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Witch   /wɪtʃ/   Listen
Witch

verb
(past & past part. witched; pres. part. witching)
1.
Cast a spell over someone or something; put a hex on someone or something.  Synonyms: bewitch, enchant, glamour, hex, jinx.



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"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books



... could 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 spire That points above earth's ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice

... they now no longer fear the king, Since that the maid turned out to be a witch At Rheims, the devil aideth us no longer, And things ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... appear and disappear at will. For the rest they have the mental and physical characteristics of the kings and queens they protect or persecute so capriciously. They can be seen by making a magic sign and looking through a witch's arm held akimbo. They are no good comates for men or women, and to meddle with a goddess or nymph or giantess was to ensure evil or death for a man. The god's loves were apparently not always so fatal, though there seems to be some tradition to that ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... witch!" shouted Jack. "She rode in on a broomstick—she crept in through the keyhole. Where's the fire? Let's take her downstairs, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... there is a plain, and on the plain is a knoll, about twice the height of a one-storeyed cottage, and pointed "like a sugar-loaf." The old people remember, or have heard, that this mound was not there when they were young. It swelled up suddenly out of the grave of a witch who was buried there. ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... eyes to his, bright with an expression of trustful candour. This was an expression she was somewhat apt to assume when her mood was a teasing one; and it generally had the effect of breaking down the Commendatore's gravity. "You are a witch," he would laugh, availing himself without shame of the way-worn reproach, "a wicked, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... shall laugh at some of the Reformers Hotch-potch too, as I have mingled it for him. Jewish Tetragramaton, Stigian Frogs, reeking Pandaemoniums, Debauch'd Protagonists, Nauseous Ribaldry, Ranting Smutt, Abominable Stench, Venus and St George, Juliana, the Witch and the Parson of Wrotham [Footnote: Collier's Epithetes.], with the admirable Popish story of the Woman that went to the Play-House and brought home the Devil with her [Footnote: Collier, p. 257.]—And the Devil's in't indeed, if this charming Rhetorick of his, (since he calls mine so) ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... the unlucky craft!" screamed the old man at the top of his voice, and turning his head to hide the tears that were streaming down his rugged face. "And her that I nursed and pulled out of the waters once all but dead. Damn it, I say! There, take that, you Sea Witch, you!" and he picked up a great boulder and crashed it through the bottom of the canoe with all his strength. "You shan't never drown no more. But it has brought you good luck, it has, sir; you'll be a fortunit man all your life now. It has brought ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... morals. To match an English and a Scottish author in the rival task of embodying and reviving the traditions of their respective countries, would be, you alleged, in the highest degree unequal and unjust. The Scottish magician, you said, was, like Lucan's witch, at liberty to walk over the recent field of battle, and to select for the subject of resuscitation by his sorceries, a body whose limbs had recently quivered with existence, and whose throat had but just uttered the last note of agony. Such a subject ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Anton, "Dan'l used to talk about that. He always used to say that the oak tree was a black witch tree and that the beech tree and the ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... as they were too far off to be hunted. It was after dark when we arrived at the rocky pool where we had before camped in March, which we learned now from Chuar the natives called the Innupin (or Oonupin) Picavu, or Witch Water-pocket. They said the locality was a favourite haunt of witches. These were often troublesome and had to be driven away or they might hurt one. There was plenty of wood and we were soon comfortable, with a keen November wind to ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... say that even 'gainst that hallow'd season, At which our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The Bird of Dawning croweth all night long. The nights are wholesome, and no mildew falls; No planet strikes, nor spirits walk abroad: No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So gracious and so hallowed is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various

... of school; and when I come home mother lectures me, and sends me to my bedroom. But I am free to-night. I have been good all day; and it is on account of you, Nora; just because you are a little Irish witch; and I sympathize with you to the bottom ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... recoiled from, and he refused to burden his soul with Arthur's murder. A few years later John suddenly turned against him, and demanded his sons as hostages. His wife, Maud de St. Valerie, who lived long in the popular memory as a witch, sent back the answer: she would not entrust her children to a man who had murdered his nephew. The king chased Braose from his lands, caught his wife and eldest son, and starved them to death in Windsor Castle. The ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... were blent All ardors of the Orient; She spake—all magics of the South Were compassed in the witch's mouth;— He thought the scarlet lips of her More precious than En Gedi's myrrh, The lips of that ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... the just penalties of a perfidious breach of contract. Their threats induced her instant flight toward my house for the usual protection, but the enraged friends of the dead man gave hot chase, and overtook the witch just inside the limits of the garrison, where, on the parade-ground, in sight of the officers' quarters, and before any one could interfere, they killed her. There were sixteen men in pursuit of the doctress, and sixteen gun-shot wounds were found in her body when examined by the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... speak words not needful: praising: polishing of words: defending sin: shouting with laughter: making grimaces at any man: to sing secular songs and to love them: to praise ill-deeds: to sing more for the glory of men than of GOD. The sins of deed are these: gluttony: lechery: drunkenness: simony: witch-craft: breaking of the holy-days: sacrilege: to receive GOD'S Body in deadly sin: breaking of vows: apostacy: dissipation in GOD'S service: to set example of ill deeds: to hurt any man in his body, or ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... scant half mile away. At some distant time there had been an enormous fall of rock. This, disintegrating, had formed a gently-curving breast which sloped down to merge with the valley's floor. Willow and witch alder, stunted birch and poplar had found roothold, clothed it, until only their crowding outposts, thrusting forward in a wavering semicircle, held back seemingly by the blue hordes, showed where it ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... "It's my opinion that we have been the policemen of the world long enough. We policed the seas for pirates and slavers. Now we police the land for Dervishes and brigands and every sort of danger to civilisation. There is never a mad priest or a witch doctor, or a firebrand of any sort on this planet, who does not report his appearance by sniping the nearest British officer. One tires of it at last. If a Kurd breaks loose in Asia Minor, the world wants to know why Great Britain does not keep him in order. If there is a military mutiny ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... salient for a machine-gun course, he had drunk more beer than was good for him, and the face of a pretty girl had bewitched him, stirring up desire. He wanted to kiss her lips... There were no women in the Ypres salient. Nothing pretty or soft. It was hell up there, and this girl was a pretty witch, bringing back thoughts of the other side—for life, womanhood, love, caresses which were good for the souls and bodies of men. It was a starved life up there in the salient... Why shouldn't she give him her lips? Wasn't he fighting for France? Wasn't he a tall and proper lad? Curse the girl ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... the little boys, crying more bitterly than ever. "We have no father and no mother, and a cruel witch troubles us. She tries all the time to do us harm, and we are going to run away where she can ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook

... with Nature's beauty, but in the fierce struggle with her wrath, does the Norseman feel pleasure. Nature to him was not, as in Mr. Longfellow's exquisite poem, {3} the kind old nurse, to take him on her knee and whisper to him, ever anew, the story without an end. She was a weird witch-wife, mother of storm demons and frost giants, who must be fought with steadily, warily, wearily, over dreary heaths and snow-capped fells, and rugged nesses and tossing sounds, and away into the boundless sea—or who could live?—till he got ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... other case the esere bean—the product of a vine—was pounded and mixed with water and drunk: if the body ejected the poison it was a sign of innocence. This method was the surest and least troublesome—for the investigation, sentence, and punishment were carried out simultaneously—unless the witch-doctor had been influenced, which sometimes happened, for there were various ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... witches, and they were condemned on the most trivial and even ridiculous evidence imaginable. If an old woman were seen to enter a house by the front door, and a black cat was seen to leave the house by the back door, it was deemed sufficient evidence that the old woman was a witch, without further evidence or investigation—and indeed much of the evidence was not nearly so good and circumstantial as this! When a witch was caught, she was questioned and generally tortured; but it was ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... 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, I smile immortal, while ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... hand upon the chimney. "Witch!" he said, "there is not your match for devilry in Europe. Service! the thing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a minute the people were so completely absorbed in the movements and words of their piache, or medicine man, or witch doctor, as the man in the jaguar skin proved to be, that they were quite oblivious of the presence of the two Englishmen; but suddenly the piache caught sight of them and stopped short in his leapings and howlings, and glared, open-mouthed, at the strangers for a second or two ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... if I could only make you see the gilded walled city, in which history of the ages is being laid in dust and ashes, while the power that made it is hastening down the back alley to a mountain nunnery for safety! Peking is like a beautiful golden witch clothed in priceless garments of dusty yellow, girded with ropes of pearls. Her eyes are of jade, and so fine is the powdered sand she sifts from her tapering fingers it turns the air to an amber haze; so potent its ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... to exertion, and he was soon tired out. Indeed he was so big that the arrows of the boys seemed only like pins and needles sticking into him, and the boys began to fear that their quivers would be emptied before they had conquered him. Just then they met an old witch with a bundle of sticks which she was carrying to her wigwam. She was very angry with Nikoochis, for he would not allow her even to gather the dry sticks that fell to the ground in the forest he was guarding. The result was that she ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... o' the sort," responded Temperance. "Whether there be witches or no, the Lord knows, and there I leave it; but that there is a devil I'm very sure, for he has tempted me over and over again. All I say is, if Charity could meet a witch, and get no ill, why should not ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... is a regular witch! He made out so well in his first interview with Yvard, that no one can doubt his ability to overlay him ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... cases of the century had as its principal subject a woman accused of the power to cause sickness. In an age when weapon salve was wiped on the weapon and not the wound, and when astrology was intimately associated with the practice of medicine, it is not surprising to find, also, the witch and her power to cause disease. Goodwife Wright stood accused of such powers in the colony's general ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... making, although she herself considered her life as practically finished. The past and the present were moulding her into something that only the future could determine. Sometimes April, sometimes July, sometimes witch, sometimes woman; impetuous, intrepid, romantic, tempestuous, illogical,—these were but the elements of which the coming years of experience had yet to shape a character. Young Mrs. Loring had plenty of briars, but she had good roots and ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... thoughts are fingers, Of the hands that witch the lyre— Greenland has its mountain icebergs, AEtna has its heart of fire; Calculation has its plummet; Self-control its iron rules; Genius has its sparkling fountains; Dulness has its stagnant pools; Like a halcyon on the waters, Burns's chart disdain'd a plan— In his soarings he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... may cease to be regarded as wicked; may 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

... plenty: sort of a gashly critter like a witch, with teeth all same like a lobo. Kind 'at'd stick a knife in yuh ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... is generally believed by the peasants of Devonshire that idiotcy is produced by the influence of a witch.] ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... to my suggestion?" asked Addie Marchmont. "I think it would be one of the best practical jokes I ever knew. The very thought of such an incorrigible witch as you palming yourself off as a demure Puritan maiden is ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... that text works both ways sometimes, and the stranger angel finds himself among angels. My old mother here, if she does weigh well on toward two hundred, is more like one than anything I have yet seen, and Elsie, if not an angel, is at least part witch and part fairy. But you need not fear ghostly entertainment from mother's larder. As you are a Christian, and not a Pagan, no more of this reluctance. Indeed, nolens volens, I shall not permit you to go out into this November storm ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... toilet water; witch hazel; bay rum; listerine; any and everything in reach; and the villain still pursued her. Every moment was getting precious now; Hubbie was about due to come home, and if Hubbie ever found out about this—well—life would ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy

... have infinitely improved him—in folly. He boasted to us triumphantly that he had run over sixteen thousand miles in sixteen months: that he had bowed at the levee of the Emperor Alexander,—been slapped on the shoulder by the Archduke Constantine,—shaken hands with a Lapland witch,—and been presented in full volunteer uniform at every court between Stockholm and Milan. Yet is he not one particle wiser than if he had spent the same time in walking up and down the Strand. He has contrived, however, to pick up on his tour, strange ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... or sum of it, was spent in Hopen Spaces. Hif anybody as has got two eyes in his hed, and a hart in his buzzom, wants for to see what can be done with about 40 hakers of land—witch the most respecfool Gardiner told me was about the size of the Queen's Park at Kilburn—let him go there on a fine Summer's Arternoon, and see jest about five thowsen children a playing about there, all free, and hindependent, and appy, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... the boy to the headmen, and the witch- doctors. They drew on his body the sign of the otter—he who is cunning and brave, who is at home on land or in the water. They made him a warrior, he who was a boy, because there was always meat in ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... old woman having the appearance of a witch sat at a dark table by the little criss-cross window of the dark room. She was crooning to herself, and I made the sign of the evil eye and asked her in French for wine; but French she did not understand. Catching, however, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... Lift up your spirits like a man! Susy, dear, you and I will have a jig—hey, my honey?—before 'tis quite too dark to see how well-favoured you be still, though so many summers have passed since your husband, a son of a witch, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... They'd cry: and straight the plash of oar, And creak of sail were stilled; And every ear Was tent to catch the strains her sweet voice trilled. Avast to gloomy thoughts and boding fear! Alack the day when she should witch their hearts ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer

... girl is such a witch that she could have magnetized the Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to influence—you yourself," replied Rastignac, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... smart girl," said Germain, "and you can make a fire like a little witch. I feel like a new man, and my courage is coming back to me; for, with my legs wet to the knees, and the prospect of staying here till daybreak in that condition, I was in a very bad humor ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... the people act thus in order to prevent them. He who does not wish to have this observed in public, through fear of punishment, removes his wife to another house for the parturition, if he thinks that the witch is in his. The procurer of this witch they say is the bird tictic, [352] and that this bird, by flying and singing, shows the witch or osuang the house where there is a parturition, and even guides him to work other misfortunes. Consequently, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... a very graceful invitation for Andrew Drever to give to a stranger who had only a few moments before implied that his mother was a witch. But it was a kindness such as he was ever showing; and I must add that Captain Gordon was one of those easy-mannered sailors who at once give an agreeable impression. I myself liked him from the very first, and I had afterwards many ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... insect bored the air and trailed slowly to silence again. Everywhere were pungent, aromatic smells. The vast, moveless heat seemed to distil countless odors from the brush—odors of warm sap, of pine needles, and of tar-weed, and above all the medicinal odor of witch hazel. As far as one could look, uncounted multitudes of trees and manzanita bushes were quietly and motionlessly growing, growing, growing. A tremendous, immeasurable Life pushed steadily heavenward without a sound, without a motion. At turns ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... encamped at Shunem, and Saul occupied Mount Gilboa (1 Sam. xxviii. 4); in the other, the Philistines encamped at Aphek, and the Israelites "by the fountain which is in Jezreel" (1 Sam. xxix. 1). The first of these accounts is connected with the episode of the witch of Endor, the second with the sending away of David by Achish. The final catastrophe is in both narratives placed on Mount Gilboa and Stade has endeavoured to reconcile the two accounts by admitting that the battle ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... a little puzzled at this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr-burning and witch-hanging;—but time will show,—time will show, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... who had trotted panting in the General's wake; "I'm sure I wish I'd never said she might go; I'm as nervous as a witch ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... are crowds of people whirled through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead,—if they don't come from Salem, they ought to,—and not more than one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought for their convenience. They know that without ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... never thole the thought of the Blessed Maid," said Allan Rutherford, "but would tell all that listened how she was a brain-sick wench, or a witch, and under her standard he would never fight. He even avowed to us that she had been a chamber-wench of an inn in Neufchateau, and there had learned to back a horse, and many a worse trick," which was a lie devised by the English and them of Burgundy. ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... handicap—which, of course, I refused. For several hundred miles it was nip and tuck, as it were. Then, over Luxembourg, I put all my energies into a magnificent sprint and won the race by three and a half broom lengths. She claimed a foul and went off in a fit of sulks, of course. (I never saw a Witch who was a good loser.) And I—well, the fact is, my boy, that I am not as young as I used to be. I simply ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... quarter millions of Irish Catholics. History concedes to Catholic Ireland the cleanest record in respect of religious tolerance to be found anywhere in Europe. We never martyred a saint, and amid all the witch-hunting devilries of Scotland and England we burned only one witch, a namesake of my own. Deny or suppress all this. Imagine into the eyes of every Catholic neighbour the slumbering but unquenched fires of Smithfield. But be good enough to respect mathematics. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... there had something else to think of and to do besides attending to our affairs? Certainly their indifference to Grant's fourth Proclamation, and to Mr. Fish's celebrated protocol in the Tahiti business, looked that way. Could it be that that little witch of a Belle Brannan really cared more for their performance of "Midsummer Night's Dream," or her father's birthday, than she cared for that pleasant little account I telegraphed up to all the children, of ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... bow-shot from the bridge. The door was opened by Bryan, and the party entered without further ceremony. They found no one within except an old woman, with harsh, wrinkled features, and a glance as ill-omened as that of a witch, whom Bryan Bowntance told them was Fenwolf's mother. This old crone regarded ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Andrew Hall, and, forgetting in her haste the consistency of her part, ran over to her. Isabel, out of her abiding mischief, had dressed herself for a dullard's part. She had thought at first of being an old witch-woman and telling fortunes, but instead she had put on pious black alpaca and a portentous cap, and dropped her darting glances. To Andrew Hall, who was a portly Quaker in the dress of uncle Ephraim long since dead, she seemed as sweet as girlhood and as restful as his own mother. Andrew had been ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... perhaps, or the touch of his strong hand—the old creature seemed to know it, and chuckled, in her own peculiar style, immensely. For old Kannoa had not been overburdened with demonstrative affection by the members of her tribe, some of whom had even called her an old witch—a name which had sent a thrill of great terror through her trembling old heart, for the doom of witches in Eskimo land in ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... catching both her hands. "You are a witch. You're burning an invisible lamp of incense off somewhere in that yellow wood and out of it comes the twilight and the secrets of the world. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... tell thee what, It would do well instead of looking-glasses, To set one's face each morning by a saucer Of a witch's congeal'd blood. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... sweet love, with her luring smile, The mystic charm-light of halcyon hours, Shall no more with her witch'ry our souls beguile, As the leaves grow seer on Life's fading bowers, And the blushes are pale on ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... which he has found the best roup remedy he has ever tried: Dissolve 1 ounce of permanganate of potash in 3 pints of water, hold the fowl's head in this for a second, then open the beak and rinse out the mouth in the solution. Wipe with a clean, soft cloth and apply a very little witch hazel or carbolated salve to the eyes, nostrils and head. Repeat the operation as often as the throat and head become clogged with mucus. Until the disease is eliminated from the premises, keep permanganate of potash in the drinking water of all the fowls, ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... that I cannot hide the misery which you have caused. Sure, the hostil goddes have, to plague me, ordayned that fatal marridge, by which you are bound to one so infinitly below you in degree. Were that bond of ill-omind Hymen cut in twayn witch binds you, I swear, Madam, that my happiniss woulde be to offer you this hande, as I have my harte long agoe. And I praye you to beare in minde this declaracion, which I here sign with my hande, and witch I pray you may one day be called upon to prove the ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the haft of his ax and looking at Brian, "do you remember my telling you, that night after we had bearded the Dark Master and got the loan of those two-score men, how an old witch-woman had predicted ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... hung fire, Perez determined to poison Escovedo. But he did not in the least know how to set about it. Science was hardly in her infancy. If you wanted to poison a man in Scotland, you had to rely on a vulgar witch, or send a man to France, at great expense, to buy the stuff, and the messenger was detected and tortured. The Court of Spain was not ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... Nameless Dell Nora Queen Bess Ruby's Reward Sibyl's Influence Stella Rosevelt That Dowdy Thorn Among Roses, A Sequel to a Girl in a Thousand Thrice Wedded Tina Trixy True Aristocrat, A Two Keys Virgie's Inheritance Wedded By Fate Welfleet Mystery, The Wild Oats Winifred's Sacrifice Witch Hazel ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... to kill this Devil-child. But meantime the village had got hold of Messua and her husband, who were undoubtedly the father and mother of this Devil-child, and had barricaded them in their own hut, and presently would torture them to make them confess they were witch and wizard, and then they would be burned ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... the Christian missionaries. Li Faa, educated, who could read and write English and Hawaiian and a fair measure of Chinese, claimed to believe in nothing, although in her secret heart she feared the kahunas (Hawaiian witch-doctors), who she was certain could charm away ill luck or pray one to death. Li Faa would never come into Ah Kim's house, as he thoroughly knew, and kow-tow to his mother and be slave to her in the immemorial Chinese way. Li Faa, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... pathetic, my dear," said March, in the discomfort he knew his wife must be feeling as well as himself. "How odd to have the lid lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the witch's caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home! And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the mouths of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... like trying to make them go to bed; and it will be necessary to surprise them with the idea that teaching is work, and that the teacher is tired and must go play or rest or eat: possibilities always concealed by that infamous humbug the current schoolmaster, who achieves a spurious divinity and a witch doctor's authority by persuading children that he is not human, just as ladies persuade them that ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... Famine at Paris? Was love ever painted with more truth and 'morbidezza' than in the ninth book? Not better, in my mind, even in the fourth of Virgil. Upon the whole, with all your classical rigor, if you will but suppose St. Louis a god, a devil, or a witch, and that he appears in person, and not in a dream, the Henriade will be an epic poem, according to the strictest statute laws of the 'epopee'; but in my court of equity it is one ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... older towns had their ghost stories, their witch stories, and their traditions of hidden treasure, guarded by spirits of persons who had been murdered, and buried with the gold in order that their spirits might act as a charm to frighten away anybody who should presume to dig in those spots. ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... vodka and genial superstition. You will be led from one to the other, puzzled but, I dare conjecture, highly entertained. I think you may take it, too, that a certain healthy sort of children will like to have these queer stories read aloud. The villainies of the Baba Yaga, an old witch of terrific resourcefulness, and the oddly inconsequent animal stories should make particular appeal. But you will be hard put to it to answer the questions which will be thrust at you; and (by the way) perhaps you will discreetly have to leave out a phrase or two for prudence' sake. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... might, Skilled in magic, huge of limb; Giant, wizard, goblin, sprite, Ghost, witch, devil, imp of night, ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... the meane-while, the Turkes began to murmurre, and would not willingly goe into the Marr Granada, as the phrase is amongst them: notwithstanding the Moores being very superstitious, were contented to be directed by their Hoshea, who with us, signifieth a Witch, and is of great account and reputation amongst them, as not going in any great Vessell to Sea without one, and observing whatsoever he concludeth out of his Divination. The Ceremonies they use are many, and when they come ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... with a lively fear that it was the Muse that had taken advantage of my solitude and possessed me—the witch had evidently come to ruin a poor devil like myself making a living by collecting cotton duties. I decided to have a good dinner—it is the empty stomach that all sorts of incurable diseases find an easy prey. I sent for my cook and gave orders for ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... evil portent of the birds? Were the stars adverse? or what else hath fall'n?" And others said, 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 woe-maker, With stones, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... jacket on. But even if she had—ho! ho! ho! I say; do you know, you couldn't convince the Bishop and Henrietta, if you'd talk till doomsday, that that red coat and hat we advertised weren't taken by a little girl that was daffy. Fact; I swear it! They admit you took the coat, you little witch, but it was when you were out of your mind—of course—of course! 'The very fact that she left the coat behind her and took nothing else from the house shows a mind diseased,' insisted Henrietta. Of course—of course! 'And her coming for no reason at all to your house,' adds the Bishop.... ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... "Because she's a little witch. Most determined little piece I know. Hard working; lots of pluck; industrious as the devil. Whole soul set on ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... our faces that that fear was groundless, but a greater one, that she might not be able to convince us, seized her next and she made such an excited gesture that the shawl she wore over her head and shoulders fell away and her long hair came tumbling down like a witch's. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... showed clearly that no one was there. They did not, of course, discover the cave, for the plank had been removed, but they gazed solemnly into the depths of the dark chasm and wondered if poor Cormac had committed suicide there, or if the witch had murdered him and thrown him in. Having neither rope nor ladder, and the chasm appearing to be bottomless, they had no means of settling ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... hunger, mewed. 20 Teased with their cries, her choler grew, And thus she sputtered: 'Hence, ye crew. Fool that I was, to entertain Such imps, such fiends, a hellish train! Had ye been never housed and nursed, I, for a witch had ne'er been cursed. To you I owe, that crowds of boys Worry me with eternal noise; Straws laid across, my pace retard, The horse-shoe's nailed (each threshold's guard), 30 The stunted broom the wenches hide, For fear that I should ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... the switchback railway, no hopping, jumping, or skipping. Anybody could have ridden from Mulranney to Achil. There was no merit in the achievement. All you had to do was to sit still and look about. You could no longer witch the world with noble truckmanship. We ran over a bridge built to replace one washed away by a mountain torrent. The engineer who constructed the first had failed to realise that the tinkling rivulet of summer became in winter a ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... unlucky for me; I never go there but to some stone-breaking job. Last time it was the public meeting of which I must have written you; this time it was this uneasy but not on the whole unsuccessful experiment. Belle, my mother, and I rode home about midnight in a fine display of lightning and witch-fires. My mother is absent, so that I may dare to say that she struck me as voluble. The Amanuensis did not strike me the same way; she was probably thinking, but it was really rather a weird business, and I saw what I have never seen before, the witch-fires ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... red berries in your hair," he said, "why would you look like some witch or priestess, and ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... the schooner happens to be round here, and they make up their minds to wait a day before attacking, we should have two of them after us then; and that schooner sails like a witch." ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... very polite, and as Lady Baker and myself were sitting upon a rug beneath a tree which we had selected for the evening's halt, and waiting for the arrival of our camels, a crowd of women and children arrived with the ugliest and most witch-like old hag that I have ever seen. This old creature had brought fire and dried olive-leaves in a broken pot, with which she immediately fumigated us by marching round several times, and so manipulating her pot as to produce ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... her in an old calico gown bought from an emigrant woman, instead of the neat and graceful tunic of whitened deerskin worn ordinarily by the squaws. The moving spirit of the establishment, in more senses than one, was a hideous old hag of eighty. Human imagination never conceived hobgoblin or witch more ugly than she. You could count all her ribs through the wrinkles of the leathery skin that covered them. Her withered face more resembled an old skull than the countenance of a living being, even to the hollow, darkened sockets, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... speak of what one has seen," urged the prompter of the uncle's ghost-story, "tell the Padrone of the witch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... in the Leicester School (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the final Story about a little Indian girl in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... than of guilt, as to its natural seat; and thus it happened that the lofty genius of Mirabeau, under the "grand hests" of a hateful necessity, like the "too delicate spirit," Ariel, tasked to the "strong biddings" of the "foul witch Sycorax," was condemned for a while to pander rather than teach, to follow rather than lead, to please rather than patronize, and to halloo others' opinions rather than ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... a black thread through the woof of the spirit tales was the mention of witch-craft—witchcraft with which Kilbuck was now preparing to deal; not because he hoped to benefit the natives and free them from the curse of superstition, but because owing to a belief in the black art, the Indians of Katleean were not bringing in the amount of furs expected, and ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... "'It is a witch, or some other dreadful being,' I said to myself. 'Nothing else could make a sound like that.' My teeth chattered. My legs shook so, I could hardly move. Somehow or other, I managed to keep on. It seemed as though hours passed before I saw the lights of ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade

... their prickly cubs: And here and there a mandrake grows, that strikes The hearers dead with their loud fatal shrieks; Under whose spreading leaves the ugly toad, The adder, and the snake, make their abode. Here dwelt Orandra; so the witch was hight, And hither had she toiled him by a sleight: She knew Anaxus was to go to court, And, envying virtue, she made it her sport To hinder him, sending her airy spies Forth with delusion to entrap his eyes, As would have fired a hermit's chill desires Into a flame; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... the mystery is out. There is a bogle or a brownie, a witch or a gyre-carlin, a bodach or a ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... angels, called on Abraham. The witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel. An angel appeared with three men in the furnace. The handwriting on the wall was done by a spirit. A spirit appeared to Joseph in a dream, to the wise men ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... forks and spoons! and now I eat, at my age, with German metal,—and all to pay for her apprenticeship, and give her a trade, where she could coin money if she chose. As for that, she's like me, clever as a witch; I must do her that justice. But, I will say, she might give me her old silk gowns,—I, who am so fond of wearing silk. But no! Monsieur, she dines at the Cadran-Bleu at fifty francs a head, and rolls in her carriage as if she were ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... Doboobie, although it may be he never wrote even MAGISTER ARTIUM, save in right of his hungry belly. Or it may be, that if he had any degrees, they were of the devil's giving; for he was what the vulgar call a white witch, a cunning man, and such like.—Now, good sir, I perceive you are impatient; but if a man tell not his tale his own way, how have you warrant to think that he can tell it ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... real. Is not that, as it appears to some, denying and affirming at the same time the same thing under different names? Tibullus took care not to make nothing of these distinctions, when he said: "As I was promised by a witch, whose magical operations never fail." While treating in this book of witchcraft and magic, it is affirmed that the demon intervenes on both, and that both work wonders." But if that is true, it is impossible ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... afternoon upon parade, Platoon commanders were bidden to hold a witch hunt, and smell out a chiropodist. But the enterprise terminated almost immediately; for Private Dunshie, caressing his injured abdomen in Number Three Platoon, heard the invitation, and ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... Europe can you match the sense of boundlessness we have here—boundless space, boundless opportunity? It often makes fools of us: it intoxicates, turns our heads. There is a germ of madness in this Northwest. I have seen men destroyed by it. But it is Nature who is the witch. She brews ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Witch" :   voodoo, spell, pythoness, old woman, imaginary being, pagan, warlock, occultist, charm, becharm, coven, imaginary creature



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