"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stupendous workshops become beautiful to me as my being merges into harmony with them and dilates with the emotion of intenser and fuller life. The Sistine Madonna is generally regarded as beautiful. But what is the beauty in the unspeakable witch on the canvas of Frans Hals? Harmony of color and of composition is employed by Raphael in the rendering of a figure and in the expression of an emotion both of which relate themselves to the veneration of mankind. Maternity, Christian or pagan, divine or ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... in Ayrshire, on the banks of "bonny Doon," in a clay biggin not far from "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," the scene of the witch dance in Tam O'Shanter. His father was a hard-headed, God-fearing tenant farmer, whose life and that of his sons was a harsh struggle with poverty. The crops failed; the landlord pressed for his rent; for weeks at a time the family tasted no meat; yet this life of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... 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 ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... I am bould to say that yersilf, honored as ye are fer hevin' the biggest hid on the shmallest body in the world, had yer hid been as big as a base dhrum an' yer body as shmall as a marble, ye would be regarded as av no impartance in comparison wid this ould witch av a Gran'mother Cruncher." ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... glance and 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 of that encounter ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... brought to the place of their execution, which was on Broadway Hill, in sight of Campden, the mother, who was reputed a witch and to have bewitched her sons, so that they would confess nothing while she lived, was executed first. After which, Richard being upon the ladder, professed as he had done all along that he was wholly innocent of the fact for which he was then to die, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... wanted a little girl like you!' said the old woman. 'You will see how well we shall get on together.' While she combed her hair Gerda had forgotten all about Kay, for the old woman was learned in the magic art; but she was not a bad witch, she only cast spells over people for a little amusement, and she wanted to keep Gerda. She therefore went into the garden and waved her hooked stick over all the rose-bushes, and however beautifully they were flowering, all sank down into ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, "in linked sweetness ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... Circumspice. Is not diplomacy, unkindly called by Voltaire the field of lies, as able as ever it was to dupe governments and governed by grand abstract catchwords veiling obscure and inexplicable purposes, and turning the whole world over with blood and tears, to a strange Witch's Sabbath?"[11] This is his ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... 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 ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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 children's hearts ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... looks like an ancient Greek statue," remarked a learned advocate, who was an Academician and corresponding member on history. "She is the very image of Eve," broke forth the prior of the Franciscans. "She is a fine woman," exclaimed the colonel of militia. "She is a serpent, a witch, a siren, an imp," added the corregidor. "But she is a good woman, an angel, a lovely creature, and as innocent as a child four years old," all agreed in saying on leaving the mill, crammed with grapes or nuts, on their way to their dull ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... days, when the people first began to find Christianity too serious, and devised a merrier faith for France, and would have bright-glancing, soubrette Madonnas everywhere—letting their own dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burned for a witch. And thenceforward, things went their merry way, straight on, 'ca allait, ca ira,' to the merriest days of ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... "Do not disturb yourself, leave me alone to act; when I have a good reason for what I do, I despise the old witch." ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... 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' barelegged ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... of the swallows, Far flutters the weft of the grass Spun dense over desolate hollows More pale than the clouds as they pass: Thick woven as the weft of a witch is Round the heart of a thrall that hath sinned, Whose youth and the wrecks of its riches Are waifs on ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... angels battered the walls of Heaven with, according to Milton, lifted its muzzle defiantly towards the sky. Why, you blessed old rattletrap, said I to myself, I know you as well as I know my father's spectacles and snuff-box! And that same crazy witch of a Memory, so divinely wise and foolish, travels thirty-five hundred miles or so in a single pulse-beat, makes straight for an old house and an old library and an old corner of it, and whisks out a volume ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the next day with plain marks of the injury they had inflicted on the froward cat,—which was sure evidence of witchery and sorcery. Doubtless full many a human being has been put to death, in times past, on no stronger evidence of being a witch. Humanity did not come to the rescue of the cat and bring her out from the shadow of ignominy that hung over her in mediaeval times until 1618, when an interdict was issued in Flanders prohibiting the festive ceremony of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep; An' all us other childern, when the supper things is done, We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about, An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you Ef you ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... lifting of the latch would the door open.—How could the woman—witch she must be—have locked it? He proceeded to unlock it. He tried one key, then another. He went over the whole bunch. Mystery upon mystery!—not one of them would turn. Bethinking himself, he began to try them the other way, and soon found one to throw the bolt ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... flower called that—noli me tangere—or some such 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
... topic of 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 ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... attempts which have been made to turn the elements we have been considering to a profitable end. I have in my thoughts the invention of ether-inhalation and the induction of trance in mesmerism. The witch narcotised her pupils in order to produce in them delusive visions; the surgeon stupifies his patient to prevent the pain of an operation being felt. The fanatic preacher excites convulsions and trance in his auditory to persuade them that they are visited by the Holy Spirit; Mesmer produced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... "you are uncommonly like—you are that accursed witch of a hare which cost me my life. There are the white marks on your back, and there is the grey splotch on your ear. Oh! if only I had a ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... lived a certain lady, and she had three dochters. The auldest o' them said to her mither: "Mither, bake me a bannock, and roast me a collop, for I'm gaun awa' to seek my fortune." Her mither did sae; and the dochter gaed awa' to an auld witch washerwife and telled her purpose. The auld wife bade her stay that day, and gang and look out o' her back door, and see what she could see. She saw nocht the first day. The second day she did the same, and saw nocht. On the third day she looked again, and saw a coach-and-six ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... should stay at home. Keep right on utilizing your vocal chords. Chatter on incessantly. Be a consistent ass until the last man is out and the umpire crawls into his cyclone cellar. Then go home and bathe what's left of your voice in witch hazel, and get ready ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... weather and her 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 ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... witch. The Missis consults him. He knows everything. But he hasn't done the Missis any good yet, though she's paid him hundreds of dollars. But he told us that the stars told him we could find ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... have been in some difficulties. I was selling so many Testaments that the priests became alarmed, and prevailed on the government to put a stop to my selling any more; they were likewise talking of prosecuting me as a witch, but they have thought better of it. I hear it is very cold in England, pray take care of yourself, I shall send you more in a few weeks.—God bless you, my ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... and I are the only ones on the mountain with more than one can. I have three cans and that makes me very clever—so clever that I'm a good Sorcerer, if I do say it myself. My poor wife had four cans of brains and became a remarkable witch, but alas! that was before those terrible enemies, the Skeezers, transformed her ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of Shakespeare's "Aroint thee, witch!" I find in several books of that age the words aloigne and eloigne—that is,—"keep your distance!" or "off with you!" Perhaps "aroint" was a corruption of "aloigne" by the vulgar. The common etymology from ronger to gnaw ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... to her parents: "I have heard so much of the old witch that I will go and see her. People say she is a wonderful old woman, and has many marvelous things in her house, and I am very curious to ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... part in the Leicester School (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the final Story about a little Indian ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the motive of Vera's life was her pride. Quite early, I should imagine, she had adopted that as the sort of talisman that would save her from every kind of ill. She told me once that when she was a little girl, the story of the witch who lured two children into the wood and then roasted them in her oven had terrified her beyond all control, and she would lie awake and shiver for hours because of it. It became a symbol of life to her—the Forest ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... they sounded as if they believed themselves—as the witch-burners had believed in witches. He was sweating when the guards ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... other things. That little Yankee girl had really made good sport all the way home. He had not been dull for a moment; she had teased and provoked him so. Her eyes, too, were wonderfully pretty, and her small, pointed chin, and her witch-like imperious ways. Was it her money, the sense that she could do as she liked with most people, that made her so domineering and masterful? Very likely. On the journey he had put it down just to a natural and very surprising impudence. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more beer than was good for him, and the face of a pretty girl had bewitched him, stirring up desire. He wanted to kiss her lips... There were no women in the Ypres salient. Nothing pretty or soft. It was hell up there, and this girl was a pretty witch, bringing back thoughts of the other side—for life, womanhood, love, caresses which were good for the souls and bodies of men. It was a starved life up there in the salient... Why shouldn't she give him her lips? Wasn't he fighting for France? Wasn't ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... 