"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... works in a similar manner. Before a party starts on the war-trail, the chief, with various ceremonies, takes his club and stands before his tent. An old witch bowls hoops at him; each hoop represents an enemy, and for each he strikes a foeman is expected to fall. A bowl of sweetened water is also set out to entice the spirits of the enemy.(1) The war-magic of the Aryans ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... that was not the worst. Hannah listened with growing suspicion while Master Necronsett explained the rest of it. All his magic consisted in the use of a "witch plant," the whole virtue of which depended on one thing. The sick person must be the only one to handle or care for it, from the seed ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... little magic from a witch, just enough magic to serve her turn. She went out and picked two palm leaves which she fastened on her shoulders and changed herself into a bird, a bright, beautiful Ground-Pigeon, with many-colored metallic feathers. But the necklace still made a band about her pretty little neck, as you may see ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... was a witch, and had witnessed the departure of the two children: so, sneaking after them secretly, as is the habit of witches, she had enchanted all the springs ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... I wrote a second novel—"The Witch's Head." This book I endeavoured to publish serially by posting the MS. to the editors of various magazines for their consideration. But in those days there were no literary agents or Authors' Societies to help ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... say again that there are not two sides to a story. If I am ever tempted to believe one side without waiting to hear the other, I shall surely feel again the hands of that old witch upon my throat." ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... father of Miranda. He was deposed by his brother, Antonio, who sent him to sea with Miranda in a "rotten carcass of a boat," which was borne to a desert island. Here Prospero practised magic. He liberated Ariel from the rift of a pine tree, where the witch Syc'orax had confined him for twelve years, and was served by that bright spirit with true gratitude. The only other inhabitant of the island was Cal[)i]ban, the witch's "welp." After a residence in the island of sixteen years, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... that of a witch, riding on the conventional broomstick) is suspended by fine threads or wires on the screen remote from the spectators. Behind this are ranged, one behind the other, and at right angles to the screen, a row of lighted candles. Being all in the same line, they throw one shadow ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... his muddy face and hands up thru the choke cherry bushes. With the oozy mud dripping from his features he looked like some very witch just raised from the grave. The boys screamed outright. One fainted. The rest ran yelling up the hill to the village, where each broke at once for ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... soul, though not that you had been born with one. They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself. But again I say I am not your judge, and when I picture you as Gavin saw you first, a bare-legged witch dancing up Windyghoul, rowan berries in your black hair, and on your finger a jewel the little minister could not have bought with five years of toil, the shadows on my pages lift, and I cannot wonder that Gavin ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... accursed witchery! I tread thee in the dust, thou spawn of Hell! And O that I could trample with these feet The witch herself! Haha! I was to take thee Unto his father, unto Samarkand? I fancy That Samarkand will never ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... arrows the first thing is to get the shafts. Ishi used many woods, but he preferred witch hazel. The long, straight stems of this shrub he cut in lengths of thirty-two inches, having a diameter of three-eighths of an inch at the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... and has not skill enough to dissemble the lapses. "Kilmeny" at its best is poetry—such poetry as, to take Hogg's contemporaries only, there is none in Rogers or Crabbe, little I fear in Southey, and not very much in Moore. Then there is no doubt at all that he could write ballads. "The Witch of Fife" is long and is not improved by being written (at least in one version) in a kind of Scots that never was on land or sea, but it is quite admirable of its class. "The Good Grey Cat," his own imitation of himself in the Poetic Mirror, comes ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... til we haue ript the wombe of Spayne, And wounded Error in the armes of hell, Crushing the triple Myter in disdaine, Which on the seauenfold mounted Witch doth dwel, Angells rewards for such dissignes remaine, And on heauens face men shall your stories tell; At this they shoute; as eager of the pray, As Ants in winter of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... was, so much, before," said Miss Broadus, "but she has been playing like a witch this evening. There Eleanor—you are ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... rest," returned Courtland with still greater solemnity. "You gather the buds of the witch-hazel in April when the moon is full. You then pluck three hairs from the young lady's right eyebrow ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... precipice, beneath which lay what is now but a large deep waterhole, but, at the period of the Gowrie conspiracy, was a loch fringed with water weeds, and a haunt of wild fowl. By this loch, Restalrig Loch, the witch more than three centuries ago met the ghost of Tam Reid, who fell in Pinkie fight, and by the ghost was initiated into the magic which brought her ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... not sleep. The wind poured in my ear Immortal names—Lear, Hamlet, Hal, Macbeth, And thro the night I heard the rushing breath Of ghost and witch and fool go whirling by. I followed them, under the phantom sphere Of the pale moon, along the Avon's near And nimbused flowing, followed to his bier— Who had evoked them first with mighty eye. And as I gazed upon the peaceful ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... the house, and we'll bind his head up," said Mrs. Rover. "I'll wash the wound first and we can put on some witch hazel." ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... intellectual point of view; while superstition is the belief unacknowledged of the few and acknowledged of the many, nor does it materially change from age to age. The rites employed among the clam-diggers on the New York coast, the witch-charms they use, the incantations, cutting of flesh, fire-oblations, meaningless formulae, united with sacrosanct expressions of the church, are all on a par with the religion of the lower classes as depicted in Theocritus ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... correct form on the surface. We have even drunk from the same cup of wine, because she preferred me hers yester-night, saying, 'To our gallant recruit Monsieur Inverey, and to his gallant nation, les Ecossais.' Ah, the laughing witch! You should have seen the languor in her eyes, the blushing red of her lips, the delicate contour of her arm, as she raised her glass to me and then bade ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... gave them little trouble, and Mamma Gerard loved him as if he were her own. The orphan was now inseparable from little Maria, a perfect little witch, who became prettier every day. The engraver, having found in a cupboard the old bearskin cap which he had worn as a grenadier in the National Guard, a headdress that had been suppressed since '98, gave it to the children. What a magnificent plaything it was, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... of England!' screamed the young man, like a witch in the air; then Burgundy began ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... behind for her. And there was the spinet, with its mysterious music, the drives about, and she was learning to ride on a pillion; and Patty knew so many stories about everything, merry and sad and awesome, for her grandmother's sister had been thrust into prison at Salem for being a witch. And Patty also knew some fairy stories, chief among them a version of "Cinderella," and that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... rapidly by level roads to Berlin. It is sinking towards dark; the courier is forward to Elbingerode, ordering forty horses to be out. Roughish uphill road; winter in the sky and earth, winter vapors and tumbling wind-gusts: westward, in torn storm-cloak, the Bracken, with its witch-dances; highland Goslar, and ghost of Henry the Fowler, on the other side of it. A multifarious wizard Country, much overhung by goblin reminiscences, witch-dances, sorcerers'-sabbaths and the like,—if a rheumatic gentleman cared to look on it, in the cold twilight. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... head as she stood while the flames were being kindled declared this Joan, who called herself the Maid, to be a liar, a plague, a deceiver of the people, a sorceress, superstitious, a blasphemer of God, presumptuous, a misbeliever in the faith of Christ, a boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, a witch of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic. It was a heavy crime-sheet for a mere girl, and there was no knowing into what a monster she might grow up. So the Bishop of Beauvais could not well hesitate in pronouncing the final sentence whereby, to avoid further infection to its members, this ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... a mad little witch, Rosabella!" cried the king, who had regained his cheerfulness. "You say you will not accuse him, and yet you make his head a plaything that you poise upon your crimson lips. But take care, my little duchess—take care, that this head does not fall ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... homogeneous crowd began to break into varied activity. Each took his turn as principal, then fell back to form part of the variegated background. Each dance was different. Warriors fully armed clashed shield and spear; witch doctors crouched and sprang; women stamped in rhythm; the elephant was hunted, the crops sown and gathered, all the activities of community and individual life were danced, the frankness of some saved from obscenity only by the unconscious earnestness of their exposition and the ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... my own land! This place must be bewitched, I think. There is a witch upon the moors, I know, who can take almost any shape; but—but they say she is three hundred years of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 which we express by the Name of Witch-craft. But when I consider that the ignorant and credulous Parts of the World abound most in these Relations, and that the Persons among us, who are supposed to engage in such an Infernal Commerce, are People of a weak Understanding and a crazed Imagination, and at ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... see Mr. Horace Manton, with whom he was associated while abroad. But suppose it had been some winsome, brown-eyed witch of a woman, instead of a dying man, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a friend of the little witch of a girl, and of Buddy, who had been the baby the year before, but whose place had been usurped because of the advent of another tow-head into the family, the others of "them Trimminses," as they were spoken of in Polktown, had become Janice Day's staunch ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... like Oisin and Finn and Dermot, have adventures in fairyland, they preserve in these their ordinary human nature. The Connacht peasant has no difficulty in following Finn into the cave of Slieve Cullinn, where the witch turned him into a withered old man, for the village where he lives has traditions of the same kind; the love affairs of Finn, of Dermot and Grania, and of many others, are quite in harmony with a hundred stories, and with ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... as bold as brass outside, and as nervous as the Endorian witch on the inside. He walked on and I followed, when, Horror of Horrors—capital H's—to both Horrors—instead of leading me to the 'cradle,' which I called a raft, he took me to a little square board held up by two crossed iron arms, called a 'buggy.' ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... grave a matter for joking. There are little burlesque manuals making merry with the language and its agglutinative prolixity, which I shall certainly not quote; and there are postal-cards representing Welsh dames drinking tea in tall witch-hats, with one of them saying: "I wass enjoying myself shocking, look you." There was, of course, nothing serious in this joking; the Welsh, who have all the small commerce in their hands, gladly sold the manuals and postals, and I did not see one ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... no muckle wi' heaven, I doubt, considering wha I carry ahint me—and as for hell, it will fight its ain battle at its ain time, I'se be bound.—Come, naggie, trot awa, man, an as thou wert a broomstick, for a witch ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... disguise herself as an old woman, that her young face might peep out the fresher from under the cap; and so utterly in this way did she confuse and mix together the actual and the fantastic, that people thought they were living with a sort of drawing-room witch. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... called hocloban, which is another kind of witch, of greater efficacy than the mangagauay. Without the use of medicine, and by simply saluting or raising the hand, they killed whom they chose. But if they desired to heal those whom they had made ill by their charms, they did so by using other ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... lower and lower. There were splashes of ruddy light on the smooth gray beech-boles, and that was all. Soon these would fade, and all would be gloom. The grove had an awful look already. One would expect to meet some ghostly Druid, or some witch of eld, among the shadowy tracks left by the forest wildings. Vixen went about her work languidly. She was really tired, and was glad to think her day's labours were over. She went slowly in and out among the trees, feeling her way with outstretched arms, her feet sinking sometimes ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... Gunnloed, and she by her goodness and her beauty was like Gerda and Skadi, the Giant maids whom the Dwellers in Asgard favored. Suttung, that he might have a guardian for the Magic Mead, enchanted Gunnloed, turning her from a beautiful Giant maiden into a witch with long teeth and sharp nails. He shut her into the cavern where the jars of the ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... call till he's tired, why didn't he stay with that old Judas and the young witch. To think of going off with sich like, and madame just a dying—halloo away, Ben Benson 'll ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... a boat and could see the figure of some one sitting in it and rowing it. At last the boat came alongside the ship, and now the queen saw that it was a stone boat, out of which there came on board the ship a fearfully ugly witch. The queen was more frightened than words can describe, and could neither speak a word nor move from the place so as to awaken the king or the sailors. The witch came right up to the queen, took the child from her, and laid it on the deck; then she took the queen and stripped her of all her fine ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... rangin' left and right-handed all up along the Wall. You've seen how flat she is—the Marsh? You'd think nothin' easier than to walk eend-on acrost her? Ah, but the diks an' the water-lets, they twists the roads about as ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles. So ye get all turned round in ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... marry the daughter of a king or of a count; but Aucassin replies that were an empress offered him he would refuse her for Nicolette. Thereat the count goes to the viscount and bids him give up the little maid that he may burn her as a witch. The viscount hesitates, and promises he will put her out of reach of Aucassin. Thereupon he shuts her up in a tower, along with her nurse, where there is but a single window. And the count promises his son that he shall have his "douce mie" if he will ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... far away from herself as possible,—"No wonder we've been unfortunate, if these feathers were always in the old house! No wonder everything went wrong! I must break the spell at once and for ever. Are there more of these horrible 'witch-eyes' ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... it in supporting me the balance of my life; but his statements could not always be relied upon, for he insisted that I never slept, had not been asleep during the seven weeks spent in Campbell, was a witch and would float like a cork, if thrown from the Long Bridge into ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... whimpered and complained, when he had a gumboil or when they gave him a plate of cold soup. Glafira Petrovna again took control of everything in the house; once more the overseers, bailiffs and simple peasants began to come to the back stairs to speak to the "old witch," as the servants called her. The change in Ivan Petrovitch produced a powerful impression on his son. He had now reached his nineteenth year, and had begun to reflect and to emancipate himself from the hand that pressed like a weight upon him. Even before this time ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... are numb, you lovely little witch. Have you been firing snow-balls, or shovelling ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... lemon-groves; tall palm-trees wave their graceful branches by the shore; music of the softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors and sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm; without, are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But the witch herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin in the painted banquet-halls ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... become a generally accepted canon, as our Socialist friends predict. However, I attempt no excuses for myself; I need them no more than a judge in the Dark Ages needed to apologize for ordering a witch to the stake. I could no more have done differently than a fish could breathe on land or a man under water. I did as all the others did—and I had the justification of necessity. Right of might being ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... wailing for friends and goods:— "Who was that woman, with mad eyes, that came Into our camp, ill-favored, hardly cast In mortal mould? By her, be sure, was wrought This direful sorcery. Demon or witch, Yakshi or Rakshasi, or gliding ghost, Or something frightful, was she. Hers this deed Of midnight murders; doubt there can be none. Ah, if we could espy that hateful one, The ruin of our march, the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... voluptuous homage paid to the sleeping Imogen by the very light in the chamber, and the reaction of her own beauty upon itself; or in the 'witch element' of the tragedy of Macbeth and the May-day night of Faust;—Seventh, and last, that which by a single expression, apparently of the vaguest kind, not only meets but surpasses in its effect the extremest force of the most particular description; as in that exquisite passage of Coleridge's ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... immovable equanimity in this distracted environment strikes us very much. Peter is careering, tumbling about, on all manner of absurd broomsticks, driven too surely by the Devil; terrific-absurd big Lapland Witch, surrounded by multitudes smaller, and some of them less ugly. Will be Czar of Russia, however;—and is one's so-called Husband. These are prospects for an observant, immovably steady-going young Woman! The reigning Czarina, old CATIN herself, is silently the Olympian ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "The Witch, as Anglos would say. We call her so because of her cunning. She is the wise one who keeps lookout. I say she is possessed by the Evil One. It is possible the Pinto is her son. Together they have ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Rosamond Redding; but the girls call her Rose Red. She's the greatest witch in the school; not exactly pretty, you know, but sort of killing and fascinating. She's always getting into the most awful scrapes. Mrs. Florence would had expelled her long ago, if she hadn't been such a favorite; and ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... ghoul-king's olpe,— Blind death within a secret lair! A varlet who his wine hath spilt As Scorpions smote him treblefold, Is thrown into a stagnant sea By Lordly Helm of bad repute, Whose visage, curl'd in ughly mien, Vext at each leper's font of spleen, Invokes a hairless witch to scan The shambling hordes that boon refute, Who lifts her unguis, long and lean, To curse each vyper's bloody dream, Each mongrel and forsaken man. Then quivers that cippus' hurl'd As templed vaults ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... their feet; the flower of it was white as milk, and the root was black. "Take this plant," he said, giving it to Odysseus. "It is the magic herb, Moly, and no human hand may pluck it; having this, thou mayest defy all the spells of Circe. And when thou comest to the house of that fair witch, she will offer thee a potion, mixed with baneful drugs: drink thou thereof, for it shall do thee no harm. But when she smites thee with her wand draw thou thy sword and make as though thou wouldst slay her; ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as a witch mounts ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... piece o' goods, was the youngster, simmin'ly, for 'a dedn' mind the stranyer a dinyun,[G] though 'a was like an owld black witch,[H] they do say. Anyhow, the two beginned jawin' together, soon got thick as Todgy an' Tom. An' by-an'-by the stranyer wormed out of un how 'a was all'ys troubled in 'es mind 'cause 'a cudn' onderstaand ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... the whole morning with that tiresome Bergenheim on my hands, and I verily believe he made me count every stick in his park and every frog in his pond. Tonight, when that old witch of Endor proposed her infernal game of whist, to which it seems I am to be condemned daily, you-excused yourself upon the pretext of ignorance, and yet you play as good a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was not so much of a witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL NOTE.