"Witchcraft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... WITCHCRAFT, Illustrated by Copies of the Plays on the Lancashire Witches, by Heywood and Shadwell, viz., the "Late Lancashire Witches," and the "Lancashire Witches and Tegue O'Divelly, the Irish Priest." Eighty ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for witchcraft, feitico; the vernacular name is Bossum, or Bossifoe. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree, is generally the national Fetish. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... and fantastic impulse seized him. These men were children of the sea, superstitious, firm believers in omens, and witchcraft, ready to see the ghosts of the slain, all the more so because they were stained with every crime, then committed so freely under the black flag. He had many advantages, too. He was a master of woodcraft, only their wilderness ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be a mer-maid, and they sing a ballad of the water-nymph. Suddenly Melusine appears and they take flight. Melusine, finding the gates of her husband's castle closed, vainly calls for him.—His mother answers in his stead, charging her with witchcraft and refusing to admit her. Melusine, sure of Raymond's love undauntedly answers that only Raymond's want of faith could undo her.—In the meantime a herald announces the arrival of Crusaders with Peter von Amiens.—The ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... cellar of her house was still to be seen when, in 1857, Whittier first told the story of "The Witch's Daughter," the poem now known as "Mabel Martin." She was the only woman who suffered death on a charge of witchcraft on the north side of the Merrimac. One other aged woman in this village was imprisoned, and would have been put to death, but for the timely collapse of the persecution. She was the wife of Judge ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... of these—involving death at a definite date, after it had been prophesied either by the victim or some physician or priest—may be dismissed in a few words, as they lead at once into the realm of prophecy, witchcraft, and voodoo. Most of them are little better than after-echoes of the ethnic stories of the "evil eye," and of bewitched individuals fading away and dying after their wax image has been stuck full of pins or otherwise mutilated. There have occurred instances of individuals dying upon the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... raised herself up into the air, attempted to stop the horse, and was on the point of leaping down; but the Christian priest held her fast with all his might, and chanted a psalm, which he thought would have sufficient strength to overcome the influence of the witchcraft under which she was kept in the hideous disguise of a frog. And the horse dashed more wildly forward, the heavens became red, the first ray of the sun burst forth through the morning sky, and with that clear gush of light came the miraculous change—she was the young beauty, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... will shine on a lady of witchcraft, Gladness and grief to see, Who has taken my heart with her nimble fingers, Calls in my dreams ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... reply: 'nothing since I got rid of that infernal portrait. I was wrong, my friend, not to let you burn it. The devil fly away with the thing, say I! I am no believer in witchcraft and the like, but I am more than half persuaded some evil spirit is lodged in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... told you frequently that there is no such word as 's'pose.' I don't suppose anything about it. It's enough to make one believe in witchcraft. Miss Sybil Lamotte held her head above us; above plenty more, who were the peers of Mr. John Burrill. Last year, as everybody knows, she refused Robert Crofton, who is handsome, rich, and upright in character. This Spring, they say, she jilted ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... cure and to curse, and also to bless when children were named. Pliny has expressed belief in the efficacy of the fasting spittle for curing disease, and referred to the custom of spitting to avert witchcraft. In England, Scotland, and Ireland spitting customs are not yet obsolete. North of England boys used to talk of "spitting their sauls" (souls). When the Newcastle colliers held their earliest strikes they made compacts by spitting ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... have said publicly that every period of life has its privileges, and that even the most despicable creatures alive may find some pleasures. Now observe this comment; who are the most despicable creatures? Certainly, old women. What pleasure can an old woman take? Only witchcraft. I think this argument as clear as any of the devout Bishop of Cloyne's metaphysics: this being decided in a full congregation of saints, only such atheists as you and Lady Fanny can deny it. I own all the facts, as many witches have done before me, and go every night in ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... was monstrously civil, saying that he hoped any little misunderstanding we had had would not prevent our being good friends in future. That a'n't all; the people of the neighbouring county hearing as if by art witchcraft that I had licked Hunter, and was on good terms with the brewer, forthwith began to come in crowds to look at me, pay me homage, and be my customers. Moreover, fifty scoundrels who owed me money, and would have seen me starve ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... sunshine to rouse up Mr. Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith. Mr. Hall's compliments and the furniture upstairs was behaving most extraordinary. Would Mr. Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man, was Mr. Wadgers, and very resourceful. He took quite a grave view of the case. "Arm darmed if thet ent witchcraft," was the view of Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "You warnt horseshoes for such gentry ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... Church of St. Dunstan had a curious clock, which was considered a very wonderful piece of mechanism, almost a work of witchcraft. Standing out on the side of the church, in full view of the passers-by, were two figures of Hercules, holding clubs, with which they struck on two bells the hours and the quarters. All children took delight in watching these gigantic figures, but none so much ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... shall wear the shaggy vesture of the goat, or foam and whet his horrid tusks, a wild and untame'd boar. But virtue prepares its possessor for the skies. Upon the upright and the good, attendant angels wait. With heavenly spirits they converse. On them the dark machinations of witchcraft, and the sullen spirits of darkness have no power. Even the outward form is impressed with a beam of celestial lustre. By slow, but never ceasing steps, they tread the path of immortality and honour. Then, mortals, love, support, and cherish each other. Fear the Gods, and reverence their holy, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... come, Witchcraft will be set a-going, Fairies will be at full speed, Running in every pass. Avoid the road, ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... faintly, and the words of Anthea came unbidden to mind, "to sleep—oh! who would forget? You plead merely with some old dream of me—not all me, you know. Gold is but witchcraft. And as for sorrow—spread me a magical table in this nettle-garden, I'll leave ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... match mere affection with that sort of witchcraft!" he said. "It's like trying to treat the hydrophobia with eau de Cologne. It can't be done, my boy. Your device does credit to your heart if not to your intelligence. She may come in a pretty bottle which exudes comforting odors but she's ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... instant there they were, sitting on it! The precious stones sparkled so brightly on all sides that it was a pleasure to see them, and they collected the most beautiful and costly together. But now the old witch had through her witchcraft caused the Hunter's eyes ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... looked out of my window and had found in the moon-bathed landscape something which had translated my ideas to that strange picture of Wiertz. Then I had known nothing of this nebula of witchcraft which, according to popular tradition, rested upon the vicinity; yet I had pictured the night as "a curtain 'broidered with luminous eyes"—and I could only suppose that my mind had become impressed by ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the wary woodsman, interrupting Heyward's exclamation of surprise; "the varlets are about the place, and any sounds that are not natural to witchcraft would bring them back upon us in ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... we had Dr Cullen, his son the advocate, Dr Adam Fergusson, and Mr Crosbie, advocate. Witchcraft was introduced. Mr Crosbie said, he thought it the greatest blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to destroy his creatures. JOHNSON. 'Why, sir, if moral evil be consistent with the government ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... downstairs shrieking for the priest, as if he had seen witchcraft. But the miller stood still, with the candle flaring on the floor behind him, not sure of his son Laurent in militia uniform, but ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... What's this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it's witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful did you get ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but it must have been unfavourable to the intentions of the court. Joan Bocher was burnt under the common law, for her opinions were condemned by all parties in the church, and were looked upon in the same light as witchcraft, or any other profession definitely devilish. But it was difficult to treat as heresy, under the common law, a form of belief which had so recently been sanctioned ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... mouthpieces sums up his whole creed in the two words Pater Noster. All these hereditary influences are consciously made conspicuous in Dr. Holmes's writings, as in Hawthorne's. In Hawthorne you see the old horror of sin, the old terror of conscience, the old dread of witchcraft, the old concern about conduct, converted into aesthetic sources of literary pleasure, of ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Midsummer last, when a poor man, who had but one son, who was sick of that disease, made moan to him, and he cured him. Thinks that by reason he is the youngest of seven sons, he performs that cure with better success than others, except the King. Has no skill in sorcery, witchcraft, or enchantment, nor ever ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... very tones. It came over in the Mayflower, as you might transport yeast. If you walk through Harvard, you will be wise; if you stand on Bunker Hill, treason flees your soul forever; and if you once gaze upon the Common, you are safe from the heresy of the Quaker and the sin of witchcraft." ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... main plot of the "Strange Story." As it stands, however, it may be considered the preliminary outline of that more elaborate attempt to construct an interest akin to that which our forefathers felt in tales of witchcraft and ghostland, out of ideas and beliefs which have crept into fashion in the society of our own day. There has, perhaps, been no age in which certain phenomena that in all ages have been produced by, or upon, certain physical temperaments, have excited so general a notice,—more ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... promised by the Ban. During the intervals of repose from the rack he conversed with ease, and even eloquence, answering all questions addressed to him with apparent sincerity. His constancy in suffering so astounded his judges that they believed him supported by witchcraft. "Ecce homo!" he exclaimed, from time to time, with insane blasphemy, as he raised his blood-streaming head from the bench. In order to destroy the charm which seemed to render him insensible to pain, they sent for the shirt of a hospital patient, supposed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... witchcraft was implicitly believed in, so, when they saw the old creature hobble towards them, they experienced feelings of alarm that had never yet affected their manly bosoms in danger or in war. Their faces paled a little, but their courage stood the test, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... when this divinity becomes identified with Persephone, she is supposed to inhabit the lower world as a malignant deity, and henceforward it is the gloomy, awe-inspiring side of her character which alone {86} develops itself. She now presides over all practices connected with witchcraft and enchantments, haunts sepulchres, and the point where two roads cross, and lonely spots where murders have been committed. She was supposed to be connected with the appearance of ghosts and spectres, to possess unlimited influence over the powers of the lower ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... children. They would give sugared water to a child, and, apparently by accident, drop some on its head, and at the same time pronounce the sacramental words. Some Indians believed for a long time that the books and strings of beads were the embodiment of witchcraft. But the persistency of the priests was at last rewarded by the conversion, or at all events the semblance of conversion, of large numbers of Hurons. It would seem, according as their fears of the Iroquois increased, the Hurons gave greater confidence to the French, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... the earth he touched, the wood that was to burn him. During this ceremony, the judge-Advocate hastily read the decree, dated the 18th of August, 1639, declaring Urbain Grandier duly attainted and convicted of the crime of sorcery, witchcraft, and possession, in the persons of sundry Ursuline nuns of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the almost universal sanction of the human race? Are not nearly all the inhabitants of the earth imbued with the idea of magic—in the habit of acknowledging occult powers—given to divination—believers in enchantment—the slaves to omens—supporters of witchcraft—thoroughly persuaded of the existence of ghosts? If some of the most enlightened persons are cured of these follies, they still find very zealous partizans in the greater number of mankind, who accredit them with the firmest confidence. It would ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... lifted, they moved with an inconceivable rapidity. There was something marvellous and strange about their dance. It was as though gray shadows had played a game which the eye could scarcely follow. It was as if they had learned it from the mists that hover over desolate morasses. There was witchcraft in it. All those who had never before been on Kullaberg understood why the whole meeting took its name from the crane's dance. There was wildness in it; but yet the feeling which it awakened was a delicious longing. No one thought ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... away" the Abbot thanked him with a look, and added, that she was suspected of witchcraft, seeing Mald her mother was a notorious witch, and the wench herself the byword and scorn of all the country-side. Sorcery, therefore, or incontinence—"whichever you will," said he. "Any stick will do to beat a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... a care of him yourself; for surely there is witchcraft betwixt his lips: He is a wolf within the sheepfold; and therefore I will be earnest, that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... in such grim fashions as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance, or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham fight with the Indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the two ladies in waiting discovered the Queen of Hearts, with a nail of Iron knocked through the forehead, and thus fastened to the bottom of the chair: they durst not pull it out, remembering that her like thing was used to the old Countess of Sussex, and afterwards proved a witchcraft, for which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... heaven through music Its most magic cures effecteth, Since no witchcraft is so potent But sweet music may dispel it. It doth tame the raging wild beast, Lulls to sleep the poisonous serpent, And makes evil genii, who Are revolted spirits—rebels— Fly in fear, and in this art I have always ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... of the number of innocent creatures that suffered death in the same State on the ridiculous charge of witchcraft toward the end of the seventeenth century? Well does it become their descendants to taunt Catholics with the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... to show the purifying and ennobling influence of science upon religion; how it has assisted, if indeed it may not claim the main share, in sweeping away the dark superstitions, the degrading belief in sorcery and witchcraft, and the cruel, however well-intentioned, intolerance which embittered the Christian world almost from the very days of the Apostles themselves. In this she has surely performed no mean service to religion itself. As Canon Fremantle has well and justly said, ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... your comfortable seven-by-nine lodgings, which seems like a palace, draw the comfortable rug about you, and fall asleep, with old Ocean for a lullaby, to dream (if your waking hours are fortunately of that bent) of some old deserted castle, "Salem witchcraft," or a lone "Grace Pool," attendant within ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... deplored the rashness of the hanging but warned the negroes that the only way to stop lynching was to quit the crimes of which they so often stood accused. But only in one little obscure sheet did an editor think to say, "There was Salem and its witchcraft; there is the south and its lynching. When the blind frenzy of a people condemn a man as soon as he is accused, his enemies need not look far ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... witchcraft I detest! Dost promise that in this foul nest Of madness, I shall be restored? Must I seek counsel from an ancient dame? And can she, by these rites abhorred, Take thirty winters from my frame? Woe's me, if thou naught better canst suggest! Hope has already fled my breast. Has neither nature ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... his men ran up into the country, and left his ship. A little after Thorer came there with his ship, sprang upon the land after them, and pursued them. There was a woman who helped Gunstein to conceal himself, and it is told that she was much acquainted with witchcraft. Thorer and his men returned to the vessels, and took all the goods out of Gunstein's vessel, and put on board stones in place of the cargo, and then hauled the ship out into the fjord, cut a hole in its bottom, and sank it to the bottom. Thereafter Thorer, with his people, returned home ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... contrary," growled the jailer, "you have set it only too well. There is some witchcraft in this. After six weeks, I was able to use it as if nothing had happened, so much so, that the doctor of the Buytenhof, who knows his trade well, wanted to break it again, to set it in the regular way, and promised me that I should have my ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... shed." Another astonishing and full evidence of the above charge, is in the act repealing the penal statutes against witches, &c., 1735, where it is enacted, "That no prosecution, suit or proceeding, shall be carried on against any person or persons, for witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration," &c. This act, in plain terms, flatly contradicts and opposes the law of God, in the very letter thereof. See Levit. xx, 6, 27; Deut. xviii, 10-12; Exod. xxii, 18. Not only has the state, in these and other instances (as the imposing almost intolerable ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... become vile by intermarriage with serviles. They mast now wed maidens of their own class, and live apart from the community: their magical practices are feared by the people,—the connection of wits and witchcraft is obvious,—and all private quarrels are traced to them. It has been observed that the blacksmith has ever been looked upon with awe by barbarians on the same principle that made Vulcan a deity. In Abyssinia all artisans are Budah, sorcerers, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... school, which was divided about evenly between the extremes represented by Sylvia and Judith. The various accomplishments of the new-comers were ground both for uneasy admiration and suspicion. They could sing like birds, and, what seemed like witchcraft to the unmusical little Americans about them, they could sing in harmony as easily as they could carry an air. And they recited with fire, ease, and evident enjoyment, instead of with the show of groaning, unwilling submission to authority which it was etiquette in the Washington Street School ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... outskirts of Sekeletu's territory the news they heard was not encouraging. Some of the men heard that in their absence some of their wives had been variously disposed of. One had been killed for witchcraft, another had married again, while Masakasa was told that two years ago a kind of wild Irish wake had been celebrated in honor of his memory; the news made him resolve, when he presented himself among them, to declare himself ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... by the use of which shepherds have been known to change themselves into wolves and tear the sheep that they should have protected; and he quoted to him St. Augustine's own testimony, to the belief that in Italy certain women were able to change themselves into heifers through the power of witchcraft. Finally, he told him one or two ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the seventeenth century belief in witchcraft was almost at its height over the whole of Europe, and in Scotland the hunt after witches and warlocks was peculiarly vindictive. To obtain confession, the most incredible tortures—as cruel as anything practised by Red Indians on their prisoners—were inflicted on accused persons, men and ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... her family for more than two hundred years. She was a Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since the year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock who was foremost in the time of the Salem witchcraft craze. And this little old house which she left to my friend, Eliphalet Duncan, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... have no doubt almost every village had at least by repute its wise woman who could, for a consideration, unravel all mysteries about stolen property, malicious injuries, and a host of things amenable to the black art often vulgarly called witchcraft, in the name of which perfectly innocent creatures had in a previous age got a ducking in a ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... shut the gates? Alas, all the injuries that the kings and great ones of the earth have done to the church and spouse of Christ in these days of the New Testament, it hath been through the instigation and witchcraft of this mistress of iniquity. 'The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear' (Nahum 3:3,4), against the saints of God, by reason of the multitudes of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, who selleth nations ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sallied forth a-walking and swaying gracefully as he paced along. His gait confounded all those who gazed upon him, as he shamed the branches with his shape and belittled the rose with the redness of his cheeks and his black eyes of Babili witchcraft: thou wouldst deem that whoso looked on him would surely be preserved from bane and bale;[FN288] for he was even as saith of him one of his describers ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... minutes, the 'cl[a]vie' is most unceremoniously hurled from its place, and the smoking embers scattered among the assembled crowd, by whom, in less enlightened times, they were eagerly caught at, and fragments of them carried home, and carefully preserved as charms against witchcraft." Some discussion took place on the origin of this custom, but nothing ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... exists amongst bakers, which we described many years ago in these pages. There are three towns, triangularly arranged, about ten miles from each other. One or more bakers in each has a van, in which he sends bread every day to the other two. As there is no witchcraft in the making of bread, it might be as well for the inhabitants of each town to be supplied by the bakers of their own place exclusively, and then the expense of the carriage would be saved. Such, however, is the keenness of competition in the case, that each ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... their unconscious victims repaired damages, but at length, after counsel taken together, they gave it up. Perhaps, like other unlettered folk, they came to the conclusion that the Devil was in it, and yielded to the invisible persecution of witchcraft. ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... to and fro, the voices muttering most of the time. After a bit I caught a word—"Witchcraft": and then a voice speaking quite close—"There's blood 'pon her hands, an' there's blood yonder by the plough." Said another voice, higher and squeaky, "there's scent behind a fox, but you don't dig it up an' take it home." The tramp passed on, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... tell you—'tis Joan!" Hereupon I dropped my spade and she, seeing how I stared upon her, burst into a peal of laughter. "Ah, ah!" cried she. "Here is pretty, soft name and should fit me as well as another. Why must you stare so fool-like; here is no witchcraft, for in the caves yonder 'Joan' meeteth me at every turn; 'tis carven on walls, on chairs, on table, together with 'Damaris' and many woful, lovesick ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... cursing or striking their father or mother. Marriages were to be solemnized by magistrates; and all who denied the coercive authority of the magistrate in religious matters, or the validity of infant baptism, were to be banished. Blasphemy, perjury, adultery, and witchcraft, were all made capital offences. In short, we may challenge the annals of any nation to produce a code of laws more intolerant than that of the first settlers in New-England. Unlimited obedience was enjoined to the authority of the magistrate, by the same men who had refused such submission in ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... VIII. the first Earl of Rutland, and he restored the castle, which had for some time been in ruins. His son enlarged it, making a noble residence. The sixth Earl of Rutland had two sons, we are told, who were murdered by witchcraft at Belvoir through the sorcery of three female servants in revenge for their dismissal. The three "witches" were tried and committed to Lincoln jail. They were a mother and two daughters, and the mother before going to the jail ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... a witch, according to our modern notions of witchcraft, Exodus 22:15, Philo and Josephus understood of a poisoner, or one who attempted by secret and unlawful drugs or philtra, to take away the senses ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Never was any one more blithe than the lean Prince de Gatinais. The latest gossip of Versailles was delivered, with discreet emendations; he laughed gayly; and he ate with an appetite. There was a blight among the cattle hereabouts? How deplorable! witchcraft, beyond doubt. And Louis passed as a piano-tuner?—because there were no pianos in Manneville. Excellent! he had always given Louis credit for a surpassing cleverness; now it was demonstrated. In fine, the Prince ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... diseases. The Greeks regarded Rue as an anti-magical herb, since it served to remedy the nervous indigestion and flatulence from which they suffered when eating before strangers: which infirmity they attributed to witchcraft. This herb was further termed of old "Serving men's joy," because of the multiplicity of common ailments which it was warranted to cure. It constituted a chief ingredient of the famous antidote of Mithridates to poisons, the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... condition. When three patients die under his ministrations, the medicine-man must yield his life and his office. Wounds do not count; broken bones and bullet holes the Indian can understand, but measles, pneumonia, and smallpox are witchcraft. Winnenap' was medicine-man for fifteen years. Besides considerable skill in healing herbs, he used his prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted the medicine-man to decline the case when the patient has had treatment from any other, say the white doctor, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... invisible; deadly indeed were arrows dipped in this liquid, and pointing a feather so dipped at any game-animal would cause it to start for the creature and kill it. In this fashion the boy learned the secret art of witchcraft. Afterwards, by experimenting, he discovered, among the various roots and herbs, the proper antidotes and counteracting agents ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... I'de have e'm; for tis the only way I have to Live: The Vulgar People love to be deluded; And things the most unlikely they most dote on; A strange Disease in Cattle, Hogs or Pigs, Or any Accident in Cheese or Butter; Though't be but Natural, or a Sluts fault, Must strait be Witchcraft! Oh, the Witch was here! The Ears or Tail is burn'd, the Churn is burn'd; And this to hurt the Witch, when all the while They're likest Witches that believe such Cures; Could I do all that People think I can, I'de ne're take pains to find out stolen Goods, Or hold intelligence ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... notwithstanding the agencies which were at work to break it down. On the other hand, the first rudiments of knowledge which appeared at an extremely remote epoch, when they confounded themselves with witchcraft, also became a power in the hands of the individual which could be used against the tribe. They were carefully kept in secrecy, and transmitted to the initiated only, in the secret societies of witches, shamans, and priests, which we find among all savages. By the same time, wars and invasions ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... of these natives were very primitive. They believed strongly in evil spirits, and had various ceremonial dances and practices of witchcraft to ward off the influence of these. But they had little or no conception of a Good Spirit. Their idea of future happiness was, after they had come into contact with the whites: "Fall down black fellow, jump ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... laying the accused on his back on a bare floor and placing a great iron weight on his chest until he consented to plead or died. There is one instance of the infliction of this punishment in American colonial history: Giles Cory, accused of witchcraft, was pressed to death in Salem, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... who increases flesh, increases worms; he who increases riches, increases care; he who increases wives, increases witchcraft; he who increases female servants, increases lewdness; he who increases men servants, increases robbery; but he who increases his knowledge of the law, increases life; he who increases his study in college, increases wisdom; he ...
— Hebrew Literature
... looks like a brilliant golden cushion against the red tiles. The houseleek, however, is a singular plant, worthy of examination; it has an old-world look, as if it had survived beyond its date into the nineteenth century. It hides in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its appropriate owner. The houseleek is still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf—the leaves are rather like portions of the plant than ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... have known you; verily you look as if you were troubled; and I beleeve you have the feeling of a first lying-in through all your joints. Well Cousin, saies the t'other, it seems that you are deeply studied in the Art of Witchcraft, for I fear its too true. I went from home on purpose to take my pleasure for three weeks or a month, that I might store my self with fresh provisions, and sing a sweet ditty in commendations of my Betty. Ho, Ho, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... of earthly misery, which derived—at least in one case—'femina' from 'fe' faith, and 'minus' less, because women had less faith than men; which represented them as of more violent and unbridled animal passions; which explained learnedly why they were more tempted than men to heresy and witchcraft, and more subject (those especially who had beautiful hair) to the attacks of demons; and, in a word, regarded them as a necessary evil, to be tolerated, despised, repressed, and if ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... should never be forgotten that one aspect of scientific progress has been the taking over of large tracts of territory that religion once regarded as peculiarly its own; and just as psychology and pathology were found to hold the key to an understanding of such a phenomenon as witchcraft, so we may yet realise that a true explanation of religious phenomena is to be found, not in some supernatural world, but in the workings ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... oozed out, and a number of them paid the penalty upon the gallows, and the rest scampered off to Meissen, Leipsic, and Herse. At these places they were not long in letting the inhabitants know, by their depredations, witchcraft, devilry, and other abominations, the class of people they had in their midst, and the result was their speedy banishment from Germany; and in 1418, after wandering about for a few months only, they turned their steps ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... that do as did King Saul, and in their tribulation go seek unto the devil. This king had commanded all those to be destroyed who used the false abominable superstition of this ungracious witchcraft and necromancy. And yet fell he to such folly afterwards himself, that ere he went to battle he sought unto a witch and besought her to raise up a dead man to tell him how he should fare. Now God had showed him by Samuel before that he should come to ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... triumph, as they drove from the door, "you must acknowledge my heraldic witchcraft, as you are pleased to call it, is right ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... He tried again—the cupola again broke down; he tried the third time—-the cupola fell to pieces a third time. Good Eremey Lukitch grew thoughtful; there was something uncanny about it, he reflected... some accursed witchcraft must have a hand in it... and at once he gave orders to flog all the old women in the village. They flogged the old women; but they didn't get the cupola on, for all that. He began reconstructing the peasants' huts on a new plan, and all on a system of 'provident management'; he set them ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... witchcraft drama of 1692 has been seriously treated, as it well deserves to be. The story has been told in two large volumes by the Rev. Charles Wentworth Upham, and in a small and more succinct volume, based upon his work, by his daughter-in-law, ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... experience," said Count Victor. "Are you sure her honesty is on more substantial grounds than her reputation for witchcraft? I demand your pardon for expressing these suspicions, but I have reasons. I cannot imagine that the attack of the Macfarlanes was connived at by your servants, though that was my notion for a little when Mungo locked me up, for they suffered more alarm at the attack than I did, and the reason ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... rubbed over the whole body will very greatly assist the astral body to leave the physical in full consciousness—a fact the knowledge of which seems to have survived even to mediaeval times, as will be seen from the evidence given at some of the trials for witchcraft. But the application to the physical eye might very easily so stimulate its sensitiveness as to make it susceptible to ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... o'clock we attended even-song at the cathedral. I shall not say what I felt when the white-surpliced boy choir entered, winding down those vaulted aisles, or when I heard for the first time that intoned service, with all its "witchcraft of harmonic sound." I sat quite by myself in a high carved-oak seat, and the hour was passed in a trance of serene delight. I do not have many opinions, it is true, but papa says I am always strong on sentiments; nevertheless, I shall not attempt to tell even what I feel in these new and beautiful ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one will deny that it is good for heathens and savages, even if there were no life after death, to be wiser and better than they are. It is good, I presume, that they should give up cannibalism, slave-trading, witchcraft, child-murder, and a host of other abominations; and that they should be made to give them up not from mere fear of European cannon, but of their own wills and consciences, seeing that such habits are wrong and ruinous, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... against it of the head of a person whilst seated on the rock. This and other circumstances led us to conjecture that the cave was frequented by some wise man or native doctor who was resorted to by the inhabitants in cases of disease or witchcraft. We saw many footmarks about, and found other signs of the close presence of the natives, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... past, as it beckons them to the summit. Till a year or two since, this portion of our history had been very imperfectly written, and, as we are not a people of legend or tradition, it was not every citizen of our ancient town that could tell, within half a century, so much as the date of the witchcraft delusion. Recently, indeed, an historian has treated the subject in a manner that will keep his name alive, in the only desirable connection with the errors of our ancestry, by converting the hill of their disgrace into an honorable monument of his own antiquarian ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rage, indignation, and incredulity impossible to describe. He could not believe it even when it went on before his very eyes. Doctor though he was, and scientific, to a certain extent, Edward Rider would have believed in witchcraft—in some philtre or potion acting upon her mind, rather than in Nettie's voluntary folly. Was it folly? was it heroism? was it simple necessity, as she herself called it? Nobody could answer that question. The matter was as incomprehensible to Miss Wodehouse ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... who succumbed to the "unholy hunger." It was like a form of revenge taken on them, for their loveless schemes of robbing and fleeing; a revenge contrived by the ancient, barbaric country they had so lightly invaded. Now, she held them captive—without chains; ensorcelled—without witchcraft; and, lying stretched like some primeval monster in the sun, her breasts freely bared, she watched, with a malignant eye, the efforts made by these puny mortals ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... she demanded. "As if I hadn' suffered enough in mind a'ready, but you must come pokin' money into my oven and atween me an' my children! Be you mad, or only wicked? Or is it witchcraft you'd be layin' on us? . . . Take up your gold, however you came by it, an' fetch your shadow off my doorstep, or I'll—" She advanced on poor Nicky-Nan, who backed out to the side gate and into the lane before her wrath, and found himself of ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... had risen to a vague conception of tutelar deities embodied in human or animal forms. Myth-tales abounded, and the folk-lore of the red men is found to be extremely interesting and instructive.[57] Their religion consisted mainly in a devout belief in witchcraft. No well-defined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine men" were mere conjurers, though possessed ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... of the purity and elevation of his religious ideas; and from the disclosures of Baron von Breitschwert [1] it seems, that, in the midst of his sublimest labors, he spent five years in the defence of his poor old mother against a charge of witchcraft. He died in 1630, in his sixtieth year, (with the prospect of starvation before him,) of a fever which he caught when on a journey to Ratisbon, whither he had gone in the attempt to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... however, about which there is no doubt—that a panic seized the people and the courts, and made them as unreliable as in the days of the Salem witchcraft. But these striking exhibitions of the weakness of human nature under certain circumstances have been witnessed since the world was made, and probably will continue to the end of time, or until the race enters on a new phase of existence. Panics, even among ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... the Hebrew had relaxed his hold for a second, a vile heretic points out to the visitor (Exodus XXII, 18): "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" and explains the witchcraft delusion to him. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... shore say you used witchcraft on the burro; he said Noddy was done for—being buried under that slide the way ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... walking along a street of the city when two carriages coming from opposite directions collided. The woman in danger of being crushed pressed up close against a wall, and the wall miraculously sank inward to make way for her. This made Isaac fear an accusation of witchcraft, and he left Worms for Troyes, where a son was born to him, whom he ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... out to the intelligent reader that the witchcraft of the mother consisted only in the ascendency of a powerful mind over a weak and melancholy one, and that the harshness with which she exercised her superiority in a case of delicacy had driven her daughter first to despair, then ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... met him," said the jam-manufacturer, "he struck me as the queerest man of business—except myself—that I had ever seen. He talked about Norse sagas, witchcraft, and so on, and when he began about business, I felt uneasy. Of course I ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... is a glorious animal," must not go to the chapter which contains that record for his evidences and proofs. If he should be in search of materials for humiliation and abasement, he will find in the history of witchcraft in this country, from the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, large and abundant materials, whether it affects the species or the individual. In truth, human nature is never seen in ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... revenge, made use of all the enchantments, spells, and charms, that were at that time supposed to answer their malicious purposes. Henry, the eldest son, died soon after their dismissal; but no suspicion of witchcraft arose till five years after, when the three women, who are said to have entered into a formal contract with the devil, were accused of "murdering Henry Lord Ros by witchcraft, and torturing the Lord Francis, his brother, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... certain crimes were also subject to the same form of execution adulterating and uttering base coins (Alan Napier, cutler in Glasgow, was strangled and burned at the stake in December 1602) sorcery, witchcraft, incantation, poisoning (Bailie Paterson suffered a like fate in December 1607). For bestiality John Jack was strangled on the Castle Hill (September 1605), and the innocent animal participator in ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... believe in witchcraft, they are less superstitious in some respects than many of the lower classes of whites. Chief Yana Taowk seemed to take pleasure in kicking the Sitka bones that lay in his way, and neither old ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... postman should have a coat-of-arms capable of expressing the strange honour and responsibility of the man who carries men's souls in a bag; the chemist should have a coat-of-arms symbolizing something of the mysteries of the house of healing, the cavern of a merciful witchcraft. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... reaction, is A QUESTION which must be reserved for the casuists of other generations.... I cannot expect that on a sudden you and your friends will come to my conclusion, that the present philosophy of the Schools and Universities of Europe, based on faith in witchcraft, magic, &c., is a system of execrable nonsense, by which quacks live on the faith of fools; but I desire a free and fair examination of my Aphorisms, and if a few are admitted to be true, merely as courteous concessions to arithmetic, my purpose ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... longing to have a look at him, I sauntered back to my litter as though I had been in the habit of killing eland all my life, feeling that I had gone up several degrees in the estimation of the Amahagger, who looked on the whole thing as a very high-class manifestation of witchcraft. As a matter of fact, however, I had never seen an eland in a wild state before. Billali received ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... her bent back a bundle of faggots. Ailsa raised her blue eyes, and at sight of the old woman shrank back and felt in her dark hair for the sprig of feathery rowan leaves that she wore there as a charm against witchcraft. ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... be, and from you. Now consider. I have been defiled, and if not defiled I may be under the spell. Look at his anklets! Who ever heard of a corpse appearing during the night amongst the logs with gold anklets on its legs? There is witchcraft there. However," added Mahmat, after a reflective pause, "I will have the anklet if there is permission, for I have a charm against the ghosts and am not afraid. ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... be witchcraft at the bottom of it, and told the villagers to resume relations with Marget and Ursula in a private and unostentatious way, and keep both eyes open. They were told to keep their own counsel, and not rouse the suspicions of the household. The villagers ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... of Old Salem in the Witchcraft days, with a charming love story: historically an informing book. 12mo. ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... understand the African races without knowing something of the terror of witchcraft, magic, and ill-luck which hangs like a cloud over their lives. Differing from each other in many ways, the African tribes are alike in this, that their religion is one of fear, dread of unseen ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... monastic communion; under another, high morality; under another, a variety of materialistic philosophy; under another, simple demonology; under another, a mere farrago of superstitions, including necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and fetishism. In some form or other it may be held with almost any religion, and embraces something ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... of his hard and heavy hand, makes happily no attempt to emulate the really noble touches of poetry and pathos with which Heywood has thrown out into relief the more serious aspect of the supposed crime of witchcraft in its influence or refraction upon the honor and happiness of innocent persons. Og was naturally more in his place and more in his element as the second "fat jailor" of Lancashire witches than as the second English dramatic ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for witchcraft. The scene of Virgil's eighth Eclogue is laid in Thessaly as appropriate to the introduction of such machinery as enchantments, love-spells, &c. Cp. Horace, Epode v. 21, and Ode ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... teacher went away; and after Otto had convinced himself by a last glance that what he saw was fact, and no witchcraft, he dashed down the steps, two at a time, across the little place and up the hillside: and not until he began to tell it all to his mother did he begin to wonder to whom he was indebted for this ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... distracted by a trouble which, though not uncommon in those days, is one which we find it difficult to realise at the present time. His mother, Catherine Kepler, had attained undesirable notoriety by the suspicion that she was guilty of witchcraft. Years were spent in legal investigations, and it was only after unceasing exertions on the part of the astronomer for upwards of a twelvemonth that he was finally able to procure her ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... language has been preserved. It looks like a piece of England of the Middle Ages, left behind on the march. Witches still hold their sway on Dartmoor, where there exist no less than three distinct kinds— white, black, and grey,*[9]—and there are still professors of witchcraft, male as well as female, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... superstitions. It was not till the 17th century that paganism was even nominally abolished in some parts, and there is probably no district in Europe where the popular Christianity has assimilated more from earlier creeds. Witchcraft and the influence of fairies are still often believed in. The costume of both sexes is very peculiar both in cut and colour, but varies considerably in different districts. Bright red, violet and blue are much used, not only by the women, but in the coats and waistcoats of the men. The reader ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... of the house and her daughter had similar bags attached to their necks, containing charms, which, they said, prevented the witches having power to harm them. The belief in witchcraft is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of the Alemtejo, and I believe of other provinces of Portugal. This is one of the relies of the monkish system, the aim of which, in all countries where it has existed, seems to have been to beset the minds of the people, that they might be more ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Ottawa or Pottawatomie chief. The body lay on the ground covered with notched poles. It had been there but a few days and the worms were crawling around the body. My special interest in the case was the accusation of witchcraft against a young squaw who was executed for killing him by her arts. In the Summit County mounds there were only parts of skeletons with charcoal and ashes, showing they had ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... Mrs. Eddy's life to indicate that she had not yet reached an inner serenity of faith. She was never able to free herself from a perverted belief in animal magnetism or mesmerism which showed itself in fear rather than faith. She believed herself persecuted and if she did not believe in witchcraft she believed in something curiously like it. Indeed, to Mrs. Eddy belonged the rather curious distinction of having instigated the last trial for witchcraft in the United States and with a fitting sense of historic propriety she staged it at Salem. The judge ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... they pretended to miraculous evidence of some kind or other" ("Evidences," p. 64). That the Christians believed in a miraculous story may freely be acknowledged, but it is evidence of the truth of the story that we want, not evidence of their belief in it. Many ignorant people believe in witchcraft and in fortune-telling now-a-days, but their belief only proves their own ignorance, and not the truth of either superstition. The next step in the argument is that "the story which Christians have now" is "the story which ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... watching me as I read. "But you say this cell has never been found. I should say its existence was a myth, and, of course, the curse on the soul of the first-born to keep the door shut as warder is absurd. Matter does not obey witchcraft." ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... a man of iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defense of what he considered his right. The dispute remained for years undecided, and came to a close only with the death of old Matthew Maule, who was executed for the crime of witchcraft. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... light; Morgan held the paper to the flame. Little by little, as the paper warmed, the writing appeared. The experience appeared familiar to the young men; the Breton alone seemed surprised. To his naive mind the operation probably seemed like witchcraft; but so long as the devil was aiding the royalist cause the Chouan was ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... own confession. It does not appear that he was put to the torture to make him confess. If this had been done his admissions would, of course, have been as valueless as those of the victims in trials for witchcraft. ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon, disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities, built temples, and ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... clearly demonstrated that the miraculous Christian story rests on a tissue of mistake, as it can be demonstrated that the Isidorian Decretals were a forgery, or the correspondence of Paul and Seneca a pious fraud, or that the mediaeval belief in witchcraft was the product ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... devilish men, who serve nobody but the Devil, that is, the spirit which in their language they call Menetto; under which title they comprehend everything that is subtle and crafty and beyond human skill and power. They have so much witchcraft, divination, sorcery and wicked arts, that they can hardly be held in by any bands or locks. They are as thievish and treacherous as they are tall; and in cruelty they are altogether inhuman, more than ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... these slaves, according to the evidence on the table, consisted, first, of prisoners of war; secondly, of free persons sold for debt, or on account of real or imputed crimes, particularly adultery and witchcraft; in which cases they were frequently sold with their whole families, and sometimes for the profit of those by whom they were condemned; thirdly, of domestic slaves sold for the profit of their masters, in some places at the will of the masters, and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... description in Macbeth of witches answers to our traditions. On St. John's night witches were supposed to fly to Bloksberg, a mythical place in Norway, upon broomsticks and in brewing tubs. There they met Gamle Erik, the evil one, who entered their names in his ledger, and instructed them in witchcraft, and, after executing the witches' dance, they returned to their respective homes in the same fashion. This tradition is common to other countries, but in Jutland the belief was that the favourite form a witch adopted was that of a hare, which evaded the huntsmen, ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... I ran, too, and felt curiously weak and shaken; though I suspected that this wriggling thing now swimming back to shore was the poison snake of the Ksaurora, and no Antouhonoran witchcraft at all, as I had seen skins of the brilliant and oddly marked little serpent at Guy Park, whither some wandering Southern Tuscaroras had ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... family as the Durgans, so old and completely exhausted a family as the Durgans, was likely to haunt anybody. What living thing now had any concern with their honour and judgments and good and evil deeds? Ghosts and witchcraft were a later innovation—that fashion came from Scotland ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... went farther up in the air. She had heard plenty about the Salem Witchcraft, and knew the stories were all as silly as silly ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... to convince you and quite certainly rid you of the idea of witchcraft, you can stay here, if you please, until— what ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... he "wishes the poetry hereof was mended." Such justice, such self-repression, such fairness make me almost forgive him for riding around the scaffold on which his fellow-clergyman was being executed for witchcraft, and urging the crowd not to listen to the poor martyr's dying words. I can even almost overlook the mysterious fables, the outrageous yarns which he imposed upon us under ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... certain Johnny Simpson, who, when crossed in love, seeks the aid of the witches to aid him in his work of vengeance on the woman who has cast him off. The story is told with great vividness, and the author has made an effective use of all the malevolent powers of witchcraft, seconded by the elemental forces of thunder and lightning, to aid him in telling a story of great dramatic power. Leet Livvy, on the other hand, is as sober and restrained as one of the verse-tales of Crabbe, and the only resemblance which ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... suddenly from her seat in the window-sill, the living dread of shepherds, for she travelled the country with a brilliant reputation for witchcraft, and thus she broke in upon the narrative: "I vow, young man, ye tell us the truth upset and down-thrust. I heard my douce grandmother say that on the night when Elphin Irving disappeared—disappeared I shall call it, for the bairn can but be gone ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the quantity of the runs to vary, and the yield scarcely two days alike. I enquired into the cause, of him, but his answers were, he could not tell; I also enquired of other distillers, and could procure no more satisfactory answer—some attributed it to the water, others to witchcraft, &c. &c. ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake; She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used: Here comes the lady; let ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... that Mrs. Basil should obtain the confidence of Solomon, and perhaps of Charley also, and yet this unlooked-for and swift success of hers was far from welcome to poor Harry. It really almost seemed that there was truth in what her son had spoken in jest—that there was witchcraft ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Professor Maitland talks of building walls round her, he emphasises the advantage that society gives against witchcraft. Of four people whose lives have been destroyed or grievously injured by hypnotism, whose circumstances are known to the writer, three were childless married men (two were unhappily married), and the fourth case was a bachelor's, a poor ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... flowers, one of the other children cried, 'Joanna, video te volantem juxta terrain,' 'Joan, I see you flying near the ground.' This is the one solitary hint of 'levitation' (so common in hagiology and witchcraft) which occurs in the career of the Maid. This kind of story is so persistent that I knew it must have been told in connection with the Irvingite movement in Scotland. And it was! There is, perhaps, just one trace that flying was believed to be an accomplishment ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... result of ignorance and superstition, but at that time, naturally, only the pagan ideas were condemned. Accordingly, while the law of the Goths recognized trial by ordeal, wherein God is summoned to bear miraculous witness in favor of the innocent, the same law condemned belief in witchcraft! The favorite ordeal among the Goths was trial by red-hot iron. The Church took charge of this ceremony, which was accompanied by a most solemn ritual, and all this was legal and religious and approved by the highest authorities! But the poor witches had to go! It was ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... was another class of book; that which dealt in demonology and witchcraft, exemplified by a famous work called Satan's Invisible World Discovered. Writers of these things may or may not have believed in witches and fairies (which they classed together); but in any event they believed them to be wicked, the abomination of uncleanness. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the eighteenth century at ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... us that the crime of disobedience is equal in guilt to that of idolatry and witchcraft. But what shall we say of the disobedience of the scrupulous, who so idolize their own opinions as to be absolutely slaves to them, and whom no sort of remonstrance or reasoning will convince of the idleness of their ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus |