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 ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Provost?' said Summertrees. 'Your wife's a witch, man; you should nail a horse-shoe on your chamber door. Ha, ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Compiegne, her countrymen doing nothing to save or to rescue her, the Maid was taken by Burgundian soldiers. Before the end of the year her captors sold her to the English, who firmly believed her to be a witch. ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... of what the mare could do to me, by fair play and horse-trickery, but that the glory of sitting upon her seemed to be too great for me; especially as there were rumours abroad that she was not a mare after all, but a witch. However, she looked like a filly all over, and wonderfully beautiful, with her supple stride, and soft slope of shoulder, and glossy coat beaded with water, and prominent eyes full of docile fire. Whether this came from her Eastern ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Rosamond Redding; but the girls call her Rose Red. She's the greatest witch in the school; not exactly pretty, you know, but sort of killing and fascinating. She's always getting into the most awful scrapes. Mrs. Florence would had expelled her long ago, if she hadn't been such a favorite; and Mr. Redding's ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem.... What else but her meek, saintly demeanor won, from the enemies that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? "Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself, "ten thousand men wept; and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition." What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... 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 whatever your ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... recalling a certain conversation, in which I had refused to satisfy her curiosity. Brigit's quick, Irish mind has a way of matching mental jigsaw puzzles, even when vital bits appear to be missing; and if she could make a cat's paw of Cleopatra, the witch would not be above doing it. I bore her no grudge—who could bear soft-eyed, laughing, yet tragic Biddy a grudge? —but I wished that she and Monny were at the other end ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "demands, I trow, sharper practice than has hitherto been applied, and I do admire at the milk-and-water temper of the worthy Assistant at this present. Not thus is he wont to speak, but in the common is zealous even unto slaying. What incantation or witch of Endor hath blinded him, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... also that at which he stared—herself. Clad in a dress made apparently entirely of flexible dull gold scales, the long lines of her figure unbroken by any belt or trimming, the woman in the glass stood smiling like a witch of old, a deep colour in her cheeks, the palms of her hands held down by her side, the fingers outspread and slightly lifted as if in water. Quite silently she stood and smiled until the man before her ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... night was 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
... "But it was not you we were trying to deceive. If you tell us how you knew, I'll tie the Colonel on a horse and let you lead him to the altar. She must be a witch, sir!" ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... shovel against it to make the fire burn?' JOHNSON. 'They play the 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.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... by a poor man occupying a lowlier place in the world, whom this ill-advised ancestor had been the means of bringing to justice for the crime of witchcraft. Hawthorne apparently found the idea of the history of the Pyncheons in his own family annals. His witch-judging ancestor was reported to have incurred a malediction from one of his victims, in consequence of which the prosperity of the race faded utterly away. "I know not," the passage I have already ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Paris. Jeanne, ill-supported by the royal troops, failed in her attack on the city walls, and was made prisoner by the Burgundians; they handed her over to the English, and she was, after previous indignities, and such treatment as chivalry alone could have dealt her, condemned as a witch, and burnt as a relapsed heretic at Rouen in 1431. Betrayed by the French Court, sold by the Burgundians, murdered by the English, unrescued by the people of France which she so much loved, Jeanne d'Arc died the martyr's death, a pious, simple soul, a heroine of the purest metal. ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... in a transport of joy, 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
... Greek virgin, though noted for his abilities elsewhere, found himself quite another man with his wife, and could by no means enjoy her; at which he was so enraged, that he threatened to kill her, suspecting her to be a witch. As 'tis usual in things that consist in fancy, she put him upon devotion, and having accordingly made his vows to Venus, he found himself divinely restored the very first night after his oblations and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... wonders:—here is a girl who can bear to gargle her mouth with melted lead, put her delicate feet into the same scalding material, and pass through her hands a flaming red-hot poker! I am inclined to believe, that were the present an age of superstition, she might be burnt for a witch, were she not happily incombustible. For my own part, I sincerely hope that this pyrophorous prodigy will never think of quitting her own country; and as I am a bachelor, I verily believe I should be tempted to make her an offer of my hand, could I flatter myself with any chance ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... child was 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 ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... 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
... contribute to his collection. Erskine accordingly put him in communication with Scott, who felt highly flattered by the Monk's request, and wrote to him that his ballads were quite at his service. Lewis replied, thanking him for the offer. "A ghost or a witch," he wrote, "is a sine qua non ingredient in all the dishes of which I mean to compose my hobgoblin repast." Later in the same year Lewis came to Edinburgh and was introduced to Scott, who found ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... hast 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 ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... ceremonies; they might be used for evil by persons having specially great powers over them. The proper course for common-place persons at ordinary times was to follow routine fetish observances; but when beset by witch-work the only escape lay in the services of witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices were called for, and on the greatest occasions nothing short ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... 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 ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Nor did the witch-doctoress say anything; she only fixed her beady eyes upon his face. Hadden returned the compliment, staring at her with all his might, till suddenly he became aware that he was vanquished in this curious duel. His brain grew confused, and ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... out to kill this Devil-child. But meantime the village had got hold of Messua and her husband, who were undoubtedly the father and mother of this Devil-child, and had barricaded them in their own hut, and presently would torture them to make them confess they were witch and wizard, and then they would be burned ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... one little snowy wisp of cloud after another kept detaching itself, like smoke from a volcano, and blowing southward in some high stream of air: Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable task, making the weather, like a Lapland witch. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "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 you occupy your time?" ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... changed the whole tenor of his career. In that year, the steamer "General Jackson," owned by Jacob Vanderbilt (a brother of the famous Commodore), and plying between New York and Peekskill, blew up at Grassy Point. A friend of Mr. Drew at once put a boat called the "Water Witch" in her place, and Mr. Drew, to oblige his friend, advanced one thousand dollars toward the enterprise. Commodore Vanderbilt was not willing that any rival should contest the river trade with him, and built ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... 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 simultaneous vision of the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... theory of the joined continents. Language as a criterion of the unity of the races. The pyramids. The tales of the Egyptian priests. The deep sea soundings by the ship Challenger. The beating of the weird drums in the night. Evidence of the natives' belief in witch doctors. The plan of advance outlined by John. The boys, accompanied by John and portion of the force advancing. Nearing the village. Hearing the shouting and the drums. Causes of the demonstrations. A captive. At the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... 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
... door) Mattie, come out of that store with a bottle of witch hazely oil quick as you can. Jim Weston, I'm gonna arrest you for this. You Lum Boger. Where is that marshall? Lum Boger! (LUM BOGER detaches himself ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... however, added that he remembered his mother saying that whoever in bad health drank of the well was sure to get better. But the majority agreed that the former was the right version of the story—for was she not a witch, an old hating witch, whose delight was to do mischief? One said he had heard that she took the shape of a young woman sometimes, as beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all, for she struck every man who ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... rides since the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme,— On Apuleius's Golden Ass, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass, Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,— The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... were looking strangely. Their coats stared, and their ears were cold and damp, while they seemed glad of the company of the men, whinnying low and rubbing themselves against them as they came into the stalls. I heard one thrall say to another that the whole stable had surely been witch ridden in the night. ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... educating people who do not understand how to be sanitary, who live in filth and disease and die needlessly, and how can you take away old superstitions and not put new science in their places, or deprive the people of witch doctors without offering them substitutes? So the missionaries became physicians, and one of the most beneficent enterprises that history records is medical missions. What is the use, however, of helping people to get well when their economic ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... powers are enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the odd clean beasts of Noah's sevens. How often has our village blacksmith 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 numbers, or increase in size? ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... to press me to marry him. I think it was mainly, I am sure it was in part, that I might never again ride the midnight moor—"like a witch out on her own mischievous hook," as he had once said. He knew that, if I caught sight of anything like my uncle anywhere, John or no John, ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... does she's nane the less willin' to be an unconscious aid, and put a flag at the window at the biddin' o' Olivia to keep the witches awa'. The same flag that keeps aff a witch may easily fetch a bogle. There's but ae time noo and then when it's safe for the lad to venture frae the mainland, and for that there maun be a signal o' some kind, otherwise, if I ken his spirit, he wad never be aff this rock. I'm tellin' ye a' ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... witch, who had half starved us at Montpellier, for want of provisions, when we went, and for want of fire to dry us, when we came back, left a piece of candle in my budget, which I did not omit to return ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... diabolical magic is very real. Is not that, as it appears to some, denying and affirming at the same time the same thing under different names? Tibullus took care not to make nothing of these distinctions, when he said: "As I was promised by a witch, whose magical operations never fail." While treating in this book of witchcraft and magic, it is affirmed that the demon intervenes on both, and that both work wonders." But if that is true, it is impossible to find any difference between them. If both perform wonders, and that ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Barbara Yelloway, pulling the sleeve of the Factor, "dinna be getting ower near the hellicat witch—wha kens but she may be asking for ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... transmogrified; and thus Phaon, for whom kind-hearted Sappho run wild, grew young again, for Venus's use; so Tithon by Aurora's means; so Aeson by Medea, and Jason also, who, if you'll believe Pherecides and Simonides, was new-vamped and dyed by that witch; and so were the nurses of jolly Bacchus, and their ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... tent that she was directed, and when she was once within and her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she saw the old hag, looking more witch-like than ever, with her head tied up in a flaming yellow bandanna, and her shoulders wrapped in a great ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... of medicine, as they call it. One is made of the roots and barks of trees, berries and bushes which they take, and some of which we still use, like witch hazel and sassafras. But they also have another kind of medicine, which is like what might be called a charm; as some pretty stone, a feather, a bone or two, or anything they might have picked up in the woods as it took their fancy. These things they wear around their necks or arms and think ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... to one another in order to trace out this mystery. The character of Lady Macbeth has caused many a one in Germany to rack his brains since the time of Tieck. Up till that time she passed simply as Megaera, as an "arch witch," as Goethe calls her. This opinion prevailed not only in Germany but in the English motherland too. But this view went against the grain with the German spirit. Therefore Ludwig Tieck first looked upon Lady Macbeth as a tender, loving wife. From this time on there arose critics and ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... Devonshire folks speak shyly and with bated breath of the "good people;" and even in the year of grace 1879 a Warwickshire laborer was had up before the magistrates for having with a pitchfork half killed a poor old woman whom he declared to be a witch. But be that as it may, in the reign of James I. no one doubted the existence of the spirit-world about us, and on St. John's Eve all its denizens, good and bad, were supposed to wander freely where they would. One only thing they feared, and that was the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... that he had gypsy blood, That in his heart was guile: Yet he had gone through fire and flood Only to win her smile. Some say his grandam was a witch, A black witch from beyond the Nile, Who kept an image in a niche And talked with it the while. And by her hut far down the lane Some say they would not pass at night, Lest they should hear an unked strain ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... impetuous penitent the kiss of peace, in a slight embrace which was like the accolade given by a monarch to new knights.[308] The whole scene is ignoble. We seem to be watching an unclean cauldron, with Theresa's mother, a cringing and babbling crone, standing witch-like over it and infusing suspicion, falsehood, and malice. When minds are thus surcharged, any accident suffices to release the evil creatures that lurk ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... clothes fly gently up from the ground and enclose his person—all unthinkable in real life, but readily possible by running the motion-picture film backward! The fairy prince commands the princess to appear, consigns the bad brothers to instant annihilation, turns the witch into a cat, confers life on inanimate things; and many more startling and apparently incomprehensible effects are carried out with actual reality, by stop-work photography. In one case, when the command for the heroine to come forth is given, the camera is stopped, the young ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... 