E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • More 'Witch' Quotes from Famous Books

... asleep with a copy of Villamaria's fairy stories in my hands, and I had a delightful dream wherein, under the protection and guidance of my fairy godmother, I undertook the rescue of a beautiful princess who had been enchanted by a cruel witch and was kept in prison by the witch's son, a hideous ogre with seven heads, whose companions ...

— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... Shelleyan traits in Sordello—e.g., the young witch image (as in Pauline) at the ...

— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... village; nor could dogs, boys, or men induce it to quit its situation, and to their shame be it said, they had the inhumanity to kill the poor animal, and afterwards to burn it, declaring it could not be no other than a witch." ...

— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... baptized at St. Thomas's Church. Callon's son Langi, and half a dozen other boys, lived with Mr. Gomes, and ran after him all day—nice little fellows, who fraternized with our boys at the school-house. There were also five men, the chief of whom was Bulan (Moon), one of the manangs, or witch-doctors, of the tribe. These manangs, being as it were the priests of Dyak superstitions, and getting their living by pretended cures, interpretations of omens and the voices of birds, were of course the ...

— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... requested a sermon upon the genealogy of Melchizedek, which the minister agreed to furnish when our blacksmith could tell him the foundry which manufactured Tubal Cain's hammer and anvil. Lot's wife, the witch of Endor, Jonah's whale, the sundial of Ahaz, and the population of Nineveh, were all duly discussed, together with the bodies in which the angels dined with Abraham. Did the loaves and fishes miraculously multiply in numbers, or increase in size? Where did the angel get the flour to bake the ...

— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... do it myself," said Lavinia. So the General retired and the Commodore was sent for. When he had joined them, Mr. Barnum began by saying, "Commodore, do you know what this little witch has been doing?" ...

— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... to perdition! execrable witch," cried he, "that knew no better how to prepare a slave to receive her lord!" As he spoke, he struck her again; but it was with his gauntlet hand, and the eyes of the unfortunate woman opened no more. The blow fell on her temple, and a motionless corpse ...

— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... had finished exclaiming at my tale, "but it's my opinion that that there She is the old gentleman himself, or perhaps his wife, if he has one, which I suppose he has, for he couldn't be so wicked all by himself. The Witch of Endor was a fool to her, sir: bless you, she would make no more of raising every gentleman in the Bible out of these here beastly tombs than I should of growing cress on an old flannel. It's ...

— She • H. Rider Haggard

... it began to rain, and the wind hath continued rising ever since. Whatever some people may think, I am very certain it is in the power of witches to raise the wind whenever they please. I have seen it happen very often in my time: and if ever I saw a witch in all my life, that old woman was certainly one. I thought so to myself at that very time; and if I had had any halfpence in my pocket, I would have given her some; for to be sure it is always good to be charitable to those sort of people, for fear what may happen; and many ...

— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... submitting, conquering, and tyrannizing over him, content with present worldly pleasure, unmindful of the past, the future, or the above. This may react to intersexual antagonism until man comes to hate woman as a witch, or, as in the days of celibacy, consider sex a wile of the devil. Along these lines even the stage is beginning to represent ...

— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... stated, "It is somewhat remarkable that traditions still survive in the Highlands of Scotland which seem to be derived from the habits of Scotch tribes like the Lapps in our day. Stories are told in Sutherlandshire about a 'witch' who milked deer; a 'ghost' once became acquainted with a forester, and at his suggestion packed all her plenishing on a herd of deer, when forced to flit by another and a bigger 'ghost;' the green mounds in which 'fairies' are supposed to dwell closely resemble the ...

— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... an exposition. He told them that the serpent was a lady, enchanted by a wicked witch, who, after she had changed her, twisted her three times round the tree, so that she could not undo herself, and laid the spell upon her that she should never have the shape of a woman, until a knight kissed her as often as she was twisted round the tree. Then, when the knight did come, at every ...

— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and ...

— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... as the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the witch, playing the part of a Medea, without ...

— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... cat widdee yella eyes Slink round like she atter ah mouse, Den yo' bettah take keer yo'self en frien's, Kase dey's sho'ly a witch en ...

— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin

... was wrapped in the folds of a pale blue silk kimono. Her hair hung in loose golden waves far below her waist and she reminded Grace of the beautiful Rapunzel of fairy tale fame who was shut up in a tower by a wicked witch and forced each night to let down her golden hair so that her dreadful jailer might climb up and into the ...

— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... and old-wives' fables; but observe, he always trembles when he tells his own. But they are all true; there is not one old-wife's fable on the list. Necromancers have had private interviews with visitors who had no right to be seen this side the Styx. The Witch of Endor and the raising of Samuel were literal facts. Above all others, the Nemesis and Eumenides were facts not to be withstood. And, philosophize as we may, ghosts have been seen at dead of night, and not always under the conduct of Mercury;[6] even the Salem witchcraft ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... A young farmer in Warwickshire, finding his hedges broke, and the sticks carried away during a frosty season, determined to watch for the thief. He lay many cold hours under a hay-stack, and at length an old woman, like a witch in a play, approached, and began to pull up the hedge; he waited till she had tied up her bottle of sticks, and was carrying them off, that he might convict her of the theft, and then springing from his concealment, he seized his prey with violent threats. After some altercation, ...

— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... sleep. The sun was still high—the air lulled and windless. Then through the shafts and down the hill there glided in that clear waking daylight, a grisly shape like that which I have heard our maidens say the witch-hags, sometimes seen in the forest, assume; yet in truth, it seemed neither of man nor woman. It turned its face once towards me, and on that hideous face were the glee and hate of a triumphant fiend. Oh, Harold, ...

— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... through which, as through earthquake rents, the innermost life of Rome has become visible in the last thirty years, are beginning to close up. In that sort of rag-fair, witch-burning ground limited only by the island and the belfries of Trastevere which I used to look down upon from Palazzo Orsini, the Jews are building a colossal synagogue. One does not grudge it them, after their Holy Cross Days! But that strange ...

— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... 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

... come up often, but that old witch in the kitchen wouldn't let me see you—she abused me scandalous. I wanted to pull her turban off and throw it in the gutter. Why, she called me a dirty beggar, and threatened to throw cold water on me if I didn't go away. Phew! ain't she ...

— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... fireplace. There was a wide hearth and always plenty of wood, and here after supper the children would gather, with Jennie and Uncle Ned, and the latter would tell hair-lifting tales of "ha'nts," and lonely roads, and witch-work that would make his hearers shiver with terror and delight, and look furtively over their shoulders toward the dark window-panes and the hovering shadows on the walls. Perhaps it was not the healthiest entertainment, but it was the kind to cultivate an imagination ...

— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Aunt Madge? Are you a witch or a magician?" asked Olivia, in her astonished voice. It was pure guess-work on Mrs. Broderick's part, but as usual her keen ...

— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... latter exclaimed, with a deep drawn sigh of satisfaction. "Yon have genius. When you play you are like that creature in the 'Witch ...

— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... spread a single cloth of canvas, by the ease with which the tug had walked away down the river with her. And after the tug had let go our hawser and left us to our own devices, we had overhauled and passed everything in our company with an ease and rapidity that proved her to be a perfect witch in light breezes; while now, when the rest of the fleet were either drifting helplessly with the tide and heading to all points of the compass, or anchoring to avoid falling foul of something else, we were sneaking along at a good two knots through the water, with the ship under perfect ...

— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... subjects are too grave, Too much morality you have,— Too much about religion; Give me some witch and wizard tales Of slip-shod ghosts with fins and scales, ...

— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A nervous affection has probably as much to do with these demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is ...

— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... some substance different from the clay which goes to the making of men and women. It was not an angel's face; it was not a divine face; neither was it a wicked face, nor had it anything cruel, nor anything of the siren or the witch. Love and pleasure seemed to have moulded the flower-like lips; but an infinite carelessness shone in the still blue eyes. They seemed like two seas that had never known what winds and tempests mean, but ...

— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... steam as fast as any cutter they had on the Cape shore at that time, but the Colleen was a witch and O'Donnell a wonder at sailing her. So we stayed with O'Donnell and watched him and the cutter have it out. They had it, the cutter letting drive a shot every once in a while. The first shot, I remember, went whistling by the ear of one of O'Donnell's crew ...

— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... old wizard's curse that "God would give them blood to drink"; or simply to an inherited tendency to apoplexy. Did Donatello have furry, leaf-shaped ears, or was this merely his companions' teasing? Did old Mistress Hibben, the sister of Governor Bellingham of Massachusetts, attend witch meetings in the forest, and inscribe her name in the Black Man's book? Hawthorne does not say so, but only that the people so believed; and it is historical fact that she was executed as a witch. Was a red letter A actually seen in the midnight sky, or was it a freak of the aurora borealis? ...

— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... through the fumes of champagne, in more than one imagination there rose a vision of that haunted water in which floated the great Yellow God, and of some mad being casting himself to his death beneath the moon, while his beautiful witch wife who was "hungry for more spirits" sat upon its edge and laughed. Although his language was now commonplace enough, even ludicrous at times, the negro had undoubtedly the art of narration. His auditors felt that he spoke of what he knew, or had seen, that the very recollection ...

— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... obsolete N. word signifying fortitude, firmness; but it appears to have originally had, in most of the Teutonic languages the sig. of maiden, virgin; and was afterwards used in the sense of witch, sorceress. ...

— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... considerably and he was anxious to get back to camp, that he might wash it and bathe it with witch hazel. ...

— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... revealing Spello, Assisi, Perugia on its mountain buttress, and the far reaches northward of the Tiber valley. Then Trevi and Spoleto came into sight, and the severe hill-country above Gubbio in part disclosed itself. Over Spoleto the fierce witch-haunted heights of Norcia rose forbidding. This is the kind of panorama that dilates the soul. It is so large, so dignified, so beautiful in tranquil form. The opulent abundance of the plain contrasts with ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... my head upon my hand, and gazed at this incomprehensible being. Was she really a witch? I do not believe in witches, and at once rejected that theory. If not an impostor, then, only one other theory remained—that Nighthawk had described my person to her, in the same manner that he had Mohun's, and the ...

— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... teaching seemed amply sufficient to justify them and to stifle all feeling of compassion for the victims. Much the same considerations explain the absolute indifference with which so many good men witnessed those witch persecutions which consigned thousands of old, feeble and innocent women ...

— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... going up to the club that night, and so we played cards with him. Wilson Irvine, a landscape painter, who was visiting us chose Constance as a partner against Mary Isabel and her grandsire. Luck was all in Constance's favor, she and Irvine won, much to the veteran's chagrin. "You little witch," he said, "what do you mean by beating your granddad?" He was very proud of her skill, for she ...

— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... in the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,— A syllabled silence that no man may hear,— As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some specter of ...

— Poems • Madison Cawein

... waves of the sea in cutlasses, swords, and bayonets; half moons, semicircles, and a target of bayonets; the form of a battery in swords and pistols; suns, with circles of pistols; a pair of gates in halberts and pistols; the Witch of Endor, as it is called, within three ellipses of pistols; the backbone of a whale in carbines; a fiery serpent, Jupiter and the Hydra, in bayonets, &c. But nothing looks more beautiful and magnificent than the four lofty wreathed columns formed with pistols in the ...

— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... from Boden on a witch's broomstick? Where did you find her, Mr. Garson?" he said, as he lifted his little sister ...

— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... - - d confounded Bitch, Ugly and cunning as a Witch. Her Bill shall be preferr'd by Law; The House we wish we'd never saw. One Pound five and ten Pence; Grant her Repentance; We'll never come here again; And let ...

— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... of compositions treated in a graver manner, as characteristic too as the other. We call attention to the comical look of poor Teague, who has been pursued and beaten by the witch's stick, in order to point out also the singular neatness of the workmanship, and the pretty, fanciful little glimpse of landscape that the artist has introduced in the background. Mr. Cruikshank has a fine eye for such homely landscapes, and renders ...

— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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 means ...

— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... effects in so-called fairy-tale pictures by "stop-camera" work, or by simply stopping the character at a certain point just prior to the scheduled appearance of some supernatural visitant, having the other characters hold their positions while the witch or the fairy character walks into the scene and takes her proper position in it, and then starting the camera again, the result on the screen being that the supernatural figure stands, in the fraction ...

— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... sovereign from his meagrely-furnished purse. 'It is only right you should do something; indeed, anything is better than wasting your life in such a hole as this. But what if you do get any answers to your advertisement? Who is to give you a character, since that old witch at Mauleverer Manor has chosen to put ...

— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... but—the Lord put it into his heart, doubtless—he crossed himself like this.... And it was so hard for him to make that cross, brothers; he said, "My hand was simply like a stone; it would not move." ... Ugh! the horrid witch.... So when he made the cross, brothers, the russalka, she left off laughing, and all at once how she did cry.... She cried, brothers, and wiped her eyes with her hair, and her hair was green as any hemp. So Gavrila looked and looked at her, and at last he fell to questioning her. ...

— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... me to eat and rest, and all retired but the chief's mother, a weird, witch-like woman of eighty, with shocks of yellow-white hair, and a stern suspiciousness in her wrinkled face. I have come to feel as if she had the evil eye, as she sits there watching, watching always, and for ever knotting ...

— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... with the ears of Claudio. 'T is certain so;—the prince woos for himself. Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negociate for itself, And trust no agent: for beauty is a witch, Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. This is an accident of hourly proof Which I mistrusted ...

— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... was the mental influence. The ways of primitive therapeutics are completely hidden from us except what we can gather from the races which retained their primitive practices in historic times. We can well understand, though, that the concoctions of medicine-men and witch-doctors could have little effect except in a suggestive way. Snakes' heads, toads' toes, lizards' tails, and beetles' wings have a small place in the pharmacopoeia of to-day, except as placebos, and it is extremely doubtful if they were ever ...

— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... the sorcerer sweated drops of blood, and the devil came at last and told him that the warriors would come back with scalps and prisoners. A sorcerer in the medicine lodge is exactly like the Pythoness on the tripod or the witch Canidia invoking the shades." The diviner was not wholly at fault. Three days after, the warriors came back with ...

— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... days of wound-nursing, Storri went to the San Reve. He found that lady of the gray-green eyes sitting sullen and silent, wrapped in resentful anger like a witch's cloak. One thing in his favor; the San Reve had not heard of his return, and supposed him just ...

— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... hewn in stone? Or imp from witch's lap let fall? Or a gay ring of shining fairies, Such as pursue their brisk vagaries In sylvan ...

— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various

... some of you have been waiting for this story of the Tin Woodman, because many of my correspondents have asked me, time and again, what ever became of the "pretty Munchkin girl" whom Nick Chopper was engaged to marry before the Wicked Witch enchanted his axe and he traded his flesh for tin. I, too, have wondered what became of her, but until Woot the Wanderer interested himself in the matter the Tin Woodman knew no more than we did. However, he found her, after ...

— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... berries in your hair," he said, "why would you look like some witch or priestess, and never like ...

— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... was possible—that they 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 way we went to muster when we were boys together? Ah well! ...

— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... ancient pumps like to the Town Pump from which Hawthorne drew that clear and sparkling little stream of revery and picture which has flowed into so many and such distant nooks, though the pump itself has now disappeared, having been directly in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, by ascending Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the past and the present of the place. Looking down from here you behold the ancient city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed by soft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge gravestone ...

— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... starting at every bush, and hating every old woman for a witch! Mr Sims, from his own intellectual altitude, pronounces these faiths to be "shadows;" he does not believe—not he—in the walking about at night of impalpable white sheets; but if you should happen to be of the same opinion with himself, then the cold-blooded demon of science has seized ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... "I have a thought. The Lord Baas wishes to get the lady dressed like a bird as to her head and like one for burial as to her body, who is, he says, his wife. But for us to take her from among so many is impossible. Now what did that old witch-doctor Harut declare just now? He declared, speaking for his fetish, that by our help alone the White Kendah can resist the hosts of the Black Kendah and that no harm must be done to us if the White Kendah would continue ...

— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... however, was eclipsed when not long afterward Howland and Aspinwall, now converted to the clipper, ordered the Sea Witch to be built for Captain Bob Waterman. Among all the splendid skippers of the time he was the most dashing figure. About his briny memory cluster a hundred yarns, some of them true, others legendary. It has been argued that the speed of the clippers was due more to the men who commanded ...

— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... and like 'Bella Donna,' and like a lynx. There was just that look of deformity I had dreamed—mysterious and dreadful. I hated the creature. I couldn't feel she was mine and Jack's. She was like some changeling in an old witch tale. I couldn't bear it! I knew that I'd rather die than have Jack see that wicked elf after all his hopes. I told the doctor so. I threatened to kill myself. I don't know if I meant it. But he thought ...

— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... smile which was bewitching, indeed, but by no means witch-like,—a frank, open smile with just a touch of natural feminine triumph in it. "No, not witchcraft," she answered, helping herself with her dainty fingers to a burnt almond from the Venetian glass dish,—"not witchcraft,—memory; aided, perhaps, by some native quickness ...

— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... low whisper. "I suppose"—there came a little catch in her voice—"I suppose, Bill, that I am what people used to call 'possessed.' In old days I should have been burnt as a witch. Sometimes I feel as if a battle were going on round me and for me—a battle between good and evil spirits. That was what I was feeling last night, before you came up. I couldn't rest—I couldn't stay in bed. I felt as if I must ...

— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... about Joseph's time, nearly three thousand five hundred years ago. Other fairy stories Homer knew, in Greece, nearly three thousand years ago, and he made them all up into a poem, the Odyssey, which I hope you will read some day. Here you will find the witch who turns men into swine, and the man who bores out the big foolish giant's eye, and the cap of darkness, and the shoes of swiftness, that were worn later by Jack the Giant-Killer. These fairy tales are the oldest ...

— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... 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

... her name was Rocco Ricci, but Pericles was the first to rush out and hang over the boat. "Witch! traitress! infernal ghost! heart of ice!" and in English "humbug!" and in French "coquin!":—these were a few of the titles he poured on her. Rocco Ricci and Montini kissed hands to her, begging her to come to them. She was very willing outwardly, ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to mere points of blackness; her mouth, sunken and drawn over toothless gums, was like the mouth of a witch. The wind, blowing in gusts through the open door, inflated her gray shawl and the skirt of her dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her garments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced and gibbered behind her. And, as she gazed down on the girl, ...

— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... were seen hovering and wheeling in the air around the devoted ship, and one of the passengers, a woman called "Mother Carey," was observed by the glare of the lightning to laugh and smile when she looked at these foul-weather visitants; on which she was not only set down as a witch, but it was also thought that they were her familiars, whom she had invoked from the Red Sea; and "all hands" were seriously considering on the propriety of getting rid of the old beldam, (as is usual in such cases,) by setting her afloat, when she saved them the ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various

... witches. One old woman was a witch, and she rode me one night. I couldn't get up one night, had a ketching of my breath and couldn't rise up. She held me down. In dem days, was lots o' fevers with de folks. Dey cured 'em and other sickness wid teas from ...

— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... humming content with a good deal of whimsical bouncing and buzzing and the most unpredictable flights. To use a phrase of Aunt Trixie's applied to her childhood, but coming into new appropriateness now, Barbara "acted like a witch." ...

— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... of such a reward so fires the young hero, that he sallies forth, routs the besiegers, and, seizing the Count of Valence, brings him back a prisoner. On entering the castle, he immediately begins to clamor for Nicolette, but his father now declares he would rather see the maiden burned as a witch than to let his son have anything more to do with her. Hearing this, Aucassin indignantly declares such being the case he will free his prisoner, an act of generosity which infuriates his father, who hopes to be enriched by the count's ransom. To punish Aucassin, the Count of Biaucaire now thrusts ...

— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... you—I love nobody but you. If I did wrong in telling you a few diddle-daddies, it was because I loved you so I could not do without you. And what comforts me for any wrong I have done is that I have you. That would make up to a man for anything short of being hanged! You little witch, how did you contrive to make a fool of a man like me! I should have been in none of this scrape but for you! My mother is very kind to me, of course—ever so much better company than Hester! she ...

— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... children of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeated it, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a "witch," instead of a brother ...

— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... a stable, Mr. Brice, before they ruined gentleman's sport with these trotters ten years ago. Yes sir, we used to be at Lexington one week, and Louisville the next, and over here on the Ames track after that. Did you ever hear of Water Witch and Netty Boone?" ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and out. But at this Ulrich's coming her pulse did leap, and her eye shine; and when he went, she did sink back and sigh; and 'twas to be seen the sun had gone out of the room for her. Nay, burgomaster, look not on me so scared: no witch or magician I, but a poor girl that hath been docile, and so bettered herself by a great neglected leech's art and learning. I tell ye all this hath been done before, thousands of years ere we were born. Now bide thou there till I come to thee, ...

— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... examples from a great variety of sources, ancient, medieval and modern, European and Asiatic, in a special treatise called the Legend of Polyphemus. Circe, the enchantress, has been discovered in a Hindoo collection of Tales belonging in the main to the thirteenth century of our era; but the witch who has the power of turning men into animals is as universal as folk-lore itself. The werewolf superstition will furnish instances without number. The descent into Hades has its parallel in the Finnish epic Kalevala, which reaches far back into Turanian legend; even the North ...

— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... know that I made an appointment with that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel, and I can only take her to the Falourdel's, the old crone of the bridge, and that I must pay for a chamber. The old witch with a white moustache would not trust me. Jehan! for pity's sake! Have we drunk up the whole of the cure's purse? Have you not ...

— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... however, was not without alloy; for my son Thomas, from some cause unknown to me, from the time he was a small lad, always called his brother John, a witch, which was the cause, as they grew towards manhood, of frequent and severe quarrels between them, and gave me much trouble and anxiety for their safety. After Thomas and John arrived to manhood, in addition to the former charge, John got two wives, with ...

— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... the bathroom to fetch the witch-hazel. Haggerty poured a little into his palm and dabbled ...

— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... who had enlarged her vocabulary more than either, in helping her about her housework, the mother having lent her for the purpose. My mother said she was not ashamed to make blunders before a child, and the little witch had taken the greatest delight in telling her the names of things in the house and the streets and the fields outside the town, where they went ...

— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... threshings by and through which it is brought again under its blessed influence. In his 'Cristabel' he has exhibited the dark principle of evil, lurking within the good, and ever struggling with it. We read it in the spell the wicked witch Geraldine works upon her innocent and unsuspecting protector; we read it in the strange words which Geraldine addresses to the spirit of the saintly mother who has approached to shield from harm the beloved child for whom she died; we read it in the story of the friendship and enmity ...

— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... considered, that it is but a few years ago, that a poor woman, within twenty miles of London, lost her life upon supposition that she was a witch; and that it is not many years since the Cock-lane ghost found advocates, even in the heart of London itself, among those who, before, were never accounted fools; it cannot but be useful to put down on record every imposition ...

— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion—through everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little pellet of some dark green substance that he took from ...

— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... mixture. After this has been used for a day or two, then a solution may be made by adding a teaspoonful of pulverized alum to a cupful of warm water; this is applied to the inflamed sides of the throat by means of a swab. Gargling the throat with a solution of ordinary extract of witch hazel, one part, and water two parts, also ...

— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... a picture to bring admiration into any eye, and although she was entirely lacking in poise and dignity, her constant restless vivacity and the witch-like spirit of laughter that possessed her were quite as engaging. She was a madcap, fly-away creature whose ravishing lace was framed by an unruly mop of dark hair, which no amount of attention could hold in place. Little dancing curls and wisps and ringlets ...

— The Net • Rex Beach

... came over and patted Crisscross, and said Rosalind must be a witch to have gained his affection so soon, and asked what she and Maurice were doing there, not as if she wanted an answer so much ...

— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... just how far down the precious liquid was, a successful well was presumably the result. The prowess of the well diviner is acclaimed even today by some people, although scientific investigation has proved that his services are worth just about as much as those of a witch doctor. ...

— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... say I would prefer the water-witch. He at least would not represent a class of neighbors who have made themselves systematically uncivil ...

— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... Saul, who being forsaken of God, went to the Witch of Endor, and so to the Devil for help. {170c} But alas, should I set my self to collect these dreadful Stories, it would be easie in little time to present you with hundreds of them: But I will conclude as I began; They ...

— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... enough, but dull and sickly, and chiefly occupied by her ailments. She seemed to be always thinking about leeches, wise friars, wonderful nuns, or even wizards and cunning women, and was much concerned that her husband absolutely forbade her consulting the witch of Spitalfields. ...

— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sides of the bucket all the way up, as the shortening rope brought it near; but when he drew it over the well's brink wonder and grief held him fast, for the bucket was as empty as vanity. From behind him came a noise of laughter, and there was the old witch running round and round in a circle; and everywhere a hedge of thorns came shooting up to enclose him and ...

— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman

... of the Firth were likened to the Scylla and Charybdis between Italy and Sicily, where, in avoiding one mariners were often wrecked by the other; but the dangers in the Firth were from the "Merry Men of Mey," a dangerous expanse of sea, where the water was always boiling like a witch's cauldron at one end, and the dreaded "Swalchie Whirlpool" at the other. This was very dangerous for small boats, as they could sail over it safely in one state of the tide, but when it began to move it carried the boat round so slowly that the occupants did not ...

— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... them, going in the same direction. Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as a witch mounts ...

— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... said Charlton laughing,—"you are not a witch in your own affairs, whatever you may be in ...

— Queechy • Susan Warner

... I noticed a little cleft in the rocky margin, a minute's climb above me. I was attracted to this by an appearance of smoke or steam that incessantly emerged from it, as though some witch's caldron were simmering alongside the fall. Spray it might be, or the condensing of water splashed on the granite; but of this I might not be sure. Therefore I determined to investigate, and straightway ...

— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... "The witch! The Muse of the Civil Guard, as the old man says," exclaimed the irrepressible Sinang. "What has she to do with our merrymakings? I imagine she's raging! But just let the cholera come and you'd see her give ...

— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... breakfast-time, you must not count on my services—I am taking my rest. I have no choice but to remain in bed (sleeping when I can) for twelve hours or more. The long repose seems to keep my life in me. Have I and my cats surprised you very much? Am I a witch; and are they my familiar spirits? Remember how few amusements I have, and you will not wonder why I devote myself to teaching these pretty creatures their tricks, and attaching them to me like dogs! They were slow at first, and they taught me excellent lessons ...

— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... Horace (Carm. l. v. Od. 5, with Dacier's and Sanadon's illustrations) is a vulgar witch. The Erictho of Lucan (Pharsal. vi. 430-830) is tedious, disgusting, but sometimes sublime. She chides the delay of the Furies, and threatens, with tremendous obscurity, to pronounce their real names; to reveal the true infernal countenance of Hecate; to invoke the ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... before him in the most realistic and vivid manner possible the picture of the ride of Tam O'Shanter, which he had seen years before. The picture soon became real to him, and he found himself taking part in a wild chase, not as witch, devil, or Tam even; but in some way his consciousness was spread through every part of the scene, being of it, and yet playing the part of spectator, as is ...

— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... said, he went. But he wasn't much better on the train than he had been in the station. He was as nervous and fidgety as a witch, and he acted as if he did so wish it would be over and over quick. But at the junction—at the junction a funny thing happened. He put me on the train, just as Mother had done, and spoke to the conductor. (How I ...

— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... dearest, prettiest, gentlest love in the world?" cried Zack, taking her hand, and kissing it with boisterous fondness. "Ah! she lets other old friends kiss her cheek, and only lets me kiss her hand!—I say, Blyth, what a little witch she is—I'll lay you two to one she's guessed what I've ...

— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... Witch, "I will give you work in which you will be associated with intellect—you will come in contact with brains. I shall present ...

— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... talking on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a listener were not a necessity. "Yes; never was I in such a taking as on that Midsummer- eve! I sat up, quite determined to see if John Wildway was going to marry me or no. I put the bread-and-cheese and beer quite ready, as the witch's book ordered, and I opened the door, and I waited till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive and so strained that I could feel every one of 'em twitching like bell-wires. Yes, sure! and when the clock had ...

— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, who would probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by the compliment paid to her son. All mothers are. If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was. Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would overhear the compliment—Rebecca spoke loud enough—and he did hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praise thrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it tingle with pleasure. Then, however, ...

— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... average reader would have guessed. The names of these hardy adventurers must by no means go unrecorded: shepherd's purse, wild pepper-grass, pansy, common chickweed (Stellaria media), mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium viscosum), knawel, common mallow, witch-hazel, cinque-foil (Potentilla Norvegica,—not argentea, as I should certainly have expected), many-flowered aster, cone-flower, yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dandelion, and jointweed. Six of these—mallow, cinque-foil, aster, cone-flower, ...

— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... far as I can see," said the doctor. "But you had better bathe it with witch-hazel and keep it warm ...

— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... I purchased a Thessalian witch, I could make the moon descend during the night and shut it, like a mirror, into a round box and there ...

— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright; And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, ...

— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... the snow-blast which overwhelms his herd and his hut, and in the dark clouds which brood on the untrodden mountain-peak. He lives in fear: and yet, if he be a valiant-hearted man, his fears do him little harm. They may break out, at times, in witch-manias, with all their horrible suspicions, and thus breed cruelty, which is the child of fear; but on the whole they rather produce in man thoughtfulness, reverence, a sense, confused yet precious, of the boundless importance of the unseen world. His superstitions ...

— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... was drinking, a mist floated over the pool, and out of the mist sprang a little, old witch," continued Polly, leaning forward, and lowering her voice, to make the tale ...

— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks

... hot and thundery, and so airless that it was difficult to breathe. Overhead, masses of black cloud, heavy with storm, hung low down over the town, and the earth, panting and worn out with the heat, waited thirstily for the cool drench of the rain. Evidently a witch-tempest was brewing in the halls of heaven on no small scale, and Gabriel wished that it would break at once to relieve the strain from which nature seemed to suffer. Whether it was the fatigue of his day's ...

— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... the same that, up to two years ago, used to write an' send all the 'nonymous letters in Polpier. The old woman an' I, we tracked it down to one of two, an' both females. It lay between 'em, and I was for old Ann' Bunney—she bein' well known for a witch. But now that can't be, for the woman's gone to Satan these three months. . . . An' my missus gone too—poor tender heart—an' lookin' down on me, that was rash enough to bet her sixpence on it, an' now no means to ...

— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... that this was a capital idea, and mentioned that he was going into the country and would be there for some time. He then looked at his watch, exclaimed at the hour, paid the waiter, and went away with me to dinner. Soames remained at his post of fidelity to the glaucous witch. ...

— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... your laughter than in all the psalms that this whole people ever whined through their noses. You're one of the rare few who can go through life being yourself—not just a copy and reflection of others. A hundred years ago your own people would probably have burned you as a witch for that. They've discontinued that form of worship now, but the cut of their moral and intellectual jib is, in some essentials, the same. Thank God, you have a different pattern of soul and I ...

— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... is nothing absurd in believing that the spirit of the just man, being about to smite the king with the divine sentence, was permitted to appear to him, not by the sway of magic art or power, but by some occult dispensation of which neither the witch nor Saul was aware. Or else the spirit of Samuel was not in reality aroused from his rest, but some phantom or mock apparition formed by the machinations of the devil, and styled by Scripture under the name of Samuel, just as the images of things are wont to be called by ...

— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... Urn Within whose inmost cavern dark, the secret waters burn Before the temple's gateway the subject tea-cups bow And pass it steaming with thy gift, thy brown autumnal glow. Within thy silver fortress, the tea-leaf treasure piled O'er which the fiery fountain pours its waters undefiled Till the witch-water steals away the essence they enfold And dashes from the yawning spout a torrent-arch of gold. Then fill an honest cup my lads and quaff the draught amain And lay the earthen goblet down, and fill it yet again Nor ...

— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... imagination of drunken genius. But the greatest poem of this period, and one of Burns's biggest achievements, is Tam o' Shanter. This poem was written in answer to a request of Captain Grose that the poet would provide a witch story to be printed along with a drawing of Alloway Kirk, and was first published in Grose's Antiquities of Scotland. We have been treated by several biographers to a private view of the poet, with wild gesticulations, agonising in the composition of this poem; ...

— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... learning, with high civilization, with any religion, or with utter irreligion. Canidia wrought her spells in the Augustan age, and Chaldean fortune-tellers haunted Rome in the sceptical days of Juvenal. Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder, and Lilly, the astrologer, were contemporaries of Selden, Harrington, and Milton. Perhaps there never was a more superstitious period than that which produced Erasmus and Bacon. ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... rightly; but these reflections should have come sooner. What has prevented you from seeing all this before? there was no need to be a witch to foresee, as soon as you fell in love with Valere, all that your genius never found out until to-day. It is the natural consequence of what you have done; as soon as I was made acquainted with it I never ...

— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... that had no mirth in it. "Lord, who'll say the New England spirit is dead! You're as cold in judging me as one of your ancestors was when he sentenced a witch to be burned." ...

— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the Sea is never one voice, but a tumult of many voices—voices of drowned men,—the muttering of multitudinous dead,—the moaning of innumerable ghosts, all rising, to rage against the living, at the great Witch ...

— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... I do. I'm a witch, and know people's secret thoughts. But why didn't you take the book when ...

— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... shone out in a reflected light which gave the city an air of enchantment; and, truly, it is an enchanted spot. New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments—constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. ...

— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... Coffee Tree Honey Locust Red or Canada Plum Wild Plum Green Ash Sassafras American Elm Rock Elm Slippery Elm Wild Red Cherry Wild Black Cherry Wild Crab Apple Mountain Ash Cockspur Thorn Black Haw Scarlet Fruited Thorn Shad Bush Witch Hazel Sweet Gum Flowering Dogwood Pepperidge Persimmon Black Ash White Ash Red Ash Scarlet Oak Black Oak Pin Oak Jack Oak Hackberry Red Mulberry Sycamore Butternut Black Walnut Bitternut Shagbark Hickory Mockernut Hickory Pignut Hickory King Nut Hickory ...

— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... widening V-shaped wake glowed with opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions, went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake three or four hundred yards wide and eight inches deep. ...

— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... in truth a witch," said he; "you must have some genius in your service, who listens to every wish you express, in order to fulfil it without delay! This letter contains an invitation from the cardinal. He gives a great entertainment to-morrow, and begs of me that I will bring you to ...

— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... said the boy; "so do we all; but confound Emily Warren's grandfather! I don't take to him. He thinks we're wonderfully simple folks, just about good enough to board him and that black-eyed witch of his. I do kind of like her a little bit, she's so saucy-like sometimes. One day she commenced ordering me around, and I stood and stared at the little miss in a way that she ...

— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... to a religious sect which had found her guilty of witchcraft. Another woman was about to shoot her, but this woman's nerve failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who decreed a whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have deserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake had been made—it was another woman who was the witch. And again in the Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news item, telling how a certain man awakened one morning, and found on his ...

— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... the rest of womankind as an exceptionally fortunate individual. But, unhappily, the malignant influence of the Dog Year was against her nativity. When once this disaffected animal had been conquered and cast out, Asako's future should be a very bright one. The family witch agreed with the Fujinami that the Dog had in all probability departed with the foreign husband. Then the toothless crone breathed three times upon the mouth, breasts and thighs of Asako; and when this operation was concluded, she stated her opinion that there was no reason, obstetrical or esoteric, ...

— Kimono • John Paris

... brave of you!" exclaimed Betty, patting Grace on the shoulder. "If you had let go we would have lost. We'll bathe your hand for you in witch hazel." ...

— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope

... the robber ran back as fast as he could to his comrades, and told the captain that a horrid witch had got into the house, and had scratched his face with her long bony fingers—that a man with a knife in his hand had hidden himself behind the door, and stabbed him in the leg—that a black monster stood in the yard and struck him with a club—and that the devil ...

— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... as he tried to work. Once more certain shapes and figures were born upon his canvas, but they were no longer the true children of his imagination, they were no longer his own; they were changelings, grotesque abortions. It was as if the brute in him, like some malicious witch, had stolen away the true offspring of his mind, putting in their place these deformed ...

— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... to ascertain the fitness of the river La Plata and its tributaries for navigation by steam, the United States steamer Water Witch was sent thither for that purpose in 1853. This enterprise was successfully carried on until February, 1855, when, whilst in the peaceful prosecution of her voyage up the Parana River, the steamer was fired upon by a Paraguayan fort. The fire was returned, but as the Water Witch was ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Teddy,' said Rolf Denison, addressing Vandeleur, whose turn had come round again for a yarn, 'You promised to tell us more about young what's-his-name, the Matabele boy who was half English, or something of the sort, and said he was a White Witch; you left him disappearing into the jungle, offended, and promised you would tell us about him reappearing "at a critical moment." I want to ...

— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... trick, but it does not make the fire burn. There is a better; (setting the poker perpendicularly up at right angles with the grate.) In days of superstition they thought, as it made a cross with the bars, it would drive away the witch.' ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... 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 magic ...

— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... all? The little motherless darlin', with the goold hair I combed the knots out iv many's the time? The little witch that run barefoot an' ...

— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... the gondolier, "to risk your life in behalf of such a frightful witch? Never did I see you so ready with your rapier, flashing it in people's eyes as though it had been one ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... knows; but 'pears to me marster's never been right in his headpiece since Hollow-eve night, when he took that ride to the Witch's Hut," replied Wool, who, with brush and sponge, was engaged in rejuvenating ...

— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... was just in the sweating stage of an intermittent, and the path to the town lay through a wet valley, I declined going. Kolimbota, who knows their customs best, urged me to go; but, independent of sickness, I hated words of the night and deeds of darkness. "I was neither a hyaena nor a witch." Kolimbota thought that we ought to conform to their wishes in every thing: I thought we ought to have some choice in the matter as well, which put him into high dudgeon. However, at ten next morning we went, ...

— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... them rode "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as a witch mounts ...

— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... Christina arrested them. They looked out to sea. What was this sudden and awful thing? Instead of the starboard green light, behold! the port red light—and that moving! Oh, see! how it recedes, wavering, flickering through the whirling vapor of the storm! And there again is the green light! Is it a witch's dance, or are they strange death-fires hovering over the dark ocean-grave? But Hamish knows too well what it means; and with a wild cry of horror and despair, the old man sinks on his knees and clasps his hands, and stretches them out to the ...

— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... mayd" and she were near of kin. But whether her parents, as they looked into the baby's clear dark eyes, saw there anything weird or elfish,—or whether the name 'grew,'—of that there remains no record. She had been a pretty quiet witch hitherto; but now— ...

— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... shouting, "He stays, he stays!" and I heard the words repeated among the groups of negresses, who loved her; it seemed to be the burthen of a general song, the glad realisation of some prophecy; for, ere the night was an hour old, the old witch, who had had the tuition of Josephine, had already made a mongrel sort of hymn of the affair, whilst a circle of black chins were wagging to a ...

— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... named Diocles had been told by a witch that he should become Emperor by the slaughter of a boar. He became a great hunter, but no wild boar that he killed seemed to bring him nearer to the purple, till, when the army was fighting on the Tigris, the ...

— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... confess I always thought him an impostor, but I could never have imagined him so simple a one as we found him. In my life I never heard so ridiculous a discourse as he made us, and no old woman who passes for a witch could have been more puzzled to seek what to say to reasonable people than he was. He asked us more questions than we did him, and caught at everything we said without discerning that we abused him and said things purposely to confound him; which we did so perfectly that ...

— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... they please; and I think that's right: is not it now? so flap ee hand, and make wry mouth oo-self, sauci doxi. Now comes DD. Why sollah, I did write in a fortnight my 47th; and if it did not come in due time, can I help wind and weather? am I a Laplander? am I a witch? can I work miracles? can I make easterly winds? Now I am against Dr. Smith. I drink little water with my wine, yet I believe he is right. Yet Dr. Cockburn told me a little wine would not hurt me; but it is so hot and dry, and water is so dangerous. The worst ...

— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... not go out to play in the afternoon, and she didn't even run when Jim said, "Nora wanted her for something special." But she really had no conscience about fooling her father several times. He pretended to be so surprised, and said, "Oh, you little witch!" It was a day on which you had need to keep your ...

— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... means on his side, for, as Professor Gilbert Murray has so well said, 'the Medea and Jason of the Argonautica are at once more interesting and more natural than their copies, the Dido and Aeneas of the Aeneid. The wild love of the witch-maiden sits curiously on the queen and organizer of industrial Carthage; and the two qualities which form an essential part of Jason—the weakness which makes him a traitor, and the deliberate gentleness which contrasts him with Medea—seem incongruous in the father of Rome.' But though ...

— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... To GLASENAPP.] I'm curious to see what the result of all this will be. Mr. Motes has finally agreed to offer witnesses. He says the Dreier woman, that old witch of a pastry cook, once stood within earshot when Fleischer expressed himself disrespectfully. How old is the ...

— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... porter almost beyond endurance, was the certainty he felt that she was mocking him. "For she didn't give me her name or address, the old witch!" he growled. "She had better look out, if I ever get hold ...

— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... they returned to New York, Kathi having begged some more money from Vienna. She was already a worn, old witch of a woman, dressed gayly in remnants of past grandeur and always painting her face. She and her son held together in a partnership strained and rasping, but unbreakable, united by the mysterious tie of blood and a deep-rooted moral resemblance. They led a wandering life, following races, hanging ...

— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... where they enter, he has created for them a peculiar language, which, although composed of the usual elements, still seems to be a collection of formulae of incantation. The sound of the words, the accumulation of rhymes, and the rhythmus of the verse, form, as it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies the kettle of the witches can be made effective with agreeable aromatics, is as wise as those who desire that hell should ...

— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... runs, interpreted to mean that he could conquer the Romans, whereas the oracle subsequently explained to him that the real meaning was that the Romans could conquer him. Similar to this, as Shakspeare makes the Duke of York point out, is the witch's prophecy in Henry VI (Second Part, ...

— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... her to liberty. She retired to Havering Bower in Essex, where her grandson, the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, was reared and educated with Henry VI. She died in 1437, and the memory of "Joan the witch queen" was long held in awe by the people ...

— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... no be for going right intil the cave? Would it no do you to shout when you got to the mouth of it? I dinna like that cave with the red sides till it. I'm thinking maybe there was red sides to the cave where the witch of Endor dweft. Are you no sure that there isna something of that kind, something no right ...

— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... "You know that witch Gloria, goes with one of the Boomer Dukes? She opened her big mouth to my girl. Yeah, opened her mouth and much bad talk came out. Said Fayo primed some jumper with a zip and the punk cooled him, and then a couple of the Boomers ...

— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl

... to be fudge, too, which Nancy had the knack of making. The chums had a chafing dish hidden away, and this was brought forth and the ingredients made ready, while Nancy hovered over the dish like a gray-robed witch. ...

— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... protest, is excellently soft, thou wicked witch!' said the rascal. 'If thou wilt now try thy hand at fishing for the town market, thou shalt be entertained the while with the finest band of music in the world. Be good and pretty, and take up thy angling-rod. Trumpets and drums, flutes and clarinets, shall all ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... delectation of your eyes. Watch it shifting then. Darkness and emptiness in a can-can. Watch the tumbling streets that have no meanings. No meanings? Yet there's a torment in them that can hoist you up by your placid little heels and swing you round ... round, and send you flying. A witch's flight with the scream of stars whistling through it. Flight that has no ending and no direction ... no face of Rachel at its ending. Burning eyes, devouring eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world ...

— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... you that—a witch has told you!" shrieked the poor little man, and stamped so furiously with his right foot that it sunk into the earth up to the hip; then he seized his left foot with both hands with such violence, that he tore himself ...

— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... be inferred from their constant intercourse that he had the field entirely to himself. Gallants of divers pretensions—first-class, mediocre, and contemptible—considered with a practical eye to "settlement," hovered about the fascinating witch as moths about a gas-burner, and had no citable cause of complaint of non-appreciation, inasmuch as she shed equal light upon all, save one. "My very old friend, Mr. Chilton," she was wont to denominate him in conversation with those who inwardly ...

— At Last • Marion Harland

... I saw you together through the key-hole of the closet one night, like Saul and the witch of Endor, turning the sieve and shears, and pricking your thumbs, to write poor innocent servants' names in blood, about a little nutmeg grater which she had forgot in the caudle-cup. Nay, I know something worse, if I would speak ...

— Love for Love • William Congreve

... consented, although not willingly, and went my way. The next morning I sought him again not certain but that in the night he and my sword and the charm had all flown out of window together and gone to join the Witch of Endor. But no, there he sat, and the sword before him, as if they never had stirred since I left. And the old man gave me a bit of parchment covered with crabbed Latin script, and told me I should ...

— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... same witch in my boyhood. But what should we fear? She is flesh and blood like ourselves; and, in spite of the prevailing belief, I could never suppose power would be granted to some, generally the most wicked and the most worthless, which from the rest ...

— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... said Finette, trembling. "The giant has a witch for a godmother; I fear that she will revenge on me the insult offered to her godson. My art tells me, my dear Yvon, that if you quit me a single instant until you give me your name in the chapel of the Kervers ...

— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... the squire, who, sword in hand, 'stood like a bulwark' between his lord and the serpent. Duessa, full of wrath at being foiled, turned the serpent on him, but not one foot would the squire move till, beside herself with anger, the witch drew out her cup and sprinkled him with the poisonous water. Then the strength went out of his arms and the courage from his heart, and he sank helpless on the ground before the snake, who fain would have trampled ...

— The Red Romance Book • Various

... in goodness which Nathaniel Hawthorne has told in similar fashion in his tale of Young Goodman Brown; and the most horrible touch of all is introduced when Faust in disgust leaves the revel, because out of the mouth of the witch with whom he had been dancing there had sprung a small red mouse. Throughout the whole play the sense of holy and splendid ideals shines at its brightest in lurid contrast with the hopeless and sordid ...

— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... with Rima in the forest under the mora tree had proved so delightful that I was eager for more rambles and talks with her, but the variable little witch had a great surprise in store for me. All her wild natural gaiety had unaccountably gone out of her: when I walked in the shade she was there, but no longer as the blithe, fantastic being, bright as an angel, innocent and affectionate as ...

— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... the finger-bone of a Lincoln man. She turned aside a flower to cull, From a vase which was made of a human skull; For to make her forget the loss of her slaves, Her lovers had rifled dead men's graves. Do you think I'm describing a witch or ghoul? There are no such things—and I'm not a fool; Nor did she reside in Ashantee; No—the lady fair was ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... which closes his correspondence with Mather, he makes his solemn and severe appeal: "Though there is reason to hope that these diabolical principles have not so far prevailed (with multitudes of Christians), as that they ascribe to a witch and a devil the attributes peculiar to the Almighty; yet how few are willing to be found opposing such a torrent, as knowing that in so doing they shall be sure to meet with opposition to the utmost, from the many, both of Magistrates, Ministers, and people; and the name of Sadducee, ...

— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... friends then immediately set about requiting her with 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 ...

— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... accents of one voice, and out of the crowd of faces, began to distinguish more and more clearly the features of the writer; for all the world like some lovelorn girl, who, gazing with her soul in her eyes, finds in the witch's cauldron the ...

— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... said; that was certain, but the tale was, that a secret way led down from the lowest cellar of this cave house, continuing—if one could only find it—to the enchanted cavern far below, where Taven, the witch, kept and cured of illness the girl loved ...

— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... Gerald suddenly let go the horse and leaped forwards, almost on to Gudrun. She was not afraid. As he jerked aside the mare's head, Gudrun cried, in a strange, high voice, like a gull, or like a witch screaming out from ...

— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... patient has bad dreams, looks black around the eyes, or feels tired, while the disease is assigned such names as "when they dream of snakes," "when they dream of fish," "when ghosts trouble them," "when something is making something else eat them," or "when the food is changed," i.e., when a witch causes it to sprout and grow in the body of the patient or transforms it into a lizard, frog, or ...

— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... witches, was not repealed till the 9 Geo. II, c. 5. In Scotland, so late as the year 1722, when the local jurisdictions were still hereditary [see post, Sept. 11], the sheriff of Sutherlandshire condemned a witch to death.' Penny Cyclo. xxvii. 490. In the Bishopric of Wurtzburg, so late as 1750, a nun was burnt for witchcraft: 'Cette malheureuse fille soutint opiniatrement qu'elle etait sorciere.... Elle etait folle, ses ...

— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... scene of her downfall, the witch caught at a slip of a bough and swung herself athletically to the top of the bank. Thence she turned a glowing face ...

— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... I was extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished ...

— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... cannot?" "Precisely," replied the shade. "But though the percentage of those that can return and reappear on earth is small, their number is fairly large. History has many cases. We know that the prophet Samuel raised the witch of Endor at the behest of Saul; that Moses and Elias became visible in the transfiguration; and that after his crucifixion and burial Christ returned to his disciples, and was seen and heard by many others." "How," asked Bearwarden deferentially, "do ...

— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... sea-shore, where he transformed himself into the likeness of one of his half-clad heathen ancestors, debased himself by whisky, and revelled in the hula-hula. He is said also to have been so far under the empire of the old superstitions, as to consult an ancient witch on ...

— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... and on a bright September morning the anchor was hove up, and the Virginie started upon her cruise. The shoals outside the harbour were cleared in due time, the brig working like a top, and sailing like a witch, to the unbounded delight of all hands; and then George hauled sharp up on the port tack, his intention being to cruise for a few days in the Windward and Caycos Passages before shaping a course ...

— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... if I recollect my discussion with you going down to Southampton. Very well, my dear Hal, and your appearance especially, which, in that witch's travelling-cap of yours, is so extremely agreeable to me that you recur to me in it constantly, and as often I execrate your bonnet. How much I do love beauty! How I delight in the beauty of any one that I love! How thankful I am ...

— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... existence of a phantasm like Miss Mehetabel's son, who, after all, was less unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey himself, and seemed more properly an inhabitant of this globe than the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention the silent Witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us ...

— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... not, however, wholly prepared for what happened next. The man in green, riding the frail topmost bough like a witch on a very risky broomstick, reached up and rent the black hat from its airy nest of twigs. It had been broken across a heavy bough in the first burst of its passage, a tangle of branches in torn and scored and scratched ...

— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... when it was ripe. A blue-painted barrel-churn stood by the door; young Aaron turned it in the morning, while the finches called in the plum-trees, but now and then not all the strength of his sturdy shoulders nor patient hours of turning could 'fetch' the butter, for a witch ...

— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... the fathers were taking away so many souls from his captivity, and tried to drive them from that province of Calamianes. He availed himself of a witch and her son, appearing in person to them, and ordering them to use all the delusions and witcheries that they knew, in order to frighten the Spanish soldiers who were in a fortress near by, so that the gospel ministers should by this means be induced to ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... a turmoil of thoughts that seethed in his brain, like a brew in a witch's cauldron—some of them dark and some golden bright, and some of them red with lust for many things—he proceeded down street to McCoppet's place, to find himself locked out of the private den, where the gambler was closeted ...

— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... extended along the back of the sofa, the white gleam of the big eyeballs setting off the black, fathomless stare of the enlarged pupils, impressed Razumov more than anything he had seen since his hasty and secret departure from St. Petersburg. A witch in Parisian clothes, he thought. A portent! He actually hesitated in his advance, and did not even comprehend, at first, what the rasping ...

— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... lower and lower. There were splashes of ruddy light on the smooth gray beech-boles, and that was all. Soon these would fade, and all would be gloom. The grove had an awful look already. One would expect to meet some ghostly Druid, or some witch of eld, among the shadowy tracks left by the forest wildings. Vixen went about her work languidly. She was really tired, and was glad to think her day's labours were over. She went slowly in and out among ...

— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... obleeged to live in a four-square box because every other man-Jack in Pow'tan County builds his in that way. Miss Nancy was always mighty nervous from the time she was a child; I knew it when I married her. Fact is, she says to me: 'Cap'n Gates, I'm as nervous as a witch, and I'm afraid you'll get out of patience with me sometimes, and I wouldn't blame you if you did.' And, says I,—my hand right on my heart,—'Miss Nancy Miller! if you'll take me as I am, I'll be proud and happy to take you as you are, nerves and all!' says ...

— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... "You little witch!" he said. "Ye certainly made a booby of ole Larry. But don't you be coming between me ...

— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... means of redress. None was to be had. Exile, imprisonment and even death, awaited the most eminent citizens; Winthrop's entry into Boston was met by gloomy silence, and for it all, Welde and Symmes protested Anne Hutchinson to be responsible, and denounced her as a heretic and a witch. ...

— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... little white goat-skin apron, adorned with numerous charms, and used a paddle for a mace or walking stick. He was not an old man, though he affected to be so—walking very slowly and deliberately, coughing asthmatically, glimmering with his eyes, and mumbling like a witch. With much affected difficulty he sat at the end of the hut beside the symbols alluded to, and continued his coughing full half an hour, when his wife came in in the same manner, without saying a word, and assumed the same affected style. The king jokingly looked at ...

— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... What witch's hand unhasps Thy keen claw-cornered wings From under the barn roof, and flings Thee forth, with chattering gasps, To scud the air, And nip the lady-bug, and tear Her ...

— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... I asked about Bridget Ruane and her brother said:—'Some people call her "Biddy Early" (after a famous witch-doctor). She has done a good many cures. Her brother was away for a while, and it is from him she got her knowledge. I believe it's before sunrise she gathers the herbs; any way no one ever saw her gathering them. She has saved many a woman from being brought away when her ...

— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... spiritual threshings by and through which it is brought again under its blessed influence. In his 'Cristabel' he has exhibited the dark principle of evil, lurking within the good, and ever struggling with it. We read it in the spell the wicked witch Geraldine works upon her innocent and unsuspecting protector; we read it in the strange words which Geraldine addresses to the spirit of the saintly mother who has approached to shield from harm the beloved child for whom she died; we read ...

— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... drawn out,' and must have cost the gallant Colonel a pile of stamps. Declining an invitation to visit the stables,—for our new millionaire is a lover of horse-flesh, as well as the narcotic weed—and leaving that gentleman to 'witch the world with wondrous horsemanship,' the 'Tattler' reporter withdrew, 'pierced through with Envy's venomed darts,' and satisfied that his courtly entertainer had been ...

— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... man of might, Skilled in magic, huge of limb; Giant, wizard, goblin, sprite, Ghost, witch, devil, imp of night, All had fled ...

— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... is to quit it, but to go to the pump—and see that each animal has its food to a minute. The devil's roysterers! a Manhattan negro takes a Flemish gelding for a gaunt hound that is never out of breath, and away he goes, at night, scampering along the highways like a Yankee witch switching through the air on a broomstick—but mark me, master Euclid, I have eyes in my head, as thou knowest by bitter experience! D'ye remember, ragamuffin, the time when I saw thee, from the Hague, riding the beasts, as if the devil spurred them, along the dykes of Leyden, ...

— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... very sad,' said the young maidens. 'What proud beauty could have secured his love, or what forsaken one has caused some Thessalian witch to cast a spell on him? Has that cabalistic ring (which he is said to have found hidden within the flanks of a brazen horse in the midst of some forest) lost its virtue, and suddenly ceasing to render its owner invisible, betrayed him to the astonished ...

— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... was a witch, and had witnessed the departure of the two children: so, sneaking after them secretly, as is the habit of witches, she had enchanted all the springs in ...

— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... Charon, leaning forward on his knee and speaking confidentially; "just as this chap was putting off,—with some of Davy's belongings, likely,—Davy up and cuts a slice of flesh and blood off him. Well, he takes this slice and fixes it up one way or another, and makes a witch out of it,—handsome as she can be,—enough to draw a chap's heart right out through his jacket. Now, being as she's his own flesh and blood, d' yer see, this chap I'm telling yer on's bound to come back after her afore he dies. ...

— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... a bottle of witch hazel as I rose. Impulsively, I drank off half the contents. It sent a warmth through ...

— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... as he appeared to his rivals and partisans, the veteran knight in magnificent apparel, pearls, and silver armour, haughty and subtle, tanned, hardened, and worn with voyages to the Spanish Main and fighting at Cadiz, 'Ralegh the witch,' the 'scourge of Spain,' the 'soldier, sailor, scholar, courtier, orator, historian, and philosopher.' We do not see the daredevil trooper of Languedoc and Munster, the duellist, the master of the roistering ...

— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... "Rosalie," late "Perdita," all this time? Why, there she goes, with never a tack, through the narrow strait, lying over under the press of her white dimity like a witch on a black broomstick, as she shoots out ...

— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... Wellington." Kentish's "Hudibrastic History of Lord Amherst's Visit to China." "The London Directory and London Ambulator." "Golden Key of the Treasures of Knowledge." "The Little World of Great and Good Things." E. Thomson's "Adventures of a Carpet." "Raphael's Witch; or, Oracle of the Future" (ten coloured designs). "The London Stage" (a collection of about 180 plays, with a cut to each play; 4 vols.). Portrait of Mr. Oxberry as "Humphrey Gull" in the ...

— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c. v. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c. 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a corpse, white as ...

— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... it?" said Barney, glancing about as if he did not like even the thought. "Thot ould witch wor kapin' me hid away from the officers in thot wee bit av a house roight behind the three over there, and all the ixercoise Oi could git wor whin Oi could shlip out av noights and walk round and swally a brith av fresh air. Oi t'ought Oi had kilt the thramp and ...

— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... servant, wilt thou forsake me now? having so often sold thyself to me to work wickedness, wilt thou forsake me now? Thou horrible wretch, dost not know, that thou hast sinned thyself beyond the reach of grace, and dost think to find mercy now? Art not thou a murderer, a thief, a harlot, a witch, a sinner of the greatest size, and dost thou look for mercy now? Dost thou think that Christ will foul his ...

— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... two that death had left her; she could not bear them out of her sight for an instant. A very weird-looking cummer was the grand-dame—with a broken, piping voice—tremulous hands, and jaws that, like the stage witch wife's, ever munched and mumbled. She seldom spoke aloud, except to groan out a startlingly sudden ejaculation of "Oh, Lord," or "O dear;" these widows' mites cast into the conversational treasury did not greatly ...

— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... arms and necks which gave that semblance of amorous vitality to her fruit. On the stall next to her an old woman, a hideous old drunkard, displayed nothing but wrinkled apples, pears as flabby as herself, and cadaverous apricots of a witch-like sallowness. La Sarriette's stall, however, spoke of love and passion. The cherries looked like the red kisses of her bright lips; the silky peaches were not more delicate than her neck; to the plums she seemed to have lent the skin from ...

— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... sitting in the kitchen doorway had seemingly missed the heights of life he might have trod, and had walked his close on fifty years through level meadows of mediocrity, a witch in every finger-tip waiting to be set to work, head among the clouds, feet stumbling, eyes and ears open to hear God's secret thought; seeing and hearing it, too, but lacking force to speak it forth again; ...

— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... 'they' I don't know, and I don't think he knew himself—'they won't send her back to the witch, you don't think, do you?' he burst out, growing ...

— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... coming on. Under these circumstances I determined on returning to the little harbour from which we had started in the morning, but the wind being directly against us, we made very little head. "We shall never get to the Nob," said Mr. Witch, who had the steer oar, to me; "it blows too hard, Sir." "What are we to do, then?" said I. "Why, Sir," he replied, "we must either beach or run out to sea," "We will beach, then," I said; "it is better to ...

— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... was a Jesuit father who won distinction as a poet and also as an opponent of the witch-burning mania. His collection of lyric poems called Trutz-Nachtigall, or Match-Nightingale, is interesting for its singular blend of erotic imagery with sincere religious feeling. The poems indicate a genuine delight in certain aspects of nature. ...

— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... always delightful; and, like things she says, they often seem to come in answer to something you have been thinking about, and which you would never imagine she could know, unless she was a witch. This was the knowing bit in that letter:—"Your dear father's note this morning did me more good than bottles of tonic. It is due to you, my trustworthy little daughter, to tell you of the bit that pleased me most. He says—'The children seem ...

— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... "Wenman does the Kitchen Witch now (I altered it this morning) and Mead the old one—the climber. Poor old chap, he'll not ...

— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... think there was," said the other complacently. "Give me a bottle of witch hazel, a package of invisible hair-pins and a box of parlor matches. Quick; ...

— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... "A witch," said the girl, demurely. "I am as old as the world, and can fly through the air on a broomstick, so don't think to escape me again, step-mamma. I trust you will enjoy your brief repose, for it will soon be morning, and if I don't see your fair face at the ...

— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... in their hay without damage, while most of that in the neighbouring village was spoiled. This occasioned very great noise in the country, and so greatly provoked were the people who resided in the other parishes that they absolutely accused her of being a witch, and sent old Gaffer Goosecap, a busy fellow in other people's concerns, to find out evidence against her. The wiseacre happened to come to her school when she was walking about with the raven on one shoulder, the pigeon on the other, the lark on her hand, and the lamb and the dog by her ...

— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... perilous position in the hands of Pringle Blowers; and, further, that the communication was effected by the negro man Pompe, who we have before described in connection with Montague at the time of his landing from the witch-like schooner. This Pompe was sold to Blowers but a few months before Annette's recovery, and acting upon the force of that sympathy which exists among fellow slaves of a plantation, soon renewed old acquaintance, ...

— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... sweetest voice was mute That river-valley ever heard From lip of maid or throat of bird; For Mabel Martin sat apart, And let the hay-mow's shadow 'fall Upon the loveliest face of all. She sat apart, as one forbid, Who knew that none would condescend To own the Witch-wife's ...

— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... enormous, awful notion of what I was doing; above all, the unbearable thought, which was like touching hot iron, of what Arthur would think of it. A Carstairs a thief; and a thief of the Carstairs treasure! I believe my brother could see me burned like a witch for such a thing, But then, the very thought of such fanatical cruelty heightened my old hatred of his dingy old antiquarian fussiness and my longing for the youth and liberty that called to me from the sea. Outside was strong sunlight with a wind; ...

— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... Grundtvig somehow experienced a wonderful rebirth of his hope in the spring of 1824, an experience to which he gave eloquent expression in his great poem, "New Year's Morning." He writes in the preface that he has "long enough battled with a witch called indifference, and has discovered that the battle wherein one is most likely to be defeated is the battle against nothing." He therefore urges his friends to ignore the witch and join him in a determined crusade for a reawakening of the Northern spirit ...

— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... further said that she had given him a valuable ring, and if he would not give her the gold chain, she insisted upon having her own ring again. On this Antipholus became quite frantic, and again calling her sorceress and witch, and denying all knowledge of her or her ring, ran away from her, leaving her astonished at his words and his wild looks, for nothing to her appeared more certain than that he had dined with her, and that she had given him a ring, ...

— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... the hunter. Here was no wolf. He felt sure that the bullets had reached their mark, yet the beast was unharmed. Dave was a mighty hunter but, like most ignorant people, he was superstitious. He had often heard tales of the loup-garou, or witch wolf, whom no bullet could kill. With a hand that trembled slightly he laid his gun across his knees, deciding not ...

— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... of the State of Kansas is a man of authority—not only intelligent but intellectual, always a rare combination, and it needs no witch to predict a great future for him. He remained at Mrs. Shields's lovely house in Cherry Street from 11.30 till 6 in the evening, in spite of having an appointment at 4, by which I inferred he ...

— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... around The realm you rule, for this is haunted ground! Here stalks the Sorcerer, here the Fairy trips, Here limps the Witch with malice-working lips, The Graces here their snowy arms entwine, Here dwell the fairest sisters of the Nine,— She who, with jocund voice and twinkling eye, Laughs at the brood of follies as they fly; She of the dagger and the deadly bowl, Whose charming horrors thrill the trembling soul; ...

— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... probably well accustomed to missiles of the kind, paid little attention to. The monarch was warned too, we are told, by another wild apparition, which suddenly appears out of the mists for this purpose—a Highland witch of the order of those who drove Macbeth's ambition to frenzy, but whose mission now was to warn James of the mischief brewing against him. The King was brave and careless, used to the continual presence of danger, keeping his Christmas ...

— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... it into the back of his mind, however, striving to recall a memory which eluded him. What had Billie told him of a witch's cauldron in the grove of zapote trees, where the old crone had wrought magic which to her, at least, was very real? Could the explanation of this amazing evanescence be ...

— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... 'The witch for the lost children? No, no, Maria, she is only gathering fir cones, and completing the picture in her red basquine, brown jacket, and great hat. I would ask her the way, but that we could not ...

— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and chilled Mr. Ferriday. He worked none the less for her and himself and he tried in a hundred ways to surprise the little witch into an adoration complete enough to make her forget herself, make her capable of that ultimate altruism to which a woman falls or rises when she stretches herself out on the ...

— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... large pumpkin on a stand or table from which hang as many ribbons as there are guests. Have one end of the ribbon attached to a small card in the pumpkin on which may be a little water color sketch of pumpkin, apples, witch, ghost or other appropriate design together with a number. Have red ribbon for the girls and yellow ribbon for the boys, with corresponding numbers. Let each guest draw a ribbon from the pumpkin and find their partner ...

— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,—No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die,— Books said they did, but they lie! ...

— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... o' seemed to sit scornful while he was a-talkin'. Folks said, if it was in old times, Ketury wouldn't have been allowed to go on so; but Parson Lothrop's so sort o' mild, he let her take pretty much her own way. Everybody thought that Ketury was a witch: at least, she knew consid'able more'n she ought to know, and so they was kind o' 'fraid on her. Cap'n Eb says he never see a fellow seem scareder than Cack did when he ...

— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the senores took their seats around the board. The orchestra was stationed in an elevated alcove in the next room. On the benches sat the women, from the dainty Juliana in her pink cotton hosiery and white kid slippers to the old witch Paola, the town scold. We knives or forks. Heaping platefuls of rice were served with the stewed meat—cut in small pieces that "just fit the hand," and cooked with vegetables. At my request the monkey had been roasted ...

— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... come, whither going, and what designing? What did the poet mean to make of her? What could he have made of her? Could he have gone on much farther without having had recourse to some of the ordinary shifts of witch tales? Was she really the daughter of Roland de Vaux, and would the friends have met again ...

— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... is admirable," I said; "but what," I jeered, "makes you think you can point to the spot, because your map says something like, 'Through the Sunken Valley to Witch's Caldron, four points N. by N. E. to Gallows Hill where the shadow falls at sunrise, fifty fathoms west, fifty paces north as the crow flies, to the Seven Wells'? How the deuce," I demanded, "is any one going to ...

— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis

... rid of Holda, but no one can tell how long. She's a terror." "Why don't you travel?" "I have, I swear I have, but she has a trick of finding where my luggage goes and then turns up at Pau or Paris as if I expected her. She's a witch! That's what she is." ...

— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... the same psychological treatment. We can readily see this in the following extreme example: An aborigine suffering from a psychological problem certainly wouldn't be a candidate for psychoanalysis as we know it. He could, no doubt, be helped much more readily by a witch doctor. It also stands to reason that the sophisticated Westerner would not be influenced by the incantations of a tribal ...

— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... mental powers and peculiarities were such that, a hundred years before, she might have been burned for a witch, and fifty years later might have been honoured as a prophetess. But she missed the crest of the wave both ways and fell in the trough; her views on religious matters procured neither a witch's grave nor a prophet's crown, but ...

— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... we could see, through the twinkling leaves and the twinkling atmosphere, the great hills across the lake, taking their afternoon naps, with their clouds drawn like handkerchiefs over their heads. It was very hot, and the red and purple ooze of the unwholesome river below "burnt like a witch's oils." It was indeed but a fevered joy we snatched from Nature there; and I am afraid that we got nothing more comfortable from sentiment, when, rising, we wandered off through the unguarded fields toward a ruined tower on a hill. It ...

— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... the smell of burning. Blouses, pink and green, and cream, and blue, were stirred into a seething mass in the fireplace, as in a witch's cauldron, their fluffy laces burnt and blackened. Chiffon fichus torn in ribbons strewed the carpet. An ivory fan had been trampled into fragments on the hearth-rug, and a snow-storm of feathers from a white boa had drifted over the furniture. On the wash-stand a spangled white tulle ...

— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson

... have burned me for a witch? Perhaps they would: I think quite likely they burned women who made better martyrs. But I didn't have to call in Flibbertigibbet. The programme is a carefully guarded secret, to be sure; but it is known—it ...

— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... Rufus appeared all dripping with Gore, his Seconds would cool him out and rub him with Witch Hazel ...

— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... exaggerated form. At the time, furthermore, when he took healthy romantic interest in the picturesque Dusseldorf life, his imagination was morbidly stimulated by furtive visits to a woman reputed to be a witch, and to her niece, the daughter of a hangman. His earliest poems, the Dream Pictures, belong in an atmosphere charged with witchery, crime, and the irresponsibility of nightmare. This coincidence of incompatible ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... His overruling operation. He condescends, though He gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries ...

— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... Abel, sartinly. But I'll never read like thee," he added, despairingly. "Drattle th' old witch; why didn't she give I some schooling?" He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and Abel, too well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil reference to his mother, said ...

— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... inexorable fate. This idea I have pointed out before in the case of Hamlet; but it occurs repeatedly in Shakespeare; for as Hamlet is driven by the ghost into straits which he cannot pass through, so is Macbeth by witches, by Hecate, and by the arch-witch, his wife; Brutus by his friends; nay, even in Coriolanus, we find a similar thing—in short, the conception of a will transcending the capacity of the individual is modern. But as Shakespeare represents this trouble of the will as arising not from within but ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... a bowldish piece o' goods, was the youngster, simmin'ly, for 'a dedn' mind the stranyer a dinyun,[G] though 'a was like an owld black witch,[H] they do say. Anyhow, the two beginned jawin' together, soon got thick as Todgy an' Tom. An' by-an'-by the stranyer wormed out of un how 'a was all'ys troubled in 'es mind 'cause 'a cudn' onderstaand ...

— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... Dunsmore filled with milk every vessel that was brought to her till an envious witch tried to ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various

... business to hunt the eggs. I fell off a beam in the barn loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee, Mrs. Semple bound it up with witch-hazel, murmuring all the time, 'Dear! Dear! It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off that very same beam and scratched ...

— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... [Footnote: See the examination of the authorities and the evidence in Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, i., ch. viii.] on charges which may be summed up as those of treason and incitement to mutiny, wherewith was apparently mixed up a conviction on Drake's part that Doughty exercised witch-craft to bring on bad weather. It is not improbable at least that Doughty was really acting in the interests of that party in England which was opposed to the whole policy of the raid, and believed that he ...

— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... Is good to distil When babies are fractious and witches do ill. But why should we waste What gives such a taste To Summer-time salads that with it are graced? Old witch, work your will! Sweet babe, take a pill! And I'll eat my ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various

... 'Awa', awa', ye ill woman, You 'r nae come here for good; You 'r but some witch, or wile warlock, Or mer-maid ...

— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick

... hear Elephant turning from side to side. Perhaps his arms pained him; and thinking thus Frank was sorry he had not insisted on swabbing them with some witch hazel which they kept handy in the shop, in case of bruises while working. But he did not think it good policy to disturb the entire bunch again in order to relieve the slight pain of Elephant who must sooner or later ...

— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... at the bare thought of Medea—"la pessima Medea"—worse than her namesake of Colchis, as he calls her. His long clemency is a result of mere fear of laying violent hands upon her. He fears her as something almost supernatural; he would have enjoyed having had her burnt as a witch. After letter on letter, telling his crony, Cardinal Sanseverino, at Rome his various precautions during her lifetime—how he wears a jacket of mail under his coat; how he drinks only milk from a cow which he has milked in ...

— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... old!" I exclaimed, in horrified amazement: its size was that of a rickety baby under three, while its wizened face was that of a spell-struck creature of no assignable age, or the wax image of some dwindling life wasting away before the witch-kindled fire of a diabolical hatred. The tiny hands and arms were pitiably thin, and showed under the yellow skin sharp little bones no larger than a chicken's; and at her wrists and temples the blue tracery ...

— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... She leered, witch-like, at him, clutched suddenly at his sword-hilt, and kissed it with a frenzy of words, then sped off, singing madly as ...

— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance - Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! And now! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense of space and water, and thereby A lamplit bridge ...

— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... "Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before we began. You've not won that game by fair means, now, ...

— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... Italian narrative, with motives and events that require historical analysis. The poem is impatient with those very things which make the environment of the bard Sordello, and treats them in curt lines. A character is jammed into a sentence, like a witch into a snuff-box, the didactic parts grow metaphysical, and the life of Sordello does not fuse the events of the poem into one long rhythm. He thinks and dreams apart, and Palma's ambition for him is an aside, and the events swing their arms and strike ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... answer; "but if the old men come to me and say, 'kill the witch,' I must do it. For you know I am Maseua, head-war-chief, and whatever the principals command I must do, even if it takes the life ...

— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... Edward, an irrepressible smile breaking through his assumed anger, "you are a witch, and a wicked witch, too. It is like your race to be cruel and merciless, indifferent to the pain ...

— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... they topped a ridge of buttes and suddenly came upon what might well have seemed, in the hot mist of noonday, a billowy ocean, held by some magic in suspension. From the trail, which wound along a red slope of baked clay falling at a sharp angle into a witch's cauldron of clefts and savage abysses, the Bad Lands stretched southward to the uncertain horizon. The nearer slopes were like yellow shores ...

— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... future engineers, agents, or settlers of the new Company. He spent every available guilder on it with a confiding heart. One thing only disturbed his happiness: his wife came out of her seclusion, importing her green jacket, scant sarongs, shrill voice, and witch-like appearance, into his quiet life in the small bungalow. And his daughter seemed to accept that savage intrusion into their daily existence with wonderful equanimity. He did not like it, but ...

— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... to the masquerade, where it would have been easy. With those two Mandarin costumes, Fong Ling in my place, I had my time from the hour we put on the masks till midnight. Another perfect alibi. Well—it didn't work. They say you have to shoot a witch with a silver bullet. And she's more ...

— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... the chasse-maree," whispered my companion; "but she sails like a witch. She's safe unless they knock ...

— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... which is changed for another on his initiation into the secret society, this secret society having also, as usual, a secret language. About the age of three or five years the boy is decorated, under the auspices of the witch doctor, with certain scars on the face. These scars run from the root of the nose across the cheeks, and are sometimes carried up in a ...

— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... the Scylla and Charybdis between Italy and Sicily, where, in avoiding one mariners were often wrecked by the other; but the dangers in the Firth were from the "Merry Men of Mey," a dangerous expanse of sea, where the water was always boiling like a witch's cauldron at one end, and the dreaded "Swalchie Whirlpool" at the other. This was very dangerous for small boats, as they could sail over it safely in one state of the tide, but when it began to move it carried the boat round so slowly that the occupants ...

— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... that glowed in the stranger's deep-set eyes was not the lambent flame seen in the chatoyant orbs of some night-prowling jungle beast. Rather was it the blue-green glow of phosphorescent witch-light that flickers and dances in the night mists above ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... 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 was fought ...

— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... tune the pipers played ere a Celtic Medusa gazed at them and turned them into stone. Every one knows the story of the Rollright stones, a similar stone circle in Oxfordshire, which were once upon a time a king and his army, and were converted into stone by a witch who cast a fatal spell upon ...

— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... the pendja-baschi. "She stuck to it well that the pretended merchant was not her son, but it was too late. Colonel Ogareff was not to be taken in; and, as he said, he will know how to make the old witch speak when the ...

— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... to Mr. Bailey's speech she was reminded of the declaration of a president of Harvard College, who asserted that without question there were witches and it was the duty of all good people to hunt them out, but twenty-five years later every intelligent man knew there had never been such a thing as a witch. A man once wrote a book to prove that a steamship could never cross the ocean and the book was brought to America by the first one that crossed. Daniel Webster made a speech against admitting as a State one of the western Territories because its members of Congress ...

— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... Wim'l'ton Road, en all de darkies fum Rockfish ter Beaver Crick wuz feared er her. She could wuk de mos' powerfulles' kin' er goopher,—could make people hab fits, er rheumatiz, er make 'em des dwinel away en die; en dey say she went out ridin' de niggers at night, fer she wuz a witch 'sides bein' a cunjuh 'oman. Mars Dugal' hearn 'bout Aun' Peggy's doin's, en begun ter 'flect whe'r er no he could n' git her ter he'p him keep de niggers off'n de grapevimes. One day in de spring er de year, ole miss pack' ...

— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... had learned a little magic from a witch, just enough magic to serve her turn. She went out and picked two palm leaves which she fastened on her shoulders and changed herself into a bird, a bright, beautiful Ground-Pigeon, with many-colored metallic feathers. ...

— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... In one he is the violent reformer, seeking to overthrow our present institutions and to hurry the millennium out of its slow walk into a gallop. Out of this mood come most of his longer poems, like Queen Mab, Revolt of Islam, Hellas, and The Witch of Atlas, which are somewhat violent diatribes against government, priests, marriage, religion, even God as men supposed him to be. In a different mood, which finds expression Alastor, Adonais, ...

— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... This was because of a wooden staff on which she leaned to eke out the failing strength of her own limbs. The wood-wife was both feared and hated by the people, amongst whom she bore the character of a very malicious witch. The king's daughter hated not only her, but her tumble-down house, and had sent again and again, with large offers of gold, to try and purchase the cottage. But the wood-wife laughed spitefully at the messengers, and only replied that the cottage suited her, and that for ...

— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... different meaning and etymology to [Hebrew: 'obot]. He derives it from the Arabic, which signifies (1) rediit, (2) occidit sol, (3) noctu venit or noctu aliquid fecit. The first and third of these meanings will make it applicable to the [Greek: nekromanteia] (of which the witch of Endor was a practitioner), which was carried on at night. See ...

— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various

... them whisper in the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,— A syllabled silence that no man may hear,— As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some specter of some perished ...

— Poems • Madison Cawein

... a witch," said he; "you must have some genius in your service, who listens to every wish you express, in order to fulfil it without delay! This letter contains an invitation from the cardinal. He gives a great entertainment to-morrow, and begs of me that I will bring you to it. The improvisatrice ...

— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... closed for centuries, the effaced lineaments of its tenant can be re-coloured only by the idealizing hand of genius, as Scott drew Claverhouse, and Carlyle drew Cromwell. But, to the biographer of the lately dead, men have a right to say, as Saul said to the Witch of Endor, "Call up Samuel!" In your study of a life so recent as Kinglake's, give us, if you choose, some critical synopsis of his monumental writings, some salvage from his ephemeral and scattered ...

— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... the gulf. All night did they contend in such wise; never, he deemed, had he fought with such a horror for her strength's sake; she held him to her so hard that he might turn his arms to no account save to keep fast hold on the middle of the witch. ...

— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... changing intellectual point of view; while superstition is the belief unacknowledged of the few and acknowledged of the many, nor does it materially change from age to age. The rites employed among the clam-diggers on the New York coast, the witch-charms they use, the incantations, cutting of flesh, fire-oblations, meaningless formulae, united with sacrosanct expressions of the church, are all on a par with the religion of the lower classes as depicted in Theocritus and the Atharvan. If these mummeries and this hocus-pocus were collected ...

— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... Mistress!" said Boswell, roughly. "Why, what have we here in the charge-sheet? 'Agnes Silverside, alias Smith, alias Downes, alias May!' Hast thou had four husbands, old witch, or how comest by so ...

— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... for Saul, that Jehovah had repented of having made him king over Israel. There is another narrative intimately connected with this one in subject and treatment, thought and expression, namely, that of the witch of Endor. When Saul, shortly before the battle in which he fell, surveyed the hostile army, he was seized with anxiety and terror. He inquired of Jehovah, but received no answer, neither by dreams, nor by the ephod, nor by prophets. In his extremity he was driven into the arms ...

— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... When brown night falls and mists begin to live, Then will the phantom hunting-train emerge, Hounds straining, black fire-eyeballed, breathless steeds, Spurred by wild huntsmen, and unhallowed nymphs, And at their head the foam-begotten witch, Of soul-destroying beauty. Saints of heaven! Preserve mine eyes from such unholy sight! How all unlike the base desire which leads Misguided men to that infernal cave, Is the pure passion that exalts my soul ...

— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... 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 to-night;" and Elsie, to her dismay, saw the ...

— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... designed to make herself sport with him, and did not miss of her aim. I confess I always thought him an impostor, but I could never have imagined him so simple a one as we found him. In my life I never heard so ridiculous a discourse as he made us, and no old woman who passes for a witch could have been more puzzled to seek what to say to reasonable people than he was. He asked us more questions than we did him, and caught at everything we said without discerning that we abused him and said things purposely to confound him; which we did so ...

— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... I ought to take my father's place to the younger ones," answered Everard gravely. "I'll do what I can in that line, though I'm not much to boast of myself, I'm afraid. I'm not the good sort you think me, Carmel. But there, you little witch, you've cast your glamour over me, somehow! I suppose I've got to try to be all you want me. Princess Carmel gives ...

— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... it for that some special mercy laid obligations upon thee, or how?" And then Standfast tells how as he was coming along musing with himself, Madam Bubble presented herself to him and offered him three things. "I was both aweary and sleepy and also as poor as a howlet, and all that the wicked witch knew. And still she followed me with her enticements. Then I betook me, as you saw, to my knees, and with hands lift up and cries, I prayed to Him who had said that He would help. So just as you came up the gentlewoman went her way. Then I continued to give thanks for my ...

— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... critic requested a sermon upon the genealogy of Melchizedek, which the minister agreed to furnish when our blacksmith could tell him the foundry which manufactured Tubal Cain's hammer and anvil. Lot's wife, the witch of Endor, Jonah's whale, the sundial of Ahaz, and the population of Nineveh, were all duly discussed, together with the bodies in which the angels dined with Abraham. Did the loaves and fishes miraculously multiply in ...

— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... "D' witch man," he whispered, his eyes almost starting from his head, and his forehead suddenly beading ...

— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... of theology and the reverential faith that guide the lives of civilized human entities. Very pretty! Then the literary critic steps in and shows how the belief in immortality has been enlarged and elaborated since the days of Saul, the son of Kish. When the witch of Endor saw gods ascending from the earth, she was only anticipating the experience of sorcerers who ply their trade in the islands of the Pacific. Professor Huxley admires the awful description of Saul's ...

— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... tide o'er all prevail - On Christmas eve a Christmas tale, Of wonder and of war—"Profane! What! leave the loftier Latian strain, Her stately prose, her verse's charms, To hear the clash of rusty arms: In Fairy Land or Limbo lost, To jostle conjuror and ghost, Goblin and witch!" Nay, Heber dear, Before you touch my charter, hear; Though Leyden aids, alas! no more, My cause with many-languaged lore, This may I say:- in realms of death Ulysses meets Alcides' WRAITH; AEneas, upon Thracia's shore, The ghost of murdered Polydore; For omens, we in Livy cross, ...

— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... kitchen was empty, and he opened the door of the sitting-room, but paused on the threshold. Miss Phrony Marlin was sitting in the corner, weeping ostentatiously, with loud and prolonged sniffs. Her mother, a little withered woman like crumpled parchment, cowered witch-like over the air-tight stove, and looked at Calvin and then at her daughter, but ...

— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... of children choose one of their number to be "mother" and another to be the witch. One child represents the pot, and the others are named after the days in the week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. If there are too many children they might be ...

— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... at the expense of Baron Maseres. Madame Agnesi also wrote a commentary on the Traite analytique des sections coniques of the marquis de l'Hopital, which, though highly praised by those who saw it in manuscript, was never published. She invented and discussed the curve known as the "witch of Agnesi'' (q.v.) or versiera. In 1750, on the illness of her father, she was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV. to the chair of mathematics and natural Philosophy at Bologna. After the death of her father in 1752 she carried out a long-cherished purpose ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; And the Children said, as they closer drew, "'Tis some witch that is cleaving the black night through— 'Tis a fairy trumpet that just then blew, And we fear the wind in ...

— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... that she was really a witch and had devoured his son. So he went himself to the counsellor's son, who was disguised as a hermit, and asked how Lily should be punished. And by his advice, she was banished from the city, though her parents wept. So she was banished naked to the forest and knew that the counsellor's son ...

— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown

... Woods paused under a burgeoning maple—paused resolutely, with the lures of Spring thick about him, compassed with every snare of scent and sound and colour that the witch ...

— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... tallow-faced; faint, dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c. v. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c. 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a ...

— Roget's Thesaurus

... mistaken, as they soon learnt to their cost. For no sooner were they all asleep than Grendel's mother, a monstrous witch who dwelt at the bottom of a cold mere, came to Heorot to avenge her son and burst into the hall. The thanes started up in terror, hastily grasping their swords; but she seized upon Asher, the most beloved of Hrothgar's warriors, who still ...

— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... of bitterness in her voice; she leaned forward, patting the mare's chestnut neck for a moment, then swung back, sitting straight as a cavalryman in her saddle. "Of course," she said, smiling for the first time, "it will break my heart to sell The Witch, but"—she patted the mare again—"the mare won't grieve; it takes a dog to do that; but horses—well, I know horses enough to know that even The ...

— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... little witch," Harold addressed Virginia. "You're hard to kiss, but your kisses are worth having. What you think about that, Joe? Aren't I tellin' you ...

— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... white flakes fell, without haste, excitement or the flurry of wind. Already the ground was covered and the trees were bending with the weight of the white garment the sky was throwing over them. It was unfit weather for a lady to encounter, or indeed for anything feminine to be abroad in, save a witch on a broomstick. Norma was fain to accept Mrs. Mason's invitation and remain for ...

— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... juggal (dog) at him; but the animal, fled from the flash of the tinker's eye, and Mrs. Herne realised that he would live—the dook (spirit of divination) told her so. The arrival of the Welsh preacher Peter Williams, and his wife Winifred, in their cart put the gypsy witch-wife and her daughter to flight. The Welshman administered some oil, which, after two hours of suspense, and with the help of an opiate, saved the life of Lavengro. During this companionship Borrow found that ...

— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... here a-new, Here, on thy Lips— Exhausted Treasures that wou'd purchase Crowns, To buy thy Smiles—to buy a gentle Look; And when thou didst repay me—blest the Giver? Oh, Abdelazer, more than this I've done— This very Hour, the last the King can live, Urg'd by thy Witch-craft, I his Life betray'd; And is it thus my Bounties are repaid? Whate'er a Crime so great deserves from Heav'n, By Abdelazer might have been forgiven: [Weeps. But I will be reveng'd by penitence, And e'er the ...

— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... recounting the scene, it was simply disgusting. Leta vowed, "The little baggage must be a witch and throw spells over people. Look what fools she's made of our boys for years, and Ross Norval, with all his splendid endowments, ...

— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... some interest in me," I grumbled. "I doubt if that stick will need a liniment rubdown tonight. Okay, Pat. You're right and I'm wrong, as you usually are. That modern variation of a witch's ...

— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond

... the bewitched monarch, as his bride, and he gave her the seven Queens' rich clothes and jewels to wear, the seven Queens' palace to live in, and the seven Queens' slaves to wait upon her; so that she really had everything even a witch ...

— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... always point out how exceedingly unpleasant things might have been for the king and the country if he, the magician, had not by his diligence, prevented its happening, say, on the 20th, and in the north. A Zulu witch-doctor is quite equal to analogous subterfuges to-day, and no doubt his Babylonian congeners were not less ingenious 3,000 years ago. Such subterfuges were not always successful when a Chaka or a Nebuchadnezzar had ...

— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... time I realised that her strong, handsome face could look nobly and pathetically beautiful. Her eyes swam in an adorable moisture and grew very human and appealing. In a second all my self-denying ordinances were forgotten. The witch had me in her ...

— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... answered, when his examination was finished, "which is, I suppose, the vessel that Madam means, is just such a ship as does a sailor's eye good to look on. A gallant and a safe boat she is, as I will swear; and as to sailing, though she may not be altogether a witch, yet is she a fast craft, or I'm no judge of blue water, or of those that ...

— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... remembered how one of his companions, who was a gatherer of samphire, had told him of a certain young Witch who dwelt in a cave at the head of the bay and was very cunning in her witcheries. And he set to and ran, so eager was he to get rid of his soul, and a cloud of dust followed him as he sped round the sand of the shore. By the itching of her palm the young Witch knew his coming, and she ...

— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... and Nevada had gone to the theatre. Barbara had not cared to go. She wanted to stay at home and study in the study. If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose taste for the oxidized-silver ...

— Options • O. Henry

... besides something of Circe, who was screamed by a Mademoiselle Hermans, seven feet high. She was in black, with a nosegay of black (for on the French stage they pique themselves on propriety,) and without powder: whenever you are a widow, are in distress, or are a witch, you are to ...

— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... All I know is that she heard Stefano the weaver's lad had the falling sickness, and she carried him a potion with her own hands, and the next day the child was dead, and a Carmelite friar, who saw the phial he drank from, said it was the same shape and size as one that was found in a witch's grave when they were digging the foundations for ...

— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... here because they wear blouses and look hungry, and when they left us the landlord notified the police that suspicious characters were at the hotel, and came there escorted by the mob, and the police surrounded the house and dad went to our room and used witch hazel on himself where the Cossack hit him with the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, and I think dad is going to join the revolution that is going to be pulled off ...

— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... mine—the home. You devote yourself to teaching, I, to the household. And if I talk about servants, then I do know what I am talking about; I do know what I am talking about... And to-morrow there's to be no more of that old thief, that old hag... [Stamping] that witch! And don't you dare to annoy me! Don't you dare! [Stopping short] Really, if you don't move downstairs, we shall always be quarrelling. ...

— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... for to have counsel of our Lord. And our Lord answered him not, ne by swevens ne by priests, ne by prophets. Then said Saul to his servants: Fetch to me a woman having a phiton, otherwise called a phitoness or a witch. And they said that there was such a woman in Endor. Saul then changed his habit and clothing, and did on other clothing, and went, and two men with him, and came to the woman by night, and made her ...

— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... while on them and around them a line of poplars fell flat, the wind whistling over them. Laura directed Vittoria's eyes to the sight. "See," she said, and her face was set hard with cold and excitement, so that she looked a witch in the uproar; "would you not say the devil is loose now Angelo is abroad?" Thunder and lightning possessed the vale, and then a vertical rain. At the first gleam of sunlight, Laura and Vittoria walked up to the Laubengasse—the street of the arcades, where ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... wistful and unblessed. In those moments glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning had abandoned the earth. But not for long. Winged with darkness, it stole back; not the soul of meaning that had gone, but a witch-like and brooding spirit harbouring in the black trees, in the high dark spears of the rushes, and on the grim-snouted snags that lurked along the river bank. Then the owls came out, and night-flying things. And in the wood there began a cruel bird-tragedy—some dark pursuit in the twilight above ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... eye iv a witch to see that Dan'l O'Connell was a bor-rn idjet. They was no rale harm in th' poor la-ad, on'y he was lazy an' foolish an' sort iv tired like. To make a long story short, Hinnissy, his father thried ivrything f'r him, an' got nawthin.' He ...

— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... Day and an adjournment of the House of Commons! Mr. BALFOUR might well rub his eyes and wonder if there had been a revival of the Saturnian days when Lord ELCHO used annually to mount his favourite hobby and witch the House with noble horsemanship. But on this occasion the adjournment lasted only half-an-hour, and had nothing to do with Epsom. Chivalry, not sport, was its motive. The House merely wished to do honour to its Leader by assisting at the presentation of its ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various

... name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 'Used by Betty Edgecombe, white witch of Malborough ...

— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... Count Hannibal roll in the dust had gone but a little way towards satisfying him. No! But to drag from his arms the woman for whom he had sinned, to subject her to shame and torture in the depths of some convent, and finally to burn her as a witch—it was that which had seemed to the priest in the night hours a vengeance ...

— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... me the whole morning with that tiresome Bergenheim on my hands, and I verily believe he made me count every stick in his park and every frog in his pond. Tonight, when that old witch of Endor proposed her infernal game of whist, to which it seems I am to be condemned daily, you-excused yourself upon the pretext of ignorance, and yet you play as good a game ...

— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... animals, as do all persons of her race, and she was not so bad, either, at conjuring away styes and boils and ringworms; but for other ailments one would scarcely think of consulting her. It was hardly the thing to expect help from a witch doctor for ...

— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... that several buckshot had grazed the small youth's temple, while one had gone through the tip of the ear. Giant's face was covered with blood, and this was washed off, and then his wounds were bathed with witch hazel and bound up. ...

— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill

... the familiar scene, its freedom, its loneliness, its unstainedness, rose high within him. He stood lost in a trance of memory. Here he and Louie had listened to 'Lias'; there, far away amid the boulders of the Downfall, they had waited for the witch; among those snow-laden bushes yonder Louie had hidden when she played Jenny Crum for the discomfiture of the prayer-meeting; and it was on the slope at his feet that she had pushed the butter-scotch into his mouth, the one and only sign of affection she had ever ...

— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... leaves there is hounds tongue. Wear it at the feet of you against dogs what be savage. Herb Benet you nail upon the door. No witch nor evil thing can enter ...

— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... power over youth and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near foreground the beginnings of that fight with patriarchal institutions which led the priestess to be branded by the new Christian civilization as the evil-working witch of the Middle Ages."[53] ...

— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... in a Stable. He had a yellow Punching Bag, a Sponge, a Bath-Robe and several Towels. Two Paper-Hangers who were out of Work acted as his Trainers. They rubbed him with Witch Hazel all day, and in the Evening the Boy stood around in a Sweater and Talked out of the corner of his Mouth. He said he was Trained to the Minute, as Hard as Nails and Fit as a Fiddle, and he would make Mr. Unknown jump ...

— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... step-mother that she was alive and living in the depths of the jungle with the three giants. When the step-mother heard about it she was so angry that she thought she could never be happy as long as Angelita was living in the world. She consulted a wicked witch as soon as she ...

— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells

... the government never punished these wicked souls!... There were no other remedies than the old, true and tried ones,—the product of the experience of people who had lived years ago and thus knew much more. One of the neighbors went off to hunt up a certain witch, a miraculous doctor for dog-bites, serpent bites and scorpion-stings. Another brought a blind old goatherd, who could cure by the virtue of his mouth, simply by making some crosses of saliva over the ailing flesh. The drinks made of mountain herbs and the moist signs of the goatherd were looked ...

— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Sitzky said about their respect for the weaker sex. I guess we'd better keep off that tack or we'll hatch up a duel or two. They seem to be fire-eaters. We must content ourselves witch searching out her home and without assistance, too. I've cooled off a bit, Harry, and, now that I've seen her, I'm willing to go slowly and deliberately. Let's take our time and be perfectly cool. I am beginning to agree with your incog. ...

— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... last, "Phoebus, what a name!" adding affectedly, "yet it seems to me, on reflection, I have heard it before. He is a Yankee, of course! Now, do you earnestly believe a native of New England, by descent a legitimate witch-burner, you know, can be any thing better than a ...

— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... were to buy a Thessalian witch, and draw down the moon by night, then shut her up in a round helmet-case, like a mirror, ...

— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... witch," said her father "and sends us, living, to the happy hunting-grounds. Will you join ...

— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... However, the cottage felt soft and looked pretty enough to eat, so Percival bit off a piece of the roof and declared it was fine. Melisande helped herself to the doorknob, and the children might have eaten half the cottage had not a witch who lived in it come out and frightened them away. The children ran as fast as their legs could work, for the witch looked exactly like their governess, who tried to make them learn to spell and do ...

— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... sure I have reason to. Grandmother Parker was a good woman if ever there was one, and she was bewitched. And would it have said in the Bible—'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' if there ...

— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... old wither'd witch, Or dread the scourge's echoing blow!" Then loud he sung and wav'd his switch, ...

— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... would, unless some upstart man should deny my right to sing any thing but melodies. If it were committed to me to sing like a bird, I would not care, I think, to exercise my right to roar like a bull. If I can witch the ears and win the hearts of men and women by doing that which I can do easily and naturally and well, then I shall do best not to exercise my right to do that which I can only do difficultly, and ...

— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... lie here brooding Where the pine-tree column Rises dark and solemn To the airy lair, Where, the day eluding, Night is couched dream laden, Like a deep witch-maiden Hidden in ...

— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... a lyre, and drew therefrom 5 Music so strange and rich, That all men loved to hear,—and some Muttered of fagots for a witch. ...

— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... well has been dug even in this land of liberty where our witch-hazel indicated; but here its kindly magic is directed chiefly through the soothing extract distilled from its juices. Its yellow, thread-like blossoms are the latest to appear ...

— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... already been as light as hair can well be, that wild ride would have turned it several shades lighter. The terrors that were compressed into those two hours are beyond description, while the bobbing, bumping and shaking of her poor plump body left reminders that only time and witch hazel were ...

— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... woman, though she is a bad old witch that did ought to be drowned," he said, and with that he popped the creature into a big ...

— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... they enter, he has created for them a peculiar language, which, although composed of the usual elements, still seems to be a collection of formulae of incantation. The sound of the words, the accumulation of rhymes, and the rhythmus of the verse, form, as it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies the kettle of the witches can be made effective with agreeable aromatics, is as wise as those who desire that hell should sincerely and honestly give good advice. These repulsive ...

— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... spit out all his venom. Well, says he, at any rate you will not deny that the English have not got a language of their own, and that they came by it in a very odd way. Of this at least I am certain, for the whole history was related to me by a witch in Lapland, whilst I was bargaining for a wind. Here the company were all in unison ...

— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... with you curs,' said Mr Jonas, 'that when you know a man's in real earnest, you pretend to think he's joking, so that you may turn it off. But that won't do with me. It's too stale. Now just attend to me for a bit, Mr Pitch, or Witch, or Stitch, or ...

— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... vampire or demon that wanders about at night. Derived from Latin striga, a bird of night, or a witch. ...

— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs, and know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what's the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign —the roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee. There's another rendering ...

— Moby-Dick • Melville

... not so sure we can, but we'll try it, anyway," sighed Mrs. McGuire, rising to her feet, the old worry back on her face. "Well, I must be goin'. Mr. McGuire'll have a fit. He's as nervous as a witch when he's left alone with John. There! What did I tell you?" she broke off, with an expressive gesture and glance, as a careworn-looking man appeared in the doorway of the house across the two back yards, and peered anxiously over ...

— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... remember how England, in the seventeenth century, could work itself up into a frenzy on this account to realize how, in an African society even of the better sort, the "smelling-out" and destroying of a witch may easily become a general panacea ...

— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... 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 ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... he answered indifferently. "But if you ask my true opinion—well, no; I am quite sceptical! There may be something in what these dealers in hope sometimes say, but more often there is nothing. In fact, you must remember that a witch generally tells her client what she believes her client wishes ...

— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... up to a certain point; which point Forms the most difficult in punctuation. Appearances appear to form the joint On which it hinges in a higher station; And so that no explosion cry 'Aroint Thee, witch!' or each Medea has her Jason; Or (to the point with Horace and with Pulci) 'Omne tulit punctum, quae ...

— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... name. Well, that's Vicky Van. She'd laugh and jest with you, and then if you said anything by way of a personal compliment or flirtatious foolery, she was off and away from your side, like a thistle-down in a summer breeze. She was a witch, a madcap, but she had her own way in everything, and her friends did her ...

— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... harsh smile were of a hag, of a witch, an enchantress, a Fate, a—I know not what! There was something about her to justify fully the aversion and fright which I had been caused all my life long by women walking alone in the streets at night. One would have said that I had had a presentiment ...

— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... triumphantly. "Once I get rid of the pain I can do as I like. When I've got red hot needles eating into my toes, am I likely to like anything? Of course not, you may just as well take medicine then as anything else, but as to taking orders from a pack of ill-bred bumpkins, full of witch magic as a dog of fleas, I see myself! Don't stand grinning there, Charles, like a dirty, shock-headed barmaid's dropped hair pin! I won't stand it! I can't see why all my sons should have thin legs, neither you nor I, Sarah, ever went about like a couple of spilikin's. I call it indecent! ...

— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... Dr. herself, but not of Divinity. For in the Joanna page of the ledger the entry would be—"Miss Joanna, in acct. with the Church, Dr. by sundry diabolic miracles, she having publicly preached heresy, shown herself a witch, and even tried hard to corrupt the principles of six church pillars." In the mean time, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon both trials. The very best witness called from first to last ...

— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... below is refreshed by a rapid stream, that forms small waterfalls as it tumbles over the rocks, and is bordered by green and flowering trees. Amongst these, is one with a smooth, satin-like bark, of a pale golden colour, whose roots have something snakish and witch-like in their appearance, intertwining with each other, grappling as it were with the hard rock, and stretching out to ...

— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... love with Cynthia, the Moon, though aware that his aspiration must remain for ever hopeless. Tellus, the Earth, herself enamoured of Endymion, jealously resolves to punish his indifference to her by deep melancholy. Accordingly she visits the witch, Dipsas, by whose magic aid the youth, found resting on a bank of lunary, is bewitched to sleep until old age. Not for this crime but for a minor one, Tellus is sentenced by Cynthia to imprisonment under the care of Corsites. Eumenides, the loyal friend ...

— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... with the old gesture she remembered so well. "Wanda, you are the most wonderful girl-woman in the world! What has happened to you? What have you done to yourself? What have you done to your eyes? Do you know, Miss Wanda Leland—are you a little witch and do you do it on purpose?—that those two eyes of yours can make ...

— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... your friends. They wove for you this robe of rose-leaves, and threw over you a gray cloud from the Witch's Mountain. ...

— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson

... hated me for that best manner. Specious little witch! she called me: your best manner, so full of art and design, had never been seen through, if you, with your blandishing ways, have not been put out of sight, and reduced to positive declarations!—Hindered from playing your little declarations!—Hindered from playing your ...

— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... has brought nothing but embroidered muslins, cobweb handkerchiefs and gray silk boots. I entreated her to put on a simple dress, when she came with me. This made her desperate, and through vengeance and maliciously exaggerated zeal she bundled herself up like an old witch. I tried to make her comprehend that her frightfulness far exceeded my wildest wishes; she thereupon disarmed ...

— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... again if you needed my help. I was just in time for a little longer and I could never have brought you back to life. And now, brother, the enchantment that held me is broken and I need no longer go about as a Little Lame Fox. My mother was a wicked witch and she enchanted me because she was angry with me for saving a man whom she wanted to kill. So she turned me into a little fox and she said I should have to remain a fox forever unless I succeeded in bringing back to life my benefactor. You are my benefactor, Janko, for ...

— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore

... hand upon the chimney. "Witch!" he said, "there is not your match for devilry in Europe. Service! ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... you're sad," he said at its conclusion. "If only the prince had not done what the witch told him, you'd have been perfectly happy, ...

— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... incident in this little tale should seem incredible, it may be mentioned that an instance of a child being deprived of speech for several days, at the bidding of a reputed witch, came under the author's immediate notice less than three years ago, in a village but three miles distant ...

— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... whither going, and what designing? What did the poet mean to make of her? What could he have made of her? Could he have gone on much farther without having had recourse to some of the ordinary shifts of witch tales? Was she really the daughter of Roland de Vaux, and would the friends have met again ...

— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... loftier cliffs, leaving two of their women as trophies to the assailants. These two, one "being olde," says the record, "the other encombred with a yong childe, we took. The olde wretch, whom divers of our Saylors supposed to be eyther the Divell, or a witch, had her buskins plucked off, to see if she were cloven-footed; and for her ougly hewe and deformitie, we let her goe; the young woman and the childe we ...

— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... silly idea, but it still haunted her and would not be shaken off. Granny Thomas was a very old woman who lived at Burnley Cove and was reputed to be something of a witch. That is, people who were not Sparhallows or Burnleys gave her that name. Sparhallows or Burnleys, of course, were above believing in such nonsense. Janet was above believing it; but still—the sailors along shore were careful to "keep on ...

— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... piano shut, something seemed to worry you. Do you remember it, dear one?' 'All of it, yes, yes.' 'Then you came singing down to that old oak, and kissed the place where I had carved our names with many vows. Tell me, you little witch, who were you thinking of all that time?' 'All the while of you,' she sighed. 'And do you, oh, do you remember that you fell asleep under the oak, and that a little acorn fell into your bosom and you tossed it out in a pet? Ah, Olive dear, I found that acorn, and kissed it twice, and kissed ...

— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... that edged the side began to wave in a strange light, and there blew on a little breeze, and over the rim of the world tipped up a waning moon. If there'd been anything needed to make us feel as if we were going to find the Witch of Endor, it was this. It was such a strange moon, pointing such a strange way, with such a strange color, so remote, and so glassy,—it was like a dead moon, or the spirit of one, ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... it was the laird himsel' that had first tauld the minister o' Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and the deil ...

— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... old woman very fond of annoying me; let us suppose she must be a witch; she always calls out after me when I pass her stall, "There is but one God and Mahomet is the prophet of God." To-day, words would not suffice; the old hag ran after me and thumped me over the back, to show her zeal for Mahomet, who, begging pardon of his Holiness, ...

— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... be a witch, she certainly is far from displaying the hag-like appearance often attributed to the female sorcerer. There is even something decidedly fascinating about her. Shotaye, although near the forties, is for an Indian woman undoubtedly good-looking. No wonder ...

— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... to speak to me like that, you sorceress, you witch! Disdain you! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as though it were swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more. Look how she laughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It does one's heart good to see ...

— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... he-witch or something," chuckled Neil, as he propelled his steed toward the campus. "Maybe he will put a curse upon me and my right foot will wither up and I won't be ...

— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... tumbling into the abyss of nonsense and absurdity, he has but to seize a comet by the beard, mount astride of its tail, and away he gallops in triumph like an enchanter on his hippogriff, or a Connecticut witch on her broomstick, "to sweep the cobwebs out ...

— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... about two ounces of stuff, viz. The Fatal Sisters; The Descent of Odin; a bit of something from the Welch, and certain little Notes, partly from justice-,, partly from ill- temper, just to tell the gentle reader that Edward 1. was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor. This is literally all; and with all this, I shall be but a shrimp of an author." ...

— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... had long served a witch as a steed complained of the nature of its employment, which ...

— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... the people were without medical assistance of any sort, and fell into the hands of native quacks who were little, if at all, better than witch doctors. ...

— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... Rainbow however, was eclipsed when not long afterward Howland and Aspinwall, now converted to the clipper, ordered the Sea Witch to be built for Captain Bob Waterman. Among all the splendid skippers of the time he was the most dashing figure. About his briny memory cluster a hundred yarns, some of them true, others legendary. It has been argued that the speed of the clippers was due more to the ...

— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... full and illuminative treatment of this subject I would refer my readers to the essays of Professor Karl Pearson, The Chances of Death, Vol. II.—"Woman as Witch: Evidences of Mother-Right in the Customs of Mediaeval Witchcraft"; "Ashiepattle, or Hans Seeks his Luck"; "Kindred Group Marriage," Part I.; "The Mother-Age Civilisation," Part II.; "General Words for Sex and Kinship," Part III.; "Special Words for Sex and Relationship." In these suggestive ...

— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... inquiries after an old woman whom she knew Harry had often befriended. She inquired at the blacksmith's shed for Dame Coppins, but was surprised by the man coming to the door, and instead of pointing out the way to the cottage, saying, "We'll do it, Mistress Harcourt! We'll have justice on the old witch that's ...

— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie

... and this one flung down in a heap upon the ground, with his head against the bars, like a wild beast. Make the rain pour down, outside, in torrents. Put the everlasting stove in the midst; hot, and suffocating, and vaporous, as a witch's cauldron. Add a collection of gentle odours, such as would arise from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet through, and a thousand buck-baskets, full of half-washed linen - and there is the prison, as ...

— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... got to her feet suddenly. "My friend," she said, "I think you are a witch. Yes, you are quite right. I have not seen a line of the other man's writing; and I have no more notion than the dead of what or where he is. But it is of him that I am frightened. It is he who is all about my path. It is he who has half driven me mad. Indeed, I think he ...

— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... 'bleeding sergeant'—falls so far below the style of the rest of the play as to suggest that it was an interpolation by a hack of the theatre. The resemblances between Thomas Middleton's later play of 'The Witch' (1610) and portions of 'Macbeth' may safely be ascribed to plagiarism on Middleton's part. Of two songs which, according to the stage directions, were to be sung during the representation of 'Macbeth' (III. v. and IV. i.), only the first line of each is noted there, but songs beginning ...

— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... stay, because she was still a living daughter of earth. On her return to earth, she was chosen for the bride of Jagannaut, and Ar'valan came to dishonor her; but she set fire to the pagoda, and Ereenia came to her rescue. Ereenia was set upon by the witch Lor'rimite (3 syl.), and carried to the submerged city of Baly, whence he was delivered by Ladurlad. The glendoveer now craved Seeva for vengeance, but the god sent him to Yamen (i.e. Pluto), and Yamen said the measure of iniquity was now full, so Arvalan and his father Kehama ...

— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... Uncle Jack, "you're a regular little witch! Why, that's a dandy plan. The first thing you know, you'll have the little folks able to take care of themselves on the streets better ...

— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey

... and the wonder of it. The spiritual effort implied is so tremendous. We have read stories of savage chiefs converted by Christian or Buddhist missionaries, who within a year or so have turned from drunken corroborees and bloody witch-smellings to a life that is not only godly but even philanthropic and statesmanlike. We have seen the Japanese lately go through some centuries of normal growth in the space of a generation. But in all such examples men have only been ...

— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Astolfo, a Peer and friend of Orlando, who is kidnaped by the evil witch Morgana and her sister Alcina; Mandricardo, a fierce but hot-headed heathen; and a young knight named Brandimarte, who falls in love with (and wins the heart of) the beautiful Fiordelisa ("Flordelice" in Rose). All play major or semi-major roles in ...

— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... miserable train of talk to-night; but that young witch leads a man on so. I'm glad she has a decided mind of her own; one feels less conscience-stricken. I'm what they call a skeptic myself, but after all, I don't quite like to see a lady become one. I ...

— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... impassioned beauty of her situation in connection with her character, that long ago, in a work of my own (yet unpublished), having occasion (by way of overture introducing one of the sections) to cite before the reader's eye the chief pomps of the Grecian theatre, after invoking 'the magnificent witch' Medea, I call up Antigone to this shadowy stage by the apostrophe, Holy heathen, daughter of God, before God was known, [3] flower from Paradise after Paradise was closed; that quitting all things for which flesh languishes, safety and ...

— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... undressed but loosely wrapped in a wool blanket, is placed on a table so that the mother or a nurse may conveniently stand while administering the bath. Close at hand have a number of soft linen towels and a large bowl of tepid water which may or may not contain a small amount of alcohol, witch-hazel, salt, or vinegar, according to the doctor's directions. The upper portion of the body is partially uncovered and the tepid water is applied with the hands to the skin surface of one arm. The hands may be dipped ...

— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... immovable equanimity in this distracted environment strikes us very much. Peter is careering, tumbling about, on all manner of absurd broomsticks, driven too surely by the Devil; terrific-absurd big Lapland Witch, surrounded by multitudes smaller, and some of them less ugly. Will be Czar of Russia, however;—and is one's so-called Husband. These are prospects for an observant, immovably steady-going young Woman! The reigning Czarina, ...

— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... I exclaimed, "I have heard of the 'witch woman,' but that was when I was trading at Gallic Harbour on Admiralty Island. There was a poor fellow there, Hairy Willard, who was dying of poison given him by some chief, and I remember quite well his wife, who was a Tahitian, ...

— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... By strange enchantment made to fetter The lesser parts and free the greater; For though the body may creep through, The hands in grate are fast enough: 1155 And when a circle 'bout the wrist Is made by beadle exorcist, The body feels the spur and switch, As if 'twere ridden post by witch At twenty miles an hour pace, 1160 And yet ne'er stirs out of the place. On top of this there is a spire, On which Sir Knight first bids the Squire The fiddle and its spoils, the case, In manner of a trophee place. 1165 That done, ...

— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... anybody, I do not know; for I never heard of her loving anybody but herself, and I do not think she could have managed that if she had not somehow got used to herself. But what made it highly imprudent in the king to forget her was—that she was awfully clever. In fact, she was a witch; and when she bewitched anybody, he very soon had enough of it; for she beat all the wicked fairies in wickedness, and all the clever ones in cleverness. She despised all the modes we read of in history, in which offended fairies and witches have taken their revenges; and therefore, after ...

— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald

... "The little witch!" he exclaimed. "She could wheedle the fish out of the sea if she'd say please to 'em that way. But how that honey-sweet tone and the yells she was letting loose awhile back could come out of that same little rose of a ...

— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... cobwebs and great layers of dust, showing that nothing had been disturbed for very many years. That was as it should be. At the very top of one tower we discovered a locked door, and beating it in amid showers of dust, we penetrated a room such as a witch of mediaeval Europe would dearly have loved. Nothing but cobwebs, dust, flapping, grey-yellow paper and decay. It was ...

— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... all in, pitied, wondered, and were indignant, with all their hearts; indeed Charlie was once heard to wish he could only get that horrid old witch near the horse-pond; and when Kate talked of her Diana face, he declared that he should get the old brute of a cat into the field, and set all the boys ...

— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... merriest and happiest creature that ever lived twelve years in this wicked world. Care cannot come near him. He hath a perpetual smile on his round ruddy face, and a laugh in his hazel eye, that drives the witch away. He works at yonder farm on the top of the hill, where he is in such repute for intelligence and good-humour, that he has the honour of performing all the errands of the house, of helping the ...

— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... headlight became an effulgence. Indeed, there were a thousand lights jammed in the street, and the fog above absorbed the radiance, giving the scene a touch of Brocken. All that was needed was a witch on a broomstick. He counted five vehicles, and stopped. The door-window ...

— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... 'And would you burn me?' says she. 'God forbid!' replied the priest, 'except for the good of the Church!' Now, this priest must be descended from some of those who attempted to blow up a river with gunpowder, in order to drown a city. Or he must have taken her for a witch, whereas, by his own confession, she 'was no heretic.' A gentleman whom I know declared to me, upon his honor, that he heard Mr. Wesley repeat, in a sermon preached by him in the city of Cork, the following words: 'A little bird cried out in Hebrew, O Eternity! Eternity! who ...

— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... has told you that—a witch has told you!" shrieked the poor little man, and stamped so furiously with his right foot that it sunk into the earth up to the hip; then he seized his left foot with both hands with such violence, that he tore himself right ...

— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... valley, the Hag's Glen, which is shut in by the Reeks and Knocknabinaneen. The dark tarn in the Glen, as well as every object of prominence, has been seized upon by the imaginative peasants, and associated in some wise with the witch who here had her local habitation and left it its name. The track across the heather leads to the junction of two rivulets from Lough Gonvogh on the right, and Lough Callee on the left. The beginning of the summit ...

— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... was himself a firm believer in witchcraft. He professed, indeed, to be an adept in the art of detecting witches, an art which became the subject of several learned treatises, one of them from James' own royal pen. During the Commonwealth England had abounded with professional witch-detectors, who travelled from county to county, and occasioned the death of many unfortunate persons. The "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts contained a capital law against witchcraft, fortified by that express declaration of Scripture, "Thou shalt not ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... gradually encroaching upon us, we came also to know her mother,—a dread and loathly old lady, whom we would willingly have seen burned at the stake for a witch. She was commonly encountered at nightfall in our street, where she lay in wait, as it were, to prey upon the fragrance of dinner drifting from the kitchen windows of our neighbor, the Duchess of Parma. Here was heard the voice of cooks and of scullions, and ...

— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... lady," said Rose; "I do indeed believe that the witch we call Mara [Footnote: Ephialtes, or Nightmare] has been dealing with you; but she, you know, is by leeches considered as no real phantom, but solely the creation of our own imagination, disordered by causes which arise ...

— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... direction. Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as a witch mounts her broomstick. ...

— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... understand the sentiments of the modern world. Nellie had been a monstrous pretty creature. He had adored her, and had done with her. It was right that she should always be toasted after dinner by the Junta, as in the days when first he loved her—"Here's to Nellie O'Mora, the fairest witch that ever was or will be!" He would have resented the omission of that toast. But he was sick of the pitying, melting looks that were always cast towards her miniature. Nellie had been beautiful, but, by God! she was always a dunce and a simpleton. ...

— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... Home Life. Religion its Centre. The Farmhouse. Morning Devotions. Farm Work. Tools. Diet. Neighborliness. New England Superstitions. Not Peculiar to New England. Sunday Laws. Public Worship. First Case of Sorcery. The Witch Executed. Cotton Mather. His Experiments. His Book. The Parris Children Bewitched. The Manifestations. The Trial. Executions. George Burroughs. Rebecca Nurse. Reaction. Forwardness of ...

— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... 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 magic spell, it fascinates ...

— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... En-dor is the oldest road And the craziest road of all! Straight it runs to the Witch's abode, As it did in the days of Saul, And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store For such as go down on the road ...

— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling

... Parris it is enough to say that he began the investigation with a frightful relish. Other ministers were called in, and prayer-meetings lasting all day were held, with the result of throwing the patients into convulsions. [Footnote: Calef's More Wonders, p. 90 et seq.] Then the name of the witch was asked, and the girls were importuned to make her known. They refused at first, but soon the pressure became too strong, and the accusations began. Among the earliest to be arrested and examined was Goodwife Cory. Mr. ...

— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... from all Parts of the World, not only from Norway and Lapland, from the East and West Indies, but from every particular Nation in Europe, I cannot forbear thinking that there is such an Intercourse and Commerce with Evil Spirits, as that which we express by the Name of Witch-craft. But when I consider that the ignorant and credulous Parts of the World abound most in these Relations, and that the Persons among us, who are supposed to engage in such an Infernal Commerce, are People of a weak Understanding and a crazed Imagination, and at the same ...

— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... sir," sung out Crowfoot in a most dolorous tone, in answer to the captain of the frigate; 'we have been nearly taken, sir, by a privateer, sir—an immense vessel, sir, that sails, like a witch, sir." ...

— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... croaking?" demanded Mr. Marwig. "Look here, Mistress Beelzebub! Do you know that you are a very lucky woman to live in a land where not only may a barefooted boy rise to the highest honors by talent and perseverance, but where a malignant old witch may torture and terrify her neighbors without fear of the ducking stool or ...

— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... curs,' said Mr Jonas, 'that when you know a man's in real earnest, you pretend to think he's joking, so that you may turn it off. But that won't do with me. It's too stale. Now just attend to me for a bit, Mr Pitch, or Witch, or Stitch, or whatever your ...

— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... 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 this meant a loss ...

— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... for. But, to be sure, how can we do eneugh for his Honour, when we and ours have lived on his ground this twa hundred years; and when he keepit my puir Jamie at school and college, and even at the Ha'-house, till he gaed to a better place; and when he saved me frae being ta'en to Perth as a witch—Lord forgi'e them that would touch sic a puir silly auld body!—and has maintained puir Davie at heck and manger maist feck ...

— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... plunging like a colt, rolling like a drunken man. Giles saw Morley; near him Dane with a savage look on his face. Morley, with terror in his eyes, tried to get away, but Dane reached him, flung his arms round him, and with a wild shout both men went down into the furiously bubbling witch-caldron, never ...

— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... his great Amanda, masterfully. "It's the shades down. I'm nervous as a witch. My land! if the front door ain't open ...

— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... friend of the little witch of a girl, and of Buddy, who had been the baby the year before, but whose place had been usurped because of the advent of another tow-head into the family, the others of "them Trimminses," as they were ...

— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas. ...

— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... his capital, several are reflected in the waters of Vltava. There is, for instance, the bridgehead tower on the Mala Strana side, a graceful monument to Charles's gracious days. You may notice on passing under the gateway from the bridge the figure of a witch carved in stone, complete with broom and general air of nocturnal enterprise. I often wonder as I pass by here whether this figure inspired Marion Crawford when he was casting about for a title to his novel ...

— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... whom I had taught to make mats, threw himself before the horses of our carriage, crying out that we might as well drive over him and kill him at once; and an old woman stood up almost like a witch or prophetess, crying out: 'Ah! that is the way with you all. You are like all the rest! You gave us hope once, and now you are gone to your pleasure which you squeeze out of our ...

— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... city we were met by an old female mendicant, who, by her beggings and importunities, disturbed him in his story. "Pack yourself off, old witch!" said he, and walked by. She shouted after him the well-known retort,—only somewhat changed, since she saw well that the unfriendly man was old himself,—"If you did not wish to be old, you should have had yourself hanged in your youth!" He turned round violently, ...

— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... from the church-yard after she met him. She took her path away from the park and the hamlet, between two cottages, the ragged boys at the doors of which called her "Old Witch," and spoke about ...

— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... luxury and display, growing vain as he grows sordid; thus, while submitting, conquering, and tyrannizing over him, content with present worldly pleasure, unmindful of the past, the future, or the above. This may react to intersexual antagonism until man comes to hate woman as a witch, or, as in the days of celibacy, consider sex a wile of the devil. Along these lines even the stage is beginning to ...

— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... within sight of the Mediterranean. Liberty from oppressive thought he had long recovered; the old zeal for labour was so strong in him that he found it difficult to imagine the mood in which he had bidden good-bye to his life's purposes. But there was always the danger lest that witch of the south should again overcome his will and lull him into impotence of vain regret. For such a long time he had believed that Italy was for ever closed against him, that the old delights were henceforth converted into ...

— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... a muttering of protest, then the bolts were drawn, and the door opened. A woman stood in the aperture. A woman, old and bent, and looking not unlike the witch she called herself. A hood of brown sat on her white hair; a brown lappet was thrown about her, and she supported herself by means of a staff. Her black eyes regarded the girl with keenness from ...

— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... pulled Pierre's blanket over him, but his fatigue and his desire for sleep seemed to have left him, and it was a long time before slumber finally drove from him the thought of what he had done. After that he did not move. He heard none of the sounds of the night. A little owl, the devil-witch, screamed horribly overhead and awakened Jeanne, who sat up for a few moments in her balsam bed, white-faced and shivering. But Philip slept. Long afterward something warm awakened him, and he opened his eyes, thinking that it was the glow of the fire in his face. It was the sun. ...

— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... to stand guard in that case myself, Miss Loring; for I have a prejudice against allowing witch-doctors ...

— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... problem, esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you know a good eye doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dry Cleaning." The name comes from synergy between {bogus} and the original Dr. Mbogo, a witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician on the old "Addams Family" TV show. See ...

— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... Heaven from the bottom of my heart that she, in her innocency, did not suspect the conclusions I had drawn from the words and manner of the old witch. ...

— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... want you to. He's as nervous as a witch about how you are going to take it. You see, he thinks more of your opinion than he does of anybody's, and he wants your approval. If you could jump right in and say you think it's a bully idea, and that you are coming out to see ...

— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... returned to New York, Kathi having begged some more money from Vienna. She was already a worn, old witch of a woman, dressed gayly in remnants of past grandeur and always painting her face. She and her son held together in a partnership strained and rasping, but unbreakable, united by the mysterious tie of blood and a deep-rooted ...

— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... dreaded and fainted sore, he cried for to have counsel of our Lord. And our Lord answered him not, ne by swevens ne by priests, ne by prophets. Then said Saul to his servants: Fetch to me a woman having a phiton, otherwise called a phitoness or a witch. And they said that there was such a woman in Endor. Saul then changed his habit and clothing, and did on other clothing, and went, and two men with him, and came to the woman by night, and made her ...

— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... O Black and Unknown Bards Sence You Went Away The Creation The White Witch Mother Night O Southland ...

— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... and illuminative treatment of this subject I would refer my readers to the essays of Professor Karl Pearson, The Chances of Death, Vol. II.—"Woman as Witch: Evidences of Mother-Right in the Customs of Mediaeval Witchcraft"; "Ashiepattle, or Hans Seeks his Luck"; "Kindred Group Marriage," Part I.; "The Mother-Age Civilisation," Part II.; "General Words for Sex and Kinship," Part III.; "Special ...

— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... the feelings of the dutiful and affectionate son, as they met Mrs. Thorpe, who had descried them from above, in the passage. "Ah, Mother! How do you do?" said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand. "Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch. Here is Morland and I come to stay a few days with you, so you must look out for a couple of good beds somewhere near." And this address seemed to satisfy all the fondest wishes of the mother's heart, for she received him with the most delighted and exulting affection. On ...

— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... If she were a witch, the stake would surely be hers; but she is a crafty and wily woman who has lured you on ...

— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... the wisest man of Greece. Socrates was put to death for this Voice of his, on the charge of 'bringing in new gods.' Joan of Arc died for her Voices, because her enemies argued that she was no saint, but a witch! These two, the old philosopher and the untaught peasant girl of nineteen, stand alone in the endless generations of men, alone in goodness, wisdom, courage, strength, combined with a mysterious and fatal gift. More ...

— The Red True Story Book • Various

... 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 ...

— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... light that glowed in the stranger's deep-set eyes was not the lambent flame seen in the chatoyant orbs of some night-prowling jungle beast. Rather was it the blue-green glow of phosphorescent witch-light that flickers and dances in the night mists above steaming ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... a woman, though she is a bad old witch that did ought to be drowned," he said, and with that he popped the creature into a big armchair and ...

— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... die. And then, Mere Jeanne she tell how she run to Jeannot's house,—she fear nossing, Mere Jeanne! the good God protect her always. She cry, 'Where is Marie? where is my child?' And Jeannot's Manon, she laugh, she say, 'Cross the sea after her, old witch! Who keeps thee?' Then—see, p'tit Jacques! see, Petie! I have not seen this wiz my eyes, no! but in my heart I have seen, I know! Then Mere Jeanne run at that woman, that devil; and she pull off her cap and ...

— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... Wedding Ring, A 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

... enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure from the Christian churches, which Acts have only been repealed in consequence of the disbelief in the Christian precept, "thou shaft not suffer a witch to live". The statute 1 James I, c. 12, condemned to death "all persons invoking any evil spirits, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit", or generally practising any "infernal arts". This was not repealed until ...

— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh

... said 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

... of a flame, or the quivering of midsummer sunshine. It was hard to associate with the man as one saw him, still, shy, stiff, the passion of his verse. This imbued not only his antislavery utterances, but equally his ballads of the old witch and Quaker persecution, and flashed a far light into the dimness where his interrogations of Mystery pierced. Whatever doubt there can be of the fate of other New England poets in the great and final account, it seems ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... disloyalty to have witness that he wished, at least, to spend his life for his country? Moreover, there is work for you to do which fighting will hinder for this turn— go to, Heregar, I will tell you no more. Now do my bidding and go, and never will you forget that you helped an old witch with her burden." ...

— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself therefore to Saul's condition, when he was answered neither by Urim nor by prophets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic answers from the witch of Endor. But with that possibility you have no concern. There is a prophetic power in your own hearts, known to the Greeks, known to the Jews, known to the Apostles, and knowable by you. If it is now silent to you, do not despise it by tranquillity ...

— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... 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 old ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, ...

— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... Rabba Kega, the witch-doctor. Tarzan hated them all; but Rabba Kega he especially hated. As the blacks filed along the winding path, Rabba Kega, being lazy, dropped behind. This Tarzan noted, and it filled him with satisfaction—his being radiated a grim and terrible content. Like an angel of death ...

— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Sometimes she would even disguise herself as an old woman, that her young face might peep out the fresher from under the cap; and so utterly in this way did she confuse and mix together the actual and the fantastic, that people thought they were living with a sort of drawing-room witch. ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... he were the son of a witch, if curds and cream won his heart, and new clothes put an end to his labours, it does not pretend to tell. His history is less known than that of any other sprite. It may be embodied in some oral tradition that shall one day be found; but as yet the mists of forgetfulness hide it from the storyteller ...

— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... she's not dull," Nanny answered. "My word! but she's like a bit of witch fire dancing—with her colour and her big silk curls in a heap. Donal stares at her like a young man at a beauty. I wish, ma'am, we knew more ...

— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... 'Execution of a Witch'—filled with gruesome and poignant detail—excellent in some of its ideas and single figures, but as a whole crude, horrible, ...

— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tub of hot water is most helpful where there is much tenderness, or inflammation. Witch-hazel in hot water douches or a weak solution of hot salt water is a wonderful ...

— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... Imagination, where human passion and action are reflected in dim and fitful, but deeply significant resemblances, and to copy these with the guileless, humble graces which alone can become them. . . . The ordinary lovers of witch and fairy matter will remark a deficiency of spectres and enchantments, and complain that the whole is rather dull. Cultivated free-thinkers, again, well knowing that no ghosts or elves exist in this country, will smile at the crack-brained dreamer, with his spelling-book prose and doggerel ...

— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... can't get free of it. I'd like every drop of New England blood drained out of me, and something—say Hebrew or—or Middle-West," he laughed, "substituted in place of it. To you this is 'pretty' and 'cozy' and—and 'cheerful'; to me—well, it's like an orgy of blue laws; it's the personification of witch-lore—like self-inflicted penance for I don't know what." He glanced at her in excitement, shifting his hands uneasily in and out of ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... accurately. It was a sense of vague and yet intense horror, with a conviction of being abroad in the night wind, and dragged through places as if by some invisible power. 'Last night,' he said, 'I felt as if I had been ridden by a witch for fifty miles, and rose far more wearied in mind and body than when I lay down.' So strong was his conviction of having been out, that he had difficulty in persuading himself to the contrary, by carefully examining his clothes in the morning, to see if they were not wet or dirty; ...

— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... Forget to visit thy wrath upon these people; For they have sworn away the life of Thy servant Who hath lived long in the land keeping Thy commandments. I am old, Lord, and betrayed; By neighbor and kin am I betrayed; A Judas kiss hath marked me for a witch. Possessed of a devil? Here be a legion of devils! Smite them, O God, yea, utterly destroy them that persecute the innocent." Before this mother in Israel the judges cowered; But still they suffered her to die. Through the tragic, guilty walls I hear ...

— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller

... reason why she was so vigorous and showed her sixty-six years so little. The fact that the two sixes stood together caused her, according to an old country saying[3] (which, however, was not universally believed in) to be regarded as a witch. It was said that she sometimes milked her black goat for hours at a time, and that this goat gave an astonishing quantity of milk, but that in milking this goat she was in reality drawing the milk out of the ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... getting through, these days," said Aunt Jessica, coming in from the main kitchen. "We always allow an extra day or two on the road. Wasn't there anything at all from Bob or Sidney or Pete, Pris? You little witch, you certainly are hiding something behind ...

— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... Mr. Browne had said were interesting, but flippant. He had seen Bob at a college club and declared that he had met a witch of a country girl at the Merrills. He couldn't make her out, because she had refused to see him every time he called again. He had also repeated Cynthia's remark about Bob's father not being quite the biggest man in his ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... must be stopped, if it has begun," decided her uncle. "I can't permit it—I'd forgotten how the little witch grows!" ...

— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... believe we have out every plate we own. Martin, do take the babies into the next room where they will be out from under foot. And watch that Nell doesn't eat the candles off the tree. She's always thinking they are candy, the witch!" ...

— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... two years Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely alone with his aged sister, who was thought a witch. A tailor in the neighborhood declared that he had often seen her at night, on the roof of the house, waiting for the hour of the witches' sabbath. This fact seemed the more extraordinary because it was known to be the miser's custom to lock up his sister at night in a bedroom ...

— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... cowslops, or you'd a seen what they was arter. I thought you'd git nipt a grain, or my name wasn't Troffater. But I dasn't tell you what I thought on 'em. You wouldn't a' b'lieved me, I ben such a witch with my word. I spose you know the fellers have been heern from? They run out of all they cabbaged here perty quick. Frisbie, they say, is jugged up in jail, and there's better men sometimes hung than ...

— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... had a soul, though not that you had been born with one. They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself. But again I say I am not your judge, and when I picture you as Gavin saw you first, a bare-legged witch dancing up Windyghoul, rowan berries in your black hair, and on your finger a jewel the little minister could not have bought with five years of toil, the shadows on my pages lift, and I cannot ...

— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... conception of god. So with almost every great change in the form of government or in the notions of right and wrong. In a slave state, God favours slavery. When slavery gives place to another form of labour the gods are equally vigorous in its condemnation. The history of the belief in witch burning, heresy hunting, eternal damnation, etc., all illustrate the same point—religious teachings are all modified and moralised in accordance with the changing moral conceptions of mankind. It is not the gods who moralise man, it is man who ...

— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... Milan, and father of Miranda. He was deposed by his brother, Antonio, who sent him to sea with Miranda in a "rotten carcass of a boat," which was borne to a desert island. Here Prospero practised magic. He liberated Ariel from the rift of a pine tree, where the witch Syc'orax had confined him for twelve years, and was served by that bright spirit with true gratitude. The only other inhabitant of the island was Cal[)i]ban, the witch's "welp." After a residence in the island of sixteen years, Prospero raised ...

— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the whole mystery, who had seemed to the boy to be spinning his very brain into dreams, rose, and, drawing near the bed, as if to finish the ruthless destruction, and with her long witch-broom sweep down the very cobwebs of his airy ...

— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... Military experts committed suicide by scores. The mighty fabric of warfare they had fashioned was a gossamer veil rent asunder by a miserable lunatic. It was too much for their sanity. Mere human reason could not withstand the shock. As the savage is crushed by the sleight-of-hand of the witch doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliah. How did he do it? It was the awful face of the Unknown upon which the world gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of ...

— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... crystal, or even cards, or the anatomy of a sacrificed fowl, would have been better than tea-leaves; tea-leaves were decidedly lower class. And yet, despite these drawbacks, when the question arose who should first visit the witch of Endor, there was ...

— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... Behring's Straits; waterproof fishing jackets, made from the intestines of the whale; harpoons of bone tipped with meteoric iron; specimens of rude sculpture from these northern regions; clubs; hatchets; the magic dome of an Iceland witch; baskets and mats; calumets of peace; scalps; a model of a cradle, showing the method adopted by the Indians of the Columbia River to flatten their children's heads. The cases 23, 24, are filled with curiosities from more southernly parts of the North American continent; and chiefly with ...

— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... makes man wary of themselves as looking no further? During times inclined to religion more than one hundred thousand witches were condemned to die by Christian tribunals in accordance with the holy text, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. During times inclined to religion it was usual to burn, broil, bake, or otherwise murder heretics for the glory of God, and at the same time to spare the vilest malefactors. During times inclined ...

— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... the white man. But the Natives received not only the white man's civilization and his religion, but have even gullibly imbibed his superstitions. Thus is their dread of the figure 13 accounted for. The Native witch-doctors in the early days took advantage of their credulity, whilst civilized people traded on their susceptibilities, and the semi-civilized Natives also traded upon the fears of ...

— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... gaze on her! How keen it sparkles o'er the Venusburg! When brown night falls and mists begin to live, Then will the phantom hunting-train emerge, Hounds straining, black fire-eyeballed, breathless steeds, Spurred by wild huntsmen, and unhallowed nymphs, And at their head the foam-begotten witch, Of soul-destroying beauty. Saints of heaven! Preserve mine eyes from such unholy sight! How all unlike the base desire which leads Misguided men to that infernal cave, Is the pure passion that exalts my soul Like ...

— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably to Strickland's bedstead. I understood then how men and women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the beast was moaning on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face, you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as waves of heat play across ...

— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... had begun to take an interest in him as perhaps their oldest fellow-citizen. It was he that remembered the Great Fire and the Great Snow, and that had been a grown-up stripling at the terrible epoch of Witch-Times, and a child just breeched at the breaking out of King Philip's Indian War. He, too, in his school-boy days, had received a benediction from the patriarchal Governor Bradstreet, and thus could boast (somewhat ...

— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... I would let you know that my father is dead. I have come here to rest and have found some work to do. I am better now. Have seen Sally. She is very beautiful and kind. She does not know that I am the old witch, I have changed so. The others do not know—it is better that way. I think it was the Lord that brought me here. He has a way of taking care of some people, my boy. Do you remember when I began to call you my boy—you were very little. It is long, long ago since I first saw ...

— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... me? 'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant; And like a bow, buckled and bent together, By some more strong in mischiefs than myself: Must I for that be made a common sink For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues, To fall and run into? some call me witch; And, being ignorant of myself, they go About to teach me how to be one; urging That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so) Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse; ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... been to such people," he answered indifferently. "But if you ask my true opinion—well, no; I am quite sceptical! There may be something in what these dealers in hope sometimes say, but more often there is nothing. In fact, you must remember that a witch generally tells her client what she believes her ...

— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... done?" he cried; "now you have made us both unlucky, for had you held out only this one year, I had been freed. For I am the White Bear by day and a man by night. It is a wicked witch who has bewitched me; and now I must set off from you to her. She lives in a castle which stands East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, and there are many trolls and witches there and one of those is the wife I ...

— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen

... exasperated the porter almost beyond endurance, was the certainty he felt that she was mocking him. "For she didn't give me her name or address, the old witch!" he growled. "She had better look out, if I ever get hold ...

— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... woods with guile They've led her bound in fetters vile To death, a deadlier sorceress Than any born for earth's distress Since first the winner of the fleece Bore home the Colchian witch to Greece— Seven months with snare and gin They've sought the maid o'erwise within The forest's labyrinthine shade. The lonely woodman half afraid Far off her ragged form has seen Sauntering down the ...

— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis

... any. She was a queer old woman, and lived alone in a little tumble-down house with nineteen cats. Folks called her a witch, but she wasn't, though she looked like an old rag-bag. She was real kind to me when I lived in that place, and used to let me get warm at her fire when the folks at the ...

— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... to her off you theis last wicks, and not Haveing done so must supose you have not got mine witch was saying how me and my man had met in with bad times this season all seems to go cross with us on the farm and which way to look for the rent we have no knowledge of it this been the sad case with us if you would have the great [liberality probably, but the exact spelling ...

— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... as Katherine was putting the last touches to her great picture "The Witch of Atlas," and to her sketch of an elaborate future, Fate stepped in and altered all her arrangements. She called it Fate, for she never could bring herself to say it was Ted. For months she had been living in a dream, in which she was ...

— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... roof-chambers were covered with enormous cobwebs and great layers of dust, showing that nothing had been disturbed for very many years. That was as it should be. At the very top of one tower we discovered a locked door, and beating it in amid showers of dust, we penetrated a room such as a witch of mediaeval Europe would dearly have loved. Nothing but cobwebs, dust, flapping, grey-yellow paper and decay. It was ...

— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... Havana's Witch-fog murks my Horoscope Until my dream-enamoured Senses grope Towards the Light, where in her opal Shrine Smiles Hopefulness, ...

— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin

... comedy!" soliloquised Santa Anna, as the door closed on his subordinate, "in which, before it's played out, I may myself take a part. She's a charming creature, this Senorita Valverde. But, ah! nothing to the Condesa. That woman—witch, devil, or whatever I may call her—bids fair to do what woman never did—make a fool of Lopez ...

— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... thou mother Mab;[284] out, old rotten witch! As white as midnight's arsehole or virgin pitch. Where be ye? come together ...

— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... red coals, goodman,— For there the child shall lie, Till the black witch comes to fetch her, And both up ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... Mr. Copley, half delighted and half conscience-stricken, "you are a little witch, Dolly. Is this the way you are going to rule other folks beside me? Mr. ...

— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... such matter, in such a way as to make them think of it in connection with the Shaman.—In every village," the Corn Woman interrupted herself to say, "there is evil enough, if laid at the door of one person, to get her burned for a witch!" ...

— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... against a clothes-line, And all the wash went flying; {278} The good dame cried, "A witch! a witch! The saints ...

— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... said little Jacob, "there's that story of the witch of Endor, and Saul seein' Sam'el when he was dead. I reckon as that's no'but another version of what happened at the ...

— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... speak Spanish, she leered at us pleasantly from where she lay, occasionally muttering something in her native tongue, that might have been a tribute to our charms of mind or person, but which sounded more like an incantation. I felt she was a veritable witch, and at any moment expected to find myself changed into some animal or other under the baleful light of her eyes. If she had said, "Rumpelstilzchen, rumpelstilzchen," or any other cabalistic thing the witches in our fairy tales used to say, I should not have been surprised; ...

— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... saw the witch-messenger of Fionn coming over the tops of the hills skimming from one to the other ...

— The Book of Romance • Various

... fire before them; and when they took their supper they cast away all the bones around them. They then prepared to go to sleep, and laid themselves down upon the benches around the fire. When they, had been asleep a short time, a huge witch came into the house; and when she came in, she carefully swept together all the bones and whatever was of food kind into a heap, and threw it into her mouth. Then she gripped the man who was nearest to her, riving and tearing him asunder, and threw him upon the fire. The others awoke ...

— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... "Helen, you witch, you darling sister," says Frank, kissing her, "I will do it—yes, to-morrow I will set forth, like Coelebs, in search of a wife! Now you must help me farther with your lively imagination; you must choose me a profession to ...

— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... New England till in or near November, the fringed gentian has long been dead. It is in fact killed by the first considerable frost. No, if one were to go botanizing, and take Bryant's poem for a guide, he would not bring home any fringed gentians with him. The only flower he would find would be the witch-hazel. Yet I never see this gentian without thinking of Bryant's poem, and feeling that he has brought it immensely nearer ...

— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... cats, who, lank with 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 ...

— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... learning and judgment, as it is but too much your nature to do, to investigate the hidden things of another world, you might as well measure with the palm of your hand the waters of the Isis. Indeed, good sir, you err in this, and give men too much pretence to confound your honourable name with witch-advocates, free-thinkers, and atheists, even with such as this man Bletson, who, if the discipline of the church had its hand strengthened, as it was in the beginning of the great conflict, would have been long ere now cast out of the pale, and delivered over to the punishment of ...

— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... but this I did not see. All these villages were very lively, as the omnibus drove in; and I rather imagine it was market-day in each of them,—there being quite a bustle of Welsh people. The old women came round the omnibus courtesying and intimating their willingness to receive alms,—witch-like women, such as one sees in pictures or reads of in romances, and very unlike anything feminine in America. Their style of dress cannot have changed for centuries. It was quite unexpected to me to hear Welsh so universally ...

— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... bandage, a small supply of which Boone always carried with him on his expeditions, he gathered some leaves of the witch-hazel plant and, pounding them to a pulp, spread them upon the cloth. Thoroughly washing the wounded hand of Peleg, he then bound the cloth and pulp of the leaves upon the wound, saying as he did so: "In a week you will be as ...

— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... out in wild and convulsive laughter, and repeated again and again in joyous tones, "Yes, yes, his beautiful Wilhelmina will punish him for calling me an old witch." ...

— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... Concini, afterwards made a marshal of France, they jointly ruled the kingdom, and became so unpopular that the marshal was assassinated, and the wife, who had been qualified with the title of Marquise d'Ancre, burnt for a witch. This happened about the time of ...

— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... 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 ...

— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... rainbow gleamed out in the sky; Natuna dropped back till Charles heard her complain, Grey Glory's forequarters seemed hung on his rein, Cimmeroon clearly was feeling the strain. But the little Gavotte skimmed the clay like a witch, Charles saw her coquet as she went at ...

— Right Royal • John Masefield

... suspense is banished from the reader's mind, too well enabled to foresee the triumph at the end; but stories of long, painful quests after hidden treasure,—mysterious enchantments thrown around certain persons by witch or wizard, drawing the subject in charmed circles nearer and nearer to his royal or ruinous destiny,—strange spells cast upon bewitched houses or places, that could be removed only by the one hand appointed by Fate. So I ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... said in private to Berenger, to whom he had taken a great liking. 'I cannot blame you for not casting your lot into such a witch's caldron as this poor country. My friends think I dallied at court like Rinaldo in Armida's garden. They do not understand that when one hears the name of Bourbon one does not willingly make war with the Crown, still less that the good Calvin left a doctrine bitter to the ...

— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to speak of what one has seen," urged the prompter of the uncle's ghost-story, "tell the Padrone of the witch that bewitched ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... R.P. as sure as I am alive, and the fortune-teller was a witch. It is all out; it is all out! O the wonderful ...

— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... Art mad, young sir? Feed a murderer, a rogue banned by Holy Church, a serf that hath raised hand 'gainst his lord? He should have hanged when the witch his daughter burned, but that Sir Pertolepe, with most rare mercy, gave to the ...

— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... should this meane? my Doues are back returnd, Who warne me of such daunger prest at hand, To harme my sweete Ascanius louely life. Iuno, my mortall foe, what make you here? Auaunt old witch and trouble not ...

— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe

... lights, [8] in semblance of lantern-fires, flit about dangerous places; and to protect yourself from this trick of his, it is necessary to learn that by joining your hands in a particular way, so as to leave a diamond-shaped aperture between the crossed fingers, you can extinguish the witch-fire at any distance simply by blowing through the aperture in the direction of the light and uttering ...

— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... to a certain point; which point Forms the most difficult in punctuation. Appearances appear to form the joint On which it hinges in a higher station; And so that no explosion cry 'Aroint Thee, witch!' or each Medea has her Jason; Or (to the point with Horace and with Pulci) 'Omne tulit ...

— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... Clameran detested the countess, Mme. de la Verberie execrated the marquis. If he nicknamed her "the witch," she never called him ...

— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... one moment that she was downright plain, but might probably be that mysterious and incomprehensible and dangerous creature, "a gentleman's beauty," which, to women, means no beauty at all, but a witch-like creature, that goes and hits foul, and eclipses real beauty—dolls, to wit—by some ...

— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... four years is a privilege reserved only for the happy few who have the arts of courting the manager as well as the muse; who have adulation to please his vanity, powerful patrons to support their merit, or money to indemnify disappointment. Our Saxon ancestors had but one name for a wit and a witch. I will not dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then; but the man who under present discouragements ventures to write for the stage, whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a wit, at least has no right to be called a conjurer." ...

— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... unboastful charms! whom white-robed Truth Right onward guiding through the maze of youth, Forbade the Circe Praise to witch thy soul, And dash'd to earth th' intoxicating bowl: Thee meek-eyed Pity, eloquently fair, 5 Clasp'd to her bosom with a mother's care; And, as she lov'd thy kindred form to trace, The slow smile ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... trees where wind-falls had mowed down the forest, walls of lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion—through everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little pellet of some dark green substance ...

— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... them into some wood to be deuoured of wylde beastes. But there is no kynde of puttynge them awaye more cruell, then to geue vp that to beastlye affeccions, whych nature hath geuen to be fashioned by very good waies. If ther wer ani witch could wyth euyl craftes, and wold go about to turne thy sonne into a swyne or a wolfe, woldest thou not thynke that ther were no punyshemente to sore for her myscheuouse deede? But that whych thou abhorrest in her, thou of purpose doest it thy selfe. ...

— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus

... seemed determined to spit out all his venom. Well, says he, at any rate you will not deny that the English have not got a language of their own, and that they came by it in a very odd way. Of this at least I am certain, for the whole history was related to me by a witch in Lapland, whilst I was bargaining for a wind. Here the company were all in unison ...

— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... Christian.' 'And would you burn me?' says she. 'God forbid!' replied the priest, 'except for the good of the Church!' Now, this priest must be descended from some of those who attempted to blow up a river with gunpowder, in order to drown a city. Or he must have taken her for a witch, whereas, by his own confession, she 'was no heretic.' A gentleman whom I know declared to me, upon his honor, that he heard Mr. Wesley repeat, in a sermon preached by him in the city of Cork, the ...

— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... 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 ...

— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Old Walquitch were ghostly white in the flood of the full moon, just risen, and swimming like a globe of witch's fire over the far, dark, wooded horizon. But the bushy shelf and the spring by the thicket, were still in shadow. Along the trail to the spring, moving noiselessly, yet with a confident dignity, came a paler shadow, the shape of a huge, gray-white ...

— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Queen's new hockey coach being exhausted for the time being, "Got any good stuff for the play in your cubicles, Cathy?" asked Eleanor; "looks to me as if they are a nice lively little bunch. What a little witch Sally May is, and what lovely eyes Judy has! I'm glad she and Nancy are such pals—they make a ...

— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... yellow plush suit and swishy-tail all painted sideways in stripes like a tiger! There was a most furious tiger head with whisk-broom whiskers! There was a green frog's head! And a green frog's suit! There was a witch's hat and cape! And a hump on the back! There were bows and arrows! There were boxes and boxes of milliner's flowers! There were strings of beads! And yards and yards of dungeon chains made out of silver paper! And a real bugle! And ...

— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... to Abbott's face. In fact, he was rather hard hit. This wandering child was no doubt a witch. He looked in the direction of the tent, as if to escape the weaving of her magic. But he only ...

— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... my attention, and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place. ...

— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... died, to warrant it in supporting me the balance of my life; but his statements could not always be relied upon, for he insisted that I never slept, had not been asleep during the seven weeks spent in Campbell, was a witch and would float like a cork, if thrown from the Long Bridge ...

— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... went into Training in a Stable. He had a yellow Punching Bag, a Sponge, a Bath-Robe and several Towels. Two Paper-Hangers who were out of Work acted as his Trainers. They rubbed him with Witch Hazel all day, and in the Evening the Boy stood around in a Sweater and Talked out of the corner of his Mouth. He said he was Trained to the Minute, as Hard as Nails and Fit as a Fiddle, and he would make Mr. Unknown jump ...

— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... woman, Ye're no come here for gude; Ye're but some witch or wil' warlock, Or mermaid o' ...

— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... gently pass over. In fact, the civil laws of most countries prohibit many of the things which Moses commanded. For instance, the eighteenth verse of the twenty-second chapter of Exodus says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Certainly no Jewish lawyer nor Rabbi, in any part of the world, advocates the killing of persons supposed to be witches. We explain that in this instance the inspired writer lapsed and merely mirrored the ignorance of his time. Or else we ...

— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... bad dreams, looks black around the eyes, or feels tired, while the disease is assigned such names as "when they dream of snakes," "when they dream of fish," "when ghosts trouble them," "when something is making something else eat them," or "when the food is changed," i.e., when a witch causes it to sprout and grow in the body of the patient or transforms it into a ...

— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... after his wife. Here two mountain streams plunged over a rock nine hundred feet high into a romantic gorge, where their waters met in a seething caldron called "Nanny's Pot." Into this, as the negroes believed, the black witch Nanny could, by her sorcery, cast the white soldiers who pursued them. As for old Cudjoe himself, the English declared that he must be in league with the devil, whom he resembled closely enough to be his brother. And they were not without warrant ...

— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... 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, ...

— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... Write me down a witch, a prophetess, or what you will. I am certainly something! All has come to pass on that very disagreeable subject very much as I feared. Perhaps no one in my position would speak freely on the subject; for that very reason I shall not hesitate ...

— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... call it the festival of the "Befana," the word being a readily-perceived corruption of "Epifania." Of course the sense and meaning of the original term have been entirely forgotten, and the Befana of the Italian populace is a sort of witch, mainly benevolent indeed, and especially friendly to children, to whom in the course of the night she brings presents, to be found by them in the morning in a stocking or a shoe or any other such fantastic hiding-place. But Italians are all more or less children of a larger growth, ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... yet would not leave it. Somebody certainly might come even to-night. Fred himself perhaps, if he could escape from the rigid guardianship he was under; or was that miraculous Australian Nettie a little witch, who had spirited the whole party in a nutshell over the seas? Never was man delivered from a burden with a worse grace than was Dr Rider; and the matter had not ...

— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... "I remember," said he; then quoted: "'The daughters of the dream witch come and go,' don't they? 'The black bat hide the starren of the night.' That's it, isn't it?... No—so far as I know! But they are a queer lot. Nobody ever knows what they'll be at next in the way of jargon. It's some rubbish I wrote when I was ...

— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... nought 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 ...

— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... Roman empire? Moreover, they were not oppressed with tribute. They were only expected to furnish men and valor to their proud allies. It was the next thing to liberty. If they were to have rulers, it was better to serve a Roman emperor than a German witch. ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... possible,—"No wonder we've been unfortunate, if these feathers were always in the old house! No wonder everything went wrong! I must break the spell at once and for ever. Are there more of these horrible 'witch-eyes' in any of ...

— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... 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 had to wander far away to get the ...

— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... something which was almost like fear—particularly at night when everything was so still, when the only sound in the attic was the occasional sudden scurry and squeak of Melchisedec's family in the wall. One of her "pretends" was that Emily was a kind of good witch who could protect her. Sometimes, after she had stared at her until she was wrought up to the highest pitch of fancifulness, she would ask her questions and find herself ALMOST feeling as if she would presently answer. But she ...

— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... gateway the subject tea-cups bow And pass it steaming with thy gift, thy brown autumnal glow. Within thy silver fortress, the tea-leaf treasure piled O'er which the fiery fountain pours its waters undefiled Till the witch-water steals away the essence they enfold And dashes from the yawning spout a torrent-arch of gold. Then fill an honest cup my lads and quaff the draught amain And lay the earthen goblet down, and fill it yet again Nor heed the curses on the cup that rise from Folly's ...

— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... cousin Philip, is it? and he'll not be living so far away from your mother? I've no need be a witch to put two and two together. He's a coming here ...

— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... freely given to her, she seemed to have the eye of a hawk; nor did I escape her glance, for I had not been seated before the marble table a moment when she shuffled up to me and stood glaring with her shining eyes, the very presentment of an old-time witch. ...

— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... meagre, swarthy figure, gasping, in all the agony of fear, under the hands of a squat, thick, hard-featured man, who collared him with great demonstrations of wrath, saying, "If you was as mighty a magician as Owen Glendower or the witch of Entor, look you, ay, ay, or as Paul Beor himself, I will meke pold, by the assistance of Got, and in his majesty's name, to seize and secure, and confine and confront you, until such time as you suffer and endure and undergo the pains and penalties of the law, for ...

— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... a background of delicately beautiful, moorland scenery, being typical examples of that spirit. In Germany, again, [243] that spirit is shown less in Tieck, its professional representative, than in Meinhold, the author of Sidonia the Sorceress and the Amber-Witch. In Germany and France, within the last hundred years, the term has been used to describe a particular school of writers; and, consequently, when Heine criticises the Romantic School in Germany—that movement which culminated in Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen; ...

— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... me!" he said, in a voice low and terrible to hear; "get thee from me. Dare not to touch me, thou, who art a harlot and a witch, lest I forget my manhood and strike thee dead ...

— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... "Hang the witch!" the new groom murmured. "Her mistress must be very generous, or very positive of her own charms, to keep a sprite like this maid about her. I wonder if I'll run into Karloff?" Karloff! The name chilled him, somehow. What was Karloff to her? Had he known that she was to be in Washington ...

— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... I did wrong in telling you a few diddle-daddies, it was because I loved you so I could not do without you. And what comforts me for any wrong I have done is that I have you. That would make up to a man for anything short of being hanged! You little witch, how did you contrive to make a fool of a man like me! I should have been in none of this scrape but for you! My mother is very kind to me, of course—ever so much better company than Hester! she never looks as if a fellow had to be put up with, or forgiven, or anything ...

— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... shining steel For the sly wolf left many a meal. The ill-shaped Saxon corpses lay Heap'd up—the witch-wife's horses' prey. She rides by night, at pools of blood, Where Friesland men in daylight stood, Her horses slake their thirst, and fly On to the field where ...

— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... seeing a witch, not mounted on a broomstick, but on the respectable household cat, changed for that night into a flying fury; finally, along with my brothers, being captured, washed, and dressed, to join with other spirits worse than ourselves in "dooking" for apples and eating mashed potatoes ...

— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... occur also in "The Witch" of Thomas Middleton, Act 5, Sc. 2, and it is uncertain to which the priority ...

— Familiar Quotations • Various

... window and watch the bats flitter in the gathering moonlight, and listen with quivering nerves for her step—perhaps she will send for the tray, and not come after all. What a fool I am to be disturbed by a grey-clad witch with a tantalizing mouth! That comes of loafing about doing nothing. I mentally darn the old fool who saved her money instead of spending it. Why the devil should I be bothered? I don't want it anyhow. She comes in as I fume, and I forget everything at her entrance. I ...

— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... The little witch! I thought her so demure! I should never have imagined she was a wild flower. But the matter is difficult. There are only the parents and the daughter in that house, and the father is dangerous. He keeps a damnably suspicious watch over his door. How ...

— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli

... lawn frowzy, lank and stringy curtains at the dim windows. There were only three bottles of the historic cellar left now, precious, cob-webbed; there was only one of the blacks, an ancient, crabbed crone of the second generation, with a witch's hand at cookery and a witch's temper. And there were only James King III and James King IV, his son, Honor's Jimsy, left of the line in the old home. The negress fed and mended them; an infrequent Japanese came in to make futile ...

— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... their white neighbors. Nearly all forms of sickness were treated as the effect of witchcraft by the Indians, and the afflicted were carried into the woods and left alone with none near them except the medicine man whose business it was to expel the witch. ...

— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... a true Narration of the Witch-crafts which Mary Smith, wife of Henry Smith Glouer, did practise: Of her contract vocally made between the Deuill and her, in solemne termes, by whose meanes she hurt sundry persons whom she enuied: Which is confirmed by her ...

— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... be too bad if Andy was seriously injured," answered the young major. "Come on, I'm going in and wash up and put some witch ...

— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... hand, lay perfectly motionless; the doctor rather frightened at his own temerity, and knowing not what to do next. At last, he placed one arm cautiously about her waist; almost in the same instant he bounded to his feet, with a cry; the little witch had pierced him with a thorn. But there she lay, just as quietly as ever, turning over the leaves, ...

— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... passage. Thus, Thackeray (Adventures of Philip): 'So, as thy sun rises, friend, over the humble house-tops round about your home, shall you wake many and many a day to duty and labor.' So, Cooper (Water-Witch): 'Thou hast both master and mistress? You have told us of the latter, but we would know something of the former. Who is thy master?' Shakespeare, Scott, and others ...

— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... were a witch, the stake would surely be hers; but she is a crafty and wily woman who has lured you ...

— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... wild threats against James, which the King, probably well accustomed to missiles of the kind, paid little attention to. The monarch was warned too, we are told, by another wild apparition, which suddenly appears out of the mists for this purpose—a Highland witch of the order of those who drove Macbeth's ambition to frenzy, but whose mission now was to warn James of the mischief brewing against him. The King was brave and careless, used to the continual presence of danger, keeping his Christmas ...

— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... you are numb, you lovely little witch. Have you been firing snow-balls, or shovelling ...

— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... had come to live at The Ship, such a witch as had never before danced along the Spear Point sands. Her name was Maria Peck, and she was the daughter of Mrs. Peck's late lamented husband's vagabond brother—"a seafaring man and a wastrel ...

— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... November. Threatened with the loss of their Guy Fawkes, the barbarians rose upon him, and he had a narrow escape from their violence. We are reminded of the case of Cotton Mather, who, after being a leader in witch-burning, nearly sacrificed his life in combatting the fanaticism which opposed itself to the introduction of inoculation. Let it always be remembered that besides its theological side, the Revival ...

— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... rage and scorn that made her feel every inch a witch, and accompanied by her black cat, which might or might not be the innocent animal the neighbours did not think him, hurried to the Macruadh, and informed him that "the lowland thief" had given her notice to quit the house of her ...

— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... Margrave, no longer with gasp and effort, but with the swell of a voice which drowned all the discords of terror and of agony sent forth from the Phlegethon burning below—"and this witch, whom I trusted, is a vile slave and impostor, more desiring my death than my life. She thinks that in life I should scorn and forsake her, that in death I should die in her arms! Sorceress, avaunt! Art thou useless and ...

— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... friend," he murmured, "you spoil me with your sweet phrases! You set the music playing in my heart—the witch music, I think. Come, we must speak to Estermen," he continued, looking resolutely away from her. "We cannot have him sitting there glum, a death's-head at our feast. Estermen, drink, man! Is this ...

— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... worse than a disease, it has enervated my people until they have lost everything, and still they are among us. They are children raised by a secret cult on my own world, trained into strange practices. It is somewhat like a witch or sorcerer would be to you, but much, much different. You could not understand unless you were raised among us. When men are tired of life, they go to a Zoorph. It is not nice to speak of, what they are and what they do. To us, it is like death, only worse. ...

— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... began Magic and wizardy seem to have held a great fascination for mankind, an example being in the story of the Witch of Endor. That this tendency has in no wise altered is clear from the popularity of conjurors, illusionists, and so called magicians who still, be it East or West, attract an audience so easily and so surely. This little volume is written in the ...

— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... upright attitude with one arm extended along the back of the sofa, the white gleam of the big eyeballs setting off the black, fathomless stare of the enlarged pupils, impressed Razumov more than anything he had seen since his hasty and secret departure from St. Petersburg. A witch in Parisian clothes, he thought. A portent! He actually hesitated in his advance, and did not even comprehend, at first, what the rasping voice ...

— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... examination of the authorities and the evidence in Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, i., ch. viii.] on charges which may be summed up as those of treason and incitement to mutiny, wherewith was apparently mixed up a conviction on Drake's part that Doughty exercised witch-craft to bring on bad weather. It is not improbable at least that Doughty was really acting in the interests of that party in England which was opposed to the whole policy of the raid, and believed that he would ...

— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... born in 1842, and soon afterwards Lady Duff Gordon began her translation of 'The Amber Witch'; the 'French in Algiers' by Lamping, and Feuerbach's 'Remarkable Criminal Trials,' followed in quick succession; and together my father and mother translated Ranke's 'Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg' and 'Sketches of German Life.' A remarkable novel by Leon de Wailly, ...

— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... afterwards precipitate itself with its rider into an abyss so steep and fearful, that neither horse nor man were ever seen more? Had he not given to Dame Gertrude Trodden a curious spell for making butter come? and was she not burnt for a witch by the grand criminal judge of the Electorate, because she availed herself of his gift? But these, and many other instances which they quoted, of mischance and ill-luck ultimately attending on the apparent benefits conferred by the Harz spirit, failed to make any impression ...

— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... on the turf and looked at her. "Either," I said slowly—"either you're a witch, and that isn't allowed, or else you've had to learn this picture some time as ...

— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... 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 ...

— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy

... one of their number to be "mother" and another to be the witch. One child represents the pot, and the others are named after the days in the week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. If there are too many children they might be called after ...

— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... for ever posed in dancing posture upon her pedestal and never danced away. As I wandered round the garden whilst luncheon was being prepared, I was greatly taken with these figures, and wondered if it might be that they were an enchanted prince and princess turned to stone by some wicked witch, envious of their happiness in the peaceful garden amid the green alleys and fragrant flowers. As I ate my luncheon I felt as if I were consuming what was their property, and pondered the supposition that some day the spell might be broken, and ...

— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... so much, before," said Miss Broadus, "but she has been playing like a witch this evening. There ...

— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... long-suffering metis and Indians to prompt and decisive action. He intended to go off again in a few hours to Prince Albert to direct the siege against that town. Only those who had witnessed the wantonness and the capture of the "white witch" followed. Most of the rebels were too busy improving the shining hour of unlimited loot. A half-breed on one side and an Indian on the other, each with a dirty mitt on Dorothy's shoulder, led her to the Judgment Hall of the dusky prophet, Louis David Riel, "stickit ...

— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... the ghost of a witch, since the witches were all burned at the stake? You never heard of anybody who was burned having a ghost, ...

— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... was as lively as ever, only a little faint from loss of blood and rather subdued. The children bathed his wound with witch hazel, and after a good breakfast, he was as well as ever, and ready for ...

— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... lest perchance any hairs might remain, and be picked up by an enemy. Dr. Livingstone, in his book on the Zambesi, mentions the existence of a similar practice among some African tribes. "They carefully collect and afterwards burn or bury the hair, lest any of it fall into the hands of a witch." Mr. Munter mentions that the same practice is common amongst the Patagonians, and the practice extends to adults. He says that after bathing, which they do every morning, "the men's hair is dressed by their wives, daughters, or sweethearts, who take ...

— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... exclaimed Betty, patting Grace on the shoulder. "If you had let go we would have lost. We'll bathe your hand for you in witch hazel." ...

— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope

... clock! There was a yellow plush suit and swishy-tail all painted sideways in stripes like a tiger! There was a most furious tiger head with whisk-broom whiskers! There was a green frog's head! And a green frog's suit! There was a witch's hat and cape! And a hump on the back! There were bows and arrows! There were boxes and boxes of milliner's flowers! There were strings of beads! And yards and yards of dungeon chains made out of silver paper! And a real bugle! And ...

— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... conviction). Yes I am. I live in a tent; and I am now in that tent, fast asleep and dreaming. Do you suppose that I believe you are real, you impossible little dream witch? ...

— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... family story, Jenny, and you're a little witch." The old gentleman kissed her. "Well, where was I? Oh, now I remember! And that grandpapa said to his grandfather, 'Tell me a story, grandpapa,' and his grandpapa replied, 'When I was ...

— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... about to shoot her, but this woman's nerve failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who decreed a whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have deserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake had been made—it was another woman who was the witch. And again in the Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news item, telling how a certain man awakened one morning, and ...

— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... I have been informed, fled to the mountains—except three old women and an old man, whom they killed; and three women and a man, whom they carried away captive. One of the old women whom they killed had been a notorious witch; but God our Lord, who loved her soul, inspired her with so fervent a desire to become a Christian and receive baptism that for three months she did not cease asking me for it. Finally, on account of her importunity, I baptized her, after she had several times given evidence ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... back of a horse and rapidly borne him into the interior. They might not have meant any harm to him at first, he thought, but when they found him examining a dog with great care they were convinced the simple-minded old man was a witch doctor and at once sentenced him to ...

— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... you must excuse my laughing. You dear old witch, how the plague could you take any such frightful nonsense into your head? I do assure you, upon my honour, I never heard of so ridiculous a blunder. Only that I know you are really fond of us, I should never speak to you again. I forgive you. But listen no more to other ...

— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... were here," thought Billie, "she would at once make a story of this: 'The Princess and the Old Witch.' I am sure Mary would call me ...

— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... mountains. Two women, not being so apt to escape as the men were, the one for her age, and the other being encumbered with a young child, we took. The old wretch, whom divers of our sailors supposed to be either a devil or a witch, had her buskins plucked off to see if she were cloven-footed, and for her ugly hue and deformity we let her go; the young woman and the child we brought away. We named the place where they were slain Bloody Point, and the bay or harbour Yorke's Sound, ...

— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... the troop, which our Duke saw sally Toward his castle from out of the valley, Men and women, like new-hatched spiders, Come out with the morning to greet our riders. 390 And up they wound till they reached the ditch, Whereat all stopped save one, a witch That I knew, as she hobbled from the group, By her gait directly and her stoop, I, whom Jacynth was used to importune 395 To let that same witch tell us our fortune. The oldest gypsy then above ground; And, sure as the autumn season came round, She paid us a visit for profit or pastime, And ...

— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... it in the town while Lizzie went inside the shops. Then I forgot about it till just now. Oh, I must know what happened when the Prince went to see the old witch!" ...

— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... the girls were all here," she thought, "how pleasant and cheerful it would be! Primrose should sit just opposite to me, and pour out the coffee; she would do it very nicely and deftly, and would look so sweet and daughterly. And Jasmine—little witch!—I do not suppose she would keep the same seat two mornings running, and I should have to tell her over and over not to jump up every moment to rush to the window. Daisy would sit near me, and, of course, I should have to have a special chair made for that funny ...

— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... well the reason, for not many rods distant was the hut where dwelt one Margery Key, an ancient woman, who had been verily tied crosswise and thrown in a pond for witchcraft and been weighed against the church Bible, and had her body searched for witch-marks and the thatch of her house burned. I know not why she had not come to the stake withal, but instead she had fled to Virginia, where, witches being not so common, were treated with more leniency. It may have been that she had escaped ...

— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... by these very hands; but when it was made, what do you think? the foolish Welsh wouldn't put it on, saying that it was against their laws and statties and religion to use it, and talked about Devil's salves and the Witch of Endor, and the sin against the Holy Ghost, and such like nonsense. So to prevent a regular rebellion, the Duke gave up the salve, and the poor sheep pined away and died, till at last there ...

— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... that a virtuous vulgar dowd is preferable to a wicked winsome witch of refined habits and person, and I should probably have gone quietly on to bankruptcy without any row or rupture, but for Burker. Having been bred in a "gentle" home I naturally took the attitude of "as you please, my dear Dolores" and refrained from bullying when quiet indication ...

— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... came again, and the Queen said to him, "Is your name Hans?" "No," said the Dwarf, with an ugly leer, and he held out his hands for the baby. "Is it Conrade?" asked the Queen. "No," cried the Dwarf, "give me the child." "Then," said the Queen, "is it Rumpelstiltskin?" "A witch has told you that!" cried the Dwarf; and then he stamped his right foot so hard upon the ground that it sank quite in, and he could not draw it out again. Then he took hold of his left leg with both his hands and pulled so hard that his right leg came off, and he hopped ...

— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... what else to do, she resolved to consult a certain witch who was called "The Fairy of the Desert." Now this was very difficult to do, as she was guarded by some terrible lions; but happily the Queen had heard a long time before that whoever wanted to pass these lions safely must throw to them a cake made of millet flour, ...

— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... trembling. "The giant has a witch for a godmother; I fear that she will revenge on me the insult offered to her godson. My art tells me, my dear Yvon, that if you quit me a single instant until you give me your name in the chapel of the Kervers ...

— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... evening; but to his astonishment a 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 or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind ...

— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... good Galloway woman she knew that of all things it is most impossible to run counter to the superstitions of her people. Perhaps she retained a touch of these herself. But, as she said, "The grace of the Lord can overcome all the wiles of the Evil One! And Mary Lyon would like to see witch or warlock, ghost or ghostling, that would come in her road when she went forth under His banner." On the darkest night she marched unafraid, conquering and to conquer, having the superstitions born in her, but knowing all the same (and all the better for that knowledge) ...

— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... it. There were the Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam, under Walter the Doubter, or the renowned Peter Stuyvesant; there was Rip Van Winkle on the Catskill Mountains; there were the king-killers, hiding in the rocks beside Newhaven; there were the witch trials of Salem; there was the peaceful village of Concord, from which came voices that echoed round and round the world; there was the Lake, lying still and silent, ringed by its woods, where the solitary student of Nature loved to sit and watch and meditate. Hundreds of things, ...

— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... comment And however some disliked that such violence should be done to so easy a text, our hair-splitting and irrefragable doctor went on in triumph. To prove it yet (says he) more undeniably, it is commanded in the old law [Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live]: now then every Maleficus, or witch, is to be killed, but an heretic is Maleficus, which in the Latin translation is put for a witch, ergo, &c. All that were present wondered at ...

— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... say of Balak, Nabal, Jeroboam? "Macbeth is rather guilty of tempting the Weird Sisters than of being tempted by them, and is surprised and horrified at his own hell-begotten conception." Saul is guilty of tampering with the Witch of Endor, and is alarmed at the Ghost of Samuel, whose words distinctly embody and vibrate the fears of his own heart, and he "falls straightway all along on the earth." "The exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs over her masculine attire." The exquisite ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... "Yes; never was I in such a taking as on that Midsummer- eve! I sat up, quite determined to see if John Wildway was going to marry me or no. I put the bread-and-cheese and beer quite ready, as the witch's book ordered, and I opened the door, and I waited till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive and so strained that I could feel every one of 'em twitching like bell-wires. Yes, sure! and when the clock had struck, lo and behold, ...

— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... whole mythology out of his blind fear of the unknown. And when he has done that—Woe to the weak! For when he has reduced his superstition to a science, then he will reduce his cruelty to a science likewise, and write books like the Malleus Maleficarum, and the rest of the witch-literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; of which Mr. Lecky has of late told the world so much, and told it most faithfully and ...

— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... 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 ...

— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... exclaim the impetuous 'Smother the old witch!' } Hedzoff, the ardent Smith, and 'Pitch her into ...

— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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 ...

— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... I'll to the witch-woman under the cliffs, and get her to say some charms that have power over the left side of a man." Ned strode moodily off, and Nick followed him. At the stile that led into the highway they met Dan Pengelly coming in search of them. Yards away his ...

— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... joking. There are little burlesque manuals making merry with the language and its agglutinative prolixity, which I shall certainly not quote; and there are postal-cards representing Welsh dames drinking tea in tall witch-hats, with one of them saying: "I wass enjoying myself shocking, look you." There was, of course, nothing serious in this joking; the Welsh, who have all the small commerce in their hands, gladly sold the manuals and postals, and I did not see one ...

— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... paid to the sleeping Imogen by the very light in the chamber, and the reaction of her own beauty upon itself; or in the 'witch element' of the tragedy of Macbeth and the May-day night of Faust;—Seventh, and last, that which by a single expression, apparently of the vaguest kind, not only meets but surpasses in its effect the extremest force of the most particular description; as in that exquisite passage ...

— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... against it, so I stood to the eastward all that day and night, under a try-sail and storm-jib. During this time the gale showed no signs of abating. It was a good trial to our tempers, at all events. Grampus vowed that there was some old witch in Halifax who must have taken a spite to us and was resolved to keep us out of the harbour as long as she could. He was devising all sorts of plans for exorcising her, but none seemed likely to prove satisfactory. In the morning, the weather moderating a little, I stood to the westward ...

— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Is there any one of the marvels yet unobtained?" Said one of his men, "There is—the blood of the witch Orddu, the daughter of the witch Orwen, of Penn Nant Govid, on the confines of Hell." Arthur set forth towards the North, and came to the place where was the witch's cave. And Gwyn ab Nudd, and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl, counselled him to send ...

— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... "Seven Tales of my Native Land." The motto which he chose for the title-page was "We are Seven," from Wordsworth. My informant read the tales in manuscript, and says some of them were very striking, particularly one or two Witch Stories. As soon as the little book was well prepared for the press he deliberately threw it into the fire, and sat by ...

— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... into a very handsome youth. Zelinda was astounded by this unexpected change, and the young man took her by the hand, and said: "Know, dear Zelinda, that I am the son of the King of the Oranges. An old witch, touching me, changed me into the terrible Monster I was, and condemned me to be hidden in this rose-bush until a beautiful girl consented ...

— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... my daughter," rejoined the gentleman. "A pretty little witch, is she not? Will you ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... went and told Angelita's step-mother that she was alive and living in the depths of the jungle with the three giants. When the step-mother heard about it she was so angry that she thought she could never be happy as long as Angelita was living in the world. She consulted a wicked witch as soon as she could ...

— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells

... Katherine was putting the last touches to her great picture "The Witch of Atlas," and to her sketch of an elaborate future, Fate stepped in and altered all her arrangements. She called it Fate, for she never could bring herself to say it was Ted. For months she had been living in a dream, in which she was no longer a poor artist toiling in a ...

— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was not so much of a witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL NOTE.—The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in ...

— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... depart. Then the Gypsies huddled into the wagons, and she was seized by Zelaya and put into the first van. The old witch ...

— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... is all kinds of trades, so is there heere, for heere you shall see a cobler sitting mending olde showes, and singing as merrily as if hee were under a stall abroad; not farre from him you shall see a taylor sit crosse-legged (like a witch) on his cushion, theatning the ruine of our fellow prisoner, the AEgyptian vermine; in another place you may behold a saddler empannelling all his wits together how to patch this Scotchpadde handsomely, or mend the old gentlewoman's crooper that was almost burst ...

— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... instrument used to make objects appear larger. 17. En-chant'ment, magic art, witch-craft. 5. A-sun'der, apart, into parts. 30. Rem'e-dy, that which removes an evil. Con-veyed', carried. 32. String'y, full ...

— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... him, now resolute and eager. "I am not a fairy princess, I am not a witch. As a matter of fact, I am a very commonplace person who is obliged to earn a living one way or another, and it isn't always a simple thing to do. Tip to this instant, I hadn't the remotest thought of becoming a governess. I don't know what came over me unless it was loneliness, thinking ...

— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... said the witch, beginning to walk slowly round him. 'But as it is not certain that Saul saw Samuel, I suppose it will not ...

— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... each other again; but Samuel mourns for Saul, that Jehovah had repented of having made him king over Israel. There is another narrative intimately connected with this one in subject and treatment, thought and expression, namely, that of the witch of Endor. When Saul, shortly before the battle in which he fell, surveyed the hostile army, he was seized with anxiety and terror. He inquired of Jehovah, but received no answer, neither by dreams, nor by the ephod, nor by prophets. In his extremity he was driven into the arms of a black ...

— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamore, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more, Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess That they do not ...

— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... went. But he wasn't much better on the train than he had been in the station. He was as nervous and fidgety as a witch, and he acted as if he did so wish it would be over and over quick. But at the junction—at the junction a funny thing happened. He put me on the train, just as Mother had done, and spoke to the conductor. (How I hated to have him do that! Why, I'm six whole months older, ...

— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... artful ways: "These are returns," I said, "quite fit To me, who nursed you when a chit. For shame, lay by this envious art; Is this to act a sister's part?" But vain were words, entreaties vain, The crafty witch secured my swain. By heavens, my sister does me wrong; But oh! she shall not triumph long. Well Venus knows I'm not in fault 'Twas she who gave the first assault And since our peace her treach'ry broke, Let me return her stroke for stroke. She'll quickly feel, and to her cost, ...

— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... violent death; I know it. When I was in Zululand an old witch doctor 'tossed the bones.' You have ...

— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... bow, buckled and bent together, By some more strong in mischiefs than myself: Must I for that be made a common sink For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues, To fall and run into? some call me witch; And, being ignorant of myself, they go About to teach me how to be one; urging That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so) Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, Themselves, their servants, and their ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... her my braille slate to play with, thinking that the mechanical pricking of holes in the paper would amuse her and rest her mind. But what was my astonishment when I found that the little witch was writing letters! I had no idea she knew what a letter was. She has often gone with me to the post-office to mail letters, and I suppose I have repeated to her things I wrote to you. She knew, too, that I sometimes write "letters to blind girls" on the slate; but I didn't suppose that she had ...

— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... Company. And in other more or less fixed spots and corners were Europe, to which the family voyaged occasionally; Niagara Falls—Mrs. Bailey's honeymoon had been spent at the real Niagara; the King's palace; the den of the wicked witch; Sherwood Forest; and Jordan, Marsh ...

— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... still felt to be an obstacle to the complete success of the locomotive engine. Mr. Stephenson endeavoured to overcome this by lengthening the boilers and increasing the surface presented by the flue-tubes. The "Lancashire Witch," which he built for the Bolton and Leigh Railway, and used in forming the Liverpool and Manchester Railway embankments, was constructed with a double tube, each of which contained a fire and passed longitudinally ...

— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... for her King and country, should, on April 18, 1909, become a saint of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world, nor that the Pope should perform the ceremony. The English sold her. An ecclesiastical court, headed by the infamous Bishop of Beauvais, condemned her to be burnt as a witch, and when the flames were consuming her a cry of "Jesus" was heard. An English soldier standing by was so overcome by the awful wickedness that was being perpetrated by the Anglo-French ecclesiastical alliance, that he called out, "We are lost! ...

— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... requiting her with 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 ...

— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... eyes of his gracious affection upon another) behold three thousand courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.—"O divine Athenais! what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.—THAT a goddess?—a pretty goddess forsooth;—a witch, rather, who, for a while, kept our gracious monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond ear-rings?"* The same tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais ...

— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... homelike, and here the servitors of Freydis attended them when there was need. The fallen Queen was not a gray witch—not in appearance certainly, but in her endowments, which were not limited as are the powers of black witches and white witches. She instructed Dom Manuel in the magic of Audela, and she and Manuel had great times together that ...

— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... furtive glances at her companions, and was relieved to find that at any rate Aunt Hannah was not a bit like what Freddie had said. She was a tall, straight old lady with a high cap, black curls, and a velvet band across her forehead. She did not look either witch-like or cross, and Susan felt that she should not be afraid of her when she knew her better. She soon found that the names of the two "grown-up" girls, as she called them in her mind, were Nanna and Margaretta; Nanna was fair and freckled, and Margaretta ...

— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton

... WITCH ON BROOM.—You will be reproved by some of your friends who consider that your interest in psychic matters is dangerous, but later on you will be able to prove to their satisfaction that no harm has ...

— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... Jesuit father who won distinction as a poet and also as an opponent of the witch-burning mania. His collection of lyric poems called Trutz-Nachtigall, or Match-Nightingale, is interesting for its singular blend of erotic imagery with sincere religious feeling. The poems indicate a genuine delight in certain aspects of nature. The selections follow Wolff's ...

— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... in the glee-girl's hand is fain * as lute to 'witch great souls by charm of cunning strain! She sweeps tormenting lute strings by her artful touch * Wi' finger-tips that surely chain with ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... Poe. Little witch! (Kisses her) How happy we shall be, Virginia, as soon as I have money. I shall go to New York for a year. It will take only a year. Then I shall come back bringing the lady Fame with me, and you must not ...

— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... contend in such wise; never, he deemed, had he fought with such a horror for her strength's sake; she held him to her so hard that he might turn his arms to no account save to keep fast hold on the middle of the witch. ...

— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... consequently, too deep. We recollect a case in which one of these delicate craft, a half-rigged brig, was much abused for "having lost her sailing." She did, indeed, lose her fore-yard, and, after that, she sailed like a witch, until she got a new one! If the facts were inquired into, in the spirit which ought to govern such inquiries, it would be found that even most of the much-abused "ten sloops" proved to be better vessels than common. ...

— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... exclaimed—"Up in the air and riding a theory like a witch on a broomstick! It's NOT natural. That's just where you're wrong! It's quite UN-natural. If a man has plenty of money he ought to be perfectly happy and satisfied,—he can get everything he wants,—he can move the whole world of commerce and speculation, and can ...

— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... low. To conclude, this drudge or Diuiner layd claime to mee, call'd mee Dromio, swore I was assur'd to her, told me what priuie markes I had about mee, as the marke of my shoulder, the Mole in my necke, the great Wart on my left arme, that I amaz'd ranne from her as a witch. And I thinke, if my brest had not beene made of faith, and my heart of steele, she had transform'd me to a Curtull dog, & made ...

— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... rock which had so excited him and which she had uncovered after he had gone, a little forked stick stood upright, and in its fork, with one end slanted to the ground, a twig of green witch-hazel still reposed. Beneath the twig a tiny spiral of arizing smoke showed that here, with these primitive appliances, the treasure seeker had prepared his dinner, later carefully covering ...

— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... bazaar knows Selim, the most insolent, avaricious, money-grabbing Lala in Stamboul. He is more like a Persian than anything else. He is the Lala of Laleli Khanum Effendi, who lives at Yeni Koej. They say she is a witch since her husband died," added Abraham, lowering ...

— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... have comprised many oddities, eccentric men and women, recluses and other kinds,—one of old Philip English, (a Jersey man, the name originally L'Anglais,) who had been persecuted by John Hawthorne, of witch-time memory, and a violent quarrel ensued. When Philip lay on his death-bed, he consented to forgive his persecutor; "But if I get well," said he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" This Philip left ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... Counter all yield to the spell And Cradledom not be considered as well? Shall betting fire Oxford, and gambling witch Girton, And Infancy not put its own little shirt on? Oh, two to ...

— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various

... numbers as he went along. Never had he seen such a fog. Two paces away from the curb a headlight became an effulgence. Indeed, there were a thousand lights jammed in the street, and the fog above absorbed the radiance, giving the scene a touch of Brocken. All that was needed was a witch on a broomstick. He counted five vehicles, and stopped. The door-window ...

— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... common sense and common humanity were unfortunately left out from their premises, and a layman had to supply them. A hundred more years and many of the barbarisms still lingering among us will, of course, have disappeared like witch-hanging. But people are sensitive now, as they were then. You will see by this extract that the Rev. Cotton Mather did not like intermeddling with his business very well. "Let the Levites of the Lord keep ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the Kitchen Witch now (I altered it this morning) and Mead the old one—the climber. Poor old chap, he'll not ...

— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... Chick mah chick mah craney crow Went to de well to wash ma toe When I come back ma chick was gone What time, ole witch? ...

— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes

... 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. But, ...

— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... her hair fell down.—Her face Was awful white, and both her eyes looked sick, And she was talking queer. 'O God of Grace!' Said she, 'where is the child?' and flew back quick The way she came, and screamed, and shook her hands; ... Maybe she was a witch from foreign lands. ...

— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... o'er all prevail - On Christmas eve a Christmas tale, Of wonder and of war—"Profane! What! leave the loftier Latian strain, Her stately prose, her verse's charms, To hear the clash of rusty arms: In Fairy Land or Limbo lost, To jostle conjuror and ghost, Goblin and witch!" Nay, Heber dear, Before you touch my charter, hear; Though Leyden aids, alas! no more, My cause with many-languaged lore, This may I say:- in realms of death Ulysses meets Alcides' WRAITH; AEneas, upon Thracia's shore, The ghost of murdered Polydore; For omens, we in Livy cross, At every turn, ...

— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... Elizabeth and under James was disfigured by enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure from the Christian churches, which Acts have only been repealed in consequence of the disbelief in the Christian precept, "thou shaft not suffer a witch to live". The statute 1 James I, c. 12, condemned to death "all persons invoking any evil spirits, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit", or generally practising any "infernal arts". This was not repealed ...

— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh

... Nance who sat close beside her on the couch and whispered, "Judy is as nervous as a witch these days. She has probably thought of something to ...

— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... 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 means of ...

— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... constant facts in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft, and magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic is due simply to the jealousy ...

— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... say that ever 'gainst that season comes, Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is ...

— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... 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 hands or ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... The witch-light danced in the steady glance she turned upon him; she threw her head back and her slim throat showed white and smooth in the ...

— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... the faculty opposite to that of a witch, and canst lay a tempest. I should as soon have imagined one man could have stopt a cannon-ball in its full force ...

— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... thoughtfully, as if considering a weighty matter. "I'd rather have ice cream and chocolate cake. If I had a witch with a wand that's what I'd wish for supper ...

— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... deprived her of her property. It was only on his approaching death that he restored her to liberty. She retired to Havering Bower in Essex, where her grandson, the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, was reared and educated with Henry VI. She died in 1437, and the memory of "Joan the witch queen" was long held in awe by the people ...

— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... she went through her process and found that he was bewitched by an old witch. So the following day she set out with six other fairies, and when they came to the gentleman's house she found he ...

— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson

... and practical women have frowned upon Stevenson. In their opinion instead of being up and doing he consecrated too many hours to the idleness of literature. They feel towards him as Hawthorne fancied his ancestor the great witch judge would have felt towards him. Hawthorne imagines that ghostly and terrible ancestor looking down upon him and exclaiming with infinite scorn, 'A writer of storybooks. What kind of employment is ...

— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... mournful witch, but gay and frolicsome; and what she loved most of all was a gale of wind. As soon as there was wind enough, off she would fly to the Naerke plain for a good dance. On days when a whirlwind swept the plain, Ysaetter-Kaisa ...

— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... delivered in Romany, and Miss Greeby only understood such scraps of it as was hastily translated to her by a wild-eyed girl to whom she had given a shilling. Gentilla, less like a sober pew-opener, and more resembling the Hecate of some witch-gathering, screamed objurgations at the pitch of her crocked voice, and waved her skinny arms to emphasize her words, in a most ...

— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several thousand years to convince the same fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's program of post-mortem entertainments; it ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain