"Witchcraft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he changed the mystery into witchcraft and possession by the devil, and contrived so artfully, that he induced many of the nuns to imagine themselves a prey to the evil one, and to assume all the appearance of suffering from the influence of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the Court, and at your peril let not a man, living or dead, escape." All was bustle and confusion, the officers looked east and west, and up in the air and down on the floor; but the search was in vain. The judge at last began to suspect witchcraft, and exclaimed, "This is a deceptio auris—it is absolute delusion, necromancy, phantasmagoria." And to the day of his death the judge never understood the precise origin of ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... which had belonged to her family for more than two hundred years. She was a Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since the year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock who was foremost in the time of the Salem witchcraft craze. And this little old house which she left to my friend, Eliphalet Duncan, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... said Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him. "Those two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is given here below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can fly on the shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue empyrean where the sublime marvels are wrought of the intellectual life; they, by the power of art, can soar whither your immense love carries you, whither opium transports me. Then none can understand them but those who are ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... and gods which in mind, if not also in visual appearance, resemble man. Epicurus succeeded in barring the door, and admitted nothing more. But the Stoics presently found themselves admitting or insisting that the same consensus proved the existence of daemons, of witchcraft, of divination, and when they combined with the Platonic school, of more ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... attentive to sick persons and was highly esteemed by the Indians, as [69] one well skilled in the art of curing diseases. Finding them very superstitious and believers in necromancy; she professed witchcraft, and affected to be a prophetess. In this manner she conducted herself, 'till she became so great a favorite with them, that they gave her full liberty and honored her as a queen. Notwithstanding this, Mrs. Dennis was always determined to effect ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... YEARS TO ACQUIRE [s]. His stupidity and indolence appeared so extraordinary, that the people endeavoured to account for the infatuation by sorcery, and believed that he was thrown into this lethargy by some magic or witchcraft. The English barons, finding that their time was wasted to no purpose, and that they must suffer the disgrace of seeing, without resistance, the progress of the French arms, withdrew from their colours, and secretly returned to their own country [t]. No one thought ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... in 998, and the following year was elected to the papal chair. Far ahead of his age in wisdom, he suffered as many such scholars have even in times not so remote by being accused of heresy and witchcraft. As late as 1522, in a biography published at Venice, it is related that by black art he attained the papacy, after having given his soul to the devil.[443] Gerbert was, however, interested in astrology,[444] ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... witchcraft an' stuff an' nonsense, an' you ought to knaw better, Phoebe. 'T is as bad as setting store on the flight o' magpies, or gettin' a dead tooth from the churchyard to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Cartesian mechanics and empiricism (for it was the credulous childhood of experimentalism), and a corrupt, mystical, theurgical, pseudo-Platonism, which infected the rarest minds under the Stuart dynasty. The only not universal belief in witchcraft and apparitions, and the vindication of such monster follies by such men as Sir M. Hale, Glanville, Baxter, Henry More, and a host of others, are melancholy proofs of my position. Hence, in the first chapters of this volume, the most idle inventions of the ancients ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... really the matter, were at their wits' end with astonishment. Don Quixote sprang to his feet, and drawing his sword, began making passes at the grating, shouting out, "Avaunt, malignant enchanters! avaunt, ye witchcraft-working rabble! I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, against whom your evil machinations avail not nor have any power." And turning upon the cats that were running about the room, he made several cuts at them. They dashed at the grating and escaped by it, save ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... witch, according to our modern notions of witchcraft, Exodus 22:15, Philo and Josephus understood of a poisoner, or one who attempted by secret and unlawful drugs or philtra, to take away the senses or ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... civilisation. Yet it was not written of civilisation, or of white men, but of the Bantu tribes of East Africa,[14] complete Negroes who, while far from being among the lowest savages, belong to a culture which is only just emerging from cannibalism, witchcraft, and customary bloodshed. So close a resemblance between the European husband and the Negro husband significantly suggests how remarkable has been the arrest of development in the husband's customary status during a vast ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... thicker and more blinding. 'Lord have mercy upon us!' said Bagge, who concluded that the tussle was 'not fair but something Irish and supernatural.'" "I daresay," comments George to his brother, "he's right. I have read of witchcraft in the Bible." ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... experience," said Count Victor. "Are you sure her honesty is on more substantial grounds than her reputation for witchcraft? I demand your pardon for expressing these suspicions, but I have reasons. I cannot imagine that the attack of the Macfarlanes was connived at by your servants, though that was my notion for a little when Mungo locked me up, for they suffered more alarm at the attack than ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... in America, has had great vogue in other countries, and here in its native land has taken such form as really to constitute a new cult. Making no mention of sporadic instances of what in earlier generations would have been called (and properly enough) by the name of witchcraft, we find the beginning of so-called "spiritualism" in the "Rochester rappings," produced, to the wonder of many witnesses, by "the Fox girls" in 1849. How the rappings and other sensible phenomena ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... 