"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... received the names of Ob, or Pythia; according to the not unusual custom for the priest or priestess of any god to take the name of the deity they served. See Selden, De Dis Syris, Synt. 1. c. 2. It is a curious coincidence, that as the Witch of Endor is called "Oub," and the African sorceress "Obi," from the serpent-deity Oub, so the old English name of a witch, "hag," bears apparent relationship to the word hak, the ancient British name of a species of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... is the case with that diverting, devilish, savoury, and obscene series he called Caprices. It is worth remembering that Delacroix was one of the first artists in Paris who secured a set of these rare plates. The witch's sabbaths and the modern version of them, prostitution and its symbolism, filled the brain of Goya. He always shocks any but robust nerves with his hybrid creatures red in claw and foaming at mouth as they fight in midair, hideous and unnamable phantoms of the dark. His owls are theologians. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... a ship (I'll show you how to make one out of paper, exactly like W), and sailed up into the sky, for the ship was a Ship of Stars—you make X's for stars; but that's a witch-ship; so it stuck fast in Y, which is a cleft ash-stick, and then came a stroke of lightning, Z, and burnt them all up!" He stopped, out ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... they still look with veneration on a place which has been hallowed many years, and refuse to give up any alluring name by which they have known it. A notable example of this is offered by what is universally called the Old Witch House, situated at the corner of Essex and North Streets, Salem. A dark, scowling building, set far enough back from the street for a modern drugstore to stand in front of it, the house itself is certainly sufficiently sinister in appearance to warrant its ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... O Black and Unknown Bards Sence You Went Away The Creation The White Witch Mother Night O Southland Brothers ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... of a material human body, a bulk of a hundred and fifty pounds' weight more or less. He furiously assailed Zwingle's objection to this monstrous nonsense, as "a devil's mask and grandchild of that old witch, mistress Reason." 27 The Roman Church teaches, and her adherents devoutly believe, that the house of the Virgin Mary was conveyed on the wings of angels from Nazareth to the eastern slope of the Apennines above the Adriatic Gulf.28 The English Church, consistently interpreted, teaches that ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... eastward all that day and night, under a try-sail and storm-jib. During this time the gale showed no signs of abating. It was a good trial to our tempers, at all events. Grampus vowed that there was some old witch in Halifax who must have taken a spite to us and was resolved to keep us out of the harbour as long as she could. He was devising all sorts of plans for exorcising her, but none seemed likely to prove satisfactory. In the morning, the weather moderating a little, I stood to the westward under ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... of unboastful charms! whom white-robed Truth Right onward guiding through the maze of youth, Forbade the Circe Praise to witch thy soul, And dash'd to earth th' intoxicating bowl: Thee meek-eyed Pity, eloquently fair, 5 Clasp'd to her bosom with a mother's care; And, as she lov'd thy kindred form to trace, The slow smile wander'd o'er her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... L. always joins me in everything I do and say for her, and I would not have even an accident deprive her of her just reward for anything. Nannie sat on the floor to-night in her night-gown, thinking. At last she said, "Miss Payson?" "Well, little witch?" "You wouldn't care much if you should die to-night, should you?" "No, I think not." "Nor I," said she. "Why, do you think you should be better off than you are here?" "Yes, in heaven," said she. "Why how do you know you'll go to heaven?" She looked at me seriously and said, "Oh, I ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... every attention. It was a strange and somewhat grotesque scene—a real drama with theatrical surroundings. The blazing lights, enclosed by their wire spheres, threw a ruddy glare upon the faces of those present, making them appear weird and witch-like in their paint and powder. On chairs and tables lay Mlle. d' Armilly's changes of dress for the performance and her street garments, while upon a broad shelf in front of a mirror were the various mysterious articles used in her make-up—rouge, ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... too? Don't that belong to me as much as any other part of me? Why am I to be condemned to sacrifice my prospects in life to a girl of whose honesty I am not even sure? What is this intolerable fascination? Witch! I almost believe in mesmerism now!— Again, I say, why should I not sell my soul, as I'd sell my coat, if the bargain's ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Saint-Germain, Madame du Hausset writes: "A man who was as amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour. This was the Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that he had lived for several centuries. One day Madame said to him, while at her toilet, "What sort of man was Francis I., a king whom I could have loved?" "A good ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... inactive part he was called on to play. From the words Polly had dropped he guessed that the cottage was the one inhabited by old Dame Herring, who was looked upon by the inhabitants of the country for miles round as a witch, and known to be a very bad character. She took advantage of her evil reputation, and practised on the credulity of the people. It is not necessary to mention her bad practices. A few years before she would very probably have been burnt as a ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... Catskill Gnomes The Catskill Witch The Revenge of Shandaken Condemned to the Noose Big Indian The Baker's Dozen The Devil's Dance-Chamber The Culprit Fay Pokepsie Dunderberg Anthony's Nose Moodua Creek A Trapper's Ghastly Vengeance The Vanderdecken of Tappan Zee The Galloping Hessian Storm Ship on the Hudson ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... made upon, the astral body in the course of its wanderings will be reproduced in the physical body. We find traces of this in some of the evidence given at trials for witchcraft in the middle ages, in which it is not infrequently stated that some wound given to the witch when in the form of a dog or a wolf was found to have appeared in the corresponding part of her human body. The same strange law has sometimes led to an entirely unjust accusation of fraud against ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... stray. apple blossom among the fruit in autumn, or an occasional violet deceived by caressing Indian Summer into thinking another spring has come, surprises no one; but when the witch-hazel bursts into bloom for the first time in November, as if it were April, its leafless twigs conspicuous in the gray woods with their clusters of spidery pale yellow flowers, we cannot but wonder with Edward ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... one of the marvels yet unobtained?" Said one of his men, "There is—the blood of the witch Orddu, the daughter of the witch Orwen, of Penn Nant Govid, on the confines of Hell." Arthur set forth towards the North, and came to the place where was the witch's cave. And Gwyn ab Nudd, and Gwythyr the son of Greidawl, counselled ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... the only sort of supernaturalism the Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They might have ghost stories, but not saints' stories. They could trifle with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... day—all things had eyes wistful and unblessed. In those moments glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning had abandoned the earth. But not for long. Winged with darkness, it stole back; not the soul of meaning that had gone, but a witch-like and brooding spirit harbouring in the black trees, in the high dark spears of the rushes, and on the grim-snouted snags that lurked along the river bank. Then the owls came out, and night-flying things. And in the wood there began a cruel bird-tragedy—some dark pursuit ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Puritan, his heart set on subduing the infernal element and winning the celestial; regarding this life as a stern warfare, but the possible pathway to an infinite happiness beyond; fierce to beat down the emissaries of evil,—heretic, witch, or devil; yet tender at inmost heart, and valiant for the truth as he sees it. After a century, behold the Yankee,—the shrewd, toilful, thrifty occupant of the homely earth; one side of his brain speculating on the eternities, and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... 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 Or see an ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... 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 ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... and witch doctors," Rhes said, consigning them all to oblivion with a chop of his hand. "The few hard-working and honest men are hampered by the fact that the faith healers can usually cure ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... the piazza were Madam Conway and Theo, the former of whom chided her for staying so late at the cottage, while Theo asked what queer things the old witch-woman ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... "I am a witch! That is, I can put two and two together, and read men, though I don't read the alphabet. Well, one reading is a good deal rarer than the other. So you mean to disobey the Hawk to-night? I like you for that. But listen here—did ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... as he set his foot on the next stair, and met the view of Hester's face, brightly illuminated by the candle, looking down at him. On the instant he stopped, rooted to the place on which he stood. "Ghost! witch! devil!" he cried out, "take your eyes off me!" He shook his fist at her furiously, with an oath—sprang back into the hall—and shut himself into the dining-room from the sight of her. The panic which had seized him once already in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... excuse my son, Benjamin, won't you, sir?" says this witch without a broomstick, pointing to the man behind her, propped against the bare wall of the dining-room, exactly as he had been propped against the bare wall of the passage. "He's got his inside dreadful bad again, has my son Benjamin. And he won't ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... is either himsell a devil frae hell, Or else his mother a witch maun be; I wad na have ridden that wan water For a' ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... happiness. So that was why she held off from Mr. Hope,' cried Albinia, burning with such indignation, that on some one she must expend it, but a tirade against the artfulness of the little French witch was cut off short by ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their graves an' walk in a long line wan afther another to the owld church in the valley where they'd go in an' stay till cock-crow, thin they'd come out agin an' back to the rath. Sorra a parish widout a witch, an' some nights they'd have a great enthertainmint on the Corkschrew Hill, an' you'd see thim, wid shnakes on their arrums an' necks an' ears, be way av jewels, an' the eyes av dead men in their hair, comin' for miles an' miles, some ridin' through the air on shticks an' bats ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... "You are a witch or a fairy," said Mrs. Rossitur, catching her again in her arms,—"nothing else! You must try your powers of charming upon ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 'Used by Betty Edgecombe, white witch of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... took the cup and drained it to the dregs, Nor felt the magic charm; but with her rod She smote me, and she said, 'Go, get thee hence And herd thee with thy fellows in the stye.' So spake she, and straightway I drew my sword Upon the witch, and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... day, declared that to deny witchcraft was to deny Revelation. Cotton Mather, the most prominent minister of the colony, was active in the rooting out of this supposed crime. He published a book full of the most ridiculous witch stories. One judge, who engaged in this persecution, was afterward so deeply penitent that he observed a day of fasting in each year, and on the day of general fast rose in his place in the Old South Church at Boston, and in the presence of the congregation handed to ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... from Behring's Straits; waterproof fishing jackets, made from the intestines of the whale; harpoons of bone tipped with meteoric iron; specimens of rude sculpture from these northern regions; clubs; hatchets; the magic dome of an Iceland witch; baskets and mats; calumets of peace; scalps; a model of a cradle, showing the method adopted by the Indians of the Columbia River to flatten their children's heads. The cases 23, 24, are filled with curiosities from more southernly parts of the North American continent; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... "Interpretations?" she said. "Of what, pray?—Sanscrit or Egyptian or Greek? Are you a seeress or a witch, dear child?" ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Spanish Comedie Tarugo'es Wiles, or the Coffee House,[471] acted. In the pit they payed 30 p., in our place 18s. He could not forget himselfe: was very satyricall sneering at the Greshamers for their late invention of the transfusion of blood, as also at our covenant, making the witch of Geneva to wy[472] it and La Sainte ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... from outside and laid on the table, where the doctor attended to them. Some ghastly sights were disclosed when the stretcher-bearers ripped off the blood-stained clothes and laid bare the hideous wounds. At the end of the room, an old woman, with a face like the witch of Endor, apparently quite unmoved by anything that was happening, was grinding coffee in a mill and making a black concoction which she sold to the men. It was no doubt a good thing for them to get a little stimulant. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... to woo the mighty meaning of the scene, perhaps to foresee the law by which a new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from this chaos, and with a curiosity as ardent, but not so selfish, as that of Macbeth, to call up the apparitions of future kings from the strange ingredients of the witch's caldron. Thus I will not grieve that all the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron, but believe it will have Medea's virtue, and reproduce them in the form of new intellectual growths, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... given by Mrs. Lottie | |Logan, of No. 1532 Ingraham Street Tuesday evening. | |The table was in yellow, with a floral center of | |chrysanthemums and favors of black cats, diminutive | |pumpkin people and other suggestive Halloween | |conceits. The guests were whisked up to the | |dressing-rooms by a witch, and Mrs. George H. | |Rector, attired in somber soothsayer's robes, told | |fortunes. Place-cards were written for Mr. and Mrs. | |Enderly, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Hart, Mr. and Mrs. | |George Rector, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Henderson, Mr. and| |Mrs. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... wheel-hoes. Whetzel, quoted. white-fly. white grub. white hellebore. wigandia. willows. willow, species of. windbreaks. wind-flower. window-boxes. window-gardens. winter aconite. winter protection. wires, injury by. wire-vine. wistaria. witch hazel. witloof. wood ashes. woodbine. woodruff. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... too deep. We recollect a case in which one of these delicate craft, a half-rigged brig, was much abused for "having lost her sailing." She did, indeed, lose her fore-yard, and, after that, she sailed like a witch, until she got a new one! If the facts were inquired into, in the spirit which ought to govern such inquiries, it would be found that even most of the much-abused "ten sloops" proved to be better vessels than common. The St. Louis, the Vincennes, the Concord, the Fairfield, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... cousin," said Charlton laughing,—"you are not a witch in your own affairs, whatever you may be ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... layman. Ostlers quarrelled over such questions as they groomed their masters' horses; old women mourned across the village shopboards of the evil days which were come or coming; while every kind of strangest superstition, fairy stories and witch stories, stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... in witchcraft, which was indeed very common among their white neighbors. Nearly all forms of sickness were treated as the effect of witchcraft by the Indians, and the afflicted were carried into the woods and left alone with none near them except the medicine man whose business it was to expel the witch. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... afther 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 over ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... and, like things she says, they often seem to come in answer to something you have been thinking about, and which you would never imagine she could know, unless she was a witch. This was the knowing bit in that letter:—"Your dear father's note this morning did me more good than bottles of tonic. It is due to you, my trustworthy little daughter, to tell you of the bit that pleased me most. He says—'The children seem to me to be behaving unusually ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... branches by the shore; music of the softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors and sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm; without, are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But the witch herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin in the painted banquet-halls ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... happened that not far from the hut, and all around it, there grew numbers of low trees, with long branches that extended horizontally outward. They were a species of the pyrus, or mountain-ash, sometimes known as "witch hazel." The branches, though long, were thin, tough, and elastic, and not much burdened with either branchlets or leaves. They were the very things for Ossaroo's purpose, and he had observed this before it had become quite dark, and while he was meditating upon some plan to get square with the wild ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... translation of coquette. Well, you shall be excused from that, if you will only translate it into English. You cannot: you are obliged to keep the French word; and yet you take for granted, without inquiry, that in the word 'witchcraft,' and in the word 'witch,' applied to the sorceress of Endor, our authorized English Bible of King James's day must be correct. And your wicked bibliolatrous ancestors proceeded on that idea throughout Christendom to murder harmless, friendless, and oftentimes crazy ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... took cover, hearing something stirring; but it was only a yearling buck that came out of the witch-hazel to stare, stamp, and wheel and trot away, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... images of his creatures. Others, frightened at the art which could raise phantoms at will, and keep the form of the dead among the living, were inclined to consider the painter as a magician, or perhaps the famous Black Man, of old witch times, plotting mischief in a new guise. These foolish fancies were more than half believed among the mob. Even in superior circles, his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising like ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... confidently; "fast asleep. Wicked old witch! Throw kettle at Kaffir, hot water burn back! Wait a ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... with a gay grin, which, distorted by her toothless gums and the wreathing steam from the kettle, enhanced her witch-like aspect and was spuriously malevolent. She did not notice the stir of an approach through the brambly tangles of the heights above until it was close at hand; as she turned, she thought only of the mountain cattle and to see the red cow's picturesque head and crumpled ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... water-lily; no prickly ash nor sumach; no loblolly-bay nor Stuartia; no basswood nor linden-trees; neither locust, honey-locust, coffeetrees (Gymnocladus) nor yellow-wood (Cladrastis); nothing answering to Hydrangea or witch-hazel, to gum-trees (Nyssa and Liquidambar), Viburnum or Diervilla; it has few asters and golden-rods; no lobelias; no huckleberries and hardly any blueberries; no Epigaea, charm of our earliest Eastern spring, tempering an icy April wind with a delicious wild fragrance; no Kalmia ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... lap. Solomon was nowhere to be seen. Davy, looking over the side of the clock, saw them disappear, one after the other, in a large tree on the lawn, and the Goblin informed him that they had fallen into the kitchen of a witch-hazel tree, and would be well taken care of. Indeed, as the clock sailed over the tree, Davy saw that the trunk of it was hollow, and that a bright light was shining far underground; and, to make the matter quite sure, a smell of cooking was coming up through the hole. ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... for the promised game at once, and soon the flicker from the flaming bow lighted up the darkened nursery as, around the witch-like caldron, they watched their opportunity to snatch the lucky raisin. The room rang so loudly with fun and laughter that even the King himself, big of head and rickety of legs, shambled in good-humouredly to join in the sport that was giving so much pleasure to the royal ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... in the station fly on her way to Stoke Revel, was only in the making, although she herself considered her life as practically finished. The past and the present were moulding her into something that only the future could determine. Sometimes April, sometimes July, sometimes witch, sometimes woman; impetuous, intrepid, romantic, tempestuous, illogical,—these were but the elements of which the coming years of experience had yet to shape a character. Young Mrs. Loring had plenty of briars, but she had good roots and in favorable soil ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Meg Merrilies!" exclaimed Sophie. "Yes, spite of her youth, do you not find that she has something of Sir Walter Scott's witch about her? When she grows older, she will be excellent. She has the appearance of being thirty, whereas she is said not to be more than twenty years old: she is ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... "that you have been an enchanted beauty, or a sleeping princess, during these weeks of my absence—under the guardianship of an old black witch, who drew incantations and water together ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... here he made me sit down, placing himself beside me. From this point we commanded a view of the head of the lake and the great mountain which closes and dominates it,—and which now began to be illumined with a strange witch-like glow of orange and purple, while a thin mist moved slowly across it like the folds of a ghostly stage curtain preparing to rise and display the first ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... exclaimed Migwan later when they were exploring the woods. "It's a regular witch's cave. Nyoda, won't you dress up like a witch to-night and tell our fortunes?" Nyoda consented and the girls scoured the woods for hanging moss to decorate the cave, and for pine cones to build a charmed fire. They were busily transforming the bare rocks into a green tapestried chamber, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... when they left us the landlord notified the police that suspicious characters were at the hotel, and came there escorted by the mob, and the police surrounded the house and dad went to our room and used witch hazel on himself where the Cossack hit him with the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, and I think dad is going to join the revolution that is going to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... think,' Mr. Falkirk echoed. 'Nobody but one who has tried it can tell what it is to have the care of a witch. I have been trying for a week, Rollo, to discover when we are to go to town, and whether I am expected to secure a house; and it is past my power to find out, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Ilium endeavored to persuade Philip to hire the services of a witch-hazel professor of that region, who could walk over the land with his wand and tell him infallibly whether it contained coal, and exactly where the strata ran. But Philip preferred to trust to his own study of the country, and his knowledge of the geological formation. He spent a month ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... see of a reconciliation. One of Thorolf's slayers dried his blood on the fringes of my veil. And you, Alf of Grof, you reviled me like the worst witch; you wanted to have a sack ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... energetic freedom of the age. He informed him that God would punish his impieties—that he was worse than any Saracen; and hinted that he might have inherited his wickedness from his grandmother, the Countess of Anjou, who was reported to be a witch, and of whom it was said that she had flown through the window during the most solemn part of Mass, though four ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... of people whirled through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead,—if they don't come from Salem, they ought to,—and not more than one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought for their convenience. They know that without hands or feet, without ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for Tims, poor step-child of nature! Now she stood looking at the reflection of Milly without noticing how in the background her own strange, wizened face peered dim and grotesque from the tarnished mirror, like the picture of a witch or a goblin behind the fair semblance of some princess in a ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... flight 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 ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... The wind poured in my ear Immortal names—Lear, Hamlet, Hal, Macbeth, And thro the night I heard the rushing breath Of ghost and witch and fool go whirling by. I followed them, under the phantom sphere Of the pale moon, along the Avon's near And nimbused flowing, followed to his bier— Who had evoked them first with mighty eye. And as I gazed upon the peaceful spire That points above ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... conflicting evidence, I have endeavoured to subpoena a credible witness to speak for herself; and the right of private judgment being thus reserved to the reader, Gulabie will no doubt be charitably dealt with, and will find her proper position somewhere within the limits of a "hideous witch" and a "celestial being." ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... little woman that she is! I wish I were a wiser man. I must be firm with her; it would be a shame to spoil her. Yes, I must be firm." But he shrugged his shoulders and smiled at himself. "The worst of it is, or the best of it is," he continued, "the little witch is almost always right, God bless her, just like her mother, just like her mother." He hastily wiped his eyes, and went off to his office where Mrs. Dean awaited him and her little girl with the burned hand. And the mother wondered ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... you that! Some witch had told you that!" cried the little man; and he dashed his left foot in a rage so deep into the floor that he was forced to lay hold of it with both hands to pull it out. Then he made the best of his way ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... over a mountainous country. In two hours from Nazareth we passed a small rivulet. Two hours and a half, the village Denouny (Arabic), and near it the ruins of Endor, where the witch's grotto is shewn. From hence the direction of our route was S.S.E. Leaving Mount Tabor to the left we passed along the plain of Esdrelon: meeting with several springs in our road; but the country ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... the house, she had never failed to arrive at the truth of their nationalities and positions in life. There must have been something in myself or my circumstances, he averred, which had produced so singular an effect upon the witch, (as he evidently believed her to be,) and he had the impression that at no distant day I should again hear from her. That was all, and so we parted, I in any other condition of mind than that promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... little at the audacity of this speech. And again he was looking at her. There was a funny little smile twitching the corners of her mouth. Her beauty was irresistible. Even the iron barrier of his churlish avoidance was severely shaken. She was hard to withstand, this witch with her friendly eyes and frank speech, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 and a suicide. With thirty years to work, I ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... gesticulation and noisy manners have never been popular in France.' The spoilt little lady was by no means satisfied with this portrait, and Sir Charles, who was away from home at the time the Memoirs appeared, writes to console her. 'You must not mind that lying old witch Madame de Genlis' attack upon you,' says the admiring husband. 'I thought she would not let you off easily; you were not only a better and younger (and I may say prettier) author than herself, but ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... say that ever 'gainst the season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike; No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm: So hallowed and so ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... o'er-ripe pear? The girls all cry 'Her bloom is on the wane.' We'll watch, Aratus, at that porch no more, Nor waste shoe-leather: let the morning cock Crow to wake others up to numb despair! Let Molon, and none else, that ordeal brave: While we make ease our study, and secure Some witch, to charm all evil from ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... faces that that fear was groundless, but a greater one, that she might not be able to convince us, seized her next and she made such an excited gesture that the shawl she wore over her head and shoulders fell away and her long hair came tumbling down like a witch's. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... observe What a close witch-craft popular applause is: 296] I am awak'd, and with clear eyes behold The Lethargie wherein my reason long Hath been be-charm'd: live, live, my matchless son, Blest in thy Fathers blessing; much more blest In thine ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was speaking to his soul— Dear witch, I said the body was enough. How young, how simple as a suckling child! And then I dreamed—'an incest 'twixt the body and the soul:' Let's wed, I thought, the seraph with the dog, And wait the purple thing that shall ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... de Clameran detested the countess, Mme. de la Verberie execrated the marquis. If he nicknamed her "the witch," she never called him anything ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... "front" she wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to mere points of blackness; her mouth, sunken and drawn over toothless gums, was like the mouth of a witch. The wind, blowing in gusts through the open door, inflated her gray shawl and the skirt of her dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her garments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced and gibbered behind her. And, as she gazed down on the girl, it was as if the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... and put an inch more onto his stride. He was descending a long, open valley that seemed from its trackless snows to have been immemorially life-shunned and accursed. Black, witch-like pines sentinelled its flanks, and accentuated its desolation. And over all there was the silence of the Wild, that double-strong solution of silence from which all other silences are distilled, and spread out. Yet, as he gazed around him in this everlasting solitude, there was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... lamb latch laugh limb listen match might muscle naughty night notch numb often palm pitcher pitch pledge ridge right rough scene scratch should sigh sketch snatch soften stitch switch sword talk though through thought thumb tough twitch thigh walk watch whole witch would write written wrapper wring wrong ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... the card of her boutique, and laughed like a sunbeam playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like the witch that ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... "If some witch or wizard could conjure up the unnecessary babies' funerals annually occurring in this country it would be found that the little hearses would reach from New York to Chicago. If we should add the mourning mothers and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... at last, "Phoebus, what a name!" adding affectedly, "yet it seems to me, on reflection, I have heard it before. He is a Yankee, of course! Now, do you earnestly believe a native of New England, by descent a legitimate witch-burner, you know, can be any thing better than a poll-parrot in the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... is needed to transform the scene into a giant Hallowe'en festival is to have a witch whisk by on a broomstick, or a ghost bob up from behind a tombstone," declared Mrs. Tolman. "Just think! If we had come by train we would have missed ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... fire was still felt to be an obstacle to the complete success of the locomotive engine. Mr. Stephenson endeavoured to overcome this by lengthening the boilers and increasing the surface presented by the flue-tubes. The "Lancashire Witch," which he built for the Bolton and Leigh Railway, and used in forming the Liverpool and Manchester Railway embankments, was constructed with a double tube, each of which contained a fire and passed longitudinally through ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... His face was like colored parchment, his mouth and cheeks wrinkled and sunken, his eyes small, black and bright, his long, white hair and flowing beard, his bony hands, which he raised every few moments and held over his long white eyelashes, as a shield to his sight, gave him a strange and witch-like appearance. ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... is represented in all parts of the United States by one of its forms. They are ground loving birds, frequenting swamps and thickets where they can be located by their loud, unmistakable song of "Witchery, w i t c h e r y, witch." They nest on or very near the ground, making their nests of grass, lined with hair; these are either in hollows in the ground at the foot of clumps of grass or weeds, or attached to the weed stalks within a few inches of the ground. They lay from three to five eggs in ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... quantity of loafers, mostly Indians, smelling dreadfully of whisky, surrounded us and begged for money. Among them an old Indian woman who looked like the witch of Endor (they said she was over a hundred years old) stretched out a long, bony, orang-outang arm, and when we gave her a few cents the old thing actually grinned with joy. It was painful to see ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... whom we leave as road-woman, I have likened to Hedda Gabler, and Sarah Casey in externals to Isopel Berners, but I do not know to whom to compare the others save Mary Byrne, as slightly suggestive of Villon's old woman. Mary Doul, blind Martin's blind wife, has a general likeness to some old witch out of a fairy tale, but she is far from being a witch; and Widow Quinn the incomparable might be compared, were she not too high-hearted, to the hag of "The Lout and Mother" ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... method as completely as The Quadroon and Winifred Dysart do his habit of thought. He painted innumerable landscapes, portraits, and ideal heads, and in figure compositions produced, among others, two works of great and permanent value, the And She Was a Witch, and The Gatherer of Simples, to whose absorbing interest all who have studied them closely will confess. The latter, particularly, is of importance as showing how carefully Fuller studied into the secret ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... wreath')—'Implentur veteris Bacchi pinguisque ferinae Anno Dom 1655.' 10. The Arms of the late Earl of Yarmouth. 11. The Arms of the Duke of Norfolk. 12. Neptune on a Dolphin. 13. A Lion supporting the Arms of Norwich. 14. Charon carrying a reputed Witch to Hell. 15. Cerberus. 16. An Huntsman. 17. Actaeon [with three dogs, and this legend, 'Actaeon ego sum Dominum cognoscite vestrum']. 18. A White Hart couchant [underneath appears in the engraving the artist's name—Johannes Fairchild struxit]. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... the old witch at some distance gesticulating violently, waving her arms about, occasionally leaping from side to side in the most extraordinary fashion. Now and then she pointed to them in a way which made them fear that she was ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ayrshire to make a drawing (p. 121) of Alloway kirk, and include it in his sketches, for it was dear to him because it was the resting-place of his father, and there he himself might some day lay his bones. To induce Grose to do this, Burns told him that Alloway kirk was the scene of many witch stories and weird sights. The antiquary replied, "Write you a poem on the scene, and I'll put in the verses with an engraving of the ruin." Burns having found a fitting day and hour, when "his barmy noddle was working prime," walked ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... at last in a low tone. "I do not wonder the boy loves to roam the hills a night like this. Look, Grant! See how soft the moonlight falls on that patch of grass this side of the old tree yonder, and how black the shadow is under that bush, like the mouth of a cave, a witch's cave. I am sure there are ghosts and goblins in there, with fairies and gnomes, and perhaps a dragon or two. And see, lad, how the great hills rise into the sky. How grand, how beautiful the world is! It is good ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tript up or entangled by the wild grape-vines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... 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 Taine,—boon companion ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Revolutionary officers with three-cornered cocked hats, and queues longer than their swords. A bright-complexioned, dark-haired, vivacious little gypsy, with a red shawl over her head, went from one group to another, telling fortunes by palmistry; and Moll Pitcher, the renowned old witch of Lynn, broomstick in hand, showed herself prominently in the midst, as if announcing all these apparitions to be the offspring of her necromantic art. But Silas Foster, who leaned against a tree near by, in his customary blue frock and smoking a short pipe, did more to disenchant the scene, with ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Ober-Amtmann, with a feeling of sudden forbearance towards the wretched woman which surprised all present; for they could not but marvel at the slightest symptom of consideration toward such an abhorred outcast of humanity as a convicted witch; and as such the miserable Magdalena ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a listener were not a necessity. "Yes; never was I in such a taking as on that Midsummer- eve! I sat up, quite determined to see if John Wildway was going to marry me or no. I put the bread-and-cheese and beer quite ready, as the witch's book ordered, and I opened the door, and I waited till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive and so strained that I could feel every one of 'em twitching like bell-wires. Yes, sure! and when the clock ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... James Mackintosh Sir H. Davy Robert Smith Canning National Debt Poor Laws Conduct of the Whigs Reform of the House of Commons Church of Rome Zendavesta Pantheism and Idolatry Difference between Stories of Dreams and Ghosts Phantom Portrait Witch of Endor Socinianism Plato and Xenophon Religions of the Greeks Egyptian Antiquities Milton Virgil Granville Penn and the Deluge Rainbow English and Greek Dancing Greek Acoustics Lord Byron's Versification and Don Juan Parental Control in Marriage Marriage ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... as fast as any cutter they had on the Cape shore at that time, but the Colleen was a witch and O'Donnell a wonder at sailing her. So we stayed with O'Donnell and watched him and the cutter have it out. They had it, the cutter letting drive a shot every once in a while. The first shot, I remember, went whistling by the ear of one of O'Donnell's crew ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... said; "but what," I jeered, "makes you think you can point to the spot, because your map says something like, 'Through the Sunken Valley to Witch's Caldron, four points N. by N. E. to Gallows Hill where the shadow falls at sunrise, fifty fathoms west, fifty paces north as the crow flies, to the Seven Wells'? How the deuce," I demanded, "is any one going to ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... brave of you!" exclaimed Betty, patting Grace on the shoulder. "If you had let go we would have lost. We'll bathe your hand for you in witch hazel." ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... grizzled locks streaming, her garments loose and tattered, all which became suddenly visible as she set fire to a great wisp of straw, and another and another she plucked from her bundle and lighted, and waved the light above and underneath. It was like a scene in a melodrama of Cavern and Witch—the best cavern scene I ever beheld. As she continued to throw down, from the height where she stood, the lighted bundles of straw, they fell on the surface of the dark stream below, and sailed down the current, under the arch ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... reasonable, 'cause niggers do swaller the stuns when they eats persimmons, an' so, o' course, jest nacher'ly the trees 'll spring up where the niggers git planted. So they'd be ha'nts like's not. But I hain't superstitious—not a mite. Mr. Sutton, he said such things as ha'nts an' witch-doctors an' such was all plumb foolishness. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... vanity had grown by what it daily fed on, and now called for the admiration of the fast men who sometimes came up from Boston to play with them in their unholy retreat. To win this, she dressed like some demon queen or witch, though it drove her husband into deeper play and threatened an exposure which would mean disaster not only to herself but ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... did come up often, but that old witch in the kitchen wouldn't let me see you—she abused me scandalous. I wanted to pull her turban off and throw it in the gutter. Why, she called me a dirty beggar, and threatened to throw cold water on me if I didn't go away. Phew! ain't she an ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... surprise them with the idea that teaching is work, and that the teacher is tired and must go play or rest or eat: possibilities always concealed by that infamous humbug the current schoolmaster, who achieves a spurious divinity and a witch doctor's authority by persuading children that he is not human, just as ladies persuade them ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... but one drop of comfort in his cup. By now, as he hoped, Hugh and his death's-head, Grey Dick, a spawn of Satan that all the country feared, and who, men said, was a de Cressi bastard by a witch, were surely slain or taken by those ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... because I loved you so I could not do without you. And what comforts me for any wrong I have done is that I have you. That would make up to a man for anything short of being hanged! You little witch, how did you contrive to make a fool of a man like me! I should have been in none of this scrape but for you! My mother is very kind to me, of course—ever so much better company than Hester! she never looks as if a fellow had to be put up with, or forgiven, or anything of that sort, in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Rigou, "but she is not suitable; she thinks she has only to be seen to be admired; she's not complying enough; we want a witch and a sly-boots, too. Never mind, the right one will turn up ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... gloomy answer; "but if the old men come to me and say, 'kill the witch,' I must do it. For you know I am Maseua, head-war-chief, and whatever the principals command I must do, even if it takes the life ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... A Witch professed to be able to avert the anger of the gods by means of charms, of which she alone possessed the secret; and she drove a brisk trade, and made a fat livelihood out of it. But certain persons accused her of black magic and carried her before the judges, and demanded ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... girl is such a witch that she could have magnetized the Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to influence—you yourself," replied Rastignac, and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... their difficulties. Such charms (for all analogous practices may be so called) are, in point of fact, sacrifices made on the principle so widely adopted,—qui facit per alium facit per se. The common witch-charm of melting an image of wax stuck full of pins before a slow fire, is a familiar instance. Everybody knows that the party imaged by the wax continues to suffer all the tortures of pin-pricking until he or she finally melts away (colliquescit), ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... And others said, wailing for friends and goods:— "Who was that woman, with mad eyes, that came Into our camp, ill-favored, hardly cast In mortal mould? By her, be sure, was wrought This direful sorcery. Demon or witch, Yakshi or Rakshasi, or gliding ghost, Or something frightful, was she. Hers this deed Of midnight murders; doubt there can be none. Ah, if we could espy that hateful one, The ruin of our march, the woe-maker, With stones, clods, canes, or clubs, nay, with clenched fists, We'd strike her dead, the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... officers and soldiers had assembled to gratify their curiosity; and new detachments of captives came in hourly, encircled by sabremen, the Southerners being disarmed and on foot. The scene within the area was ludicrously moving. It reminded me of the witch-scene in Macbeth, or pictures of brigands or Bohemian gypsies at rendezvous, not less than five hundred men, in motley, ragged costumes, with long hair, and lean, wild, haggard faces, were gathered in groups or in pairs, around some fagot fires. In the growing darkness their ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... or three-legged pot, of the size and shape of the cauldron usually introduced in the witch ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Hsien there was a witch and some official attendants who collected money from the people yearly for the marriage of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... left she turned on me with a furious outburst. "Oh, you witch, you ogress, you could not die yourself, but needs must send him to his ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... of the country. And 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
... deep-seated faith in amulets and charms, which were thought to have brought about what would now be regarded as curious coincidences, or to place reliance upon the babbling utterances of some old crone who posed as a witch or a fortune-teller. Yet among such old-world stories there are germs of truth although misapplied. The emblems, amulets, and charms so implicitly believed in a few centuries ago are objects numbered among collectable curios, valued even in this prosaic age not only for their intrinsic ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... sibyl, who is endowed with the skill of foretelling all things to come. Take Epistemon in your company, repair towards her, and hear what she will say unto you. She is possibly, quoth Epistemon, some Canidia, Sagana, or Pythonissa, either whereof with us is vulgarly called a witch, —I being the more easily induced to give credit to the truth of this character of her, that the place of her abode is vilely stained with the abominable repute of abounding more with sorcerers and witches than ever did the plains ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... stood an' stared at her so I knew 'at the little witch had rooted out his devisement. "When you are older, Barbara," ol' Cast Steel sez in his coldest tone, "you will understand these things an' be glad of the care I took of you; but now I am compelled to lay down ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... window and watch the bats flitter in the gathering moonlight, and listen with quivering nerves for her step—perhaps she will send for the tray, and not come after all. What a fool I am to be disturbed by a grey-clad witch with a tantalizing mouth! That comes of loafing about doing nothing. I mentally darn the old fool who saved her money instead of spending it. Why the devil should I be bothered? I don't want it anyhow. She comes in as I fume, and I forget everything at her entrance. ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... to write an' send all the 'nonymous letters in Polpier. The old woman an' I, we tracked it down to one of two, an' both females. It lay between 'em, and I was for old Ann' Bunney—she bein' well known for a witch. But now that can't be, for the woman's gone to Satan these three months. . . . An' my missus gone too—poor tender heart—an' lookin' down on me, that was rash enough to bet her sixpence on it, an' now no means ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the greatest wrong, the deepest offence to me, the disgrace of your family, the eternal ruin of your soul - you can easily turn back, nothing yet is lost, and you don't want to! You don't want to! Is this woman a witch then? An enchantress? Oh, now I know that you have no religion! Now I see what it is to ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... night—the waving arms and flying limbs of the girl, and her great black eyes looking into the night and calling him. He could hear her now, and hear that wondrous savage music. Had it been real? Had he dreamed? Or had it been some witch-vision of the night, come to tempt and lure him to his undoing? Where was that black and flaming cabin? Where was the girl—the soul that had called him? She must have been real; she had to live and dance and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... caught on a bush and rolled Right off her, and her hair fell down.—Her face Was awful white, and both her eyes looked sick, And she was talking queer. 'O God of Grace!' Said she, 'where is the child?' and flew back quick The way she came, and screamed, and shook her hands; ... Maybe she was a witch from ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... the earliest spring of her youth, a girl of fifteen or sixteen at the utmost. Her veil had been thrown back by accident or design, and for one brief moment I drank in that soul-tempting glance, that witch-like smile! The procession passed—the vision faded—but in that breath of time one epoch of my life had closed forever, and another ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... match the sense of boundlessness we have here—boundless space, boundless opportunity? It often makes fools of us: it intoxicates, turns our heads. There is a germ of madness in this Northwest. I have seen men destroyed by it. But it is Nature who is the witch. She brews the cup." ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is a regular witch! He made out so well in his first interview with Yvard, that no one can doubt his ability to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fate had perhaps come to them before their first sleep on the journey. The new leaves were just out, but not quite full. The little maples and beeches flung their sprays of vivid green foliage above the darker shades of the witch hopple into the soft-lighted air of the great house of the wood and filled it with a pleasant odor. A mile or so back, Solomon had left the trail and cautioned Jack to keep close and step softly. Soon the old scout stopped, and listened and put his ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... of seeing a witch, not mounted on a broomstick, but on the respectable household cat, changed for that night into a flying fury; finally, along with my brothers, being captured, washed, and dressed, to join with other spirits worse than ourselves in "dooking" for ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... us,' he said in private to Berenger, to whom he had taken a great liking. 'I cannot blame you for not casting your lot into such a witch's caldron as this poor country. My friends think I dallied at court like Rinaldo in Armida's garden. They do not understand that when one hears the name of Bourbon one does not willingly make war with the Crown, still less that the good Calvin left a doctrine ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gracious majesty, and, of course, there was a great crush. The king and queen returned the tickets, but everybody else was there. I remember that the Duke of Cleveland appeared as Henry VIII.; the Duke of Gloucester as a fine old English gentleman; the Duchess of Buccleugh as the Witch of Endor; Lady Edgecombe as a nun; the Duchess of Bolton as the goddess Diana; Lady Stanhope as Melopomene; the Countess of Waldegrave as Jane Shore; Lord Galway's daughter, Mrs. Monckton, as an Indian princess, in a golden robe, embroidered with diamonds, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... 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 ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... see that each animal has its food to a minute. The devil's roysterers! a Manhattan negro takes a Flemish gelding for a gaunt hound that is never out of breath, and away he goes, at night, scampering along the highways like a Yankee witch switching through the air on a broomstick—but mark me, master Euclid, I have eyes in my head, as thou knowest by bitter experience! D'ye remember, ragamuffin, the time when I saw thee, from the Hague, riding the beasts, as if the devil spurred them, along the dykes of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... dame combed her hair, Gerda forgot her adopted brother Kay more and more; for this old woman could conjure, but she was not a wicked witch. She only practiced a little magic for her own amusement, and wanted to keep little Gerda. Therefore she went into the garden, stretched out her crutch toward all the rosebushes, and, beautiful as they were, they all sank into the earth, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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
... of the wear and tear of a witches' night; riding his runaway play and fighting the enchantment that was upon him. Elastic twenty-seven does not mark a bedless session with violet arcs below its eyes;—what violet a witch had used upon Stewart Canby this morning appeared as a dewey boutonniere in the lapel of his new coat; he ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington |
