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More "Incantation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'Pontic sea' with its 'violent pace.') Medea's incantation in Ovid's Metamorphoses, vii. 197 ff., which certainly suggested Prospero's speech, Tempest, V. i. 33 ff., should be compared with Seneca, Herc. Oet., 452 ff., 'Artibus magicis,' etc. It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... put the money, and they told him that they had hidden it in the sand by the river. Then he promised not to reveal their guilt, if they would show him where to find the money when the time came. They gladly promised and took him to the Raja. The Trickster pretended to read an incantation over some mustard seed, and then taking a bamboo went along tapping the ground with it. He refused to have a crowd with him, because they would spoil the spell, but Find and Fail followed behind him and showed him where to go. So he soon found ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... is in the humour you will get whatever you want done, in the way of justice or injustice. Now in a free country justice is absorbed into the great cosmic forces, and it is apt to be an expensive incantation that wakes the lost elementary spirit. In Russia justice shines by contrast with the surrounding corruption, but there is no mistake about it when you get it. In America it is taken for granted everywhere, and the consequence is that, like most things that are taken for granted, it is a myth. Rousseau ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... inhaling the volatile essence of its poisonous contents. Then, holding the bouquet with one hand at arm's length, she sprinkled the glowing roses with the transparent liquid from the vial which she held in the other hand, repeating, in a low, harsh tone, the formula of an ancient incantation, which was one of the secrets imparted to Antonio Exili by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... forth once more at this spectacle, while she stood on the heath with her head uncovered, and her grey hairs streaming in the wind, no bad representation of a superannuated bacchante, or Thessalian witch in the agonies of incantation. She soon discovered Claverhouse at the head of the fugitive party, and exclaimed with bitter irony, "Tarry, tarry, ye wha were aye sae blithe to be at the meetings of the saints, and wad ride every ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... their description of the seven devils, describing them in various passages in different ways. In fact they actually conceived of a very large number of these demons, and their visions of the other evil spirits are innumerable. According to the incantation of Shamash-shum-ukin fifteen evil spirits had come into ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... latter of which cost him many a tear in writing,—being, indeed, the most mournful, as well as picturesque, "story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and heart of man. Those verses, too, entitled "The Incantation," which he introduced afterwards, without any connection with the subject, into Manfred, were also (at least, the less bitter portion of them) the production of this period; and as they were written soon ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... SHARP MINOR, must be ranked among his most energetic compositions. He has inserted in it a MAZOURKA. Had he not frightened the frivolous world of fashionable life, by the gloomy grotesqueness with which he introduced it in an incantation so fantastic, this mode might have become an ingenious caprice for the ball-room. It is a most original production, exciting us like the recital of some broken dream, made, after a night of restlessness, by the first dull, gray, cold, leaden rays of a winter's sunrise. It is a ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... killed a polar bear, and in the vigour of his pantomime nearly slew his mother's brother. But nobody heeded. The woman Ipsukuk fell to weeping for a son lost long years agone in the ice, and the shaman made incantation and prophecy. So it went, and before morning they were all on the floor, sleeping ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... The fervent incantation rose higher. It seemed to fill the forest, so wide was its volume, so splendid its energy. The echoes took it up, the very mountains responded. Five hundred voices must have joined in the chorus, and even Senator North threw back his head as the columns ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing, fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced, and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No enterprise is undertaken without consulting the gods, and no ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... toward the great bulk of the whale, which lay plainly visible not more than a quarter of a mile away. As the other boats came on in squadron close behind, Rob could hear a sort of low, rhythmic humming, as though all the natives were joining in an incantation. It was his privilege to see one of the native hunts for the whale in all its original features—something which few white men have ever seen. The strange excitement of the scene, so many savage hunters all bent upon one purpose, and evidently using every means to screw their courage to ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... vision in matters that required cool judgment. The ironical correction of sentiment, the tone of the advocatus diaboli, is habitual with many of the Icelandic writers, and many of their heroes. "To see things as they really are," so that no incantation could transform them, was one of the gifts of an Icelandic hero,[55] and appears to have been shared by his countrymen when they set ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... smoothly, for Don Pedro defied the world in a speech of two pages without a single break. Hagar, the witch, chanted an awful incantation over her kettleful of simmering toads, with weird effect. Roderigo rent his chains asunder manfully, and Hugo died in agonies of remorse and arsenic, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... me for all the world of the scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine-man making incantation in the primeval forest ten ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... nothing more for them, so severe and so deadly were the stabs and the thrusts, and the gashes of the many wounds that they had, than to apply to them spells and incantations and charms, in order to staunch their blood, and their bleeding mortal wounds. And for every spell and incantation and charm that was applied to the stabs and the wounds of Cuchulain, he sent a full half westward across the ford to Ferdia; and of each kind of food, and of pleasant, palatable, intoxicating drink that the men of Ireland brought to Ferdia, he sent a half across the ford ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... are probably an echo of the "incantation and magic words" ("incantationem et verba quas sibi reperta sunt de quibus ad funem utitur ... quoniam in fune aliquam nec vocem nec gemitum emittit sed solum inter dentes ipse videtur et auditur loqui" [Die beiden Foscari, pp. 160, 161]), which, according ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Indian will not attempt to perform when his courage is taxed, or the honour of his nation called in question. "An Omawhaw," says Long, "being on a visit to the Pawnees, was present at a kind of grand incantation, during which many extraordinary feats were performed. He there saw, for the first time, the mountebank trick of appearing to cut off the tongue, and afterwards replacing the severed portions without a wound. 'There,' said ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... paradise," she firmly asserted. In the middle of the room there was a round table, the top inlaid with agate. On it a large blue bowl stood, and it was empty. Mrs. Whistler went to a swinging cabinet and took from it a dozen small phials. "Now for the incantation," he jokingly said. In her matter-of-fact manner she placed the bottles on the table, and uncorking them, she poured them slowly into the bowl. He ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the same in the shape of a legend. It seems to consist in taking a clean shovel and seating the changeling on its broad iron blade, and thus conveying the creature to the manure heap. The assistants would then join hands and circle about the heap thrice while the fairy-man chanted an incantation in the Irish language. At its conclusion all present would withdraw into the house, leaving the child where it had been placed, to howl and cry as it pleased. Says Mr. Kennedy: "They soon felt the air ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... to attain a desired result. Not used of passwords or other explicit security features. Especially used of tricks that are so poorly documented that they must be learned from a {wizard}. "This compiler normally locates initialized data in the data segment, but if you {mutter} the right incantation they will ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Rosie wrote Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon and Charles Henry Peters on her slate and performed the necessary ceremony. It turned out quite satisfactorily, and Rosie's next duty was to chant the usual incantation over the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... incantation used in addressing this god begins: "O Father, Thaulang, who hast enabled me to be born, who hast given me my stature and my life." This is very certain proof that the maternal system among the Khasis has no connection ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... preparation,—albeit her interarticular cartilages are somewhat tough, and her lateral ligaments apparently composed of a substance between leather and caoutchouc. As afternoon advances, the porter of the dissecting-room finds them performing an incantation dance round Mr. Muff, who, seated on a stool placed upon two of the tressels, is rattling some halfpence in a skull, accompanied by Mr. Rapp, who is performing a difficult concerto on an extempore instrument of his own invention, composed of the Scotchman's hat, who is still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... squeezing juice from the herbs, she applied an ointment made from it; then, opening a phial attached to her waist-belt, she poured some drops of liquid into the girl's mouth, gently parting her lips. This done, she stood erect and began an incantation, or rather a supplication, in an unknown tongue. As she proceeded her form became rigid, her eye gleamed, her arms, the hands clenched, were raised above her head. The sun flashed on the circlet, glittered ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... white cliffs of Aetna. There once more he saw the shepherds tend their flocks, singing or wrangling with one another, dreamily piping on their wax-stopped reeds or plotting to annex their neighbours' gear; or else there sounded in his ears the love-song or the dirge, or the incantation of the forsaken girl rose amid the silence to the silver moon. Once again he stood upon the shore and watched the fishers cast their nets, while around him the goats browsed on the close herbage of the cliff, and the crystal stream leapt down, and the waves broke upon the rocks ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Muttering some mystical incantation, he waved it to the east and the west, to the north and the south; and when the charm was complete, gave it to Multnomah, who smoked it and passed it to Snoqualmie. From chief to chief it circled around the whole council, but among ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... divers times this last summer been seen and heard alone, inasmuch as human eye may discover, on the narrow slip of greensward between the Avon and the chancel, distorting thy body like one possessed, and uttering strange language, like unto incantation. This, however, cometh not before me. Take heed! take heed unto thy ways; there are graver things in law ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... in the human life will not answer to the names by which we call them here, any more than the lightning would answer to the old Magician's incantation,—any more than it would have come if the old Logician had called it by his name,—which was just as good as the name—and no better, than the name, which the priest of Baal gave it,—any more than it would have come, if the old Logician ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Lord's Prayer repeated backwards—the incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy. Susan uttered the lugubrious discourse three times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably diminished. As the wax dropped into the fire a long flame ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... fascinated me! I own it! There is such incantation, in the small circle of her eye, as mortal man scarcely can resist! I adored her; nay still adore! But she knows me not. I have a soul of fire. She has driven me beyond the limits ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... slumber with tender kisses, lays her softly down upon the green mound, and draws down the visor of her helmet. Then, after covering her with her shield to protect her from all harm, he begins a powerful incantation, summoning Loge to surround her with an impassable barrier of flames. As this incantation proceeds, small flickering tongues of fire start forth on every side; they soon rise higher and higher, roaring and crackling until, as Wotan disappears, they ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... lap of luxury and ease. Even the hardened criminal, dandled on the knee of a patriarchal Government, will sometimes complain and try to give the Doctor trouble. But the Doctor has a specific—a brief incantation that allays every species of inflammatory discontent. "Look here, my man! If I hear any more of this infernal nonsense, I'll turn you out of the gaol neck and crop." This is a threat that never fails to produce the desired effect. To be expelled from gaol and driven, like Cain, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... picture of the witches is truly magical: in the short scenes where they enter, he has created for them a peculiar language, which, although composed of the usual elements, still seems to be a collection of formulae of incantation. The sound of the words, the accumulation of rhymes, and the rhythmus of the verse, form, as it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies the kettle of the witches can be made effective with agreeable aromatics, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, but a fact. I forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless whom God has not blessed—he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a heart ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... words of this spell serve for all men alike? Had the Sirens only to utter this one incantation, and was every ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... widely distributed Marchen of the animal bride is found in the mythical genealogy of the Raja of Chutia Nagpur, a chief of the Naga, or snake race. It is said that Raja Janameja prepared a yajnya, or great malevolently magical incantation, to destroy all the people of the serpent race. To prevent this annihilation, the supernatural being, Pundarika Nag, took a human form, and became the husband of the beautiful Parvati, daughter of a Brahman. But Pundarika Nag, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... is German to the core, and every page of it bears the impress of German inspiration, but the glamour of Weber's genius transmuted the rough material he employed into a fabric of the richest art. Of the imaginative power of such scenes as the famous incantation it is unnecessary to speak. It introduced a new element into music, and one which was destined to have an almost immeasurable influence upon modern music. Weber's power of characterisation was remarkable, as shown particularly in the music assigned to Agathe and Aennchen, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... temperament all things unconsciously serve, for the rough block of granite out of which the work is hewn, and, even while with difficulty enduring his vices, Emily undoubtedly learned from them those darker secrets of humanity necessary to her tragic incantation. They served her, those dreaded, passionate outbreaks of her brother's, even as the moors she loved, the fancy she courted, served her. Strange divining wand of genius, that conjures gold out of the miriest earth of common life; strange and terrible faculty laying up its stores and ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... injure another takes one of these sticks, and warms it at a small fire he has made; he sticks the gooweera in the ground a few inches from the fire. While it is warming, he chants an incantation, telling who he wants to kill, why he wants to kill him, how long he wants the process to last, whether it is to be sudden death or a ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... emotion to find the serene calm of an European place of worship in the midst of the distasteful turmoil of the Chinese country. Under the high white arch, where I stood alone with my sailors, the "Dies Iroe," chanted by a missionary priest, sounded like a soft magical incantation. Through the open doors we could see sights that resembled enchanted gardens, exquisite verdure and immense palm-trees, the wind shook the large flowering shrubs and their perfumed crimson petals fell like rain, almost to the church itself. Thence we marched to the ceremony, very ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... Place de la Loge, passed the time of day with a cafe waiter until the latter, with a disconcerting "Voila! Voila!" darted off to attend to a customer, and then strolled through the Porte Notre Dame onto the Quai Sadi-Carnot. There a familiar sound met his ears—the roll of a drum followed by an incantation in a quavering, high-pitched voice. It was the Town Crier, with whom, as with a brother artist, he had picked acquaintance the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... responded Don Rafael, with equal firmness, at the same moment that he recognised in the speaker the Indian whose incantation he had witnessed. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... a psychical storm, agitating to unimaginable depth the mystery of the past within us. Or we might say that it is a prodigious incantation, every different instrument and voice making separate appeal to different billions of prenatal memories. There are tones that call up all ghosts of youth and joy and tenderness;—there are tones that evoke all phantom ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... wizard uttered an incantation, so frightful, and of such incomprehensible words, that it is impossible for any mortal man to repeat them. And at the end of what seemed to be a versicle of his chant he called Bluebeard. There was no noise but the moaning of the wind in the trees, and the toowhooing ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... the sofa, my forehead and the backs of my hands still chafed by the texture of the horsehair, and we faced one another in the dreary light. My Father, perfectly confident in the success of what had really been a sort of incantation, asked me in a loud wheedling voice, 'Well, and what is the answer which our Lord vouchsafes?' I said nothing, and so my Father, more sharply, continued, 'We have asked Him to direct you to a true knowledge of His will. We have desired Him to let you know whether it is, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... say, and I'm not going to have you say it; and you have said it, besides. Look here. A marriage isn't a real marriage when people don't care for each other. Do you think a woman is bound by a few words said over her by a man in a black silk gown? by an incantation, like the savages? It would make me downright wicked to go on living with John Charteris; you ought to want to save me from that. I am always a great deal bettermore religiouswhen I am happy, than when I am miserable. It always rouses up all there is bad ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... keen-witted ladies laughed thereat, making as if 'twas at somewhat else. However, his story being ended, the king called for one from Elisa, who, all obedience, thus began:—Debonair my ladies, we heard from Emilia how the bogey is exorcised, and it brought to my mind a story of another incantation: 'tis not indeed so good a story as hers; but, as no other, germane to our theme, occurs to me at present, I ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... haunches. The drums ceased. A slave appeared bearing a pure white kid. Kingata Mata took the animal and held it before Kawa Kendi, who muttered a long incantation over it and cut the throat with a spear head. Then to Marufa was the bleeding carcass carried and while still alive he slit open the belly, smeared the liquid over his chest and right arm, and tore out the guts. The corpse ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... time I woke, Tom Kivelson was reciting the Mayday, Mayday incantation into the radio, and his father was asleep. The man who had been praying had started again, and nobody seemed to care whether he wasted oxygen or not. It was a Theosophist prayer to the Spirit Guides, ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... restrained! Stand up, and I and thou will fight together.' When Tiamat heard this, she uttered her former spells, she repeated her command. Tiamat also cried out vehemently with a loud voice. From her roots she rocked herself completely. She uttered an incantation, she cast a spell, and the gods of battle demand for themselves their arms. Then Tiamat attacked Merodach the counsellor of the gods; in combat they joined; they engaged in battle. Then Bel opened his net and enclosed her; the evil wind that seizes behind he sent before him. Tiamat ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... civilization, though confounded by the savage, it will not surprise one to find that the medicine-men are conjurers as well as doctors, and that their conjurations partake as much of medical quackery as does their medical practice of affected incantation. As physicians, the medicine-men are below contempt, and, but for the savage cruelty of their ignorance, undeserving of notice. The writer has known a man to have his uvula and palate torn out by a medicine-man. In that case the disease was a hacking cough caused by an elongation of the uvula; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... flame sank low. It flickered, once, twice, thrice, each time showing the pale, drawn faces of us six seated about it, like wizards making an incantation, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... of magic, the author informs us, he means any improper communication between men and evil spirits, whether it be called theurgy, soothsaying, necromancy, chiromancy, incantation or witchcraft. He proposes to prove, in the first place, that such a communication does actually exist. He quotes the Egyptian magicians, the witch of Endor, the possessions mentioned in the New Testament, and many more exceptionable authorities from the fathers, and canons of the church. He is ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Exception is made in favor of the classics, on account of their style; with the proviso that they are on no account to be given to boys to read. Treatises dealing professedly with occult arts, magic, sorcery, predictions of future events, incantation of spirits, and so forth, are to be proscribed; due reservation being made in favor of scientific observations touching navigation, agriculture, and the healing art, in which prognostics may be useful to mankind. Having thus broadly defined the literature which ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... in. As soon as you see me or hear me approaching, you must repeat, quite slowly, this scientific incantation." She beat time with a pink and rhythmic finger ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... as in benediction, he slowly repeated thrice, like an incantation, the words, "Rest in Peace," and, ere the echoes of his voice had died away, the soul of Sarthia had left forever its earthly abode ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... to be a young woman, who brought a badly-sprained wrist for cure. She was treated with an herb poultice, over which the old woman muttered an inaudible incantation; and having paid a bunch of parsnips as her fee, she went away well satisfied. Next came a lame old man, who received a bottle of lotion. The third applicant wanted a charm to make herself beautiful. She was desired to wash herself once a day in cold ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... service may be thus described: A deep cut is first made in the stomach of the departed one. Into this incision a stone, some bone ash, and a bird's claw are introduced. The body is then placed over the grave on two sticks, a muttering incantation is said by the witch doctor, and the sticks are roughly knocked from under the body, so as to permit it to fall in a sitting posture. A bow and arrows, and some food and cooking utensils, are dropped into the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... magic and sorcery from the Tengus, or long-nosed elves of the mountains, and could fly high in the air with incredible swiftness. Speaking a few words of incantation, he put on the wings of a Tengu, mounted a white cloud and rode on the east wind to India, bought the elixir of the mountain spirits, and returned to Japan in ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... first appears with its appearance: a motif preparing for some unearthly manifestation the mind pricked to disquieted attention by the weirdness of the air. Alberich places it upon his head, utters a brief incantation, and disappears from sight. A column of vapour stands ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind, If Winter comes, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... as a species of sorcerers, and believe they have the power to take the lives of whomsoever they choose by incantation. Themorangha,[BT] one of the most enlightened of the chiefs, came one day to Marsden, in great agitation, to inform him that a brother chief had threatened to employ a priest to destroy him in this manner, for not having sold to sufficient advantage an article which he had given him to dispose ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... words were repeated by the simple-minded shepherd, and poor Durie's fears were, if possible, increased; for it seemed that they were now performing some new incantation, whereby he would be again reduced to their power; but he was now in the open air, and why not take advantage of the opportunity of escaping from their thraldom? The moment the idea started in his mind, he threw from him the accursed cloak, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Dick Turpin, and clever indeed, for they contrive that you shall be helpless, that you may not in good form resist their calculated, schemed, coordinated blood-drawing. And I had as lief have a Sioux Medicine man dance a one-step round my camp fire, and chant his silly incantation for my curing, as any of these blood pressure, electro-chemical, pill, powder specialists. Give me an Ipswich witch instead. Let her lay hands on me. Soft hands that turn away wrath. Have you such or did your ancestors, out of fear of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... myself I swear, And ocean's gods and heaven's gods I adjure, Thou shalt be Tamar's, Tamar shalt be thine." Then she, regarding him long fixed, replied: "I have thy promise, take thou my advice. Gebir, this land of Egypt is a land Of incantation, demons rule these waves; These are against thee, these thy works destroy. Where thou hast built thy palace, and hast left The seven pillars to remain in front, Sacrifice there, and all these rites observe. Go, but go early, ere the ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... its idle Tread of leisurely delay; Fear or doubt it cannot bridle Should it headlong run away; No remorse, no incantation Moves the standing from ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... bog-end's yellow incantation, You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above, Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs, Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love; You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent, You with your face all rich, like the ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... about her than to either the service or the sermon; but to-day she wistfully turned her thoughts to both, in the hope that they might do her good, although she had as vague an idea as to the mode or process as if both were an Indian incantation. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... treasures. Her priests would fail to console her, and she would become superstitious, and resort to clairvoyants and mediums for the solution of the torturing mystery. But no prayer or curse will reach me, no incantation of conjurers or spirit-rappers will call me back. The dead do not return, either for promised ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... will understand that the term "medicine," foolishly enough adopted by both French and English to express the aboriginal magic arts, has no therapeutic significance. Very few even pretended remedies were administered to the natives and probably never by the professional shaman, who worked by incantation, often pulverizing and mixing the substances mystically used, to prevent their detection. The same mixtures were employed in divination. The author particularly mentions Mandan ceremonies, in which a white "medicine" stone, as hard as pyrites, was produced by ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... it is to hear: at length it seems hardly a human voice; it sounds like a series of magic formulas, unwinding themselves from an inexhaustible roller, and escaping to take flight through the air. By its very weirdness, and by the persistency of its incantation, it ends by producing in my half-awakened brain an ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... voice boomed out in a solemn incantation and the whispering hushed. He chanted age-old verses, whose very meaning was forgotten in the womb of time—forgotten as the artist who had painted the picture of idealized Kharvani on the wall. Ten priests, five on either side of the tremendous idol, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Historia and Magic of Dr. Faust, from which every Christian man should take warning, and specially those who are of a presumptuous, proud, curious and obstinate mind and head, that they may flee from all Magic, Incantation, and other works of the devil. Amen! This I wish for each and every one from the ground of my ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... it will burn with a beautiful emerald green flame. Pieces of sponge soaked in this spirit, lighted and suspended by fine wires over the stage, produces the lambent green flames now so common in incantation scenes; strips of flannel saturated with it, and applied round copper swords, tridents, &c., produce, when lighted, the flaming swords and fire forks brandished by the demons in such scenes; indeed, the chief consumption of nitrate of ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... on the neck of the vase and with a long incantation which there is no use at all in repeating, the Gheewizard flung the bottle straight at the Scarecrow's head. But scarcely had it left his hand before there was a flash and a flutter and down came Dorothy and the magic parasol right ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... see it in the vacant eye, the listless face, the expression that betrays hopeless intoxication. Some are preparing the enchanting pipe,—a laborious process, that reminds one of an incantation. See those two votaries lying face to face, chatting in low voices, each loading his pipe with a look of delicious expectation in every feature. They recline at full-length; their heads rest upon blocks of wood or some improvised pillow; a small oil lamp flickers between them. Their ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... appeared. The operation was repeated ineffectually a second time, and John Campbell determined upon the Grand Rite, which began by each person spinning on his own axis, and in this manner circumambulating the temple in procession. Whenever they passed an embedded fakir, they obtained an incantation from his lips, but still Baal-Zeboub failed. Thereupon the native Grand Master suggested that the evocation should be performed by the holiest of all the fakirs, who was produced from a cupboard more fetid than the temple itself, and proved to be ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... to the spell of her song. To him it was an incantation. Her own strains varied to express the changing sentiment, and at last, as the song ended, it seemed to die away in melodious melancholy, like the dying ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Oh, Marster! de devil is 'bout heah, sho'! Marse Nat, you fling it up, suh. I ain' nuttin but a po' sinful nigger. Oh, Lordy!" And handing over the quarter tremulously, George Washington flung himself flat on the ground and, as a sort of religious incantation, began to chant in a wild, quavering tone ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... usual incantation was gone through, which constitutes an introduction in England—namely, the repetition of two names, whereof each person hears only his or her own (an item of information by no means new or in any way to be desired), while the name of the other contracting party remains ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... trembled with a maiden's eyes; Yet must I dote upon thee,—call thee sweet. Sweeter by far than Hybla's honied roses When steep'd in dew rich to intoxication. Ah! I will taste that dew, for me 'tis meet, And when the moon her pallid face discloses, I'll gather some by spells, and incantation. ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... flat in Chelsea. Hurrying through Houndsditch, across Leadenhall Street and up St. Mary Axe, the author discovers the right 'bus in Broad Street about to start. They are filling the radiator with water and the conductor is intoning a mysterious incantation which resolves itself into "Benk! Oobun, Benk! Piccadilly, 'Yde Pawk, Sloon Stree', Sloon Square, Kings Road, Chelsea an' Walham Green. Here y' are, lidy." With long practice he can make the vowels reverberate above the roar of the traffic. The words Benk and Pawk come ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the peculiar treasure of Provence, has been ruined by the loss of a feather, so that my daughter can no longer go abroad in the appearance of a swan, because the robe is not able to work any more wonders until that feather in your pocket has been sewed back into the robe with the old incantation." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... still functions actively enough in creating glamours and effecting the impossible. He came before her eyes as a very central man, and that always counts, and he had powers, unique powers as it seemed, at any rate in the air. The performance with the model had just a touch of the quality of a potent incantation, and women have ever displayed an unreasonable disposition to imagine that when a man has powers he must necessarily have Power. Given so much, and what was not good in Filmer's manner and appearance became an added merit. He was modest, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... deprived of his (natural) armour. Indeed, because Karna, cutting off his (natural) armour and his brilliant ear-rings, gave them unto Sakra, it is for that he came to be called Vaikartana. Karna now seems to me to be like an angry snake of virulent poison stupefied by power of incantation, or like a fire of mild flames. From that time, O mighty-armed one, when the high-souled Sakra gave that dart unto Karna in exchange for the latter's ear-rings, and celestial armour, that dart, viz., which has slain Ghatotkacha, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Prince Bobo had used a spell that would puzzle any ordinary wizard or sorcerer to break; therefore she had given the matter much shrewd thought and hoped she had conceived a plan that would succeed. But because she was not positive of success she would have no one present at the incantation except her ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the submission with which Perpetua followed the incantation of the fool. "This is the black magic," she said; and then asked Perpetua, "Are you content ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Chrisolite, that doth resist Thirst, proued, neuer failing, The purple colored Amatist, 'Gainst strength of wine prevailing; The verdant gay greene Smaragdus, Most soueraine ouer passion: 130 The Sardonix approu'd by vs To master Incantation. Then that celestiall colored stone The Saphyre, heauenly wholly, Which worne, there wearinesse is none, And cureth melancholly: The Lazulus, whose pleasant blew With golden vaines is graced; The Iaspis, of so various hew, Amongst our other ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... day by day the machine grew in complexity and power. But in the process it yielded automatically a result very different from that which its constructors had foreseen. It is the story of the witch who, by a magic incantation, had won the consent of her broomstick to go to the river and fill her buckets; having no formula ready to check the work, she watched her cave fill with water until she ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... a beckoning in the locust bough, and in the air an incantation that made a folly of sermons and souls and old maids' resentments and gossips' queries. The preacher fought on, another Saint Anthony in a cloud ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... by speaking words out of season even Vrihaspati himself incurreth reproach and the charge of ignorance, one becometh agreeable by gift, another by sweet words, a third by the force of incantation and drugs. He, however, that is naturally agreeable, always remaineth so. He that is hated by another is never regarded by that other as honest or intelligent or wise. One attributeth everything good to him one loveth; and everything evil to him one ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for what he said, as Demdike, having paused at a broad green patch on the hill-side, was now busied in tracing a circle round it with his staff. He then spoke aloud some words, which the superstitious beholders construed into an incantation, and after tracing the circle once again, and casting some tufts of dry heather, which he plucked from an adjoining hillock, on three particular spots, he ran quickly downwards, followed by his hound, and leaping a stone wall, surrounding a little orchard ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... reptiles. But the prince having his eyes shut, and his back toward him, could not see his motions, and the enchanter being horribly affrighted, as well as naturally a great blockhead, was so long in recollecting the formula of his incantation, that the prince, seeing by a sly glance over the shoulder, that he was sufficiently near, suddenly turned round, and with one blow severed his head from his shoulders. Then catching it before it fell to the ground, he threw it into the great kettle that hung ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... necessary for his first growth. By and by, when he has found his legs, he begins to skip, and even before he has found articulate speech, to croon for himself. Pass a stage, and you find him importing speech, drama, dance, incantation, into his games with his playmates. Watch a cluster of children as they enact "Here we go gathering nuts in May"— eloquent line: it is just what they are doing!—or "Here come three Dukes a-riding," or "Fetch a pail of water," or ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... subject, Charles M. Barrows, in "Facts and Fictions of Mental Healing," remarks that whatever acts upon a patient in such a way as to persuade him to yield himself to the therapeutic force constantly operative in Nature, is a means of healing. It may be an amulet, a cabalistic symbol, an incantation, a bread-pill, or even sudden fright. It may be a drug prescribed by a physician, imposition of hands, mesmeric passes, the touch of a relic, or visiting ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Taylor, wherein the young husband, stricken to the heart by the baleful kiss given to him against his will by a wood-nymph, goes home to die, and his fair young wife follows him fast to the grave. Alison Gross is another of those Circes who, by incantation of horn and wand, seek to lower the shape and nature of her lovers to those of the beasts that crawl on their bellies. Sometimes the tempter is of the other sex. Thus The Demon Lover is a tale known in several versions in ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... warriors stepped forward, and with a piece of quartz formed a deep incision in the nape or the neck of each youth, cutting broad gashes from shoulder to hip, all the while repeating rapidly the following curious incantation: ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... it. In this incantation, again, we have the association with moonwort; and the connection is further illustrated in an old oracle ascribed to Hecate: 'From a root of wild rue fashion and polish a statue; adorn it with household lizards; grind myrrh, gum, and frankincense with the same reptiles, and let the mixture ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... to everybody," said Mrs. Todd kindly; and I felt for a moment as if it were part of a spell and incantation, and as if my enchantress would now begin to look like the cobweb shapes of the arctic town. Nothing happened but a quiet evening and some delightful plans that we made about going to Green Island, and on the ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the fascinum was in vogue during the eighth century[Y] in Italy and in other countries under the religious jurisdiction of the Pope, the following from the Judicia Sacerdotalia Criminibus, clearly indicates: "If any one has performed incantation to the fascinum, or any incantation whatever, except one who chaunts the Creed or the Lord's Prayer, let him do penance on bread and water during ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... good singers: and in these, and still more in the song of the Three Women in "Baile's Strand," the singers must remember the natural speed of words. If the lyric in "Baile's Strand" is sung slowly it is like church-singing, but if sung quickly and with the right expression it becomes an incantation so old that nobody can quite understand it. That it may give this sense of something half-forgotten, it must be sung with a certain lack of minute feeling for the meaning of the words, which, however, must always remain words. The songs in "Deirdre," especially the last ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Graham. "Why should a judge be ashamed to follow the example of his own goddess?" And so at last the owner of the ermine submitted, and the stern magistrate of the bench was led round with the due incantation of the spirits, and dismissed into chaos to seek ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... a book of magic. But in the Tamil version, the process is described as being of a different and double nature. According to it, the mother of the murdered child "by the charm called sisupabam re-created the body, and, by the incantation called sanjivi, restored it to life." The suitor, having learnt the charm and the incantation, "took the bones and the ashes (of the dead girl), and having created out of them the body, by virtue of the charm sisupabam gave life to that body by ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... are mine own. On the fourteenth of the dark half of the moon at night, I had gone into a place where dead bodies are burned, for the purpose of accomplishing a witch's incantation. After long and toilsome labour she appeared, but her demeanour was so unruly that I was forced to chastise her. I struck her with this, my trident, on the left leg, if memory serves me. As she continued to be refractory, in ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... and sang a hymn, every now and then falling on their faces and touching the floor with their foreheads. The whole looked like an incantation, or a scene in Robert le Dable. The novice was then raised from the ground and led to the feet of the bishop, who examined her as to her vocation, and gave her his blessing, and once more the black curtain fell between us ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... a thrill of interest as the old man began to spin slowly on his toes round the column of smoke, chanting slowly some strange mixture of savage music which was, as Frank guessed, an incantation to the fetish that, as he believed, dwelt in the smoke. As the smoke grew thicker he cast some sort of powder from a skin-bag into it and instantly a thick yellow ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... stately Lady Ashton, kept close guard over her; and it made me shudder to behold, also, the old hag, Ailsie Gourley, crouching down by her bonny mistress, and stroking the lily-white hand which hung so listless at her side, mumbling the while what seemed to me must be some incantation ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... seem, in Wales, a certain form of incantation resorted to to reclaim children from the Fairies, which was as follows:—The mother who had lost her child was to carry the changeling to a river, but she was to be accompanied by a conjuror, who was to take a prominent part in ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... tale of Sudama the poor Brahman whose tattered hovel is changed by Krishna into a golden palace. He was evidently assisted by a weaker painter but in the pictures which are clearly his own work, the same quality of lyrical incantation appears. As Sudama journeys to Dwarka Krishna's golden city, his heart swoons with adoration, the hills, trees and ocean appear to dance about him and once again, the linear music of the composition engenders a feeling of supreme ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... suspended under the incantation of opium, his quick mind, without conscious intent, without prejudice or purpose, assembled such mysterious and wonderful sights and sounds as the naked soul might see and hear in the world of actual experience. For De Quincey's range of action and association ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... mention is made of the Mid[-e], the Jessakk[-i]d, or the Wb[)e]n[-o], but the term sorcerer or juggler is generally employed to designate that class of persons who professed the power of prophecy, and who practiced incantation and administered medicinal preparations. Constant reference is made to the opposition of these personages to the introduction of Christianity. In the light of recent investigation the cause of this antagonism is seen to lie in the fact ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... poured the liquid into a crucible, set it among the glowing and sparkling coals and murmured strange words and spells over the seething fluid until it boiled up and the hissing bubbles ran over the rim of the crucible. Then he stood the hot vessel in cold water, pronounced one more incantation over it, held it before a mirror—the symbol of the Spirit of Truth and the emblem which she is always represented as carrying in her right hand—and poured the liquid back into the phial. Beads ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... incident. It will be recalled by people familiar with the history of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer first designed "Robert" for the Opra Comique, but remodeled it for the Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... help being reminded, as I looked at him, of another black poodle, which Faust entertained for a short time with unhappy results, and I thought that a very moderate degree of incantation would be enough to bring the ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... pleasure,—first lighting another cigar to dispel the weird shapes which will probably respond to your incantation." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ironic, supercilious disillusion makes her forehead weary, and her eyelids heavy. But after all, to what exquisite children, like rare, exotic flowers, she has the power to give birth! But did you know, you for whom the syllables "Oxford" are an Incantation, that to the yet more subtle, yet more withdrawn, and yet more elaborate soul of Walter Pater, Oxford Herself appeared, as time went on, a little ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... offender. At that moment, the withered squaw already mentioned moved into the circle, in a slow, sidling sort of a dance, holding the torch, and muttering the indistinct words of what might have been a species of incantation. Though her presence was altogether an ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the fact that a Scotch empiric of the seventeenth century professed the cure of those "'visseit with frenacies, madness, falling evil (epilepsy), persones distractit in their wittis, and with feirful apparitiones, etc., and utheris uncouth diseases; all done be sorcerie, incantation, devellische charmeing.' Above forty persons are enumerated for whom he had prescribed, for which he was strangled and burnt as too familiar with Satan."[32] The same author relates that a poor woman having become frantic, the alleged author of the malady came, and ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... a wild incantation in which all joined. The old priest would speak some words, and the reply came in barbaric music. The words meant nothing to me; they must have been in some tongue long since dead. But the music told its own tale. It ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... was convinced that there is virtue in them by plain proofs before my eyes. For I had trial of their beneficial operations in the case of those scorpion-stung, nor less in the case of bones stuck fast in the throat, immediately, by an incantation thrown up. And many of them are excellent, severally, and they ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... no man escapes that gets within their reach, but they never injure women. One of these of a prodigious size was caught having gold rings in its ears, which was supposed to have been done as some species of witchcraft or incantation by the Kafrs to clear the river from these dangerous animals. In confirmation of this opinion, we read in an Arabian author named Matude, giving an account of prodigies, that about the year 863 a brazen crocodile ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... sacrificial nature, and the stones with which soma is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration. Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings. Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless it ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... is the tone with the true ring in it. I thank thee and I bless thee, my bairn," said Mary, making over her the sign of the cross, at which the maiden winced as at an incantation. Then she added, "My little maid, we must be up and stirring. Mind, no word of all this. Thou art Cicely Talbot by day, as ever, and only my child, my Bride, mine ain wee thing, my princess by night. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who were the priests of the Median religion, greatly developed the practices of incantation and sorcery. Among these rites they "pretended to have the power of making fire descend on to their altars by means of magical ceremonies." [Footnote: Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, 226, 238.] Moses appears to have been very fond of this particular miracle. It is mentioned as having ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... back and forth in the curve of the cliffs. His back was toward the white men. If he heard them, he made no sign. He was wrapped in a blanket, from shoulders to heels, and was in the midst of a long incantation, flung at the beetling walls with their foot fringe of stone tents. The tepees of the Indians were hardly distinguishable from those which Nature had pitched on this world-old camping-ground. No sound came from the tents of the Indians. ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... confundir overwhelm, engulf, confuse, confound, mingle, heap up; —se be bewildered, be perplexed. confusin f. confusion, disorder. confuso, -a confused, dim, indistinct, bewildering. conjurar conjure, implore. conjuro m. conjuration, incantation. conmigo pron. pers. with me. conmover stir, affect. conocer know, be acquainted with, recognize; —se know each other. conque conj. so then, and so. conquistar conquer, subdue. conseguir attain, obtain, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... But the incantation was more soothing than the breath of Miss Vilda's scarlet poppies, and before the magical verse had fallen upon the drowsy air for the third time, Timothy was fast asleep, with a smile of ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a belief that when, for the sake of some small kindness or gratuity, a Gipsy woman has allowed her child to be baptised, she summons her friends, and attempts to undo the effect of the ceremony by subjecting the infant to some weird, horrible incantation of Eastern origin, the original import of which is in all probability a profound mystery to her. There is a quaint story of a Yorkshire Gipsy, a prosperous horse-dealer, who, becoming wealthy, came up to town, and, amongst other sights, was shown a goldsmith's window. His sole remark was that ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in making a random cast on the surface of a strange language. You cannot tell what will come up. It is like an experiment in witchcraft. We should not have been at all surprised, I must confess, if our preliminary incantation had brought forth a cow ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... bone is dislocated it can be made sound by this incantation. Take a green reed four or five feet long, split it down the middle and let two men hold the pieces against your hips. Begin ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... heavens, based as it is on the primitive view which regarded the liver as the seat of life and of the soul, were brought into connexion with astral divination. Less influenced by the astral-theological system are the old incantation texts which were gathered together into series. In these series we can trace the attempt to gather the incantation formulae and prayers produced in different centres, and to make them conform to the tendency to centralize the cult in the worship of Marduk and his consort ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... he came to the door he, too, was transfixed, and the fire seemed burning his vitals, until he felt water sprinkled on his face, and saw that his wife, whom he had left at home too ill to move, stood behind him and was casting holy water into the furnace, speaking an incantation as she did so. At that moment a storm arose, and a rain fell that put out the fire; but as the last glow faded the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and the figures around them, with those of the dancers, reminded me of the witch scenes in Macbeth, as conceived by Shakspeare, not by the actors of them upon the stage. Four grim figures were stirring the cauldrons incessantly, with a sort of humming incantation, the others dancing around. In one of their dances they used a sort of small kettle-drum, with a guitar-like handle to it. But after a while, the evening dances seemed to vary from the devotional to the complimentary and to the diverting; but the daylight ones were altogether ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... world-old formula of hate; he knew of its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending with the wizardry with which he surrounded his thoughts of the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... mind will receive more benefit from affirmations in which the precise physiological functions are specifically mentioned; while the person who is fond of mystery and strange ceremonies will be better served in the affirmations or statements taken in the form of some magical incantation, etc. The difference, however, lies in the mind of the patient, rather than in the words themselves. Words are merely invokers of ideas—symbols of ideas. In themselves, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... and sorrowful; lightnings quiver, storm's roll; and high above the gigantic musician! banning and compelling all things, proudly and firmly wielding them from whirl to whirlpool, to the abyss.— He laughs at himself; for the incantation was, after all, but play to him. Thus night beckons. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... was installed in the chieftainship, he felt his position rather insecure, for it was believed that the incantations of Mpepe had an intimate connection with Sebituane's death. Indeed, the latter had said to his son, "That hut of incantation will prove fatal to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... in their places, To the rapture of three races) How the fire fumes! There'll be ruction. Characters look like OBSTRUCTION! But they mean—and that's their beauty!— Merely, simply, purely DUTY! Therefore, 'tis my occupation So at present, Incantation! G. O. M. won't take a part; He objects to the Black Art. Though he rather shirks my cult, He will relish the result. ZAMIEL! you're the chap I like, Charm the bullets that they strike. ZAMIEL, lend thy might to kill ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... the usual incantation was gone through, which constitutes an introduction in England—namely, the repetition of two names, whereof each person hears only his or her own (an item of information by no means new or in any way to be desired), while the name of the other contracting party remains shrouded in impenetrable ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... afterward introduced from that play songs by him—"Music and a song, Come away, come away," Act III., Sc. 5, and "Music and a song, Black spirits," etc., Act IV., Sc. 1. This was done to please the inferior part of the audience. These songs and all this sort of operatic incantation are entirely foreign to the supernatural motive of the tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. And I will here remark that the usual performance of "Macbeth" with "a chorus" and "all Locke's music" is a ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... calico—with a grin like that which made Aunt Sallie famous—having appeared, panting, with two large glasses and a bundle of green herbage upon a silver salver, the old fossil poured out a seething decoction—of which like only the memory remains—performed an incantation over each glass with the odoriferous greens, smiled fondly upon the work of his hands and remarked with amiable hospitality, "Well, my son! Glad to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... followed him and suddenly, as we are told, struck him with a druidic wand, or according to one version, flung at him a tuft of grass over which he had pronounced a druidical incantation." ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... contrive that you shall be helpless, that you may not in good form resist their calculated, schemed, coordinated blood-drawing. And I had as lief have a Sioux Medicine man dance a one-step round my camp fire, and chant his silly incantation for my curing, as any of these blood pressure, electro-chemical, pill, powder specialists. Give me an Ipswich witch instead. Let her lay hands on me. Soft hands that turn away wrath. Have you such or did your ancestors, out of fear of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the coming of Cumaean grain into the material world of Rome. The Greek goddess of grain came with the grain, just as Castor had come with the Greek cavalry, with this essential distinction however that Demeter came by the incantation of the books and the enactment of the Senate, whereas Castor's coming was a slow ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... through a hundred, hundred years Hear the waves as they climb the piers, Hear the howl of the silver seas, Hear the thunder. Hear the gongs of holy China How the waves and tunes combine In a rhythmic clashing wonder, Incantation old and fine: 'Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons, Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... priests as a species of sorcerers, and believe they have the power to take the lives of whomsoever they choose by incantation. Themorangha,[BT] one of the most enlightened of the chiefs, came one day to Marsden, in great agitation, to inform him that a brother chief had threatened to employ a priest to destroy him in this manner, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... hill limping as if in pain. It was the suspected witch, whom he had shot in the leg. She did not bother him any more; but another witch used to come at night and ride him. She would shake a witch bridle over his head, utter some incantation and my uncle would be turned into a horse, and she would ride him hard until morning. Then she would bring him home, remove the spell, and he would be asleep in bed at dawn. One night he was thus ridden to a witch ball and tied to a tree. He rubbed his head against the tree until he got the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... [human as she is] That is, not a phantom, but the real Rosalind, without any of the danger generally conceived to attend the rites of incantation. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... There once more he saw the shepherds tend their flocks, singing or wrangling with one another, dreamily piping on their wax-stopped reeds or plotting to annex their neighbours' gear; or else there sounded in his ears the love-song or the dirge, or the incantation of the forsaken girl rose amid the silence to the silver moon. Once again he stood upon the shore and watched the fishers cast their nets, while around him the goats browsed on the close herbage ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Laing, writing from New Zealand. The article is by Miss Tenira Henry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the island. The Council of the Society, not having seen the rite, 'do not guarantee the truth of the story, but willingly publish it for the sake of the incantation.' Miss Henry begins with a description of the ti-plant (Dracaena terminalis), which 'requires to be well baked before being eaten.' She ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... howled, the branches of the forest stirred, and sent forth sounds like an incantation. Soon might be distinguished the various voices of the mighty trees, as they expressed their terror or their agony. The oak roared, the beech shrieked, the elm sent forth its deep and long-drawn groan; while ever and anon, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... it was such an emotion to find the serene calm of an European place of worship in the midst of the distasteful turmoil of the Chinese country. Under the high white arch, where I stood alone with my sailors, the "Dies Iroe," chanted by a missionary priest, sounded like a soft magical incantation. Through the open doors we could see sights that resembled enchanted gardens, exquisite verdure and immense palm-trees, the wind shook the large flowering shrubs and their perfumed crimson petals fell like rain, almost to the church ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... description inherited from Scott and Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe. Neither is it of importance that "Parisina" is a tale of the year 1405, and has an echo in it of convent bells and the death chant of friars; nor that the first scene of "Manfred" passes in a "Gothic gallery," and includes an incantation of spirits upon the model of "Faust"; nor that "Marino Faliero" and "The Two Foscari" are founded on incidents of Venetian history which happened in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively; nor yet that Byron translated the Spanish ballad "Woe is me Alhama" and a passage from ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of Mull, one of the largest of the Hebrides, the need-fire was kindled as late as 1767. "In consequence of a disease among the black cattle the people agreed to perform an incantation, though they esteemed it a wicked thing. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel and nine spindles of oakwood. They extinguished every fire in every house within sight of the hill; the wheel was then turned from east to west over the nine spindles long enough to produce fire ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... from her surprise, 'Quit the shape of woman of which you are unworthy and take that of a mare.' What the nature of the charm might be, or by the aid of what demon the change took place, I know not; at any rate the incantation was effectual, and as I pronounced the words, Sojah disappeared and a beautiful mare ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... sorcery. Now Kinney had been to school once, in his Eastern childhood, and there had committed to memory portions of Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, and other poets out of a Reader. He had never forgotten a single word of any of them, and it now occurred to him that for the purposes of an incantation it would be both entertaining for himself and impressive to Cheschapah if he should recite "The Battle of Hohenlinden." He was drawing squares and circles with ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... uttered these terrible words a most singular thing happened. In whatever attitude the creatures were they remained so; and gradually each assumed a stony and lifeless expression, and the spell or incantation which the Ambassador had pronounced had evidently ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... cabalistic value. When the Hawaiian propitiates his gods he concludes with an invocation to the "forty thousand, to the four hundred thousand, to the four thousand"[3] gods, in order that none escape the incantation. Direction is similarly invoked all around the compass. In the art of verbal debate—called hoopapa in Hawaii—the test is to match a rival's series with one exactly parallel in every particular or to add to a whole some undiscovered part.[4] A charm mentioned in folk tale is "to name every word ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... stage of theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing, fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced, and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No enterprise is undertaken without consulting ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... This is an incantation," replied the Lonesome Duck, but now it began making a succession of soft noises that sounded like quacks and seemed to mean nothing at all. And it kept up these sounds so long that Trot ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... senses, was a noise over my head of one shrieking; after which, methought I took a full jump, and found myself in the hands of a sorceress, who seemed as if she had been long waking and employed in some incantation: I was thoroughly frightened, and cried out, but she immediately seemed to go on in some magical operation, and anointed me from head to foot. What they meant I could not imagine; for there gathered a great crowd about me, crying, 'An heir, an heir'; upon which I grew a little still, and believed ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... by day the machine grew in complexity and power. But in the process it yielded automatically a result very different from that which its constructors had foreseen. It is the story of the witch who, by a magic incantation, had won the consent of her broomstick to go to the river and fill her buckets; having no formula ready to check the work, she watched her cave fill with water until she ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... affirmed. "His mother was so extravagant and wasteful that his father named him Chryseros Philargyrus as a sort of antidote incantation, in the hope that it might prove a good omen of his disposition and predispose him to parsimony. He certainly has turned out sufficiently close-fisted to justify ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... of the text is fragmentary, and shows that the text formed part of an incantation which was recited in the Temple of E-Zida, possibly the great ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... the thrusts, and the gashes of the many wounds that they had, than to apply to them spells and incantations and charms, in order to staunch their blood, and their bleeding mortal wounds. And for every spell and incantation and charm that was applied to the stabs and the wounds of Cuchulain, he sent a full half westward across the ford to Ferdia; and of each kind of food, and of pleasant, palatable, intoxicating drink that the men of Ireland brought to Ferdia, he sent a ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... burial service may be thus described: A deep cut is first made in the stomach of the departed one. Into this incision a stone, some bone ash, and a bird's claw are introduced. The body is then placed over the grave on two sticks, a muttering incantation is said by the witch doctor, and the sticks are roughly knocked from under the body, so as to permit it to fall in a sitting posture. A bow and arrows, and some food and cooking utensils, are dropped into the grave. All ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... gladdened king, "By my right hand and by myself I swear, And ocean's gods and heaven's gods I adjure, Thou shalt be Tamar's, Tamar shalt be thine." Then she, regarding him long fixed, replied: "I have thy promise, take thou my advice. Gebir, this land of Egypt is a land Of incantation, demons rule these waves; These are against thee, these thy works destroy. Where thou hast built thy palace, and hast left The seven pillars to remain in front, Sacrifice there, and all these rites observe. Go, but go early, ere the gladsome Hours, Strew ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... was not introduced into England until the middle of the 17th century. The Mignonette or Sweet Reseda was once supposed capable of assuaging pain, and of ridding men of many of the ills that flesh is heir to. It was applied with an incantation. This flower has found a place in the armorial bearings of an illustrious family of Saxony. I must tell the story: The Count of Walsthim loved the fair and sprightly Amelia de Nordbourg. She was a spoilt child and a coquette. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... What of the incantation That forced the huddled shapes on yonder short To take and wear the night Like a material majesty? That touched the shafts of wavering fire About this miserable welter and wash— (River, O River of Journeys, River of ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... Daphne has made a wiser choice than any of you may imagine." With this, after muttering an incantation, she touched Girofle with her crutch-handled staff, and in his stead Prince Mirliflor stood revealed in rich and splendid attire ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... left the room and came back with her store, which she put into Grizzie's hand. Grizzie laid it on the table, went in her turn to her box, brought thence her store, laid it on the other, took both up, closed her hands over them, shook them together, murmured over them, like an incantation, the words, "It's nae mair mine, an' it's nae mair thine, but belangs to a', whatever befa'," and put all in her pocket under her winsey petticoat. Thence, for a time, the invalids wanted, nothing—after the moderate ideas of need, that is, ruling ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... intense blackness, showed the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping their uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... with narrowing eyes. And now she was all Indian, the white woman in her dead. Only the Sioux watched, and, in the patient, Indian style, bided its time. "Cattle thieves," "the girl at Wetmore's"—the words sang themselves in her head like an incantation. "Cattle thieves" meant her brother, their recognized leader—her brother, who was dearer to her than the heart in her breast, the eye in her head, the right hand that held together the shambling, uncertain destiny ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... not immediately removed. The two boys could hear the sound of footsteps moving round them, and voices chanting in some unknown tongue what seemed to be a mysterious incantation. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... that to everybody," said Mrs. Todd kindly; and I felt for a moment as if it were part of a spell and incantation, and as if my enchantress would now begin to look like the cobweb shapes of the arctic town. Nothing happened but a quiet evening and some delightful plans that we made about going to Green Island, ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Sualtam, and they called him Setanta, That was his first name. His nurse was Dethcaen, the druidess, daughter of Cathvah the druid, the mighty wizard and prophet of the Crave Rue. His breast-plate [Footnote: A poetic spell or incantation. So even the Christian hymn of St. Patrick was called the lorica or breastplate of Patrick.] of power, woven of druidic verse, was upon Ulla [Footnote: Ulla is the Gaelic root of Ulster.] in his time, upon all ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... wrote Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon and Charles Henry Peters on her slate and performed the necessary ceremony. It turned out quite satisfactorily, and Rosie's next duty was to chant the usual incantation over the buttons of ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... imagination, and they shall find the effects: let divines say to the contrary what they will." He proves and contends that many diseases cannot otherwise be cured. Incantatione orti incantatione curari debent; if they be caused by incantation, [2803]they must be cured by incantation. Constantinus lib. 4. approves of such remedies: Bartolus the lawyer, Peter Aerodius rerum Judic. lib. 3. tit. 7. Salicetus Godefridus, with others of that sect, allow of them; modo sint ad sanitatem quae a magis fiunt, secus non, so they be for the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... wilderness of houses, with roofs as innumerable as tree-tops, and people looking like tiny insects below. Or one might go out into the harbour late upon a winter afternoon, and see it as a city of a million lights, rising like an incantation from the sea. Round about it was an unbroken ring of docks, with ferry-boats and tugs darting everywhere, and vessels which had come from every port in the world, emptying their cargoes into the ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... were solemnly tried to hush the wires, and each one usually proved to be as futile as an incantation. What was to be done? Step by step the telephone men were driven back. They were beaten. There was no way to silence these noises. Reluctantly, they agreed that the only way was to pull up the ends of each wire from the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... turned his eyes, there was the young man, seeming to be, and yet not to be Holden, and haunting him like a shadow. As these imaginations possessed themselves more and more of the Indian's mind, he began to fancy himself the victim of some incantation, with which he naturally connected the Recluse as the cause; and, finally, by continual brooding on the subject, both his appetite and sleep deserted him. His moodiness at length attracted the attention of Peena. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... ocean, his hand relaxed on the machine-gun and he stood in ready expectation. The Eskimos appeared to understand the words which the stranger flung at them, for, though they continued their weird incantation, they lowered their weapons and did not attempt to approach nearer the ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... dreaming; you see it in the vacant eye, the listless face, the expression that betrays hopeless intoxication. Some are preparing the enchanting pipe,—a laborious process, that reminds one of an incantation. See those two votaries lying face to face, chatting in low voices, each loading his pipe with a look of delicious expectation in every feature. They recline at full-length; their heads rest upon blocks of wood or some improvised pillow; a small oil lamp flickers between them. Their pipes resemble ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... three feet high. Haying fastened the remains to the extremity of a long, black wand, he held them in the fire of the altar until they were nearly consumed, and then laid the charred mass in the urn, muttering an incantation in Latin. The urn being buried deep in the ground, we formed a ring around the grave, and sung the dirge. Then, lighting our larches by the dying fire, we retraced our steps with feelings ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... charm consists in a spell taken from a book of magic. But in the Tamil version, the process is described as being of a different and double nature. According to it, the mother of the murdered child "by the charm called sisupabam re-created the body, and, by the incantation called sanjivi, restored it to life." The suitor, having learnt the charm and the incantation, "took the bones and the ashes (of the dead girl), and having created out of them the body, by virtue of the charm sisupabam gave life to that body by the sanjivi incantation." ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... arias of the less important people. Agatha, the heroine, has a prayer of exquisite beauty, which still is often heard as a church tune. And in contrast with these elements was the weird and uncanny music of Zamiel, the Satanic spirit of the wood, and the strange incantation scene in the Wolf's Glen at midnight, where the magic balls are cast. The story was thoroughly German, and the music not only German and well suited to the story, but distinctly original and charming of itself. In this work, perhaps first ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... With the incantation of technical phrase over the witch-brew of adventure, gambling, and romance, that simmers in the mind when men tell of finding gold in the ground, with the addition of this salt of science comes a savour of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... that are of interest. Here, for instance, near the head of the dead, who lies stretched out on the ground in the house, the shaman places a god's eye and three arrows; and at his feet another arrow. He sings an incantation and smokes tobacco, though not on the dead, while the widow makes yarn from some cotton, which she has first handed to the shaman. When she has finished the yarn, she gives it to the shaman, who tears it into ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... never!' exclaimed Sister Agatha. 'Who would have dreamed of such a thing! I suppose you will make the incantation? Please begin at once,' she added; 'Mary has never seen you dance, ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... At its incantation rose the starry fane; At its magic thronged the myriad race of men; Life awoke that in the womb so long had lain To its ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... master. At some time he appears to have been commissioned to illustrate the tale of Sudama the poor Brahman whose tattered hovel is changed by Krishna into a golden palace. He was evidently assisted by a weaker painter but in the pictures which are clearly his own work, the same quality of lyrical incantation appears. As Sudama journeys to Dwarka Krishna's golden city, his heart swoons with adoration, the hills, trees and ocean appear to dance about him and once again, the linear music of the composition engenders a feeling of supreme ecstasy.[109] We do not know which member of the ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... night after night was one ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last drowsy incantation! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing; but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... with coffee, to me far more acceptable. After a sufficient interval of time had passed for the most meditative and abstracted of men to remember his purpose, our host, reminded of what he had apparently forgotten by my companion's conjuring robes, an electrical machine, and other instruments of incantation, which the slaves carried from our carriage, civilly inquired when we intended to commence operations. "What operations?" demanded my companion, with much apparent unconcern. "The discovery of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... win a favour of his beloved, filled his room with skulls and bones like a churchyard?' The most loathsome tasks were prescribed—to draw three teeth from a corpse or a nail from its finger, and the like; and while the hocus-pocus of the incantation was going on, the unhappy participants sometimes ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... all owe their origin to the time when spells were in vogue. 'Charm' is just carmen, from the fact that 'a kind of Runic rhyme' was employed in diablerie of this sort; so 'enchant' and 'incantation' are but a singing to—a true 'siren's song;' while 'fascination' took its rise when the mystic terrors of the evil eye threw its withering blight over many ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... orthography, which I have always considered as depending on their derivation, and have therefore referred them to their original languages: thus I write enchant, enchantment, enchanter, after the French and incantation after the Latin; thus entire is chosen rather than intire, because it passed to us not from the Latin integer, but ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... starting-gate, little spots of color moved in impatient circles. The big, good-natured crowd had grown silent, so silent that from the high, sun-warmed grass in the infield one could hear the lazy chirp of the crickets. As though repeating a prayer, or an incantation, Dolly's lips ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... head-flattening system of education, and his wife, especially his wife, the daughter of a lay brother of a bishop who has got a baronetcy for making an enormous fortune out of the war, wouldn't have me at any price. But Theophilus must have muttered some incantation which frightened them, so they surrendered. Poor old Theophilus and I had a touching meeting. He's about as lonely a thing as you could wish to meet. He married an American heiress, who died about eight years ago, and he's as rich as Croesus. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... single night. When the story ends the tired eyelids are weighed down with sleep. Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the world of life ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... will burn with a beautiful emerald green flame. Pieces of sponge soaked in this spirit, lighted and suspended by fine wires over the stage, produces the lambent green flames now so common in incantation scenes; strips of flannel saturated with it, and applied round copper swords, tridents, &c., produce, when lighted, the flaming swords and fire forks brandished by the demons in such scenes; indeed, the chief consumption of nitrate of copper ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... the first bandage on Hermon's eyes with her own weak fingers, at the same time muttering an incantation; but it did not seem to satisfy her. Great excitement had taken possession of her, and as the silver light of the full moon shone into her room she waved her hands before the artist's eyes and fixed her gaze upon the threshold illumined by the moonbeams, ejaculating sentences incomprehensible ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and unworthy, and as groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of its muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in vain the enchanter's wand we wave: No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision: The incantation that its power gave ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... here, in "Lewti," he has his style, his lucid and liquid melody, his imagery of moving light and the faintly veiled transparency of air, his vague, wildly romantic subject matter, coming from no one knows where, meaning one hardly knows what; but already a magic, an incantation. "Lewti" is a sort of preliminary study for "Kubla Khan"; it, too, has all the imagery of a dream, with a breathlessness and awed hush, as of one not yet accustomed to be ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... room, which was furnished with a substantial, almost shabby masculine comfort. But oh, tantalizing spectacle! Under the illumination of a tall, crimson-shaded, standard lamp, stood a little, white-covered table, reminding her irresistibly of a little table in a fairy story, which the due incantation causes to rise out of the ground. A small silver-gilt tureen of soup smoked upon it and a little pile of delicate rolls lay beside the plate set for one. But alas! she might not, like the favored girl in the fairy story, proceed without ceremony to satisfy ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... wind-instrument took up a wild strain, while a human voice was again heard chanting to the music, words which were so much involved by the composition of the air, as to render it impossible to trace more than that their burthen was a sort of mysterious incantation of some ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... especially devoted to the worship of this deity. He does not tire of singing her praises, and of speaking of the temple he erected in her honor. Still, Ur-Bau does not stand alone in his devotion; Uru-kagina, Gudea, and others refer to Bau frequently, while in the incantation texts, she is invoked as the great mother, who gives birth to mankind and restores the body to health. In the old Babylonian inscriptions she is called the chief daughter of Anu, the god of heaven. Among ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... be an imitation of a spell, charm, or incantation to lay the supposed ghost, which Anselmo says kneeling and hardly able to ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... of the jug (to make the demon fancy there's some one with him), and addressing himself by his own name and the name of his mother, let him say, "Thy mother has bid thee beware of Shavriri, vriri, riri, iri, ri," in a white cup. Rashi says by this incantation the demon gradually contracts and vanishes as the sounds of the word ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... hand, and, coming again to the grave where Hector Munro was interred alive, demanded of the witch which victim she would choose, who replied that she chose Hector to live and George to die in his stead. This form of incantation was thrice repeated ere Mr. Hector was removed from his chilling bed in a January grave and carried home, all remaining mute as before. The consequence of a process which seems ill-adapted to produce the former effect was that Hector Munro recovered, and after the intervention ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Physician in curing the Wounded, made an hideous Noise, singing certain Charms, with particular Actions and Forms of Incantation, to which he ascribed the Cure, tho' I believe this is done only to blind the common Indians; for I observed he did not begin his Operation, till he had been in the Woods. Then he shut us all out for an Hour, and when we were readmitted, I perceived he had been ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... the keeping of Harvey, had, in the absence of its master, injured itself badly in the foot by a large needle. The offending instrument had been carefully greased, wrapped in woolen, and placed in a certain charmed nook of the chimney; while the foot, from a fear of weakening the incantation, was left in a state of nature. The arrival of the peddler had altered the whole of this admirable treatment; and the consequences were expressed by Katy, as she concluded ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... and throbbed with a certain sonority like that of distant gongs; but no sane man would have written it in his waking moments. In that fact lay its charm. The author's voice, naturally low and musical, acquired new tones as he recited it, giving to it the qualities of an incantation; and round us, as though fashioned out of shadows, was the large, dimly lighted drawing-room, which the old novelist had incrusted with impossible heraldries, culminating in ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... repeated by the simple-minded shepherd, and poor Durie's fears were, if possible, increased; for it seemed that they were now performing some new incantation, whereby he would be again reduced to their power; but he was now in the open air, and why not take advantage of the opportunity of escaping from their thraldom? The moment the idea started in his mind, he threw from him ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... romance was laid in Thessaly, the original land of witchcraft, and took one up and down its mountains, and into its old weird towns, haunts of magic and [58] incantation, where all the more genuine appliances of the black art, left behind her by Medea when she fled through that country, were still in use. In the city of Hypata, indeed, nothing seemed to be its true self—"You might think that through the murmuring of some cadaverous ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... superb new tapestry, representing the exploits of Charlemagne and his twelve peers; here, were seen the Saracens, with their horrible visors, advancing to battle; and there, were displayed the wild solemnities of incantation, and the necromantic feats, exhibited by the magician JARL before the Emperor. The sumptuous banners of the family of Villeroi, which had long slept in dust, were once more unfurled, to wave over the gothic points of painted casements; and music echoed, in many a lingering close, through ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... an Indian will not attempt to perform when his courage is taxed, or the honour of his nation called in question. "An Omawhaw," says Long, "being on a visit to the Pawnees, was present at a kind of grand incantation, during which many extraordinary feats were performed. He there saw, for the first time, the mountebank trick of appearing to cut off the tongue, and afterwards replacing the severed portions without a wound. 'There,' said ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the episode is a failure. The goddess Ishtar symbolizes the earth which woos the sun in the spring, but whose love is fatal, for after a few months the sun's power begins to wane. Gilgamesh, who in incantation hymns is invoked in terms which show that he was conceived as a sun-god, [117] recalls to the goddess how she changed her lovers into animals, like Circe of Greek mythology, and brought them to grief. Enraged at Gilgamesh's insult to her vanity, she flies to her father Anu and cries for revenge. ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... lay ghosts by the simple brushing of your hair and sponging your face. After his breakfast he lay down on the bed and again fell asleep, but this time not to dream; he slept like a Briton, dreamless, healthy and clean. He awoke as sure of himself as ever.... The first incantation had not, you ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... experience and sin. But this has only sufficed to make them sad children or naughty children or bewildered children. They have absolutely no trace of that quality upon which secure government rests so largely in Western Europe, the quality of being soothed by long words as if by an incantation. They do not call hunger "economic pressure"; they call it hunger. They do not call rich men "examples of capitalistic concentration," they call them rich men. And this note of plainness and of something nobly prosaic is as characteristic of Gorky, in some ways the most modern, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... the loftiest tree-tops with weird illumination, and anon hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to avoid them. The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn "Chuckwill's-widow" croaked her incantation, and the rabbits raced phantom-like across the shadowy road. Slowly in the darkness I followed the well-known path to the spot where our most advanced outposts were stationed, holding a causeway which thrust itself far out across the separating river,—thus fronting a similar ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... their sects, count by millions. Defined by custom, every rite is sacred, immutable, and, when exactly fulfilled, sufficient in itself and efficacious; the priest who utters the words and makes the motions is only one piece in the mechanism, one of the instruments requisite for a magic incantation; after his instrumentation, he falls back into his human negativity; he is nothing more than an employee paid for his ministration. And this ministration is not exalted in him by an extraordinary and visible renunciation, by perpetual celibacy, by continence promised and kept; he is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... educated in the true sense of the term, MEN OF LETTERS, by virtue of (as Ruskin calls it) "the kingship of words." "Charm" is derived from the Latin "carmen," a song that fascinates, and means to control by incantation, to subdue; while Teleo concerns the secret powers and wisdom of consecration and initiation. It is because of modern misuse of antique terms that, we have considered this somewhat lengthy explanation necessary, in order to clear ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... magic and medicine-men, which resulted in powers of metamorphosis, the effect of incantation, and communion with the dead.—To the savage all nature was animated, all things were persons. The leading ideas of savage peoples have already been referred to in the list of motifs which appear in the different fairy tales, as given by Lang, mentioned ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... advanced to prove the divinity of the Koran or the book of Mormon. If it is a valid argument in the one case it is valid in the others. The trouble with it is it proves too much. It takes in the whole field. It does not leave a weed, from the first incantation of the first aborigine to the last shout of the last convert to Mormonism, out of its range; and it does, and always has done, just as good service for any one of the other religions as it does for ours. It is a free-for-all, go-as-you-please argument; but it is the sort of chaff they feed ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... untaught, unenlightened savage of Guiana add an ingredient which, on account of the harm it does him, he fancies may be useful to the perfection of his poison, though in fact it be of no use at all? If a bone snatched from the jaws of a fasting bitch be thought necessary in incantation; or if witchcraft have recourse to the raiment of the owl because it resorts to the tombs and mausoleums of the dead and wails and hovers about at the time that the rest of animated nature sleeps; certainly the savage may imagine that the ants, whose sting ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... a torch of pine-wood, For the darkness is appearing, That my playing may be joyous And my wisdom-songs find welcome." Then the ancient sage and singer, Wise and worthy Wainamoinen, Sweetly sang and played, and chanted, Through the long and dreary evening, Ending thus his incantation: "Grant, O Ukko, my Creator, That the people of Wainola May enjoy another banquet In the company of Light-foot; Grant that we may long remember Kalevala's feast with Otso! "Grant, O Ukko, my Creator, That the signs may guide our footsteps, That the notches in ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... the agency of an infinite will, created the Universe, and the same sort of power in an inferior degree, limited more or less by external hindrances, exists in all spiritual beings." The higher we ascend in antiquity, the more does prayer take the form of incantation; and that form it still in a great degree retains, since the rites of public worship are generally considered not merely as an expression of trust or reverence, as real spiritual acts, the effect of which is looked for only within ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... sleep too became a passion, a passion new and sweet in its incantation out of the lost cravings of childhood. When the nearer freshness of the woods filled her nostrils, there from the live-oak moss in her night's abode, she smiled on the grave young fellow who had left her at the door. And both girls laughing together over the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... degrees of magic set forth by Talmud and Cabala. She wrote of legions of kingdoms between earth and heaven, and the twelve unearthly worlds of Plato. She alluded to a Barrier between men and other orders of beings, beyond which dwelt Those whom the magicians of old glimpsed after long toil and incantation. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... crucified, when the corpses are brought into court, and are found to be three wine-skins. He is told that this was a trick played on him upon the day when they usually celebrated the festival of the god of laughter, but it seems to have been really owing to an incantation. He sees Pamphile, his hostess, change herself into an owl, thinks he also will transform himself into a bird, and anoints himself with some of the witch's preparations. By mistake, taking the wrong ointment, he transforms himself into a donkey. He then goes to look for his horse, who, thinking ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... insidious burlesques of Browning and Swinburne—on a theme which is familiar to us to-day in les mots justes of Mother Goose. "It is," explains Freydis, after the thaumaturgists have finished, "an experimental incantation in that it is a bit of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not yet been found: but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and then this rune will live perpetually." And thus the poet, speaking through the mouth-piece of Freydis, discourses on the power of words and, in one ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... It will be recalled by people familiar with the history of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer first designed "Robert" for the Opra Comique, but remodeled it for the Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... holds up his own idle fancies to our ridicule. Shakspeare's picture of the witches is truly magical: in the short scenes where they enter, he has created for them a peculiar language, which, although composed of the usual elements, still seems to be a collection of formulae of incantation. The sound of the words, the accumulation of rhymes, and the rhythmus of the verse, form, as it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... threw the parts into her caldron, and by her incantations changed the old ram into a young lamb. The daughters of Pelias thought they would have their father restored to youth, as AEson had been. So they killed him, and put the body in Medea's caldron; but Medea refused to utter the needful incantation, and so the old man was ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... past the immovable form of Uncas, placed himself in a dignified attitude before the offender. At that moment, the withered squaw already mentioned moved into the circle, in a slow, sidling sort of a dance, holding the torch, and muttering the indistinct words of what might have been a species of incantation. Though her presence was altogether an ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... refreshed my forehead with its coolness. So, as I looked under the falling drops, lo! on the opposite bank the old beggar that had given me such fair return for my alms and Kadrab his hump! I heard him call, 'This night is the key to the mystery,' and he was gone. Every incantation I uttered was insufficient to bring him back. Surely, I hurried to the tents and took no sleep, watching zealously by the tent of Ravaloke, crouched in its shadow. About the time of the setting of the moon I heard footsteps approach the tent within the circle of the guard, and it was a youth that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they could find trace of her. The sun rose brightly and made weird gleaming of the silver wire on which the dying roses hung. The air was heavy with their breath, and the rooms in the early garish light looked out of place as if some fairy wand had failed to break the incantation at the right hour and left a piece of Magicland behind. The parlor maid went about uncertainly, scarcely knowing what to do and what to leave undone, and the milk cars, and newsboys, and early laborers began to make a clatter of every day on the streets. The morning paper, flung ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... with the boy for him to know that he was the Medicine Man of the tribe, whom the chieftain had been kind enough to send to his help. Instead of giving the youth the few simple remedies he required, he resorted to incantation and sorcery as has been their custom for hundreds of years. The barbarian fraud continued to chant and rattle and dance back and forth, until Jack's eyes grew weary of following the performance. The mind, too, which was so nigh its own master in the morning, ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... us had any faith in the incantation except Peter, and, by infection, Cecily. You never could tell what might happen. Cecily took the wishbone in her trembling little hands and began her backward pacing, repeating solemnly, "I wish that we may find Paddy alive, or else his body, ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... him as a devil's incantation, the music that he played that night, remembering his promise to Dicky Donovan. It was music through which breathed the desperate, troubled, aching heart and tortured mind of an overworked strong man. It cried to the night its ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. "I am," said he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have come, from pure brotherly love, to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... floor; the crone squatted on the threshold, a green palm-branch in her hand, the light striking full on her aged features and picking out behind her, from the black night, timorous faces of spectators. Our sorceress began with a chanted incantation; it was in the old tongue, for which I had no interpreter; but ever and again there ran along the crowd outside that laugh which every traveller in the islands learns so soon to recognise,—the laugh ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a low, droning chant but before he had uttered a dozen words there came a distant roar, dull but unmistakable, that drowned the sound of his incantation. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... think—their fancy seldom rising beyond the invention that their fagots are beautiful and sound and dry. But our particular woodman was, in his way, a gifted man. Long before I had dealings with him, I knew him by the superb song, or rather incantation, with which he announced his coming on the Grand Canal. The purport of this was merely that his bark was called the Beautiful Caroline, and that his fagots were fine; but he so dwelt upon the hidden beauties of this idea, and so prolonged their effect upon the mind by artful repetition, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... beckoning in the locust bough, and in the air an incantation that made a folly of sermons and souls and old maids' resentments and gossips' queries. The preacher fought on, another Saint Anthony in a ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... cartilages are somewhat tough, and her lateral ligaments apparently composed of a substance between leather and caoutchouc. As afternoon advances, the porter of the dissecting-room finds them performing an incantation dance round Mr. Muff, who, seated on a stool placed upon two of the tressels, is rattling some halfpence in a skull, accompanied by Mr. Rapp, who is performing a difficult concerto on an extempore instrument of his own invention, composed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... camp, but we must be very careful not to let them see us writing. They have a great fear of the art of writing, a superstitious idea that a person who writes or sketches in their camp, is writing some charm or incantation to bring mischief upon them. I once heard of a missionary who went to an Arab village to spend the night. The people were all Maronites, and grossly ignorant. He pitched his tent and sat down to rest. Presently a crowd of rough young men came in and began to insult him. ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... made of the Mid[-e]/, the Jes/sakk[-i]d/, or the W[^a]b[)e]n[-o]/, but the term sorcerer or juggler is generally employed to designate that class of persons who professed the power of prophecy, and who practiced incantation and administered medicinal preparations. Constant reference is made to the opposition of these personages to the introduction of Christianity. In the light of recent investigation the cause of this antagonism is seen to lie in the fact that the traditions of Indian genesis and cosmogony ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... that burned in agony. Ulka could never command such magic—she knew it. But at her side Ulka was standing erect, tall, slender and beautiful, but just as he cast his missile the evil voice of the old medicine man began a still more evil incantation. He fixed his poisonous eyes on the younger man, eyes with hideous magic in their depths—ill-omened and enchanted with 'bad medicine.' The stone left Ulka's fingers; for a second it flew forth in a straight ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... warm, any kind of covering is unpleasant in the hot weather, so she stripped to the skin and soon fell asleep. I did the same, but I could not help feeling some regret at having engaged myself not to take advantage of the position before the night of the great incantation. I knew that the operation to unearth the treasure would be a complete failure, but I knew likewise that it would not fail ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... did the magic words of this spell serve for all men alike? Had the Sirens only to utter this one incantation, and was every ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... 'The incantation's quite short,' said Cyril, taking the hint; 'and as for fasting, it's not needed in MY sort of magic. Union Jack, Printing Press, Gunpowder, Rule Britannia! Come, Fire, at the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... his chest there broke out with effort a prolonged howl.... Muzzio's lips parted too, and a faint moan quivered on them in response to that inhuman sound.... But at this point Fabio could endure it no longer; he imagined he was present at some devilish incantation! He too uttered a shriek and rushed out, running home, home as quick as possible, without looking round, repeating prayers and ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... slowly stepped into the circle of blue light that fell from the window-a man thin and pale, a man with long hair, in a black doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where Sainte-Croix lay. Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered to his prayers (and at the period the power of incantation and magic was still believed in) that he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of the human race, who is continually at hand, had heard him and had now come in answer to his prayers. He sat up on the bed, feeling mechanically at the place where the handle of his sword would have been but two hours ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... attachment to anything human. You remember the genii in the "Arabian Nights Entertainments" who were forced to serve powerful magicians, but who hated them and longed to tear them in pieces all the time, and did so, too, if the omission of some necessary incantation gave them the power. Well, the camel seemed like one of these subjugated spirits, an excellent servant, but a most unwilling one, and resenting the power to which, forced by inevitable destiny, he yielded implicit obedience. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... as useless by some former owner, himself squalid. These she managed to keep on by tying the tops with wrapping-cord. A more unlovely human being it would have been hard to find in all the great city. There she sat, crooning a ballad to herself in a high, cracked voice. It sounded like an incantation. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... a week, an avaricious [211] husband or brother would begin to whisper foul play. Witchcraft would be mentioned, and the wise man called in. He would give the sufferer a quid of betel, muttering an incantation, but this rarely effected a cure, as it was against the interest of all parties that it should do so. The sufferer's relatives would then go to their Naik, tell him that the sick person was bewitched, and ask him to send a deputation to the Janta or witch-doctor. This would be at ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... thrill of interest as the old man began to spin slowly on his toes round the column of smoke, chanting slowly some strange mixture of savage music which was, as Frank guessed, an incantation to the fetish that, as he believed, dwelt in the smoke. As the smoke grew thicker he cast some sort of powder from a skin-bag into it and instantly a thick yellow ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... credible the Love Eternal. Say boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, but a fact. I forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless whom God has not blessed—he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a heart diseased, and binding up the wound that ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... fun in making a random cast on the surface of a strange language. You cannot tell what will come up. It is like an experiment in witchcraft. We should not have been at all surprised, I must confess, if our preliminary incantation had brought forth a cow or a ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... runes: /n./ What a {guru} does when you ask him or her to run a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare {incantation}, {runes}, {examining the entrails}; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... in girlhood, and mutually declared their intention never to speak to each other again, wetting and drying their forefingers to the accompaniment of an ancient childish incantation, and while they lived on the paternal farm they kept their foolish oath with the stubbornness of a slow country stock, despite the alternate coaxing and chastisement of their parents, notwithstanding the perpetual everyday contact of their ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... scientific turn of mind will receive more benefit from affirmations in which the precise physiological functions are specifically mentioned; while the person who is fond of mystery and strange ceremonies will be better served in the affirmations or statements taken in the form of some magical incantation, etc. The difference, however, lies in the mind of the patient, rather than in the words themselves. Words are merely invokers of ideas—symbols of ideas. In themselves, words ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
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