"Beldame" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... volley, explosion, blow up, blast, detonation, rush, eruption, displosion|, torrent. turmoil &c. (disorder) 59; ferment &c. (agitation) 315; storm, tempest, rough weather; squall &c. (wind) 349; earthquake, volcano, thunderstorm. berserk, berserker; fury, dragon, demon, tiger, beldame, Tisiphone[obs3], Megaera, Alecto[obs3], madcap, wild beast; fire eater &c. (blusterer) 887. V. be -violent &c. adj.; run high; ferment, effervesce; romp, rampage, go on a rampage; run wild, run amuck, run riot; break the peace; rush, tear; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Rather in garret pent, secure from harm, My Muse with murders shall the town alarm; 200 Or plunge in politics with patriot zeal, And snarl like Guthrie[11] for the public weal, Than crawl an insect in a beldame's power, And dread the crush ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... speaking, the number of participants is considerable. The business is not entirely left, as in some churches, to worn-out old men and sacredly-snuffy old women—to a miserable half-dozen of fogies, nearly as ignorant of the vital virtues of the sacrament as the Virginian old beldame who took it to cure the rheumatism. At St. Mark's the sacrament takers consist of all classes of people, of various ages, and, considering the district, they muster ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... usher, and that her words "admit of no delay." But James was annoyed by the interruption, and, as it was midnight, ordered her to be sent away, promising to see her on the morrow. Driven forth at the king's command, the old beldame wrung her hands, and cried, "Woe! woe! To-morrow I shall not see his face!" and the usher, upon the king's interrogation, repeated her words to him and to the queen. Upon hearing them, both were filled with anxiety and fear, and thinking it best to close the festivities ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... furnished me with the eyes. Farewell, dear wise man. I think your poverty honorable above the common brightness of that thorn-crown of the great. It earns you the love of men and the praise of a thousand years. Yet I hope the angelical Beldame, all-helping, all-hated, has given you her last lessons, and, finding you so striding a proficient, will dismiss you to a hundred editions and the adoration ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of my mouth before there was a thumping upon the floor outside, and the voice of the beldame ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... delight Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; Or of those hags, who at the witching time Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell: Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart, Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... growled; "I would that my general were here to curse the beldame, as he did Lee at Monmouth. Once you are cared for, I'll return and see that she hear one man's opinion of her. Follow me, and I'll soon put you in comfort." Getting a trunk on each shoulder, he ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... left a sort of jungle of dwarf-oak and brushwood approaches its edge. The sun is sinking blood-red in the west. His disk has touched the broad black level of the moor, and his parting beams glare athwart the gaunt figure of the old beldame, as she strides homeward stick in hand, and bring into relief the folds of her mantle, which gleam like the draperies of a bronze image in the light of a fire. For a few moments this light floods the air—tree, gorse, rock, and bracken glare; and then it ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... said I, with a dubious accent, thinking of the heather above the myrtle and MacCailein's head on a post "Did you hear of the Macaulay beldame ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the ground vigorously with her cane). Those are bold words, Master Benjamin Franklin. Are you not feared to speak them? (Looks half-fearfully over her left shoulder.) Folk might think you were in league with—with strange powers! (There is a touch of the eighteenth-century beldame in her as ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... is spilled from his trembling hand.) Hoot toot, woman! ye're, ye're—(Angrily) Ye auld beldame, to say such things to me! I'll have ye first whippet and syne droont for a witch. Damn thae stubborn and supersteetious cattle! (To SANDEMAN) We should have come in here before him and listened ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... GENEROUS.—Why, so I would if I could; but Justice is an old hobbling beldame, and I can't get her to keep pace with Generosity, for the ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... heavens on fire, And not in fear of your nativity. Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions; oft the teeming Earth Is with a kind of cholic pinch'd and vex'd By the imprisoning of unruly wind Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving, Shakes the old beldame Earth, and topples down Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth, Our grandam Earth, having this distemperature, In passion shook." 1 King Henry ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... she was duly interested, even if a trifle shy of the red brother who stared so fixedly. She entered a lodge with Bill, and listened to him make laundry arrangements in broken English with a withered old beldame whose features resembled a ham that had hung overlong in the smokehouse. Two or three blanketed bucks squatted by the fire that sent its blue smoke streaming out ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... captain, began to chaff with their friends above. The respect with which he had inspired them, however, prevented any overt insult on their part. As for me, my temper had flared up like the burning of a loose charge of powder, and by instinct my right hand sought the handle of the mate's hanger. The beldame saw ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... theology. Some of us may find the aid of material symbols a comfort, if not a necessity. The boldest thinker may have his moments of languor and discouragement, when he feels as if he could willingly exchange faiths with the old beldame crossing herself at the cathedral-door,—nay, that, if he could drop all coherent thought, and lie in the flowery meadow with the brown-eyed solemnly unthinking cattle, looking up to the sky, and all their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... marriage had been celebrated was a ruin—it had been burned to the ground, whether as part price of the terrible feud or not, no one could say; the priest was dead, or gone none knew whither; and old Mawsie, a beldame, lived in the cottage that had once ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... replied. "Oh, I got into such a scrape. The thing which is snoring in the kitchen is the old beldame, Tim's mother. I took hold of her by the side, but so softly that I did not wake her, and such a stench came from her that I really thought I should have fainted. Now, what to do I don't know—but, ...
— The Story of Tim • Anonymous
... who is but a distant kinsman, and a foresworn caitiff to boot.—Would you think it, reverend pilgrim, after the mountains of gold he promised me?—when the castle was taken, and he saw I could serve him no more, he called me old beldame, and spoke of the beadle and the cucking-stool.—Yes, reverend sir, old beldame and cucking-stool were his best words, when he knew I had no one to take my part, save old Raoul, who cannot take his own. But ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... "Witch, beldam, devil!" he cried, "I charge you, by the power of God, begone—if you be dead, to the grave; if you ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... children hie. Anicia soon appears, the door Opens unto her visitor. Into the lonely house she went, Wherein a space Oneguine spent. She gazed—a cue, forgotten long, Doth on the billiard table rest, Upon the tumbled sofa placed, A riding whip. She strolls along. The beldam saith: "The hearth, by it The master ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Member, Short, thick and blustrous, like a day in November![343:1] 60 Short in person, I mean: for the length of your speeches Fame herself, that most famous reporter, ne'er reaches. Lo! Patience beholds you contemn her brief reign, And Time, that all-panting toil'd after in vain, (Like the Beldam who raced for a smock with her grand-child) 65 Drops and cries: 'Were such lungs e'er assign'd to a man-child?' Your strokes at her vitals pale Truth has confess'd, And Zeal unresisted entempests your breast![343:2] Though some noble Lords may be wishing to sup, Your ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 219, and Littre, Dict. de la Langue Francaise, preface, p. xxv.).] a 'menial' was one of the household; a 'paramour' was a lover, an honourable one it might be; a 'leman' in like manner might be a lover, and be used of either sex in a good sense; a 'beldam' was a fair lady, and is used in this sense by Spenser; [Footnote: F. Q. iii. 2. 43.] a 'minion' was a favourite (man in Sylvester is 'God's dearest minion'); a 'pedant' in the Italian from which we borrowed the word, and for a while too with ourselves, was simply ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... excluding from the benefits of culture the majority of men, so that a gifted minority may blossom. Through this door the modern democrat arrives to the place where he is willing to allot two able-bodied men and two fine horses to the task of helping one wizened beldam to take ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois |
