"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... legend says, as grim Sir Ranulph view'd A wretched hag her footsteps drag beneath his lordly wood. His bloodhounds twain he called amain, and straightway gave her chase; Was never seen in forest green, so fierce, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... my face, that I might not be defiled with the shower of curses which were thrown at me like mud, and sat there watching till the storm was over. Unfortunately, in lifting up my garment, I exposed to the view of the old hag the cursed goat's-skin bag, which hung at my girdle, and contained, not only her money, but the remainder of my own. "Mashallah—how wonderful is God!" screamed the old beldame, flying at me like a tigress, and clutching the bag from my girdle. Having secured that, she darted ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... others. A fisherman, well known in the place, a handsome and popular young fellow, was seized, while working in his boat, with the first symptoms of cholera. He was carried to his mother's house. The old woman, a villainous-looking hag, watched the little procession as it approached her dwelling, and taking in the situation at once, she shut ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... old hag, with her damp, coarse mouth, her skinny hands, and her cunning, ignorant eyes, was her grandmother—Stefanone was her grandfather—her mother had been a peasant, like them, beautified by ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... however, to be the owner of a most forbidding countenance, and four of her front teeth had disappeared from her upper jaw, which caused a singular and disagreeable indention of the upper lip. The travellers were disgusted with the appearance and hateful familiarity of this ancient hag, who had thus paid so ill a compliment to their vanity, and subsequently they forced her out of the yard ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... only be induced to admit La Corriveau into her secret chamber and take her into her confidence, the rest—all the rest," muttered the hag to herself, with terrible emphasis, "would be easy, and my reward sure. But that reward shall be measured in my own bushel, not in yours, Mademoiselle des Meloises, when ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... but in her heart she felt that it must be true. As for Thorbeorn, who had heard it all through the wall, whatever he may have thought, he was very indignant, and angry with her too. "Put such mummery out of your head. We are not Christians for nothing, I should hope. A scandalous hag with her bell-wether voice and airs of a great lady! What has she to do with good women, well brought up? A woman's duty is to leave match-making to her parents, and the future to God and His Angels. Who can foretell his end? Can the priest? Can the bishop? No. And who would wish ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... thoughts, that, sinful, dark, and deep, O'erpower the passive mind in sleep, Pass from the slumberer's soul away, Like night-mists from the brow of day: Foul hag, whose blasted visage grim Smothers the pulse, unnerves the limb, Spur thy dark palfrey, and begone! Thou darest not ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... surely be some mistake. Here, what's this? This old toothless hag, without her wig, is unknown to me! And why does she address me as "ARCHIBALD"? I was expecting to see my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... became of the fair-haired lady? No one knows. At the cry of Yvon she disappeared; but it was said that a wretched old hag was seen flying on a broomstick over the castle walls, chased by the dogs; and it was the common opinion among the Kervers that the fair-haired lady was none other than the witch, the godmother of the giant. I am not sure enough ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... read in the Hydrographic Office records, the fate of the steamship Sarah Calkins. Old was Sarah; weather-scarred, wave-battered, suffering from all the internal disorders to which machinery is prone; tipsy of gait, defiant of her own helm, a very hag of ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cried, clasping me in his arms, 'excuse a man who might be your father! This is the best news I ever had since I was born; for that hag of a mulatto was no less a person than my wife.' He sat down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy. 'Dear me,' said he, 'I declare this tempts me to believe in Providence. And what,' he added, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... you what it would be?' growled the old hag. 'From shelter we shall proceed to demand supper, and from supper money to take us on our way. Upon my word, if I could be sure of finding some one every day whose head was as soft as his heart, I wouldn't wish for a more ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... drinking was more likely to sober him than to kill him," rejoined the squire. "But, as I said just now, I like not this Mother Demdike, nor her rival in iniquity, old Mother Chattox. The devil only knows which of the two is worst. But if the former hag did not bewitch your husband to death, as I shrewdly suspect, it is certain that the latter mumbling old miscreant killed my elder ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, bonne a tout faire, who rubs male nakedness in the bath ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... them to one Thorbiorn Angle, a man of good house, but violent, unpopular, and unscrupulous. This man, after trying the obvious ways of persuasion, cajolery, and assassination, for getting the island into his hands, at last, with the help of a certain hag, his foster-mother, has recourse to sorcery. By means of her spells (as the story goes) Grettir wounds himself in the leg in the third year of his sojourn at Drangey, and though the wound speedily closes, in a week or two gangrene supervenes, and Grettir, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... beginning to be modest again to-day!" old lady Chia smiled. "But I expect it's because she looks down upon me as being an old hag!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... great offence; they had condemned me to many years' imprisonment, condemned me to spend all my youth behind iron-barred windows and they would only let me free again when I had become a wrinkled old hag. Would you love me if I was in prison? Would you come and stand outside my iron bars and speak to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... madwoman, Lady Scrope. They say she lives quite alone, and that her servants come in the morning and leave at night. Sure they will none of them have courage to pass the threshold when that sign adorns it, and the old hag will have to come forth herself to seek them. An excellent joke! I will watch the house, and give her a kiss as she ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... once, and it is 'gnadige Frau' here and 'gnadige Frau' there and a diamond bracelet or a pearl ring, if only I will do the little conjuring trick that will smooth everything over. But when all goes well, then I am 'old Schratt,' 'old hag,' 'old woman,' and I must take my orders and beg ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... The fact is that his natural eloquence was irrepressible. If Miss Edgeworth's King Corny had the gout, nature said "Howl," and he howled. If Carlyle had indigestion, he broke into picturesque rhetoric about the hag which was riding him no-whither. A far characteristic passage than his mother's "gey to deal wi'" is his own simple confession to his father, "When I shout murder, I am ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... post-chaise and pair, at the bottom of the garden, but I find my horses yet unable to perform the journey. I expect you'll assist us with a pair of fresh horses, as you promised. Dispatch is necessary, as the HAG (ay, the hag), your mother, will otherwise suspect us! Yours, Hastings." Grant me patience. I shall run distracted! ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... non-aesthetic use; but when we speak of a beautiful woman there is. When an ordinary man speaks of a beautiful woman he certainly does not mean only that she moves him aesthetically; but when an artist calls a withered old hag beautiful he may sometimes mean what he means when he calls a battered torso beautiful. The ordinary man, if he be also a man of taste, will call the battered torso beautiful, but he will not call a withered hag beautiful because, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... from the city. When they met by the rustic well in the rose garden, haunted by that "dark lady" who was giving Mr. Mann so much trouble, Dora uttered the sprightly lines of her blooming sister, while the latter mouthed the old hag's prophecies. ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... the other Philosopher, "your voice is like the droning of a bee in a dark cell. If in my latter days I am reduced to playing on the tambourine and running after a hag in the moonlight, and cooking your breakfast in the grey morning, then it is indeed time that I should die. ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... look in her eyes as I held her hand and said, 'Baby shall be taken care of.' She tried to thank me, and died soon after quite peacefully. Well, I went today and hunted up the poor little wretch. Found her in a miserable place, left in the care of an old hag who had shut her up alone to keep her out of the way, and there this mite was, huddled in a corner, crying 'Marmar, marmar!' fit to touch a heart of stone. I blew up at the woman and took the baby straightaway, for she had been abused. It was high time. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... of the underworld had seemed, indeed, to border on the supernatural; she, the Tocsin—the woman whose face he had never seen before! The woman whose face he had never seen before—and who now was that wretched hag that hobbled along the street before him, begging, whining, and importuning the passers-by to purchase ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... she had been led by two of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept murmuring to herself a Saxon rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance which her spindle was performing upon the floor. The hag raised her head as Rebecca entered, and scowled at the fair Jewess with the malignant envy with which old age and ugliness, when united with evil conditions, are apt to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... household duties well perform, Although she does not claim a beauty's charm. Who wants a wife?" The ugly crone with blinks Doth hideous look, till every bidder shrinks. A sorry spectacle, mis-shapen, gross, She is, and bidders now are at a loss How much to ask to take the hag to wife. At last one cries: "Five bilti,[20] for relief Of herald I will take, to start the bid!" "And four of bilti, I'll take, with the maid!" "Three and a half!" one cries with shaking head, "And she is yours, my man!" the herald said, And thus she bought a husband ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... the last night's interview with his uncle, and to ask, as usual, for George's advice and opinion, Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, was the only person whom Arthur found in the dear old chambers. George had taken a carpet-hag, and was gone. His address was to his brother's house, in Suffolk. Packages addressed to the newspaper and review for which he wrote lay on the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Enter here, my dear fellow," he said to his companion. The man in the mantle obeyed without a word in reply, the door closed upon him; he heard Phoebus bolt it, and a moment later descend the stairs again with the aged hag. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... as an example of "the conservatism of the religious instinct".[82] The grandmother of the Teutonic deity Tyr was a fierce giantess with nine hundred heads; his father was an enemy of the gods. In Scotland the hag-mother of winter and storm and darkness is the enemy of growth and all life, and she raises storms to stop the grass growing, to slay young animals, and prevent the union of her son with his fair bride. Similarly the Babylonian ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... his body, a cocoa-nut should be cracked, and its kernel disengaged from the shell and placed upon his stomach under the grave-clothes. Having descended to the Shades, he beheld Miru, the horrible hag who rules them, and whose deformities need not now be detailed. She commanded him to draw near. "The trembling human spirit obeyed, and sat down before Miru. According to her unvarying practice she set for her intended victim a bowl ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of her diabolic nature, like a snake's head peeping with a hiss out of her bosom, at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken the trouble ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... another, that she was the parent of some lord, who could only be brought to concede something to the Warden by the force of the impledgment of his mother; and, again, that she was the duenna of an heiress, who could only be got through the confinement of the old hag. Be who she might, however, Christie's Will declared, upon the faith of the long shablas of Johnny Armstrong, that he would carry her off through fire and water, as sure as ever Kinmont Willie was carried away by old Wat of Buccleuch ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... quarters of the town. Regardless of the weather one of these bedrabbled creatures stations herself just outside the door of a pub. Along comes a mother with a thirst and a child. Surrendering her offspring to the temporary care of the hag the mother goes within and has her refreshment at the bar. When, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she comes forth to reclaim the youngster she gives the other woman a ha'penny for her trouble, and eventually the other woman harvests enough ha'penny ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the room, banging the door, so that it shook and rattled as though it had listened to the conversation and fully sympathised with the old hag. ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... to the name of Caponsacchi. His worst fears were thus confirmed. Even so, had he been admitted by Pompilia, weak from her recent sufferings, he might have paused in pity—by Pietro, he might have paused in contempt; but it was the hag Violante who opened to him: the cheat, the mock-mother, the source of all his wrongs. The impulse to stamp out that one detested life involved all three. And now he triumphs in the deed. He has cast a foul burden from his life. He can look his fellow-men ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... before. It required no supernatural wisdom for any man on the floor to see that Bob Brownley's seed had fallen in superheated soil, that his until now secret hellite was about to be tested. It needed no expert in the mystic art of deciphering the wall hieroglyphics of Old Hag Fate to see that the hands on the clock of the "System" were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to the stock-gambling structure. The deafening roar of the brokers that had broken the stillness ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... castle, and the old duchess was jealous of her,—'cause, you see, she hated to give up her place in the house, and the old family-jewels, and all the splendid things,—and so one time, when the poor young thing was all dressed up in a set of the old family-lace, what does the old hag do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... "An old hag jerked open the door after I rang the bell. I asked her nice and polite if a lady named Caroline Smith was in the house? 'No,' says she, 'and if she was, what's that to you?' I told her I'd come a long ways to see Caroline. 'Then go a long ways back without seeing Caroline,' says this ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... fortune-tellers."—"And are all the children in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you?"—"O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they'll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?" The poor girl asked this question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... cabin in the middle of the bog, and there they saw her jump in at the window, and up came the dogs the next minit, and gathered round the house with the most horrid howling ever was heard. The huntsman alighted, and went into the house to turn the cat out again, when what should he see but an old hag lying in bed ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... doubts and mistrust. She felt impelled to go forward and ask—what? She did not know, but something to still this war in her bosom. She had seldom seen Elspeth; she had never been in her cabin. She had felt an inconquerable aversion for the evil hag; she felt it now, and shivered ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... us as American freemen to become free men in every sense the word implies, and exercise both our franchise and our brains in relegating this "Scarlet-Robed Hag of ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... away, the manager returned with Demorest to the rooms. The marble hearth was smoked and discolored and still littered with charred ashes of burnt paper. "My belief is," said the manager darkly, "that the old hag came here just to burn up a lot of incriminating papers that her son had intrusted to her keeping. It looks mighty suspicious. You see she got up an awful lot of side when I told her I didn't reckon to run a smelting furnace in a wooden ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... for assurance, was in herself the best advertisement for her wares. Rachel was a fat old hag. Anne, prettily fair, little-boned, and deliciously fleshed, was neat and elegant. The impression one gets of her from all the records, even the most prejudiced against her, is that she was a very cuddlesome morsel indeed. She was, in addition, demonstrably clever. Such a man of ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... chair, Adrian," said Foy rising, "and don't make such a stir about a couple of cowardly footpads and an old hag. You don't want us to think you a hero because you didn't turn tail and leave Elsa and her companions ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... with a letter in her hand that had arrived express, and was to be delivered instantly!—Our mutual perturbation did not escape the prying witch; my countenance red, hers pale—The word begone! maddened to break loose from my impatient tongue. My eyes however spoke plainly enough, and the hag was unwillingly retiring, when a faint—'Stay, Mrs. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... is only there that children run wild in the streets at night. There was one child under the front wheels, crushed almost in half, so that you could not bear to look at it, to say nothing of touching it; and there was another, struck by the fender and knocked into the gutter. There was an old hag of a woman standing by, with her hands lifted into the air, shrieking in such a voice of mingled terror and fury as I had never heard in my life before. It roused the whole quarter; there were people running out of twenty houses, I think, before ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... at one of the skulls which were on the fence, and began fetching meat from the oven and setting it before the Baba Yaga; and meat enough had been provided for a dozen people. Then she fetched from the cellar kvass, mead, beer, and wine. The hag ate up everything, drank up everything. All she left for Vasilissa was a few scraps—a crust of bread and a morsel of sucking-pig. Then the Baba Yaga ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... noted that they very frequently resorted to hills and mountains, their meetings taking place "on the mead, on the oak sward, under the lime, under the oak, at the pear tree." Thus the fairy rings which are often to be met with on the Sussex downs are known as hag-tracks,[4] from the belief that "they are caused by hags and witches, who dance there at midnight."