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 of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... speculation, which has nearly, but not quite, grasped the physical causes underlying the whole history of magic and illusion in all ages, it may be read with profit as well as pleasure in this age of vulgar spirit-rapping. But the true history of Witchcraft has yet to be ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... make use of these mysterious powers in their beneficent and curative forms, there exist all over Hindostan abundant proofs of the dread of 'zadoo,' or witchcraft, among all classes, Moslems as well as Hindoos, when it appears to threaten them with evil. If a cultivator has transplanted his tobacco or other valuable plant, he collects old cracked earthen cooking-pots, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... yard, a garden, several acres of land, and a salt meadow; all worth about fifteen thousand francs. Unfortunately the time for the conscription was near. Like many young men of that district, Trumence believed in witchcraft, and had gone to buy a charm, which cost him fifty francs. It consisted of three tamarind-branches gathered on Christmas Eve, and tied together by a magic number of hairs drawn from a dead man's head. Having ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... are living peaceably in their cabin on the Cuyahoga when an Indian warrior is found dead in the woods nearby. The Seneca accuses John of witchcraft. This means death at the stake if he is captured. They decide that the Seneca's charge is made to shield himself, and set out to prove it. Mad Anthony, then on the Ohio, comes to their aid, but all their efforts prove futile and the ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... crabapple of our family, after the entrance of the Maitland children into the household of Heathknowes. Not that my aunt had much faith in Irma. She had an art, which my aunt counted uncanny, indeed savouring of the sin of witchcraft. It mattered not at all what Irma was given to wear—an old tartan of my grandmother's Highland Mary days when she was a shepherdess by the banks of Cluden, a severe gown designed on strictly architectural principles by the unabashed shears of Aunt Jen herself, a bodice and skirt of my ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... superstitions now entertained in some parts of Somersetshire, will be interesting to the inquirers into the history of witchcraft. I was lately informed by a member of my congregation that two children living near his house were bewitched. I made inquiries into the matter, and found that witchcraft is by far less uncommon than I had imagined. I can hardly adduce the two children ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... Nightshade. Two males, one female. It was much celebrated in the mysteries of witchcraft, and for the purpose of raising the devil, as its name imports. It grows amid the mouldering bones and decayed coffins in the ruinous vaults of Sleaford-church in Lincolnshire. The superstitious ceremonies ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... dealt kindly with Salem, in effacing all memorials of the witchcraft persecution, except a picturesque old house at the corner of North and Essex Streets, where there are said to have been preliminary examinations for witchcraft,—a matter which concerns us now but ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 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 was not strange that his lips should be parched, and that his heart ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... wherein the spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent; doleful, not nice and tearful. Then comes the Heaven-born fiddler,* who can make himself cry. with his own fiddle. David had a touch of this witchcraft. Though a sound musician and reasonably master of his instrument, he could not fly in a second up and down it, tickling the fingerboard and scratching the strings without an atom of tone, as the mechanical monkeys do ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid Avon below, and still keep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... sometimes water, of whom this is said: "We are all of us under the power of evil and sin, because we are children of the Water," says the Mexican baptismal formula. That Unktahe, spirit of water, is the master of dreams and witchcraft, is the belief of the Dakotas.[133-3] A female spirit, wife of the great manito whose heart is the sun, the ancient Algonkins believed brought death and disease to the race; "it is she who kills men, otherwise they would never die; she eats their flesh and knaws[TN-4] their vitals, till they ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... slander or defamation of character being sometimes brought before it. Any violation of the ten commandments was within its jurisdiction. It particularly devoted itself to secret crimes, such as magic, witchcraft, or poisoning. Its agents of justice were bound to make constant circuits, night and day, with the privilege, as we have said, if they caught a thief or murderer in the act, or obtained his confession, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... What do you mean by hiding up like that? It is one of your infernal tricks; be careful"—tapping his pistol case—"or I shall one day put an end to you and your witchcraft together." ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... vncleane. And to bee short, they think that all things are to be purged by fire. Therefore, when any ambassadours, princes, or other personages whatsoeuer come vnto them, they and their giftes must passe betweene two fires to be purified, lest peraduenture they haue practised some witchcraft, or haue brought some poyson or other mischiefe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... omit the third. In a capital trial, in which I had pleaded for Titinia, the daughter of Cotta, when he attempted to reply to me in defence of Serv. Naevius, he suddenly forgot every thing he had intended to say, and attributed it to the pretended witchcraft, and magic artifices of Titinia. These were undoubted proofs of the weakness of his memory. But, what is still more inexcusable, he sometimes forgot, even in his written treatises, what he had mentioned but a little ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... transmission of intelligence, and they had a code by which the signals could be read with practically the same accuracy as if they had been printed words. The movements of the lights looked curious and strange, something elf-like, with a suspicion of witchcraft, or deviltry of some kind, about them. They would make all sorts of gyrations, up, down, a circle, a half circle to the right, then one to the left, and so on. Sometimes they would be unusually active. Haines' ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... seems to English minds so simple, there might yet be hope for them. But they regard it all as a piece of black magic, and refuse to reason about it. How should a herd of cattle be driven without goads? Witchcraft, witchcraft! ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... poets, we have Coleridge, the author of Christabel, that piece of winter witchcraft, Kubla Khan, that oriental dazzlement, and the Ancient Mariner, that most English of all this list of enchantments. Of Tennyson's work, besides Merlin and the Gleam, there are the poems when the mantle was surely on his ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics on account of the purity and elevation of his religious ideas; and from the disclosures of Baron von Breitschwert [1] it seems, that, in the midst of his sublimest labors, he spent five years in the defence of his poor old mother against a charge of witchcraft. He died in 1630, in his sixtieth year, (with the prospect of starvation before him,) of a fever which he caught when on a journey to Ratisbon, whither he had gone in the attempt to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... 