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 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... there; he whom I love more than father or mother, he to whom my thoughts cling and to whose hands I am ready to commit the happiness of my life. I will dare anything to win him and to gain an immortal soul! While my sisters are dancing in my father's palace I will go to the sea-witch, of whom I have always been very much afraid; she will perhaps be able to ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... again—"a long, thin ghost, standin' at my bedside. The light was so dim that I couldn't well make it out, but I saw that it was white, or pale-like, and that it had on a pointed cap, like the cap o' an old witch. I thought I should ha' died outright, and I lay for full five minits tremblin' like a leaf and starin' full in its face. At last I started up in despair, not knowin' well wot to do; and the moment I did ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... and went; where chariots rushed past in hot haste, or moved stately by in jubilant procession; where at night lonely forms would steal through the city of the silent, with but the moon to see them go, bent on ghastly conference with witch ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... if Pony did not want to go home and let his folks find out about the melon patch, to take him to his mother's log-barn, and get a witch-doctor to come and tend him; but Pony said that he thought they had better keep on, and then Jim trotted and asked him if the jolting did not do him some good. He said he just wished there was an Indian medicine-man ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... Prince The Crow How Six Men travelled through the Wide World The Wizard King The Nixy The Glass Mountain Alphege, or the Green Monkey Fairer-than-a-Fairy The Three Brothers The Boy and the Wolves, or the Broken Promise The Glass Axe The Dead Wife In the Land of Souls The White Duck The Witch and her Servants The Magic Ring The Flower Queen's Daughter The Flying Ship The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son The Story of King Frost The Death of the Sun-hero The Witch The Hazel-nut Child The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus Prince Ring The Swineherd How to ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... Rabbi Abhu, "Ye say that the souls of the righteous are treasured up under the throne of glory; how then had the Witch of Endor power to bring up the prophet Samuel by necromancy?" The Rabbi replied, "Because that occurred within twelve months after his death; for we are taught that during twelve months after death the body is preserved and the soul soars up and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... army of them there are! I 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
... down to soothe the weary eyes, How all the griefs and heart-aches we have known Come up like pois'nous vapors that arise From some base witch's caldron, when the crone, To work some potent spell, her magic plies. The past which held its share of bitter pain, Whose ghost we prayed that Time might exorcise, Comes up, is lived and suffered o'er again, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... before Herod and so intoxicated him with her skill and beauty, that, heated and overcome, he promised—the promise showing the man—to give her whatever she might ask, even to the half of his kingdom; and when the young witch, well drilled by her mother in the craft of hell, asked the head of the man of God, she ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... powder towards them, having persuaded the enemy that she alone would gain the victory by virtue of that powder. Barreto understood the meaning of this superstitious act, having seen similar things in India, and gave orders to level a field piece at the notorious witch, which was so well pointed that she was blown to atoms, at which the Kafrs were astonished, as they believed her immortal. The enemy however advanced, but without any order, either from ignorance or because they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... twisted strata, strange distorted cedar and cactus, uncanny shapes of rock pinnacles, in colors somber and strange. They stopped at noon in the shadow of a weathered overhanging rock, with the profile of a witch. The atmosphere of dissension had by this time permeated the crew and this meal, usually so jovial, was eaten with no general conversation and all were glad to take to the boats as soon as ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... also strige), a 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
... really blush to acknowledge that we cannot. The adorable creature has been telling a parcel of fibs about us, by way of revenge for something that we did to Mr. Longfellow (who admires her very much) and for calling her 'a pretty little witch' into the bargain. The facts of the case seem to be these: We were invited 'deliver'(stand and deliver) a poem before the Boston Lyceum. As a matter of course, we accepted the invitation. The audience was 'large and distinguished.' ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... witch winks— The fat begins to fry; There's nobody home but Jumping Joan, Father ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... days that she pondered came a wife of the witch-folk there, A woman young and lovesome, and shaped exceeding fair, And she spake with Signy the Queen, and told her of deeds of her craft, And how the might was with her her soul from her body to waft And to take the shape ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... remedy could allay this torture, the Holy Grail decreed that it should be stilled by a guileless fool, who, enlightened by pity, would find the only cure. But, as he tarried, many knights travelled all over the world in search of simples, and Kundry, a wild, witch-like woman, also sought in ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... Bottle (The), an oracle sought for by Rabelais, to solve the knotty point "whether Panurge (2 syl.) should marry or not." The question had been put to sibyl and poet, monk and fool, philosopher and witch, but none could answer it. The oracle was ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... A woman was murdered without cause close by the camp; the murderer said she was a witch and speared her: the body is exposed till the affair is settled, probably by a ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... preaching and reasoning would have done. No man living could have done the thing with like effect, nor any woman save one of her complete self-possession and natural authority. The younger villagers chuckle over the jest of it to this day, and the old witch-doctor himself was crouching at her feet and, as one may say, eating out of her hand, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... knowing 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