[5] Their love for sequestered and romantic localities is widely illustrated on the Continent, instances ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... ribald songs rose in giant discord as the spirit moved the singers. Now and again, betwixt the shouting and the singing, a young girl, whose presence in such a company turned my heart sick, played upon a harp, while to serve the crew with liquor there was a mahogany-faced hag whom the men addressed as "Mother Catch." An old crone, bent and doubled like a bow, yet vigorous in her work, and shuffling with quick steps as she laid down the jugs, or took the uncouth orders so freely given to her, she seemed to have the eye of a hawk; nor did I escape her ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... establishments. One of them shall serve as a specimen. Descending through a rickety door-way, we passed into a room about sixteen feet square and eight feet high. At one end was a stove in which a fire burned feebly, and close by a small kerosene lamp on a table dimly lighted the room. An old hag, who had lost the greater part of her nose, and whose face was half hidden by the huge frill of the cap she wore, sat rocking herself in a rickety chair by the table. The room was more than half in the shadow, and the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... "you were the average young cub I'd get to my feet and apologize for speaking sense; but you're fairly well grown. All you need, Payne, is to have the fresh young mask pulled from the face of Life and to see the old hag as she really is. Then you'd be fit for something. Payne, I believe I'm going to do that service ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... help him, go help him in the shop, and stand over a table all day, pushing a big heavy iron. Your complexion will look fine after about fifteen years of baking that way, won't it! And you'll be humped over like an old hag. And probably you'll live in one room back of the shop. And then at night—oh, you'll have your artist—sure! He'll come in stinking of gasoline, and cranky from hard work, and hinting around that if it hadn't been for you, he'd of gone ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... few minutes of eight o'clock when, at last, I turned into the squalid street at the end of which stands Springer's. In the sunshine of the mild March morning the facade of the tall buff building looked for all the world like a gaunt, ugly, unkempt hag, frowning between bleared old eyes that seemed to coax—nay, rather to coerce me into entering ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... His own business was based on a "Bank of Air," "wind-capital," as Cadell, Constable's partner, calls it, and the bubble was just about to burst, though Scott had no apprehension of financial ruin. A horrid power is visible in Scott's second picture of la mauvaise pauvre, the hag who despises and curses the givers of "handfuls of coals and of rice;" his first he drew in the witches of "The Bride of Lammermoor." He has himself indicated his desire to press hard on the vice of gambling, as in "The Fortunes of Nigel." Ruinous at all times and in ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... was a conversation going on about the mare; the man who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter was "hag-rid;" for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed and fed her; ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... valiantly that Zuloaga must not be compared with Goya, that their methods and themes are dissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcieres de San Millan) are in the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter—a hideous crew. At once you think of the Caprichos of Goya. The hag with the distaff, whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkey profile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsive creature in spectacles—Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't varied since his days—these ladies ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... dresses, nursed the sick, revered Rugge, told fortunes on a pack of cards which she always kept in her pocket, and acted occasionally in parts where age was no drawback and ugliness desirable,—such as a witch, or duenna, or whatever in the dialogue was poetically called "Hag." Indeed, Hag was the name she usually took from Rugge; that which she bore from her defunct husband was Gormerick. This lady, as she braided the garland, was also bent on the soothing system, saying, with great sweetness, considering that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me some of it!' shrieked the wretched hag, stretching out her withered arms. 'I'll try it!—I'll try it! What do you ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... be Bicrobes, as they say, This Idfluedza pest; What batters? I bust cough—ad pay! The Doctor orders "Rest"! Bicrobes be blowed, ad Rest go hag! I'll stad this thig do bore! BARY! was that the door-bell rag? —"The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... this peerless robe into strips. He bought it of an old crone, who must doubtless have worn it on gala days when she went to Lucifer's drawing-room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice, with its gold tassels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps: it will give me a right worshipful air. To match such jewels, there is this green velvet petticoat with its saffron-coloured trimming, and this mask would melt even Medusa ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing—filthy of breath, dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and encouraged by the nods and winks of the wooers who sat near, Irus was only too ready to take up the challenge. "Hark to the old starveling cur!" he shouted. "How glib of tongue he is, like any scolding hag! Get thee to thy fists then, since thou wilt have it so, and I will knock all thy teeth out, if thou hast any left"; and he thrust Odysseus with ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... the Valencian, the Murcian on his glebe, you find an exact relation established; the one exhales the other. The man is what his country is, tragic, hag-ridden, yet impassive, patient under the sun. He stands for the natural verities. You cannot change him, move, nor hurt him. He can earn neither your praises nor reproach. As well might you blame the staring noon of summer or throw ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... in debt—when I heard our cottage door smashed in and the sound of horrible voices. The roar of a gun rang up the stairs, and the crash of someone falling and the smoke came through my bedroom door, and then wailing mixed with curses. "Out of the way, old hag!" I heard, and then another shriek; and then I stood upon the stairs-and looked down at them. The moon was shining through the shattered door, and the bodies and legs of men went to and fro, like branches ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... be not too severe on poor Voltaire! He is very fidgety, noisy; something of a pickthank, of a wheedler; but, above all, he is scorbutic, dyspeptic; hag-ridden, as soul seldom was; and (in his oblique way) APPEALS to Friedrich and us,—not in vain. And, in short, we perceive, after the First Act of the Piece, beginning in preternatural radiances, ending in whirlwinds of flaming soot, he has been getting ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... lop-sided sound. After it was over Mrs. Emma McChesney, secretary of the company, followed T. A. Buck, its president, into the big, bright show-room. T. A. Buck's hands were thrust deep into his pockets. His teeth worried a cigar, savagely. Care, that clawing, mouthing hag, perched on his brow, tore at ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... glad leetle Ken's done tuck ter ther bottle," she said with forced cheerfulness to the hag-like Mirandy Sloane. "Mebby when I gits back thar'll be a mite more flesh on them puny leetle bones of his'n." Her words caught sob-like in her throat as she wheeled resolutely and caught up her ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... anthem i' the efternune, an' Sandy sang anither at the same time, the rest o' the fowk harkenin' to the competition. Sandy gaed squawlin' an' squawkin' up an' doon amon' the quivers, an' through the middle o' what he ca'd the cruchits, juist like a young pairtrick amon' a pozel o' hag. Mistress Glendie, that sits at the tap o' oor seat, is a bit o' a singer, an' she put back her lugs an' skooled like a fountin' mule at Sandy, oot at the corner o' her specks; but Sandy never lut dab. His een, when he hadna his nose buried in his book, were awa' i' the roof o' the ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... had retired with a headache, only to be awakened by this crashing, and the cry of fire, and she seemed utterly beside herself with terror. A beautiful woman by day, when carefully gowned and controlled, she was a veritable hag just now! It seemed as if terror and dismay let loose her unbeautiful soul to dominate her well-kept body. She looked older, by a score of years, and was as unlike her usual elegant self ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... he said, as he put on his great coat, "it is a curious fact that, with all his incredulity, he is exceedingly superstitious. You can hardly believe how troubled he is about some gibberish of that old hag that sets charms for lame horses, etc. I'm not at all sure but that she set charms in the other way for my ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... clever fellow, Dick, but even you can't wash out the writing on the wall," philosophized the patient, from behind his bandage, "nor scribble anew on the tablet of Fate, which is hung round the neck of every man. If the old hag meant me to be blind, she'd fixed me all right without ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... crooked straight; Shall for our ease the raging floods restrain, And sink the mountain level to the plain. Discord, whom in a cavern under ground With massy fetters their late patriot bound; 540 Where her own flesh the furious hag might tear, And vent her curses to the vacant air; Where, that she never might be heard of more, He planted Loyalty to guard the door, For better purpose shall our chief release, Disguise her for a time, and call her Peace.[116] Lured by that name—fine engine of deceit!— Shall ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... said Mr. Larkspur, dragging the little silken covering from his carpet-bag, and displaying it before those to whom it was so familiar. "That's about the ticket, I think, my lady. Yes, just so. I found a nice old hag waiting to claim her five pounds reward; for, you see, the men at the police-office at Murford Haven contrived to keep her dancing attendance backward and forwards—call again in an hour, and so on—till I was there to cross-question her. A precious deep one she ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the gum in her mouth and tried to chew it, but when she shut her jaws together the great tusk went straight through her neck and came out at the back. The old hag gave a scream and put up her hands to pull out the tusk again, but so great was her excitement that in her haste she scratched out both her own eyes, and could no longer see where the Princess ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... Forgetfulness x. Chorus 'The varied earth, the moving heaven' xi. Lost Hope xii. The Tears of Heaven xiii. Love and Sorrow xiv. To a Lady sleeping xv. Sonnet 'Could I outwear my present state of woe' xvi. Sonnet 'Though night hath climbed' xvii. Sonnet 'Shall the hag Evil die' xviii. Sonnet 'The pallid thunder stricken sigh for gain' xix. Love xx. English War Song xxi. National Song xxii. Dualisms xxiii. [Greek: ohi rheontes] xxiv. Song 'The lintwhite ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the entrance, the dingy parlours of "Mme. Levin, Modes et Toilettes," on the first landing the wailing-rooms of a hag-ridden teacher of vocal culture, on the next several dusty chambers perennially unrented, and gained at the top an open door whose panels sported a simple rectangle of cardboard advertising the tenancy of (in engraved script) Miss Lucy Spode, (in ink) M. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... shrieked Starr Wiley. "I will not face that old hag! What's the use? You've got the goods on me! It's all true, all of it except that I instigated El Negrito's ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... marriage of the lip and beaker Let Joy be born! and in the rosy shine, The slanting starlight of the lifted liquor, Let Care, the hag, be drowned! No more repine At all life's ills! Come, bury them in wine! Room for great guests! Yea, let us usher in Philosophies of old Anacreon And Omar, that, from dawn to glorious dawn, Shall lesson us in ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... hesitate about remaining where we were. We had still four hours of daylight, and by pushing on we might put a distance of ten miles or so between ourselves and the blacks. From what we had seen, and the few words we had understood, we gathered that the old hag, for some cause or other, was instigating her tribe to attack us. Pullingo was consulted on the subject; and when he understood that we proposed moving away, he advised that we should ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... couched on a gentle height, With walls embattled and strong towers bedight. Now seeing that the sun was getting low, Our travellers at quicker pace did go. Thus as in haste near to the gate they came, Before them limped a bent and hag-like dame, With long, sharp nose that downward curved as though It beak-like wished to peck sharp chin below. Humbly she crept in cloak all torn and rent, And o'er a staff her tottering limbs were bent. So ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... what you mean, and I can lay no claim to such a character. Any hag with golden eyes will always find me as affectionate ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... see A broomstick plain as plain can be; On every stick there's a witch astride,— The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch. As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a gleam from her ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for a stuck-up, cross-grained, meddlin', bumble-bee-backed old hag of a soup-slopper; to come stickin' yer big nose into other people's kitchens! If there was a rale misthress to the house instead of the little gal upstairs, you'd be rowled down the front steps afore you'd been let ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... were not prepared for the scene that met us when we drove into the porte cochere. The place seemed deserted, not a servant was to be seen but one old wrinkled hag, who hobbled up to the door saying something in Dutch that made Madame van Hunker clasp her hands and exclaim: 'All fled! Oh, what shall ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... police force!" muttered the Baron. "Every old hag in the village knows about a thing whenever it's supposed to be conducted in absolute secrecy." Then he continued angrily: "He'd have indeed to be a stupid devil of a criminal who would ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... next day an old hag of an Italian woman—one of them fortune-telling swines with a cage of birds on a stand—came and set up just by the main doorway. I soon sent her packing, but, bless you! she was back again in ten minutes, birds and all. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... black cliffs the torrents toil, He watch'd the wheeling eddies boil, Till, from their foam, his dazzled eyes Beheld the River Demon rise; The mountain mist took form and limb Of noontide hag or goblin grim. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... signs that the gift of foreknowledge was in her possession, though she seemed herself to have profited little by so dangerous an endowment. Ellen, being persuaded by her maid, craved a specimen of this wonderful art. The hag, a smoke-dried, dirty-looking beldame, with a patch over one eye, and an idiotic expression of face, began to mutter and make an odd noise at the sight of the sick lady. She took a piece of chalk from her handkerchief, and began her work of divination. First ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time I was taken for the first time to a real play, and it was to that paradise of juvenile spectators, Astley's, where we saw a Highland horror called "Meg Murdoch, or the Mountain Hag," and a mythological after-piece called "Hyppolita, Queen of the Amazons," in which young ladies in very short and shining tunics, with burnished breastplates, helmets, spears, and shields, performed sundry warlike evolutions round her Majesty Hyppolita, who was mounted ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... church, and now drew away into a horror of infinite distance and infinite littleness, the poor soul was very well aware of what must follow, and struggled hard against the approaches of that slumber which was the beginning of sorrows. But his struggles were in vain; sooner or later the night-hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him, strangling and screaming, from his sleep. His dreams were at times commonplace enough, at times very strange: at times they were almost formless, he would be haunted, for instance, by nothing more definite than a certain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this sense of awful space, of barren nothingness with which the desert oppressed her. Instinctively she turned to look for human companionship. Kut-le and Alchise were not to be seen but Molly nodded beside Rhoda's blankets and the thin hag Cesca was curled in the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... afflicted, George thought, and he glanced at them furtively, looking for the various symptoms of which he had read. Or were there, perhaps, some like himself—merely victims of a foolish error, coming to have the hag of dread pulled ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps, And took the youthful pleasures from his days, And chased the youthful smoothness from his brow, That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned To a pale skeleton of what he was; And would have died, but for ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... in this matter is fraught with danger! Listen, sir! How Warfield got possession of this girl or the knowledge of her history I do not know, except that it was through the agency of that accursed hag Nancy Grewell. But that he has her and that he knows all about her is but too certain. That he has not at present legal proof enough to establish her identity and her rights before a court of justice I infer from the fact of his continuing inactive in the matter. But who ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... skinny old hag, carrying a basket of water-bottles, "'tis she, and the other is Terere. I lived with them once at Tutuila. She who is now made a wife and looketh so good and holy went away but a year ago with the captain ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... came to Lady Gower after dinner, and I think intends to go to-day to the Birthday, but such a hag you have no conception of; and a patch which she is obliged to wear upon the lower eyelid, improves the horror of her appearance. She will kill herself, I make ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... capital fellow; and that I no longer feel inclined to pitch him into a lime-kiln at the mere thought of his putting out a hand to Paula. At the same time," and he started to his feet, "even if I help him to bring the poor little girl away from that demented old hag, I cannot and will not continue to be her physician. There are plenty of quacks about in this corpse of a town, and they may ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a very small matter, they thought, and agreed to do it. The Princess with the long nose began to wash as well as she could, but, the more she washed and rubbed, the larger the spots grew. "Ah! you can't wash at all," said the old troll-hag, who was her mother. "Give it to me." But she too had not had the shirt very long in her hands before it looked worse still, and, the more she washed it and rubbed it, the larger and blacker ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... That never crossed their eagle ken: But a' unfrettit turn and say, 'Hoots, but the sport's been grand the day!' For none but Scotsmen born and bred, When ither folk lie snug in bed, Would face yon cauld and watery pass, The eerie peat-hag's dark morass, Where wails the whaup wi' mournful screams, Tae wade a' day in icy streams An' flog the burn wi' feckless flies Though ilka trout declines tae rise, Then hameward crunch wi' empty creel Tae sit and hark wi' unquenched zeal Tae dafties' tales o' lonesome ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... entered into your possessions," jeered the hag; "it is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland in order to rob them of that which is ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Haberdasher fadenisto. Habit kutimo. Habit vesto. Habit of, to be in the kutimi. Habitation logxejo. Habitual kutima. Habituate kutimigi. Hack haki. Hack (horse) cxevaleto. Hackney-coach fiakro. Hag malbelulino. Haggard sovagxa. Haggle marcxandi. Hail hajli. Hail hajlo. Hailstone hajlero. Hair haro. Hair, head of hararo. Hairdresser frizisto. Hairy harajxa. Halberd halebardo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 'imperialism' in the bad sense of the term. But it is certainly true that no state has ever been so completely dominated by it as Germany; and no state less than Britain. It was in the light of this doctrine that the demands of the new scientific industry were interpreted. Hag-ridden by this conception, when the statesmen of Europe awoke to the importance of the non-European world, it was not primarily the economic needs of their countries that they thought of, for these were, on the whole, not ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... made to be loved." There was the irresistible outbreak against "that putrid carcase, that mother of all evil—the French Revolution." It reminded him of the accursed things that crawled in and out of the mouth of the vile hag in Spenser's Cave of Error; and he repeated the nauseous stanza. Mackintosh was to be the faithful knight of the romance, the brightness of whose sword was to flash destruction ...
— Burke • John Morley
... the proper sacrifices—two black rams, which were duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... up alongside the "Lightning Express," as the crowd had begun to call her, that creature turned her head diagonally backward and let fall a smile. The encroaching beast stopped as if he had been shot! His rider plied whip, and forced him again forward upon the track of the equine hag, but with the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... here, all Friendship dies between us; thus hast thou kill'd thy Friend, and satisfied that infernal Hag, thy cursed Mistress, who thus commanded thee: Away, I say, begon, and ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... shops, excepting immediately after the arrival of a ship, are very poorly provided, while the packs, for few have attained to the dignity of tin boxes, brought about by the hawkers, contain the most wretched assortment of goods imaginable. The moment, therefore, that the cargo of a vessel hag been purchased by the retail dealers, all that is really elegant or fashionable is eagerly purchased, and the rejected articles, even should they be equally excellent, when once consigned to the dingy precincts of a Bombay shop, lose all their lustre. The most perfect ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... with a start) "What you have now!" I don't like that phrase! He knows I have this money just as well as I do! The old hag's been blabbing! ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... this old hag is said to have crossed the moor, driving before her a flock of geese, which she proposed to sell to advantage at a neighbouring fair;—for it is well known that the fiend, however liberal in imparting his powers of doing mischief, ungenerously ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... The hag laid down the coins and moved laboriously to the, table. Wallace produced from a drawer a pen, paper and ink, and told the woman to ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Groaning and sighing, a ghastly procession, it dragged its wretchedness past. It was given to Koolau to taste a deeper bitterness, for they hurled imprecations and insults at him as they went by; and the panting hag who brought up the rear halted, and with skinny, harpy-claws extended, shaking her snarling death's head from side to side, she laid a curse upon him. One by one they dropped over the lip-edge and surrendered to ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... election feasts which still survive on Hogarth's canvas. Substitute him for the luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat, who represents the successful candidate in the first picture of the series. A drunken voter is dropping lighted pipe ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is picking his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his neighbour's broken head; an alderman—a very ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... up, rather than brought up, had run away from a hag known as Old One-eye, she had been arrested and committed to prison for eight years. Taught sewing there, she had saved up some three hundred francs. Ignorant, childishly fond of flowers and the open air of the country, she had made Rigolette's acquaintance, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big fight—Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows—and somebody having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad company! Do you see where he is? ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wicked place," she exclaimed in horror, as she passed by some of the foul-smelling closes, or courts, as we call them, where dishevelled hag-like old women sat on door-steps, and filthy, squalid children played in the gutter, where ill-favoured young people of both sexes hung idly about the entrances, chaffing or quarrelling with each other. "Ye police ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... An old hag danced and gesticulated before him, singing the while a monotonous song. The gestures were pantomimic and menaced him with abominable mutilations; the words described in simple and unexpurgated language the grievous death agonies ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Look at it! There's the nose and chin exactly of the extraordinary hag you gave your silk pocket-handkerchief to at parting. Now, I never saw such a miserable old woman as that ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... you must clap your hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural population of England, male and female, and take whatever comes first—be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag, tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age (for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and perennial poverty;—Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced in pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... like of them to be getting twenty pounds! mightn't he as well have said twenty thousand? and tin pounds on Tim too! More power to you, Jonas Brown; tin pounds for a poor boy's warming his shins, and gagging over an owld hag's bit ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... they reached the cave, and one of the men entered, to see what should be found there. And he beheld a hag, horrible to look upon, seated on a rock, and before he could speak, she struck him with her club, and changed him into a stone; and in like manner she dealt with the other three. At ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... here? A girl. Monsieur woos her, but she is turned away. The maiden flies; Monsieur follows, and he overtakes the maiden. Then he bears her away with guards around her, through a deep valley, till he reaches a hut. Now he hands her over to an ugly hag— and the name of that hag is Jubal. Is it not so, Monsieur?" and the crone, turning from the cup, looked with a hideous grin in the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... to have been imprudent. Her father believed that the "old hag" breathed upon her while she was with her mother, who was sketching in the Palace of the Casars; but the Palatine Hill is on high ground, with a foundation of solid masonry, and was guarded by French soldiers, and it would have been difficult to find a more cleanly spot in the city. A German ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... ever!—mother wants you for a while. There's that jade Betty going to come of age, and she means to make the biggest fuss over it ever was heard. She said she would send Wilson over, but I jumped on my tit, and came to tell you myself. You'll come, won't you, old hag?" ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... more manageable and productive form; so that, when Clement began his fine studio behind the old mansion, he felt that at least he could pursue his art, or arts, if he chose to give himself to sculpture, without that dreadful hag, Necessity, standing by him to pinch the features of all his ideals, and give them something ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... old hag, who was just placing on her crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that Betsy Jennings desarves it—was she ever married? ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Shakespeare generally uses the word in an uncomplimentary sense—'hag'—but it is not so used here. The word is used by Spenser in its derivative sense, 'Fair lady,' Faerie Queene, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... solitude in the hotel in the Avenue de Kleber, I yielded to it. I knew the address to which she had gone, and I took a cab and drove there, hating myself. I was received with excessive rudeness by a dirty and hag-like concierge, who, after refusing all information for some minutes, informed me at length that the young lady in question had quitted Paris in company with ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... friendship proffers, now shalt thou behold The allotted length of life." He stamp'd the earth, And dragging a huge coffin as his car, Two GOULS came on, of form more fearful-foul Than ever palsied in her wildest dream Hag-ridden Superstition. Then DESPAIR Seiz'd on the Maid whose curdling blood stood still. And placed her in the seat; and on they pass'd Adown the deep descent. A meteor light Shot from the Daemons, as they dragg'd along The unwelcome load, and ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... harm in the land deils, when a's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country, I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewie Moss. I got a glisk o' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as gray's a tombstane. An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered naebody. Nae doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by there wi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would hae lowped upo' ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it says. It says outrage. It says another wan o' thim ould women has come bechune me an' me daily bread. It says that Tony Scollop's been and hired some ould hag av a gran'mother to shtep in an' discredit the perfession. I was a lad av tin years, sor, when I furst shtepped upon the boords av a doime moosaum in the well-known characther av the Son av the Cannibal King. From that day to this, sor, I have exhibited my charrums to the deloighted ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... to risk a shot from his strong eyes. They were like blue stones, full of the cold glitter of their fire. It was at times like this, when a man stands naked confronting his purpose, that one saw the hag riding on the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... woman was Martha, and an agreeable contrast to the grim, decrepit hag, which my fancy had conjured up, as the depository of all the horrible tales in which I doubted not this old place was most fruitful. She welcomed me and her master with a profusion of gratulations, alternately kissing our hands and apologising for the liberty, until at length Lord ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... says of his friend's legs, "we will confine ourselves to bandy. He is gone, my friends, where his legs would never be called in question." They go on to the discussion of his nose, and Mrs. Jiniwin inclines to the view that it is flat. "Aquiline, you hag! Aquiline," cries Mr. Quilp, pushing in his head and striking his nose with his fist. There is nothing better in the whole brutal exuberance of the character than that gesture with which Quilp punches his own face with his own fist. It is indeed a perfect symbol; for Quilp is always fighting himself ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... she answered, flashing a curious glance upon me. "In truth, I do not quite know why; but from no lack of suitors, since, were she but a hideous hag, an empress would find these. Olaf, you may have learned that I was not born in the purple. I was but a Greek girl of good race, not even noble, to whom God gave a gift of beauty; and when I was young I saw a man who took my fancy, also of old race, yet but a merchant of fruits ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... Of course the old hag was there without being asked. Not to be asked was just what she wanted, that she might have a sort of reason for doing what she wished to do. For somehow even the wickedest of creatures likes a pretext for ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... petticoats. There's contamination in her circumference, and she trembles with guilt down to the extremities of her corollaries. Ah! you're found out, you rectilineal antecedent, and equiangular old hag! 'Tis with you the devil will fly away, you porter-swiping similitude of ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... forlorn and wind-swept house where John Manning lay. An unkempt and hideous old crone as black as night opened the door for him. He left in the hall his hat and overcoat and a little square box he had brought in his hand; and then he followed the ebony hag up-stairs to Colonel Manning's room. Here at the door she left him, after giving a sharp knock. A weak voice ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "The hag is astride This night for a ride, The devils and she together: Through thick and through thin, Now out and now in, Though ne'er ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... by the same authority, as early as 5th January 1592. She is noticed in "Westward Hoe!" 1607, where Clare says: "O Master Linstock, 'tis no walking will serve my turn: have me to bed, good, sweet Mistress Honeysuckle. I doubt that old hag Gillian of Braineford has bewitched ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... did not come down, nor did she give any answer. The "hag" was trembling violently, and saw that all was lost. If the priest were only here! If she could only have gone and returned with him! ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... which Duke Lodovico is represented alternately as Fortune, driving the squalid figure of Poverty away with a golden wand, and throwing his ducal mantle over a helpless youth who flies before the ugly hag; or as supreme Wisdom, wearing the spectacles which can pierce through all disguises, and pronouncing sentence between Envy on the one hand and Justice on the other. Then Bramante painted those frescoes on the walls of the Castello of Milan, in which the Moro was seen crowned ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... I flung down a knife with which I had armed myself; for the old hag on bringing in the wine had removed ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the indignity of allowing this dessicated hag to pass her fumbling hands all over her body, pinching her and prodding her. The old woman smelt horribly of daikon (pickled horse-radish). Furthermore the terrified girl had to answer a battery of questions as to her personal habits and her former marital ...
— Kimono • John Paris |