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 called ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... of everything hostile to the Holy Grail and its knights, summons Kundry, the maid, subject to his witchcraft—in other words to that evil moral law which the individual alone is unable to ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... notion what that process might be, but had she taken it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At last her singularity was standing ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is 'well authenticated?' and does not such an assertion promote the popular superstition of witchcraft? ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... desires remained, but all inactive, as age or death itself, as cold and feeble, as unfit for joy, as if my youthful fire had long been past, or Sylvia had never been blest with charms. Tell me, thou wondrous perfect creature, tell me, where lay the hidden witchcraft? Was Sylvia's beauty too divine to mix with mortal joys? Ah no, 'twas ravishing, but human all. Yet sure 'twas so approaching to divinity, as changed my fire to awful adoration, and all my wanton heat to reverent contemplation.—But this is nonsense all, it ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... cavalier Pizarro y Orellana has given biographical notices of each of the brothers. It requires no witchcraft to detect that the blood of the Pizarros flowed in the veins of the writer to his fingers' ends. Yet his facts are less suspicious than his inferences.] In talent and in expansion of views, he was inferior to his brothers. Neither did he discover the same cool and crafty policy; but he was ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... which we lay is one of those, where travellers on the Orinoco have heard from time to time, towards sunrise, subterraneous sounds, resembling those of the organ. The missionaries call these stones laxas de musica. "It is witchcraft (cosa de bruxas)," said our young Indian pilot, who could speak Spanish. We never ourselves heard these mysterious sounds, either at Carichana Vieja, or in the Upper Orinoco; but from information given us by witnesses ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... doubloon would be best." The doubloon and all the other coins were duly sewn in. "Now give me the scarf, and I'll take it to the Campo Santo when midnight strikes. You come along with me, if you want to see a fine piece of witchcraft. I promise you shall see the man you love to-morrow!" The gipsy departed alone for the Campo Santo, since my Spanish friend was too much afraid of witchcraft to go there with her. I leave my ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... the winter wore away; and there was seldom a Saturday afternoon, be it raining or shining, that failed to bring her to the cottage. Nor was she by any means unwelcome there. For Nancy could be very helpful, when she willed it; and, by some strange witchcraft or other, Lilias had crept into her murmuring, though not unkind heart. It is true that she always came and went with the same ominous shake of the head, and the same dismal prophecy that, "unless she was much mistaken, Mrs Blair would never set her foot to ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... wildly, as he jumped from his horse, "I would give my last gold piece that the work of this evening should be undone! How came it? What does it mean? Hither, my Lord Bishop, for surely it smacks of witchcraft and the Devil." ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the runs to vary, and the yield scarcely two days alike. I enquired into the cause, of him, but his answers were, he could not tell; I also enquired of other distillers, and could procure no more satisfactory answer—some attributed it to the water, others to witchcraft, &c. &c. ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... less averse to such subjects than 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... believe in witchcraft, they are less superstitious in some respects than many of the lower classes of whites. Chief Yana Taowk seemed to take pleasure in kicking the Sitka bones that lay in his way, and neither old nor young showed the slightest trace of superstitious ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... among us," wrote Mather, "a little before the second coming of our Lord. The evening wolves will be much abroad when we are near the evening of the world." This belief culminated in the horrible witchcraft delusion at Salem in 1692, that "spectral puppet play," which, beginning with the malicious pranks of a few children who accused certain uncanny old women and other persons of mean condition and suspected ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the witchcraft!" said Wilhelm; "the magical power of the ale! Now begins the bacchand! Give your hand to the prettiest girl, and she will ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... take revenge, to do evil, to steal, to tell lies, to deceive, to blaspheme; carelessness about the children, intemperance, luxury, excessive prodigality, drunkenness, uncleanness, immodesty, application to magic and witchcraft, impiety, with several other causes. By legitimate causes we do not here mean judicial causes, but such as are legitimate in regard to the other married partner; separation from the house also is seldom ordained in a ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... thy God in Gilgal. 22. And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. 23. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of fault was found with him. Almost as soon as he assumed the government, he became engaged in a very frightful business, which might have perplexed a wiser and better cultivated head than his. This was the witchcraft delusion." ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... days of the 17th century; a ruffling young theologue new to the city; a beautiful and innocent girl, suspected of witchcraft; a crafty scholar and metaphysician seeking to give over the city into the hands of the Savoyards; a stern and powerful syndic whom the scholar beguiles to betray his office by promises of an elixir which shall save him from his fatal illness; a brutal soldier of fortune; ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... sorcery; occult art, occult sciences; magic, the black art, necromancy, theurgy, thaumaturgy[obs3]; demonology, demonomy[obs3], demonship[obs3]; diablerie[Fr], bedevilment; witchcraft, witchery; glamor; fetishism, fetichism, feticism[obs3]; ghost dance, hoodoo; obi, obiism[obs3]; voodoo, voodooism; Shamanism [Esquimaux], vampirism; conjuration; bewitchery, exorcism, enchantment, mysticism, second sight, mesmerism, animal ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "What witchcraft is this!" cried the King, spurring his steed cruelly. But the animal, like the dogs, obeyed the Hermit's will ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... made a sacrifice of the spoil to the Lord, Samuel replied: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying his voice?... Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,—for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry." The prophet here sets forth, as did Isaiah in later times, the great principles of moral obligation as paramount over all ceremonial observances. He strikes a blow at all pharisaism and all self-righteousness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... sense of the beauty of these old beliefs—a rational smile at their absurdity—such is the tone of his "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" (1830), a passage or two from which will give his attitude very precisely; an attitude, it will be seen, which is after all not so very different from Addison's, allowing for the distance in time and place, and for Scott's livelier imagination.[49] ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... were deduced. A number of other very important cases which I included in my plan of proofs and illustrations I have been obliged to leave out for lack of space. Such are: Demonism, Primitive Religion, and Witchcraft; The Status of Women; War; Evolution and the Mores; Usury; Gambling; Societal Organization and Classes; Mortuary Usages; Oaths; Taboos; Ethics; AEsthetics; and Democracy. The first four of these are written. I may be able to ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... whom I knew, for I hadn't any women folks belonging to me, nor any place but that to put her in. She stayed there till spring working for her keep, growing brighter, prettier, every day, and fonder of me, I thought. If I believed in witchcraft, I shouldn't think myself such a fool as I do now, but I don't believe in it, and to this day I can't understand how I came to do it. To be sure I was a lonely man, without kith or kin, had never had a sweetheart in my life, or been much with women since my mother died. ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Willan Blaycke, under his breath, "what witchcraft is going on here? what girl's voice is that?" And he sprang again to ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... third and concluding series in 1830, when he also contributed a graver History of Scotland in two volumes to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. In 1829 likewise appeared "Anne of Geierstein," a romance, and in 1830 the "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft." In 1831 he produced a series of "Tales on French History," uniform with the "Tales of a Grandfather," and his novels, "Count Robert of Paris," and "Castle Dangerous," as a fourth series of "Tales of My Landlord." Other ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Apparitions. It is to be regretted, that Coleridge has never yet gratified the wish he professed to feel, in the first volume of his Friend, p. 246, to devote an entire work to the subject of dreams, visions, ghosts, witchcraft, &c; in it we should have had the satisfaction of tracing the workings of a most vivid imagination, analyzed by the most discriminating judgment. See Barrow's sermon on the being of God, proved from supernatural ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... know where I was. The whole face of things in my room was completely changed. Flowers had been put in the china vases upon the tables—two handsome lamps, shaded with gauzes, stood upon the consoles —illustrated books, prints, and caricatures, were scattered about. A piano-forte had also, by some witchcraft, insinuated itself into a recess near the sofa—a handsome little tea service, of old Dresden china, graced a marquetry table—and a little picquet table stood most invitingly beside the fire. I had scarcely time to turn my eyes from one to the other of these new ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... consisted in laying the accused on his back on a bare floor and placing a great iron weight on his chest until he consented to plead or died. There is one instance of the infliction of this punishment in American colonial history: Giles Cory, accused of witchcraft, was pressed to death in Salem, Massachusetts, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... matters relating to Satanic interference, Wesley was especially credulous. "I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane." He had no doubt that the physical contortions into which so many of his hearers fell were due to the direct agency of Satan, who tore the converts as they were coming to Christ. He had himself seen men and women who were literally possessed ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... could catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet here, so little removed from the arteries of the latest civilization, was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like witchcraft seemed to hold a very ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... fire. The books on magic, of the Middle Ages, are full of such things; though the reader who may wish to obtain information on this subject need not go so far back. Only eighty years since, the learned and celebrated Storch, of the school of Stahl, published a treatise on witchcraft, worthy of the fourteenth century."—Treatise on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... supper, the entire school, instead of being allowed to pursue fancy work, was summoned to the lecture hall, and harangued by Miss Beasley upon the follies and dangers of superstition. She touched upon ancient beliefs in witchcraft, and modern credulity in clairvoyance and spiritualism, and placed an equal ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more eloquence in a Sugar touch of them than in the tongues ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... be so, or there's witchcraft in it. There's witchcraft, at any rate, in this new invention. Speed, secrecy, security and surety—no eastern genius of Arabian fiction can be compared to the electric telegraph; and how Ministers or editors continued to keep the world ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... to their serious consideration the growth of the sins of Witchcraft, Charming and Consulting, notwithstanding the frequent Recommendations for restraining thereof; And remembring that the Generall Assembly 1647. did propose a good way for the tryal and punishment of these sinnes, by appointing conferences with some Ministers, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... 19., 25. "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanliness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21. Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... already prophesied in the nature of Newton's mind. Not less does the brain of Davy or of Gay-Lussac, from childhood exploring the affinities and repulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of organization. Does not the eye of the human embryo predict the light? the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, and temperable texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, and wood? ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Gate of God (El), or Gate of Ilu (P. N. of God), which the Jews ironically interpreted "Confusion." The tradition of Babylonia being the very centre of witchcraft and enchantment by means of its Seven Deadly Spirits, has survived in Al-Islam; the two fallen angels (whose names will occur) being confined in a well; Nimrod attempting to reach Heaven from the Tower in a magical car drawn by monstrous birds and so forth. See p. 114, Francois Fenormant's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... this, too, he heard that Mr. Bolitho's daughter had been visiting among the poorer streets in the town, and that on every hand she had been winning golden opinions. It seemed to him from what he had heard that there was a kind of witchcraft in her presence, and that many who had been among his great admirers, and promised supporters, now seemed to think that the other side had a great deal to say. Paul quickly discovered, too, that this girl was no ordinary canvasser. She ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Lat. amuletum, origin unknown; falsely connected with the Arab. himalah, a cord used to suspend a small Koran from the neck), a charm, generally, but not invariably, hung from the neck, to protect the wearer against witchcraft, sickness, accidents, &c. Amulets have been of many different kinds, and formed of different substances,—stones, metals, and strips of parchment being the most common, with or without characters ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dreamed that she was playing any kind of part, or interested in anything at all except the coppers that she begged for. She squatted in the roadway, ink-black and clear-cut in the now blazing sunlight, alternately flattering them and pretending to a knowledge of unguessed-at witchcraft. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... "The Witchcraft Act assumes that there can be no possible communication between living men and spirits," he said in answer to an assertion; whereon Septimus May instantly took up ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... distance between its walls. At the foot of the fall the waters linger for a moment in a dark, deep, brimming pool, hemmed in by a circle of ruined rocks; to this pool, in ancient times, all women convicted of capital crimes were immediately taken, and drowned. Witchcraft seems to have been the principal weakness of ladies in those days, throughout the Scandinavian countries. For a long period no disgrace was attached to its profession. Odin himself, we are expressly told, was a great adept, and always ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... bosom, her dark eyes upon me, her head held high. "My mother died when I was born; my father, years ago. I was the King's ward. While the Queen lived she kept me with her,—she loved me, I think; and the King too was kind,—would have me sing to him, and would talk to me about witchcraft and the Scriptures, and how rebellion to a king is rebellion to God. When I was sixteen, and he tendered me marriage with a Scotch lord, I, who loved the gentleman not, never having seen him, prayed ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... young friends," here interposed a voice from the clouds—figuratively speaking—really from an upper window; "it is not witchcraft, but a ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... yellow, but the twelfth (that upon North Island) a deep glowing crimson. Since then and for fifteen years they had been his friends. Nightly he watched them for minutes from his window before undressing for bed; and in fanciful moments they seemed to draw a circle of witchcraft around ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... frame, relighted the candle, and went to work again. A second time the frame was thrown down. Thereupon the children ran away, afraid of a thing so strange, and, with the superstition common to their class, dreaming of witchcraft. The neighbors, attracted by their cries, refused to credit their story. So, returning, but with fear and trembling, two of them at first, afterwards a third, resumed their occupation, without the recurrence of the alarming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... twinkling. Then, brazenly lifting out the inner framework, bodily, he thrust a fumbling hand into the aperture thus disclosed and pressed the spring, releasing the panel at the back. It disappeared as though by witchcraft, and the splash of light from the bull's-eye discovered a canvas bag squatting humbly in the secret compartment: a fat little canvas bag, considerably soiled from much handling, such as is used by banks for coin, a sturdy, matter-of-fact, every-day sort ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... no. I seldom speak but what I think, for flattery I like neither to give nor receive. Ah, yes; there are witches in the world yet. And their witchcraft consists not in magic filters, and potent herbs gathered at midnight under the full moon; far more subtle and powerful is it. Like the poisons of eastern countries, it is communicated by a touch, by a look, by the breath of a word. This is the witchcraft that they use; therewith ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... punishment. In several countries of Europe, these statutes still subsist; they were not abolished in Britain till a period still at no great distance. Since the abolition of persecution, the faith of witchcraft has disappeared even among the vulgar. It was long found inconsistent with any ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... her to be a witch because she was old and poor. The same was the case in Europe when these unfortunates were burned during the early part of the last century and even now the country-folk are often ready to beat or drown them. The abominable witchcraft acts, which arose from bibliolatry and belief in obsolete superstitions, can claim as many victims in "Protestant" countries, England and the Anglo-American ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... people," said the cat. "I am a human being like yourselves, and have been changed into the shape of a cat by witchcraft, though it was a just return for my wickedness. I was the housekeeper in the palace of a great king a long way from here, and the old woman was the queen's first chambermaid. We were led by avarice to plot together secretly ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... religious superstitions. It was not till the 17th century that paganism was even nominally abolished in some parts, and there is probably no district in Europe where the popular Christianity has assimilated more from earlier creeds. Witchcraft and the influence of fairies are still often believed in. The costume of both sexes is very peculiar both in cut and colour, but varies considerably in different districts. Bright red, violet and blue ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... is the result of a set of stage-fixings which make the little great, and half the horror inspired by the priest's curse is derived from bell and book and candle. The mystery of print gives weight to small men by the same witchcraft; you would not take the personal advice of so stupid a man as Criticus about the crossing of a t, but when he prints a tirade anonymously in the Philadelphia ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... lived in a house with her grandson. She was a very bad woman who thought of nothing but playing mischief. She was a witch and tried to harm everybody with witchcraft. ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... 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 ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... to the evidence on the table, consisted, first, of prisoners of war; secondly, of free persons sold for debt, or on account of real or imputed crimes, particularly adultery and witchcraft; in which cases they were frequently sold with their whole families, and sometimes for the profit of those by whom they were condemned; thirdly, of domestic slaves sold for the profit of their masters, in some ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... confidence, Malcolm; and a mother does not need witchcraft to enable her to read ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Jacobin etait une espece d'amulette, dont les inities etaient jaloux, et qui frappoit de prestiges ceux qui ne l'etaient pas—"The Jacobin diploma was a kind of amulet, which the initiated were jealous of preserving, and which struck as it were with witchcraft, those who were not of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... citizens crossed themselves, grew pale and shuddered. The fear of witchcraft was great in Angers, the peril, if accused of it, enormous. Even ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... 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, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... and swaying gracefully as he went. His gait confounded all those who beheld him, as he shamed the branches with his shape and belittled the rose with the redness of his cheeks and his black eyes of Babylonian witchcraft; indeed, thou wouldst deem that whoso looked on him would surely be preserved from calamity; [for he was] even as saith of him one of his describers ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... reaction. It has the emotional quality of a reaction to witchcraft or magic, but psi is not witchcraft. It is a natural force. No natural force is either nonexistent or irresistible. No natural force is invariably effective. Psi is not irresistible under all circumstances. It is not always effective. My rat cannot levitate cheese-crumbs weighing ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... ill you can conceive the image of my dear love, who has no witchcraft but beauty, no charm so potent as her ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... mother, a witch, displeased at her son's choice, maliciously arrests by witchcraft the birth of Willie's son. Willie's travailing wife sends him again and again to bribe the witch, who refuses cup, steed, and girdle. Here our version makes such abrupt transitions, that it will ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... used by the negroes themselves, is known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for witchcraft, feitico; the vernacular name is Bossum, or Bossifoe. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree, is generally the national Fetish. The king's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... how can you expect a fair trial? Prisoner at the bar, you have been found guilty of witchcraft." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's "History of New England Witchcraft," in which, by the way, he ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and it wad healed. The soldiers who were standing near, as well as the archers and the six Pharisees, far from being moved by this miracle, continued to insult our Lord, and said to the bystanders, 'It is a trick of the devil, the powers of witchcraft made the ear appear to be cut off, and now the same power gives it the ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... There was something marvellous and strange about their dance. It was as though gray shadows had played a game which the eye could scarcely follow. It was as if they had learned it from the mists that hover over desolate morasses. There was witchcraft in it. All those who had never before been on Kullaberg understood why the whole meeting took its name from the crane's dance. There was wildness in it; but yet the feeling which it awakened was a delicious longing. No one thought any more about struggling. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... home. That night the father calls his son to account; but he is so pleased at the effects of the magic fife, that he decides not to punish the boy. The official, too, the bishop's agent, at whose court the next Friday step-mother and monk bring charges of witchcraft against Jack, has to hear the fife, and is obliged to dance until he promises ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... hobgoblins, and all the fiery shapes with which the imagination of ignorance and fear could people that horrible place; and the bible teaches the existence of hell and this big devil and all these little devils. The bible teaches the doctrine of witchcraft and makes us believe that there are sorcerers and witches, and that the dead could be raised by the power of sorcery. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him with his knife, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one will deny that it is good for heathens and savages, even if there were no life after death, to be wiser and better than they are. It is good, I presume, that they should give up cannibalism, slave-trading, witchcraft, child-murder, and a host of other abominations; and that they should be made to give them up not from mere fear of European cannon, but of their own wills and consciences, seeing that such habits are wrong and ruinous, and loathing them accordingly; in a word, that instead of ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by trying experiments, drowned them in ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Hearts, with a nail of Iron knocked through the forehead, and thus fastened to the bottom of the chair: they durst not pull it out, remembering that her like thing was used to the old Countess of Sussex, and afterwards proved a witchcraft, for which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... "There is witchcraft about those great hulks," he growled. "They are neither Norse, nor Frisian, nor Danish, but better ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... 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, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... elder days. The woodland, still really tenanted by 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 ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... needless to point out to the intelligent reader that the witchcraft of the mother consisted only in the ascendency of a powerful mind over a weak and melancholy one, and that the harshness with which she exercised her superiority in a case of delicacy had driven her daughter first to despair, then to frenzy. Accordingly, the Author has endeavoured ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... of the broom bush, which you saw growing on the old castle of Auchinleck. The wood has a curious appearance when sawn across. You may either have a little writing-stand made of it, or get it formed into boards for a treatise on witchcraft, by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... those days of witchcraft and apparitions of all kinds, and even in the present, among the ignorant and uneducated of the lower classes, any female seen at night in a lonely place, and supposed to be a spirit, was termed a white woman, no matter what the color of her dress may have been, provided it was not black. The same ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... market days, and he felt a genuine thrill of pleasure when he recognized the red bandana turban of old Aunt Lyddy, the ancient negro woman who had sold him gingerbread and fried fish, and told him weird tales of witchcraft and conjuration, in the old days when, as an idle boy, he had loafed about the market-house. He did not speak to her, however, or give her any sign of recognition. He threw a glance toward a certain corner where ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... came over in the Mayflower, as you might transport yeast. If you walk through Harvard, you will be wise; if you stand on Bunker Hill, treason flees your soul forever; and if you once gaze upon the Common, you are safe from the heresy of the Quaker and the sin of witchcraft." ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... what have we to do with them!" and when we pointed out to Asaad some text of Scripture, which we thought applicable in any case, she would endeavour to close the book, or catch it from him, as if it taught paganism, or witchcraft. During her stay we dined, and as Asaad took the meat upon his plate, and ate it without a scruple, in this season of Lent, it was remarked with what a gaze of wonder she regarded him. She seemed to say in her heart, "All is ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... (Mass.). Sincere in his bigotry, pitiable in the superstition that darkens his life, honestly persuaded that he and his are the victims of witchcraft, and that duty forces him to punish those who have afflicted the Lord's saints.—Josiah Gilbert Holland, The Bay ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... both. I know not what safety you seek in Drangey, but there shall your bones be laid, and many will begrudge you your living there. Beware of treachery; yet shall you be smitten with weapons, for strange are the dreams which I have had. Guard yourselves against witchcraft, for few things are stronger than ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... say whether he prefers dark or white meat; though he inflict upon you the words, "Why, if two hundred years ago people had been told that you could talk through a wire they would have hanged the prophet for witchcraft!" though he repeats the point of his story, rolling it over on his tongue, seeking for a second laugh; though he says, "Dinner is my best meal"—he cannot help it. You know he is a Bromide, and you expect ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... know it—which the intellectual faculties sometimes derive from mocking and drawing down to their own level the spiritual powers, the intuitive powers, which are higher than they, higher, yet less capable of justification or verification by the common tests of sense and understanding. The witchcraft of the brain degrades ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... this is almost witchcraft. I didn't believe in them wings and clouds till now, but sure enough there they are. Seein' is believin'. I don't hold with it, but I don't deny ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... man of sound and unsophisticated tastes and propensities so likely to be attracted by the female of a foreign stock, as by one of his own, who is more nearly conformed to himself. Shakspeare spoke the language of nature, when he made the senate and people of Venice attribute to the effect of witchcraft, Desdemona's passion for Othello—though, as Coleridge has said, we are to conceive of him not as a negro, but as a high ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... with another or with mankind. The gods, therefore, have no divine superiority to man in conditions or limitations; they can only be described as pre-existent, acting intelligences, with scarcely greater powers than man might hope to gain by magic or witchcraft of his own. This conception explains how easily the divine merged into the human in Greek theology, and how frequently divine ancestors occurred in family histories. (By the word 'theology' is designated the knowledge ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... more decorous; but can we imagine Virgil praying, or anybody praying, to the gods of the Aeneid? The supernatural machinery of Camoens and Tasso is frankly absurd; they are not only careless of credibility, but of sanity. Lucan tried to do without gods; but his witchcraft engages belief even more faintly than the mingled Paganism and Christianity of Camoens, and merely shows how strongly the most rationalistic of epic poets felt the value of some imaginary relaxation in the limits of human existence. Is it, then, only as such a relaxation ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... deserving Death, or even a Prison for Debtors; there being no more than two Persons, that, as far as I have been able to learn, ever suffer'd as Criminals, although it has been a Settlement near sixty Years; One of whom was a Turk that committed Murder; the other, an old Woman, for Witchcraft. These, 'tis true, were on the Stage, and acted many Years, before I knew the Place; but as for the last, I wish it had been undone to this day; although they give a great many Arguments, to justifie the Deed, which I had ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... such and such a date, fall into two great classes. The first of these—involving death at a definite date, after it had been prophesied either by the victim or some physician or priest—may be dismissed in a few words, as they lead at once into the realm of prophecy, witchcraft, and voodoo. Most of them are little better than after-echoes of the ethnic stories of the "evil eye," and of bewitched individuals fading away and dying after their wax image has been stuck full of pins or otherwise mutilated. There have occurred instances of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... court. For this was a lady that I was much beholden unto; and hither she came under my safe conduct. I shall never forgive you that trespass." "My lord," said Balin, "me forethinketh much of your displeasure; for this lady was the untruest lady living; and by her enchantment and witchcraft she hath been the destroyer of many good knights, and she was the causer that my mother was burnt, through her falsehood and treachery." Then King Arthur and all his court made great dole, and had great shame of the death of the Lady of the Lake. Then the king full richly ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... witchcraft at the bottom of it, and told the villagers to resume relations with Marget and Ursula in a private and unostentatious way, and keep both eyes open. They were told to keep their own counsel, and not rouse the suspicions of the household. The villagers were ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... defenders of the post had repaired the damage by the end of the month; and the enemy, finding no signs of the earthquake when they invested the place, ascribed the supposed immunity of Jellalabad to English witchcraft. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... to the reader to know that the Highland cattle are peculiarly liable to be TAKEN, or infected, by spells and witchcraft, which judicious people guard against by knitting knots of peculiar complexity on the tuft of hair ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... were exported like cattle from the British Coast and exposed for sale in the Roman market. These men and women who were thus sold were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, debt, blasphemy or theft. Or else they were prisoners taken in war—they had forfeited their right to freedom, and we sold them. We said they were incapable of self-government and so must be looked after. Later we quit selling British slaves, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... word, a glance! Why, the whole frozen statue Warmed into life. Surely it was not you. You must have bribed some angel with false prayers To wear your semblance—nay, no angel served, But devilish witchcraft— ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Grandfather'—until he was suddenly struck down by paralysis. But he had no sooner recovered sufficient strength to be able to hold a pen, than we find him again at his desk writing the 'Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,' a volume of Scottish History for 'Lardner's Cyclopaedia,' and a fourth series of 'Tales of a Grandfather' in his French History. In vain his doctors told him to give up work; he would not be dissuaded. "As for bidding me not work," he said to Dr. Abercrombie, "Molly might just ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... revenge, made use of all the enchantments, spells, and charms, that were at that time supposed to answer their malicious purposes. Henry, the eldest son, died soon after their dismissal; but no suspicion of witchcraft arose till five years after, when the three women, who are said to have entered into a formal contract with the devil, were accused of "murdering Henry Lord Ros by witchcraft, and torturing the Lord Francis, his brother, and Lady Catharine, his sister." After various examinations, before Francis ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... lost their wits about the Sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land: another age went mad for fear of the Devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the Philosopher's Stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence in very many countries of Europe to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... once more saw this he said to himself, 'What a bad business this is! Can they all have been so heavy-hearted that they have all three hanged themselves? No, I can't believe that it is anything but witchcraft! But I will know the truth,' he said; 'if the two others are still hanging there it is true but if they are not it's nothing else ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... maleficae," are the words of Suetonius; the latter conveying the idea of witchcraft or enchantment. Suidas relates that a certain martyr cried out from his dungeon—"Ye have loaded me with fetters as a sorcerer and profane person." Tacitus calls the Christian religion "a foreign and deadly [Footnote exitiabilis: superstition," Annal. xiii. 32; ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... leader of all the other witches and therefore the most hated and feared. The King used her witchcraft at times to assist him in carrying out his cruelties and revenge, but he was always obliged to pay Blinkie large sums of money or heaps of precious jewels before she would undertake an enchantment. ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... fact is, Cuthbertson, Craven's a devout believer in the department of witchcraft called medical science. He's celebrated in all the medical schools as an example of the newest sort of liver complaint. The doctors say he can't last another year; and he has fully made up his mind not to survive next Easter, just ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... you—'tis Joan!" Hereupon I dropped my spade and she, seeing how I stared upon her, burst into a peal of laughter. "Ah, ah!" cried she. "Here is pretty, soft name and should fit me as well as another. Why must you stare so fool-like; here is no witchcraft, for in the caves yonder 'Joan' meeteth me at every turn; 'tis carven on walls, on chairs, on table, together with 'Damaris' and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... labor and the right to work. The interests of workingmen resent political trifling. Our political education, shaped almost entirely to the interest of slavery, has been false and vicious in the extreme, and it must be corrected with as much suddenness, almost, as that with which Salem witchcraft came to an end. The only question that remains to decide is how ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... and not ask for a miracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft, though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel. Thou didst not come down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and reviling Thee, "Come down from the cross and we will believe that Thou art He." Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... very greatly assist the astral body to leave the physical in full consciousness—a fact the knowledge of which seems to have survived even to mediaeval times, as will be seen from the evidence given at some of the trials for witchcraft. But the application to the physical eye might very easily so stimulate its sensitiveness as to make it susceptible to some of ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... houseleek, however, is a singular plant, worthy of examination; it has an old-world look, as if it had survived beyond its date into the nineteenth century. It hides in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its appropriate owner. The houseleek is still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf—the leaves are rather like portions of the plant than mere leaves—is ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... sitting on it! The precious stones sparkled so brightly on all sides that it was a pleasure to see them, and they collected the most beautiful and costly together. But now the old witch had through her witchcraft caused the Hunter's eyes to ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... a dear little girl," said the old woman. "Now you shall see how well we agree together"; and while she combed little Gerda's hair, the child forgot her foster-brother Kay more and more, for the old woman understood magic; but she was no evil being, she only practised witchcraft a little for her own private amusement, and now she wanted very much to keep little Gerda. She therefore went out in the garden, stretched out her crooked stick towards the rose-bushes, which, beautifully ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... do hereby declare, Urbain Grandier duly accused and convicted of the crimes of magic and witchcraft, and of causing the persons of certain Ursuline nuns of this town and of other females to become possessed of evil spirits, wherefrom other crimes and offences have resulted. By way of reparation therefor, we have sentenced, and do hereby sentence, the said Grandier to make public apology, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... No one came the next day, and the next, nor for a whole week. Gobila's people might have been dead and buried for any sign of life they gave. But they were only mourning for those they had lost by the witchcraft of white men, who had brought wicked people into their country. The wicked people were gone, but fear remained. Fear always remains. A man may destroy everything within himself, love and hate and belief, and even doubt; but as long as he clings to life he cannot destroy ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... reply, that in endeavoring to relieve the oppressed, to elevate the poor, and to instruct and edify those of a happier condition, he had only held "the mirror up to Nature. To show virtue her own form—scorn her own image." That "this only was the witchcraft he had used;" and, did he need proof of this, there are many fair girls on both sides of the water who, though they might not repeat the whole of Desdemona's speech to a married man, yet could ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various |