... only be slain by the noble knight, the enchantments which can only be broken by the outwitting of the evil witch, the lady who can only be won by perils bravely endured, form the material of moral lessons which no other method of teaching could so impress upon ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... was a 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 the good side" ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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
... in the evening repaired to the place of deposit. Joseph, senior, first made a circle, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter: 'This circle,' said he, 'contains the treasure.' He then stuck in the ground a row of witch-hazel sticks around the said circle, for the purpose of keeping off the evil spirits. Within this circle he made another, of about eight or ten feet in diameter. He walked around three times on the periphery of this last circle, muttering ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... cell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future could be altered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There must be additional dimensions of time; lines of alternate probabilities. Something like William Seabrook's witch-doctor friend's Fan-Shaped Destiny. When I brought memories of the future back to the present, I added certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an entirely new line of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... You have not been thinking much of these things. You have your eye upon Fame, and that old witch lives in another direction. To illustrate—our bull-necked friend and illustrious critic, James Rutlidge, in my story, will be named 'Sensual.' His distinguished father was one 'Lust.' The horrible example, Mr. Edward ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... attendants are seated behind. The Gypsy pulls the bell, when is heard the soft cry of 'Quien es'; the door, unlocked by means of a string, recedes upon its hinges, when in walks the Gitana, the witch-wife of Multan, with a look such as the tiger-cat casts when she stealeth from ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... already referred to the old method of obtaining certain 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 of a second, where nothing of the kind appeared before. Today, stop-camera work is ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... one eye, which he snaps up, and gets first a sword 'that puts a whole army to flight, be it ever so great', we have the 'one-eyed Odin', degenerated into an old hag, or rather—by no uncommon process—we have an old witch fused by popular tradition into a mixture of Odin and the three Nornir. Again, when he gets that wondrous ship 'which can sail over fresh water and salt water, and over high hills and deep dales,' and which is so small that he can put it into his pocket, and ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... is ordinarily so scientific and unsentimental, has fallen in love with Allegra. He didn't so much as glance at her tonsils; he simply picked her up in his arms and hugged her. Oh, she is a little witch! Whatever is to become ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... "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 a boy. I put it ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 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
... the infant that was baptized with the grandiloquent names of Anne Rene, Gontran de Duepair, Marquis de Champdoce, was the bastard child of a girl living near Montroire, who was known in the neighborhood as "The Witch." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... only say I would prefer the water-witch. He at least would not represent a class of neighbors who have made themselves systematically ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... 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
... woman is about to be one's wife! He could have believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he was in the hands of a witch. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Machiavelian policy hath made a Sanctuary for Treason: he must talk with none but Cobham; because, saith he, one Witness can never condemn me. For Brook said unto sir Griffith Markham, 'Take heed how you do make my lord Cobham acquainted; for whatsoever he knoweth, Raleigh the witch will get it out of him.' As soon as Raleigh was examined on one point of Treason concerning my lord Cobham he wrote to him thus: 'I have been examined of you, and confessed nothing.' Further, you sent to him by your trusty Francis Kemish,[12] that one witness could not condemn; ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... hopes, half secular, like seers by Endor's witch: Beyond our barren Maryland God's folks were wise and rich; Where climbing spires and easy pews showed how the preacher thrived, And all old brethren paid their rents, and many ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... was not the worst. Hannah listened with growing suspicion while Master Necronsett explained the rest of it. All his magic consisted in the use of a "witch plant," the whole virtue of which depended on one thing. The sick person must be the only one to handle or care for it, from the seed up ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Witch and a Goblin led the sprites; Out from the sky they sprung; And down the milky way they slid, And over a chasm swung. The streams around ran witches' broth, The fumes were strong and rank. These Elfin creatures all were wroth, While of ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... gravely supposes that transformations take place between men and the lower animals. He makes Aristomenes tell a story in which a witch appears, "able to drag down the firmament, to support the world on her shoulders, crumble mountains, raise the dead, dethrone gods, extinguish the stars, and illuminate hell." She changed one of her lovers, of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... also many psychics in the ignorant and undeveloped classes. The witch women and seers, and many of the colored races are psychic. In the past, these people were looked upon as witches and their words and works were ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... 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 natural enemies of truth and enlightenment. Bulan, however, had tried ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... 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 ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... 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
... judgment was, upon the whole, —That lady is the dullest soul!— Then tapt their forehead in a jeer, As who should say—She wants it here! She may be handsome, young, and rich, But none will burn her for a witch! A party next of glittering dames, From round the purlieus of St. James, Came early, out of pure good will, To see the girl in dishabille. Their clamour, 'lighting from their chairs Grew louder all the way up stairs; At ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... fair-haired boy of seventeen, sauntering into his sister's room and taking a somewhat insecure seat upon a fancy table, where, with hands in pockets, he regarded her quizzically. "Great Scott, what a turn out! You look like a magician in the midst of a magic circle. Are you going to witch the lot into newts and toads? Whence this thusness? You won't persuade me that it's a fit of neatness and you're actually tidying. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... 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 ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... fleyt (frightened) at ye. Ye're no sic a witch as that comes till, though ye div ken a body's fit upo' the flags! My blin' luckie deddy can du mair nor that!" said Malcolm, irritated by her persistency, threats and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... living-room after supper for evening prayer. Jane and I, the cook, and the two little maids were there because we found comfort and joy. Old Ishi, the gardener, attended because he hoped to discover the witch that made the music inside the baby organ. At the same time he propitiated the foreigner's god, though he kept on the good side of his own deities by going immediately afterwards to offer apology and incense at ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... there occurred an event which is the obscurest part of his history; for I know not who or what it was—my mind being in a mist about it—that came to or accidentally found him lying on a bed of grass and dried leaves in his thorny hiding-place. It may have been a gipsy or a witch—there were witches in those days—who, suddenly looking on his upturned face and seeing the hunger in his unfathomable eyes, loved him, in spite of her malignant nature; or a spirit out of the earth; or only a very wise man, an ancient, white-haired ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... river, The blue-bird notes upon the soft breeze born, As high in air he carols, faintly quiver. The weeping birch like banners idly waving, Bends to the stream, its spicy branches laving, Beaded with dew, the witch elms' tassels shiver, The timid rabbit from the furze is peeping, And from the springing spray the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... theater. She sang and one believed again in the benevolence of heaven; in immortal love. To the distressed woman effacing herself in the corner of the empty box it was all a sort of inconceivable witch-work. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Dreadful Griffin (that is, a hundred miles away) there lived a Wicked Witch, and he went to consult her as to how he might get at the Princess. When the Wicked Witch heard what a sad effect White Cats had on the Griffin's constitution she said that she would have expected a Griffin of his coils ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... red-headed witch from the first, with an air of general uncanniness in everything she did and said. Until after she was six there was no believing a word she uttered. Her conversation was bravely indifferent to considerations of truth or falsehood, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... he said that he would give it to them; only Jason must first yoke certain bulls that breathed fire from their nostrils, and slay a great dragon. But the Princess Medea saw Jason, and loved him, and purposed in her heart that she would help him. And being a great witch, and knowing all manner of drugs and enchantments, she gave him an ointment which kept all that anointed themselves with it so that they took no harm in battle with man or beast. But first Jason had promised, swearing to her a great oath, that she should be his wife, ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... success of the childbirth, and to suck out the souls of children; and the people act thus in order to prevent them. He who does not wish to have this observed in public, through fear of punishment, removes his wife to another house for the parturition, if he thinks that the witch is in his. The procurer of this witch they say is the bird tictic, [352] and that this bird, by flying and singing, shows the witch or osuang the house where there is a parturition, and even guides him to work other misfortunes. Consequently, whenever they see or hear the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... that Elspeth is a witch," declared Ailsa. "Never do I see her but I must shrink away and cross myself in dread of her. Why do all the brave men of Bute fear her more than they would fear a band of armed Norsemen? She casts her spells upon our kine so that ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... come to live at The Ship, such a witch as had never before danced along the Spear Point sands. Her name was Maria Peck, and she was the daughter of Mrs. Peck's late lamented husband's vagabond brother—"a seafaring man and a wastrel if ever there ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell |
