to abuse their understanding by exercise of the pretended arts of witchcraft, conjuration, enchantment, or sorcery, or by pretended prophecies, shall be punished by ducking and whipping, at the discretion of a ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... ten or fifteen feet in the air. And between them he very soon made out great bustle and activity. Many figures were moving about. They looked like dwarfs at first, gnomes at play in a little world made out of witchcraft. But Bateese was sending the canoe nearer with powerful strokes, and the figures grew taller, and the spouts of flame higher. Then he knew what was happening. The Boulain men were taking advantage of the cool hours of the night ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... that of gooseherd; while those original minds who in other circumstances would take to authorship or painting have to wait, if they are peasants, till they are old, when they can take to fortune-telling and witchcraft. Herr Riehl admits that the lot of women when they are peasants is not a happy one. He does not make the admission because he thinks it of much consequence, but because it illustrates his argument that ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... which, though not uncommon in those days, is one which we find it difficult to realise at the present time. His mother, Catherine Kepler, had attained undesirable notoriety by the suspicion that she was guilty of witchcraft. Years were spent in legal investigations, and it was only after unceasing exertions on the part of the astronomer for upwards of a twelvemonth that he was finally able to procure her ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... intrepidity—and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he knew was this—that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... vibration near her face. Thrice o'er her brow she drew her languid hand, That, if it were a dream, she might dispel The gay enchantment; and thrice murmured o'er The spells learned of her nurse in infancy, Which would all witchcraft render innocent; But that great cavern of the northern world Was not by nurse's spells to be dissolved, Growing more wond'rous, as she ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... cried Edward. "She—what shall I call her? my mistress, my sweetheart, if you like—let the name be anything 'wife' it should have been, and shall be—I left her, and have left her and have not looked on her for many months. I thought I was tired of her—I was under odd influences—witchcraft, it seems. I could believe in witchcraft now. Brutal selfishness is the phrase for my conduct. I have found out my villany. I have not done a day's sensible work, or had a single clear thought, since I parted from her. She has had brain-fever. She has been in the hospital. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were then, as they still are, firm believers in supernatural influence working visibly among men, they do not appear to have ever been slaves to the terrible delusion of witchcraft. Among the Anglo-Irish we find the first instance of that mania which appears in our history, and we believe the only one, if we except the Presbyterian witches Of Carrickfergus, in the early part of the eighteenth century. The scene of the ancient delusion was Kilkenny, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... call me James Fitz-James. Thus watch I o'er insulted laws, Thus learn to right the injured cause.' Then, in a tone apart and low,— 'Ah, little traitress! none must know What idle dream, what lighter thought What vanity full dearly bought, Joined to thine eye's dark witchcraft, drew My spell-bound steps to Benvenue In dangerous hour, and all but gave Thy Monarch's life to mountain glaive!' Aloud he spoke: 'Thou still cost hold That little talisman of gold, Pledge of my faith, Fitz-James's ring,— What seeks fair Ellen ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and the tender mercies of English mortgagees before the 1st August, 1840, arrives. And ought these parties not to be thankful? Unquestionably they ought. Ingratitude, we are told, is as the sin of witchcraft, and although the table of exports exhibits our fair island as hastening to a state of ruin, and the despatch tells us that "by the united influence of mock philanthropy, religious cant, and humbug," a reformed ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to him, which is richly adorned within. The Sovereign Court of the Inquisition is held at Madrid, the President whereof is called the Inquisitor General. They judge without allowing any Appeal for four Sorts of Crimes, viz. Heresy, Polygamy, Sodomy and Witchcraft, and when any are convicted, 'tis ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... common fault of those who think they have more self-sufficiency than the vulgar. So was I formerly minded; and if I heard anybody speak either of ghosts coming back, or of the prophecy of coming things, of spells, of witchcraft, or of any other ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... come up last of all, and the witnesses would all be examined before he himself was called to make his defence. He was nervous and anxious. Even while he was sitting there, Giovanni might be finding out some new accusation against him or the officer of archers might be accusing him of witchcraft and of having a compact with the devil himself. He was innocent, but he had broken the law, and no doubt many an innocent man had sat on that same bench before him, who had never again returned to his home. It ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... restraint, and he passed his last two years in a private asylum, near Bonn. Periods of complete sanity, when he received his friends and wrote to them, alternated with periods of absolute despair. Under the weight of his affliction, his soul, like Giles Corey's body in the Salem witchcraft times, was gradually crushed to death, and at the age of forty-six he died. Clara, who had been away on a concert tour to earn much-needed funds, hastened back from London just in time to give him her own arms as his resting-place ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... foibles fifty-fold, and he, though not liking it, of course not, would yet have preserved a certain manly equanimity. How was it Lady Camper had such power over him?—a lady concealing seventy years with a rouge-box or paint-pot! It was witchcraft in its worst character. He had for six months at her bidding been actually living the life of a beast, degraded in his own esteem; scorched by every laugh he heard; running, pursued, overtaken, and as it were scored or branded, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... convince you and quite certainly rid you of the idea of witchcraft, you can stay here, if you please, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... country lads and lasses of merry England. Their names are borrowed from popular romance, which, if somewhat French in its tone, was certainly in no way antagonistic to the legends of Sherwood nor to the agency of witchcraft and fairy lore[289]. Even Alken, in spite of his didactic bent, is as far as possible from being the conventional 'wise shepherd,' and certainly no Arcadian ever displayed such knowledge as he of the noble art, while his lecture on the blast of hag-hunting, though savouring somewhat ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... forerunners in American art, Martin, Ryder and Fuller who, in their painting, may be linked not without relativity to our artists in literary imagination, Hawthorne and Poe. Fuller is conspicuously like Hawthorne, not by his appreciation of witchcraft merely, but by his feeling for those eery presences which determine the fates of men and women in their time. Martin is the purer artist for me since he seldom or never resorted to the literary emotion in the sense ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... can remember when a child the maids[38] Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, As silly women use, and tell me stories Of Witches—Make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft," And in conclusion show me in the Bible, The old Family-Bible with the pictures in it, The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, Which so possest my fancy, being a child, That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came And sat upon my pillow. I am relapsing into infancy,— ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in line 535): a mysterious Thracian divinity, afterwards regarded as the goddess of witchcraft: for these reasons a fit companion for Cotytto and a fit patroness of Comus. Jonson calls her "the mistress of witches." She was supposed to send forth at night all kinds of demons and phantoms, and to wander about with the souls of the dead and ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Beetle would have fallen upon him, for that song was barred utterly—anathema—the sin of witchcraft. But seeing what he had wrought, they danced round him in silence, waiting till it pleased him to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... replied the man; "he is very ill at ease. The leeches are at a stand, and many of his household suspect foul practice-witchcraft, or worse." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... raids on houses during the absence of parents, and the forcible seizure and re-vaccination of children left to answer the door, can be prevented simply by abolishing the half-crown and all similar follies, paying, not for this or that ceremony of witchcraft, but for immunity from disease, and paying, too, in a rational way. The officer with a fixed salary saves himself trouble by doing his business with the least possible interference with the private citizen. The man paid by the job loses money by not forcing his job on the public ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... attended even-song at the cathedral. I shall not say what I felt when the white-surpliced boy choir entered, winding down those vaulted aisles, or when I heard for the first time that intoned service, with all its "witchcraft of harmonic sound." I sat quite by myself in a high carved-oak seat, and the hour was passed in a trance of serene delight. I do not have many opinions, it is true, but papa says I am always strong ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... vellum; Fine copies of Works from the Presses of Caxton, Machlinia, Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Julyan Notary, Verard, etc.; an extensive Collection of Old English Poetry; Romances; Historical and Theological Tracts; early Voyages and Travels; curious Treatises on Witches and Witchcraft; some of the earliest Dictionaries and Vocabularies in the English Language, etc. Likewise several Manuscripts on vellum, most beautifully illuminated, etc.' The number of lots in this sale was sixteen hundred and sixty-five, and the sum realised three thousand ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... masses endeavoured to maintain the tribal unity, notwithstanding the agencies which were at work to break it down. On the other hand, the first rudiments of knowledge which appeared at an extremely remote epoch, when they confounded themselves with witchcraft, also became a power in the hands of the individual which could be used against the tribe. They were carefully kept in secrecy, and transmitted to the initiated only, in the secret societies of witches, shamans, and priests, which we find among all savages. By the same time, wars ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... It is written in the Decretals (XXVI, qu. v, can. Sortes): "We decree that the casting of lots, by which means you make up your mind in all your undertakings, and which the Fathers have condemned, is nothing but divination and witchcraft. For which reason we wish them to be condemned altogether, and henceforth not to be mentioned among Christians, and we forbid the practice thereof ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... beseech of you, as you love life and happiness, do not say aught against Mr. Parris or witchcraft. We stand on the brink of something terrible, and no one knows what the end ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... Drummond, mounted on other people's backs, used to charge each other like knights in the tilt-yard, to the monarch's great amusement. The following is an instance of the same kind, taken from Webster upon Witchcraft. The author is speaking of the faculty ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... to the mosque. Here the Moros had rallied for the last time, trusting in what their captain-general [condestable] had told them, that they were not to retreat until they saw him fall. He believed, by some witchcraft or other, that our bullets could not injure him; and he had had proof of this, for once a ball had broken the bone of his leg, crippling him, but without breaking the skin or drawing blood. In this confidence, he came out with his men to defy us, but Captain Zubire at once leveled his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... world has emerged from its blindness and ignorance by the innate force of the mind. Reason, the great magician, has uplifted its wand; and lo, the creatures of night disappear! It has dispelled the foolish old notions of magic, witchcraft, and miracles. It has overcome the spirit of persecution, the childish conception of original sin, and the doctrine of eternal punishment. It has put an end to bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and all the lower forms of vicious pleasure. It has secularized politics, overthrown ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... grounds about the house or in the neighboring fields. The awful stillness oftentimes of summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of gray or misty afternoons,—these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods, into the desert air, I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in them. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. Obstinately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny, sweeping them ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... deer, wolves, and wild boars, was also filled by popular imagination with demons and imps. Charms, spells, and incantations formed the most real and living part of the national faith; and many of these survived into Christian times as witchcraft. Some of them, and of the early myths, even continue to be repeated in the folk-lore of the present day. Such are the legends of the Wild Huntsman and of Wayland Smith. Indeed, heathendom had a strong hold over the common English mind long after the public adoption ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... nearly knocked down my good Eddi when we first met him. Eddi loathed it. It used to sniff at his thin legs and cough at him. I can't say I ever took much notice of it (I was not fond of animals), till one day Eddi came to me with a circumstantial account of some witchcraft that Meon worked. He would tell the seal to go down to the beach the last thing at night, and bring him word of the weather. When it came back, Meon might say to his slaves, "Padda thinks we shall have wind tomorrow. Haul up the boats!" I spoke to ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... one trembled and obeyed. To enter into a detail of all his cruelties would fill volumes; it will be sufficient to mention the last act of his life. His mother died, and he declared that she had perished by witchcraft. Hundreds and hundreds were impaled, and, at last, tired of these slow proceedings, he ordered out his army to an indiscriminate slaughter over the whole country, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... evensong at the cathedral. I shall not say what I felt when the white-surpliced boy choir entered, winding down those vaulted aisles, or when I heard for the first time that intoned service, with all its 'witchcraft of harmonic sound.' I sat quite by myself in a high carved oak seat, and the hour was passed in a trance of serene delight. I do not have many opinions, it is true, but papa says I am always strong on sentiments; nevertheless, I shall not attempt to tell even what ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a kind of witchcraft,' he said.... 'I should think you might go on the stage and make a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... in his youth while he was a scholar in the house of Giovanni Resta at Pavia. He searches the pages of Hector Boethius, Nicolaus Donis, Rugerus, Petrus Toletus, Leo Africanus, and other chroniclers of the marvellous, for tales of witchcraft, prodigies, and monstrous men and beasts, and devotes a whole chapter to chiromancy,[122] a subject with which he had occupied his plenteous leisure when he was waiting for patients at Sacco. The diagram of the human hand given by him does not differ greatly from that ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... in all, with your life, and know that, by and large, Heaven has been rather undeservedly kind to you," says Manuel, sighing. "Yes, Freydis, yes, you may believe me that such are the real joys of life; and that such pleasures are more profitably pursued than are the idle gaieties of sorcery and witchcraft, which indeed at our age, if you will permit me to speak thus frankly, dear friend, are ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... while from the court, he was soon recalled and reinstated in all his former dignities. This melancholy infatuation of the king is imputed by the writers of that age to sorcery on the part of the favorite. [4] But the only witchcraft which he used, was the ascendency of a strong ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... may be further inferred from the fact, that of the thirty-six executions ordered by him in the same city, "one was a blackamoor and two were witches, who were condemned by the law of nature, for there was no positive law against witchcraft [in Ireland] in those days." That defect was soon supplied, however, by the statute 27th of Elizabeth, "against witchcraft and sorcery." Sir John Perrott, successor to Drury, trod in the same path, as we judge from the charge of severity against ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... publicly that every period of life has its privileges, and that even the most despicable creatures alive may find some pleasures. Now observe this comment; who are the most despicable creatures? Certainly, old women. What pleasure can an old woman take? Only witchcraft. I think this argument as clear as any of the devout Bishop of Cloyne's metaphysics: this being decided in a full congregation of saints, only such atheists as you and Lady Fanny can deny it. I own all the ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... its royal road to divorce. On 29th January, Chapuys, ignorant of Anne's miscarriage, was retailing to his master a court rumour that Henry intended to marry again. The King was reported to have said that he had been seduced by witchcraft when he married his second queen, and that the marriage was null for this reason, and because God would not permit them to have male issue.[961] There was no peace for her who supplanted her mistress. Within six months of her marriage Henry's roving fancy had given her cause for jealousy, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... it?" she demanded. "As if I hadn' suffered enough in mind a'ready, but you must come pokin' money into my oven and atween me an' my children! Be you mad, or only wicked? Or is it witchcraft you'd be layin' on us? . . . Take up your gold, however you came by it, an' fetch your shadow off my doorstep, or I'll—" She advanced on poor Nicky-Nan, who backed out to the side gate and into the lane before her wrath, and found himself of a sudden taken on both flanks: on the one by Mrs Climoe, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... tender and delicate, yet have not much strength; nor do they afford great marks of genius. The softness of his verses is denominated by the Duke of Buckingham, Sedley's Witchcraft. It was an art too successful in those days to propagate the immoralities of the times, but it must be owned that in point of chastity he excels Dorset, and Rochester; who as they conceived lewdly, wrote in plain English, and did not give themselves any trouble to wrap up their ribbaldry in a dress ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... confessed himself addicted to witchcraft in my hearing," said the doctor, who had remained ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... to think; I am nonplussed. Witchcraft, though not in the older sense of the word, is still no doubt exercised by young ladies, and there are certain improvement commissions that undertake, for a suitable consideration, the—ah—redecoration of feminine architecture, or even the partial ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... then to read a morning and an evening paper—two or three, perhaps—is beyond comprehension. And to have heard news from every quarter of the globe before it was more than a few hours old would have seemed witchcraft. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... many things, my dear M. Maxence," he replied; "and yet, as I do not wish to be suspected of witchcraft, I will tell you where all my science comes from. At the time when your house was closed to me, after seeking for a long time some means of hearing from your sister, I discovered at last that she had for her music-teacher an old Italian, the Signor ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... sitting. He bit at the spot struck, as a dog does at a stick or stone thrown at him; then leaping away, broke through the opening circle and escaped unhurt. The men were afraid to attack him, perhaps on account of their belief in witchcraft. When the circle was re-formed, we saw two other lions in it; but we were afraid to fire lest we should strike the men, and they allowed the beasts to burst through also. If the Bakatla had acted according to the custom of the country, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... * Her voice is hovering o'er my soul—it lingers, O'ershadowing it with soft and thrilling wings; The blood and life within those snowy fingers Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. My brain is wild, my breath comes quick. The blood is listening in my frame; And thronging shadows, fast and thick, Fall on my overflowing eyes. My heart is quivering like a flame; As morning-dew that in the sunbeam dies, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... remaining gold. The Moor asked Cabral if he had any witches on board, who could conjure up his gold from the bottom of the sea? Cabral answered, that the Christians believe in the true God, and do not practice or give credit to witchcraft. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... grumbled, "or how can you expect a fair trial? Prisoner at the bar, you have been found guilty of witchcraft." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... sister a word of reproof. There was still upon her face the fine glow born of a new resolution never again to listen to a word of witchcraft. ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... common to all civilized races. We know that religious hysteria has at different times, like the influenza, swept over a nation, or that a society has lost its taste for generations together in art, and in poetry. We remember that the Witchcraft Delusion obsessed our ancestors. It is not impossible, therefore, that between 194 and 1918 the American people passed through a stage in which it threw logic to the winds. This would account at least for its infatuation for ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the action be referred to its right head, there remains the second question whether we are really justified in regarding the class of actions itself as right or wrong. Failure to prosecute for or punish heresy or witchcraft was at one time regarded at least as wrong as failure to punish or prosecute for theft or murder would now be. To decline to fight a duel was, till quite recently, to place yourself outside the pale of gentlemen. A reluctance to sacrifice herself on the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... of witchcraft in old Connecticut has never been told. It has been hidden in the ancient records and in manuscripts in private collections, and those most conversant with the facts have not made them known, for one reason or another. It is herein written from authoritative sources, ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... the wretched abbess is described as an alchemist as well as a sorceress, and she descends to the depths of the lowest and most revolting witchcraft. She practises shape-shifting and similar arts. She has power over natural forces, and knows the past, the present, and the things to be. She possesses sufficient Druidic knowledge to permit her to gather the greatly prized serpent's ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... again—the cupola again broke down; he tried the third time—-the cupola fell to pieces a third time. Good Eremey Lukitch grew thoughtful; there was something uncanny about it, he reflected... some accursed witchcraft must have a hand in it... and at once he gave orders to flog all the old women in the village. They flogged the old women; but they didn't get the cupola on, for all that. He began reconstructing the peasants' huts on a new plan, and all on a system of ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee! Quiet consummation have; And ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various |