—The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... electric light and through the fumes of champagne, in more than one imagination there rose a vision of that haunted water in which floated the great Yellow God, and of some mad being casting himself to his death beneath the moon, while his beautiful witch wife who was "hungry for more spirits" sat upon its edge and laughed. Although his language was now commonplace enough, even ludicrous at times, the negro had undoubtedly the art of narration. His auditors felt that he spoke of what he knew, or had seen, that the very recollection of it ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... years that are gone," he said; "The spirits the words of the witch fulfill; For I saw the ghost of my father dead, By the moon's dim light on the misty hill. He shook the plumes on his withered head, And the wind through his pale form whistled shrill. And a low, sad voice on the hill I heard. Like the mournful wail of a widowed bird." Then lo, as he looked ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... unpursued, in a deserted quarter of the ground; but still the scream of the timbrel-girls, as they hurried, wheeling and dancing, into the distance, was borne ominously to the young man's ear. "Ha, ha! the witch and her lover! Foul is fair! foul is fair! Shadow to goblin, goblin to shadow,—and the devil will have ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... drink. They claim this is a cure nine cases out of ten. A tablespoonful of warm vinegar and teaspoonful of salt will cure most severe cases. Also, hot ginger ale or hot water containing a teaspoonful of witch hazel is good. Repeat any of the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the smell of burning. Blouses, pink and green, and cream, and blue, were stirred into a seething mass in the fireplace, as in a witch's cauldron, their fluffy laces burnt and blackened. Chiffon fichus torn in ribbons strewed the carpet. An ivory fan had been trampled into fragments on the hearth-rug, and a snow-storm of feathers from a white boa had drifted over the furniture. On the wash-stand a spangled ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... to say that he began the investigation with a frightful relish. Other ministers were called in, and prayer-meetings lasting all day were held, with the result of throwing the patients into convulsions. [Footnote: Calef's More Wonders, p. 90 et seq.] Then the name of the witch was asked, and the girls were importuned to make her known. They refused at first, but soon the pressure became too strong, and the accusations began. Among the earliest to be arrested and examined was Goodwife Cory. Mr. Noyes, teacher ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... by day the machine grew in complexity and power. But in the process it yielded automatically a result very different from that which its constructors had foreseen. It is the story of the witch who, by a magic incantation, had won the consent of her broomstick to go to the river and fill her buckets; having no formula ready to check the work, she watched her cave fill with water until she ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... it over carefully, when you are by yourself. You are quite aware that there is a great talk about witches in these parts; and, I may speak it without offence to you, your own family come under the charge. There is your grandmother Demdike, for instance, a notorious witch—your mother, Dame Device, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... now relate, That's true indeed without debate. A bundling couple went to bed. With all their clothes from foot to head, That the defence might seem complete, Each one was wrapped in a sheet. But O! this bundling's such a witch The man of her did catch the itch, And so provoked was the wretch, That she of him a bastard catch'd. Ye bundle misses don't you blush, You hang your heads and bid me hush. If you wont tell me how you feel, I'll ask your sparks, they best can tell. But it is custom you will say, And custom ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... Lo! Venice, gay with color, lights and song, Calls from St. Mark's with ancient voice and strange: I am the Witch of Cities! glide along My silver streets that never wear by change Of years: forget the years, and pain, and wrong, And every sorrow reigning men among. Know I can soothe thee, please and marry thee To my illusions. Old and siren-strong, ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... replied Pharaoh quietly, "make your prayer to the Prince of Egypt, in whose household I understand the woman dwells. If it pleases him to surrender her who, I take it, is a witch or a cunning worker of tricks, to her betrothed and her kindred, let him do so. It is not for Pharaoh to judge of the ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... from the outside world in his location, the native has lived in peace and watched his cattle grow upon a thousand hills. His wealth has become great and his wives many. He no longer dreads swift "death by order of the king," or by word of the witch-doctor. No "impi," or native regiment, can now sweep down on him and "eat him up," that is, carry off his cattle, put his kraal to the flames, and himself, his people, his wives, and children to ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... induced to attempt it by an account of the German idylls given me in conversation." Southey's eclogues are eight in number: 'The Old Mansion House', 'The Grandmother's Tale', 'Hannah', 'The Sailor's Mother', 'The Witch', 'The Ruined Cottage', 'The Last of the Family' and 'The Alderman's Funeral'. Southey was followed by Wordsworth in 'The Brothers' and 'Michael'. Southey has nothing of the charm, grace and classical finish of his disciple, but how nearly Tennyson follows him, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... stood aside, saying under his breath, "I would call a creature like that a witch ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Peace Congress at Versailles continuous war in Europe has been seen: Russians against the whole world, Czechs against Hungarians, Roumanians against Hungarians, Poles against Ukrainians, Southern Slavs against Germans, Communists against Socialists. Three-fourths of Europe is turned into a witch's cauldron where everything is concocted except work and production, and it is futile to ask how this self-lacerated Europe will be able to find the war expenses laid upon her. According to human ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... man. I must be firm with her; it would be a shame to spoil her. Yes, I must be firm." But he shrugged his shoulders and smiled at himself. "The worst of it is, or the best of it is," he continued, "the little witch is almost always right, God bless her, just like her mother, just like her mother." He hastily wiped his eyes, and went off to his office where Mrs. Dean awaited him and her little girl with the burned hand. And the mother wondered at the gentleness ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... she could have been the adept in conjuring, which she firmly believed the Widow Keswick to be; but, as she possessed no such gift, she made up the deficiency, as well as she could, by mixing up her mind, her soul, and her desires, into a sort of witch's hodge-podge, which she thrust as a spell into the affairs of other people. Twice had the devices of this stupid-looking wooden peg of a negro girl stopped Lawrence Croft in the path he was following in his pursuit of Roberta March. If Lawrence had known, ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... first to learn the truths, I wonder?" and she stared in turn at the faces of every one of them, a process which seemed to cause general alarm, bearing, as it did, a strong resemblance to the smelling-out of savage witch-doctors. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the merriest and happiest creature that ever lived twelve years in this wicked world. Care cannot come near him. He hath a perpetual smile on his round ruddy face, and a laugh in his hazel eye, that drives the witch away. He works at yonder farm on the top of the hill, where he is in such repute for intelligence and good-humour, that he has the honour of performing all the errands of the house, of helping the maid, the mistress, and the master, in addition ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... of Fairy Tales," and an odd volume of the "Parents' Assistant." She picked out, slowly, the gist of these, with a lame and uncertain interpretation. She lived for weeks with Beauty and the Beast—with Cinderella—with the good girl who worked for the witch, and shook her feather bed every morning; till at last, given leave to go home and see her mother, the gold and silver shower came down about her, departing at the back door. Perhaps she should get her pay, some time, and go ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... dog's shadow, the man will immediately die. Then came the endless procession of sorcerers and sorceresses. In one of these tales Bernadette evinced a passionate interest; it was the story of a clerk of the tribunal of Lourdes who, wishing to see the devil, was conducted by a witch into an untilled field at midnight on Good Friday. The devil arrived clad in magnificent scarlet garments, and at once proposed to the clerk that he should buy his soul, an offer which the clerk ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... can hear some Methodist exclaiming. And one may well be tempted to sneer at those pilgrims for the more enlightened of whom such literature is printed. For they are unquestionably a repulsive crowd: travel-stained old women, under-studies for the Witch of Endor; dishevelled, anaemic and dazed-looking girls; boys, too weak to handle a spade at home, pathetically uncouth, with mouths agape and eyes expressing every grade of uncontrolled emotion—from wildest joy to downright idiotcy. How one realizes, down in this cavern, the effect upon some cultured ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... his beard, his deep-throated bull's voice rumbling through their tiny room. "But it is in my mind that there are stranger days ahead of us, Brian Buidh. A witch-woman once told me that I would meet my death from water and fire together, brother, in a ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... the jury; there were no hysterics; the matter was dispassionately canvassed; impressions and prejudices were not accepted as evidence; and in the end the verdict was that though she was guilty of being called a witch, a witch she nevertheless was not. The distinction was so well taken that no more witch trials or panics occurred. This was in 1684, eight years before the disasters in New England. But newspapers did not exist in those days, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... had done by the irresistible charm of what she was. You forgot all about her books,—you only felt the intense delight of life with her; she was penetrating and sympathetic, and entered into your feelings so entirely that you wondered how 'the little witch' could read you so readily and so rightly,—and if, now and then, you were startled, perhaps dismayed, by her wit, it was but the prick of a diamond arrow. Words and thoughts that she flung hither and thither, without design or intent beyond the amusement of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... shriveled witch, taking in the whole scene, had drawn himself up as nearly like the captain as possible and with one wee fist doubled up, was thumping his own little hams, an exact imitation of the man's gesture. In spite of himself, Captain Hosmer burst into laughter, Hope fairly ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... to the population is very small, and the people still have great confidence in their quacks and witch-doctors. The elementary rules of sanitation are generally neglected, water supplies are polluted, filth is piled up in the streets and the courtyards, as it was in England and Western Europe generally until a century ago, and the framing ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... got too damned good fer yore kin-folks, Samson South?" he shrilly demanded. "Hev ye done been follerin' atter this here puny witch-doctor twell ye can't keep a civil tongue in yer head fer yore elders? I'm in favor of runnin' this here furriner outen the country with tar an' feathers on him. Furthermore, I'm in favor of cleanin' out the Hollmans. I was ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Fanny Molyneux well satisfied with the turn affairs had taken lately. That poor little "white witch" was really alarmed by the unruly character of the spirit that she had been anxious to raise; she did not know the proper formula for sending it back to its own place; and, if she had, the stubborn demon would only have mocked at ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... in this poem and The Changeling as Eunice Cole, who for a quarter of a century or more was feared, persecuted, and hated as the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a hovel a little distant from the spot where the Hampton Academy now stands, and there she died, unattended. When her death was discovered, she was hastily covered up in the earth near by, and a stake driven through her body, to exorcise ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... When a tomb has been closed for centuries, the effaced lineaments of its tenant can be re-coloured only by the idealizing hand of genius, as Scott drew Claverhouse, and Carlyle drew Cromwell. But, to the biographer of the lately dead, men have a right to say, as Saul said to the Witch of Endor, "Call up Samuel!" In your study of a life so recent as Kinglake's, give us, if you choose, some critical synopsis of his monumental writings, some salvage from his ephemeral and scattered papers; trace so much of his youthful training as shaped the development of his character; ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... honour she is," insisted Archibald. "Why, she flirts outrageously with me. I'm sure I don't know how many heads the little witch is going to turn when she grows up. And her sister, Margaret—I couldn't tell you which of the two I like the better—has quite an extraordinary talent for plastic art. I mean to give her a commission before I return to my ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the tickets, but everybody else was there. I remember that the Duke of Cleveland appeared as Henry VIII.; the Duke of Gloucester as a fine old English gentleman; the Duchess of Buccleugh as the Witch of Endor; Lady Edgecombe as a nun; the Duchess of Bolton as the goddess Diana; Lady Stanhope as Melopomene; the Countess of Waldegrave as Jane Shore; Lord Galway's daughter, Mrs. Monckton, as an Indian princess, in a golden robe, embroidered with diamonds, opals, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... many books, Chambers has been responsible for one or two shows. He wrote for Ada Rehan, The Witch of Ellangowan, a drama produced at Daly's Theatre. His Iole was the basis of a delightful musical comedy produced in New York in 1913. He is a member of the National ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... is MARION CRAWFORD's Witch of Prague: the witch novel might easily have been told in one volume instead of three. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... a witch—Mutti, she's a witch!" shrieked the child, flinging his face, butter and all, at these portentous words, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in a manner she had not expected. Mrs. Nesbit beckoned her to her side, laid her hand on hers, and peered up in her face with witch-like eyes, that disconcerted her usually ready speech, and called ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it, she would rather live with the professional devils in perdition than with these imitators in the village. They accused her of breaking all those ribs by witchcraft, and asked her if she was not a witch? She ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... find the church you find the school. But what is the use of educating people who do not understand how to be sanitary, who live in filth and disease and die needlessly, and how can you take away old superstitions and not put new science in their places, or deprive the people of witch doctors without offering them substitutes? So the missionaries became physicians, and one of the most beneficent enterprises that history records is medical missions. What is the use, however, of helping people to get well when their economic condition is such, their standards ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Florian confound me, madam!" said Essper, addressing himself to the lady in the window, "if ever I beheld so ugly a witch as yourself! Pious friend! thy chaplet of roses was ill bestowed, and thou needest not have travelled so far to light thy wax tapers at the shrine of the Black Lady at Altoting; for by the beauty of holiness! an image of ebony is mother of pearl to that soot-face ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... of lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion—through everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little pellet of some dark green substance that he took from a flat silver box ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... different from what he expected. There arose, within twenty yards of him, a sound that might have been the cry of a child or the scream of a trapped animal. Assuming it to be the latter, Will again hesitated. Often enough he had laughed at the folk-tales of witch hares as among the most fantastic fables of the old; yet at this present moment mystic legends won point from the circumstances in which he found himself. He hurried forward to the edge of a circle from which the sound ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... my guest at last, Mr. Baldur, let me apologize for the exercise of my art upon your responsive nerves;" she made this witch-burning admission as if she were accounting for the absence of tea. To his relief she offered him nothing. He had a cigarette between his fingers, but he did not ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... observe What a close witch-craft popular applause is: 296] I am awak'd, and with clear eyes behold The Lethargie wherein my reason long Hath been be-charm'd: live, live, my matchless son, Blest in thy Fathers blessing; much more blest ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... again, until humanity itself shall become divine. If she loses the final vision, or substitutes her own, she can neither point nor guide. No wonder woman has been a mystery to the church. No wonder a witch was not allowed to live, while a wizard might; she was more dangerous. No wonder Paul was perplexed by the woman question. No wonder monks fled to the desert. Christ has spoken the final words of woman, "Thy faith hath saved thee." From the anguish of His cross he said: "Woman, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... advantage in education, though their reason set them free from it,) is every day wearing out, seem likely to be of little further assistance in the machinery of poetry. As I recollect, Hammond introduces a hag or witch into one of his love elegies, where the effect is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... passage from the Book of Chronicles, or softening what seemed an asperity in Scripture. Samuel, for example, orders Agag to be killed, whereas in the Bible he puts him to death with his own hand.[1] The incident of Saul and the Witch of Endor is expanded and invested with further pathos.[2] The Witch devotes her only possession, a calf, for the king's meal, and the historian expatiates first on her kindness and then on Saul's courage in fighting, though he knew his approaching ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... skin and apply salt water (one-half ounce to the quart), extract of witch-hazel, a weak solution of oak bark, or camphorated spirit. If the surface is raw use bland powders, such as oxid of zinc, lycopodium, starch, or smear the surface with vaseline, or with 1 ounce of vaseline ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the Kitchen Witch now (I altered it this morning) and Mead the old one—the climber. Poor old chap, he'll not ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... witch with single flaming eye, Was watching from beneath the hemlock tree; And fairies that our gaze might never see, Laughed at us as we, hand in ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... the hills to the singular eminence stuck betwixt the most southern and the centre peaks, and called, from its resemblance to such an animal in its form, the Lucken Hare. At the foot of this eminence, which is almost as famous for witch meetings as the neighbouring wind-mill of Kippilaw, Dick was somewhat startled to observe that his conductor entered the hill-side by a passage or cavern, of which he himself, though well acquainted with the spot, had never seen ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a witch, Hilda," I answered. "I found that out long ago; but if you succeed between here and Bombay in inventing a Mission, I shall begin to believe you are even more of a witch than I ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Presently the bell began to ring for Wednesday evening meeting. Mrs. Mellen glanced again at the minister, but he heard nothing. The botany was open before him, and he was muttering strange words that sounded like witch-talk. ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... the narrator of the poetic story must undertake to invest it. Nor can the unfinished condition in which it was left be fairly held to account for this, for the characters themselves—the lady Christabel, the witch Geraldine, and even the baron Sir Leoline himself—are somewhat shadowy creations, with too little hold upon life and reality, and too much resemblance to the flitting figures of a dream. Powerful in their way as are the lines descriptive of the spell thrown over Christabel by ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... longer and be on hand to scold Fair-Hair when she came galloping back with a string of merry excuses tumbling off her nimble tongue, her ready "I forgots" or "I didn't thinks"—the teasing, adorable witch ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... continued for many months, until it dawned on Mompesson and his friends that possibly the case was not one of ghosts but one of witchcraft. This suspicion rose from the singular circumstance that voices in the children's room began, "for a hundred times together," to cry "A witch! A witch!" Resolved to put matters to a test, one of the boldest of a company of spectators suddenly demanded, "Satan, if the drummer set thee to work, give three knocks and no more!" To which three knocks were distinctly heard, and afterward, by way of confirmation, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... had come to live at The Ship, such a witch as had never before danced along the Spear Point sands. Her name was Maria Peck, and she was the daughter of Mrs. Peck's late lamented husband's vagabond brother—"a seafaring man and a wastrel if ever there was one," as Mrs. Peck was often heard to declare. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was more at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Howsoever, it was the laird himsel' that had first tauld the minister o' Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have thy unlucky familiars carried thee? Hast thou bestridden the enchanted horse, or wert thou bidden to a witch-feast?" ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... healing virtues of common herbs. The administration of these is always accompanied with a prayer. After domestic resources have been exhausted, especially if the ailment is believed to be of supernatural origin, recourse is had to the witch-doctress. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... on the heath; but it is more likely that “Tab” had a reference to the cat, “Tabby” being the term for a brindled cat. And Bishop Harsnet, in his curious book on “The Superstitions of the Day” (1605), says a witch, or elf, “can take the form of hare, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... long ago, lived in the state of Kentucky One that was reckoned a witch—full of strange spells and devices; Nightly she wandered the woods, searching for charms voodooistic— Scorpions, lizards, and herbs, dormice, chameleons and plantains! Serpents and caw-caws and bats, screech-owls and crickets and adders— These were the ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... a rat, and she was a rat, And down in one hole they did dwell, And both were as black as a witch's cat, And ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... from other writers is the unequalled exuberance of his fancy. The reader, say for instance of that fantastically brilliant poem, The Witch of Atlas, the work of three days, is overwhelmed in a storm, as it were, of rainbow snow-flakes and many-coloured lightnings, accompanied ever by "a low melodious thunder." The evidences of pure imagination in his writings are unfrequent ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... bees flew away, Mrs. Twistytail and Pinkey went safely home, and the wolf had to stay in his den for a week and put witch hazel on ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... can thank her, and the padre, for gettin' out of this scrape with the laugh on the other side. She thought she was goin' to die and had unloaded her soul on to the padre, and he had ordered her to tell Emerson Mead what she had told him. I reckon the little witch wouldn't have peeped about it to anybody if the padre hadn't made her. She didn't want to say a word to me, and at first she said she wouldn't, but I finally made her understand she couldn't see Emerson, and I swore by all the saints I could think of that I'd tell him and nobody else ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... Witch! Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think it! Well! good-evening! You'd better come. A word to me at any time. I'm going ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... good as she was handsome. But a dreadful dwarf, who had slain many people in that country, slew her father and mother, and robbed the poor Princess of her fine house, and carried her off and delivered her to an old fairy, called Cathel, a wicked and bad old sorceress and witch, who sat all day surrounded by black cats, weaving incantations and making charms, which she sold to all who would buy of her. Now, among the customers of Cathel was a monstrous and bloody giant, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... but two more returns to truth and justice necessary,—the Inquisition and the Witch-Trials. These restored, we may safely congratulate ourselves on having regained the ground on which our race stood before the Reformation, that untoward event, whence all the mischief dates that has befallen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... water; the midnight sunshine bathed the falling glory of her long hair, till each thick tress, each clustering curl, appeared to emit an amber spark of light. The strange, weird effect of the sky seemed to have stolen into her eyes, making them shine with witch-like brilliancy,—the varied radiance flashing about her brought into strong relief the pureness of her profile, drawing as with a fine pencil the outlines of her noble forehead, sweet mouth, and rounded chin. It touched ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... de ole black cat widdee yalla eyes Slink round like she atterah mouse, Den yo' bettah take keer yo'self en frien's, Kase deys sholy a witch en ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... want to go on with it. Dr. Astroff hardly ever used to come here; it was all we could do to persuade him to visit us once a month, and now he has abandoned his forestry and his practice, and comes every day. You must be a witch. ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... knew it—Virginia Huff was the witch who had mixed the hell-broth that had raised up all this treachery against him. She had poisoned his men's minds and incited them to vandalism, but it would not happen again. He had been a fool to endure it so long; but she could ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... guarded by a dragon in the shape of a monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea, to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give up the undertaking. He prudently, however, consulted with an old Indian witch, and so received the devil's good word, and piously got a bottle of holy water from the priest, and thus was well fenced in above ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... have not been thinking much of these things. You have your eye upon Fame, and that old witch lives in another direction. To illustrate—our bull-necked friend and illustrious critic, James Rutlidge, in my story, will be named 'Sensual.' His distinguished father was one 'Lust.' The horrible example, Mr. Edward Taine,—boon companion ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... rushes through! He who traveled with it before recognizes it no longer; the grisly giant is rejuvenated into heroic youth. Its waves leap along the stony bed, from which sometimes a great bowlder projects like a witch's altar, the huge "Babagay," the crowned "Kassan." On this it bursts with majestic fury, roaring round it with swirls which hollow deep abysses in the bottom; thence it rushes, hissing and seething, across ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... deficiency of will may rise to the rank of an inexorable fate. This idea I have pointed out before in the case of Hamlet; but it occurs repeatedly in Shakespeare; for as Hamlet is driven by the ghost into straits which he cannot pass through, so is Macbeth by witches, by Hecate, and by the arch-witch, his wife; Brutus by his friends; nay, even in Coriolanus, we find a similar thing—in short, the conception of a will transcending the capacity of the individual is modern. But as Shakespeare represents this trouble of the will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... does not make the fire burn. There is a better; (setting the poker perpendicularly up at right angles with the grate.) In days of superstition they thought, as it made a cross with the bars, it would drive away the witch.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... with the ground, if needful—And, hold—summon Randal hither instantly.—Randal, here is a foul and evil chance befallen—send off a boat instantly to Kinross, the Chamberlain Luke Lundin is said to have skill—Fetch off, too, that foul witch Nicneven; she shall first counteract her own spell, and then be burned to ashes in the island of Saint Serf. Away, away—Tell them to hoist sail and ply oar, as ever they would have ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and aprons of the same round about their middle, all els naked, of such a difference of statures onely as wee in England, hauing no edge tooles or weapons of yron or steele to offend vs withall, neither knowe they how to make any: those weapons that they haue, are onely bowes made of Witch-hazle, and arrowes of reedes, flat edged truncheons also of wood about a yard long, neither haue they any thing to defend themselues but targets made of barkes, and some armours made of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... of the Seventeenth Century. Wedded Love in Shakspeare and his contemporary Dramatists. Wellington, Duke of. Wetherell's (Sir Charles) Speech. Whigs, Conduct of the. Wicliffe. Wilkins, Peter, and Stothard. William III. Wilson. Wit and Madness. Witch of Endor. Women, Characterlessness of. ——, Old. ——and Men. Words and Names of Things. Wordsworth. Works, Chronological Arrangement of. Working to better one's condition. Worlds, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... however, wholly prepared for what happened next. The man in green, riding the frail topmost bough like a witch on a very risky broomstick, reached up and rent the black hat from its airy nest of twigs. It had been broken across a heavy bough in the first burst of its passage, a tangle of branches in torn and scored and scratched it ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... were fixed on the window; he hardly seemed to hear her. At length he walked across the room and pulled up the shade. The electric lights were dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn. A milk-cart rattled down the street and, like a witch returning late from the Sabbath, a stray cat whisked into an area. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... be too bad if Andy was seriously injured," answered the young major. "Come on, I'm going in and wash up and put some witch hazel on ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... for them—and probably have expressed more of it than I intended—for my preliminary chapter has caused the greatest uproar that has happened here since witch-times. If I escape from town without being tarred and feathered, I shall consider it good luck. I wish they would tar and feather me; it would be such an entirely novel kind of distinction for a literary man. And, from such judges as my ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Cockburn says:—"Scott's description of the woman is very correct; she was like a vindictive masculine witch. I remember him sitting within the bar looking at her. As we were moving out, Sir Walter's remark upon the acquittal was, 'Well, sirs, all I can say is that if that woman was my wife I should take good care to be my ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... is an old witch" was the announcement that met Crefton's inquiring scrutiny, and he hesitated a moment before giving the statement wider publicity. For all he knew to the contrary, it might be Martha herself to whom he was speaking. It was possible ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... castrated myself, they would remain—five invisible testicles. It is impossible to possess. Folly to attempt. As long as the senses remain life clings like a dead whore to my darkness. Even my madness that I prided myself upon is a babbling witch astride a phallus, her lips bending ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... left your new piano shut, something seemed to worry you. Do you remember it, dear one?' 'All of it, yes, yes.' 'Then you came singing down to that old oak, and kissed the place where I had carved our names with many vows. Tell me, you little witch, who were you thinking of all that time?' 'All the while of you,' she sighed. 'And do you, oh, do you remember that you fell asleep under the oak, and that a little acorn fell into your bosom and you tossed it out in a pet? ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... she was a witch, and and that she broke all the ten commandments, and put the sacraments under her feet; and listen,—they said that she mixed poison in her husband's drink, and he died ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... Esdraelon, the 'battle-field of Palestine'; these rounded mountains here in the eastern part of the Valley of Esdraelon are Tabor, Little Hermon, and Gilboa;—on the north is Tabor, at whose base Napoleon fought; the next is Little Hermon, where lived the witch of Endor; and the one south of Little Hermon is Gilboa, where Saul and his sons were slain; that range of mountains forming the southern wall of Esdraelon is Carmel, where Elijah held his trial with the priests ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... McKean, more of interest occurred. The first collision was unfortunate, and, to some extent, humiliating to the service. A squadron consisting of the steam-sloop Richmond, sailing-sloops Vincennes and Preble, and the small side-wheel steamer Water Witch had entered the Mississippi early in the month of October, and were at anchor at the head of the passes. At 3.30 A.M., October 12th, a Confederate ram made its appearance close aboard the Richmond, which, at the time, had a coal ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... last two years Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely alone with his aged sister, who was thought a witch. A tailor in the neighborhood declared that he had often seen her at night, on the roof of the house, waiting for the hour of the witches' sabbath. This fact seemed the more extraordinary because it was known to be the miser's custom to lock up his ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... the ever-memorable scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor, when Jack Falstaff, disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, is escaping from Ford's house, he is cuffed and mauled by Ford, who exclaims, "Hang her, witch!" on which the honest Cambrian Sir Hugh Evans sapiently remarks: "Py yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a 'oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under her muffler!" (Act ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston |
