"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clever you are at flattering and paying compliments! A pretty little creature like you was just made to turn all the men's heads—a little witch." ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... sprang up and gave chase and Carrie straightway forgot all about the name problem, but Tabitha's busy brain puzzled over it all that happy day, even while she romped and played with her mates in lively games of "Farmer in the Dell," "Old Mother Witch," "Drop the Handkerchief," and all the other childhood favorites. Once she almost forgot it. They were playing "Blind Man's Buff," when Jerome, who was "it," succeeded in catching her by her hair after an animated scrimmage. Her braid promptly gave away her identity, ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... 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 ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... fireworks didn't just have the effect I expected. I thought they'd be glad to let us go, fearing that we could work magic, and might turn it on them. Most of the natives are deadly afraid of magic, the evil eye, witch doctors, and stuff like that. But evidently we've impressed the giants in the wrong way. If we could only speak their language now, we could explain that unless they let us go we might destroy their village, though of course we wouldn't do anything ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... up often, but that old witch in the kitchen wouldn't let me see you—she abused me scandalous. I wanted to pull her turban off and throw it in the gutter. Why, she called me a dirty beggar, and threatened to throw cold water on me if I didn't go away. Phew! ain't she ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... a time, long ago, lived in the state of Kentucky One that was reckoned a witch—full of strange spells and devices; Nightly she wandered the woods, searching for charms voodooistic— Scorpions, lizards, and herbs, dormice, chameleons and plantains! Serpents and caw-caws and bats, screech-owls and crickets and adders— These were the guides of the witch through ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... was extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a false shame whispered that it would be cowardly to give way, and that doubtless the fulfillment of the pretended witch's former prediction ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the vessel that Madam means, is just such a ship as does a sailor's eye good to look on. A gallant and a safe boat she is, as I will swear; and as to sailing, though she may not be altogether a witch, yet is she a fast craft, or I'm no judge of blue water, or of those ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... by witchcraft but by conducting it along a canal from the neighbouring river. Some rough tools were first hewn out, and he had soon the whole tribe at work, and the canal and conduits were laid out among the crops. And there stood the witch-doctors put to shame, as they heard the water purling and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... human mind too precious an inheritance to be willingly relinquished,—for appalling as its contents may be, the value of the materials it may furnish may be inestimable,—we might otherwise be tempted to wish that the miserable record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for ever cancelled. Most assuredly, he, who is content to take the fine exaggeration of the author of Hydriotaphia as a serious and literal truth, and who believes with him that "man is a glorious ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... stumbling along the dark, chilly streets to his hotel, "what a perfectly dazzling little witch she is! Was there ever such another sparkling, bewildering little ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... years since the present writer was taken to see a certain nonagenarian—one Bobby Dawson—for some fifty years, if memory serve, whipper-in to the Bilsdale hounds, who related in all good faith how he with his hounds had once hunted a witch in the shape of a hare that escaped by a cundy, or underground drain, into a barn. When Dawson entered, there was the witch in the form of an old woman ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... since you were taken sick. Nellie! I say, Nellie! you witch of Endor! bring some wine-whey here. Irene, how ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... broth all morning. I shall not tell you than two woods. Have you understanded? Let him have know? Have you understand they? Do you know they? Do you know they to? The storm is go over. The sun begins to dissipe it. Witch prefer you? The paving stone is sliphery. The thunderbolt is falling down. The rose-trees begins to button. The ears are too length. The hands itch at him. Have you forgeted me? Lay him hir apron. Help-to a little most the better ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... that gather around them in obedient harmonies. At least, I think I would, unless some upstart man should deny my right to sing any thing but melodies. If it were committed to me to sing like a bird, I would not care, I think, to exercise my right to roar like a bull. If I can witch the ears and win the hearts of men and women by doing that which I can do easily and naturally and well, then I shall do best not to exercise my right to do that which I can only do difficultly, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... sensible and give you some idea of what has been happening, but how I am to get it on paper I don't know. I got here yesterday, the 4th of July, on the early train, and rushed down to the hatoba to meet the launch when it came in from the steamer. I had had no breakfast and was as nervous as a witch. Your letter had not come, and my fears were ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... natives call all these rank weeds, useless for pasture, burian, and, with the dry dung of the flocks, this constitutes all the fuel they possess. One curious plant of the thistle tribe has attracted the notice of most travellers—the wind-witch, as it is called by the German colonists, or leap-the-field, as the Russian name may be translated. It forms a large globular mass of light wiry branches interlaced together, and in autumn decays off at the root, the upper ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... again!" he exclaimed—"Up in the air and riding a theory like a witch on a broomstick! It's NOT natural. That's just where you're wrong! It's quite UN-natural. If a man has plenty of money he ought to be perfectly happy and satisfied,—he can get everything he wants,—he ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... bore sheer to earth, while on them and around them a line of poplars fell flat, the wind whistling over them. Laura directed Vittoria's eyes to the sight. "See," she said, and her face was set hard with cold and excitement, so that she looked a witch in the uproar; "would you not say the devil is loose now Angelo is abroad?" Thunder and lightning possessed the vale, and then a vertical rain. At the first gleam of sunlight, Laura and Vittoria walked up to the Laubengasse—the street of the arcades, where they made purchases ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dear lady," said Rose; "I do indeed believe that the witch we call Mara [Footnote: Ephialtes, or Nightmare] has been dealing with you; but she, you know, is by leeches considered as no real phantom, but solely the creation of our own imagination, disordered by causes ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... asleep, a witch entered the city, and poured seven drops of strange liquid into the well, and said, "From this hour he who drinks this ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... has heard of the animadversions which "The Amber Witch" excited, many asserting that it was only dressed-up history, though I repeatedly assured them it was simple fiction, will pardon me if I do not here distinctly declare whether Sidonia be ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... intertwining with their sharp needles the gold and silk on the tambour; several female attendants are seated behind. The Gypsy pulls the bell, when is heard the soft cry of 'Quien es'; the door, unlocked by means of a string, recedes upon its hinges, when in walks the Gitana, the witch-wife of Multan, with a look such as the tiger-cat casts when she stealeth from her ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... One old woman was a witch, and she rode me one night. I couldn't get up one night, had a ketching of my breath and couldn't rise up. She held me down. In dem days, was lots o' fevers with de folks. Dey cured 'em and other sickness wid teas ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's Birth is celebrated, The Bird of Dawning singeth all night long; And then, say they, no Spirit dares walk abroad: The nights are wholsom, then no Planets strike, No Fairy takes, nor Witch hath pow'r to charm; So hallow'd and so gracious ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... instruction in Altrurian, but there was a bright little girl who had enlarged her vocabulary more than either, in helping her about her housework, the mother having lent her for the purpose. My mother said she was not ashamed to make blunders before a child, and the little witch had taken the greatest delight in telling her the names of things in the house and the streets and the fields outside the town, where ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... Nay, in those ages of the world, it was believed that spirits intermeddled in the affairs of mankind; and, throughout the Old Testament, I do not find any thing that in the least contradicts is. All the pains and labour that some learned men have taken, to confute the story of the witch of Endor, and the appearance of an old man personating Samuel, cannot make such apparitions inconsistent with nature or religion; and it is plain, that it was either a good or bad spirit, that prophetically told the unfortunate king what should happen the next day; ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... and others, Satan accounted the son for praiseworthy, if he kept faithful to his mother, thus making a virtue of a crime. If this be true, we must assume that the woman was protected by a woman, that the Witch sided with the mother, to defend her hearth against a daughter-in-law who, stick in hand, would have sent ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Astolfo, a Peer and friend of Orlando, who is kidnaped by the evil witch Morgana and her sister Alcina; Mandricardo, a fierce but hot-headed heathen; and a young knight named Brandimarte, who falls in love with (and wins the heart of) the beautiful Fiordelisa ("Flordelice" in Rose). All play major or semi-major roles in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "Harold," the apparition of Cerdic, haunted the imaginations of generations of magicians. These were possibly Celts; only one witch-rune on a Saxon sword was found; that was in the Isle of Wight. It was, Professor Stephens said, a solitary instance, as the brave Germans thought magic the art of a coward. The hypnotism from which all the garrison suffered was a slight ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... black cat, which crept meekly toward the window, its phosphorescent eyes gleaming, its lank jaws parted in a vain effort to mew. Startled, old Marg drew back for an instant; then, glancing from the animal to the pavement below, a brutal cunning, a malicious pleasure, lit up the witch-like features. Reaching out one skinny arm, she called coaxingly: ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... for centuries, the effaced lineaments of its tenant can be re-coloured only by the idealizing hand of genius, as Scott drew Claverhouse, and Carlyle drew Cromwell. But, to the biographer of the lately dead, men have a right to say, as Saul said to the Witch of Endor, "Call up Samuel!" In your study of a life so recent as Kinglake's, give us, if you choose, some critical synopsis of his monumental writings, some salvage from his ephemeral and scattered papers; trace so much of his youthful training as shaped the ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... devised by the lake-woman for her mistress, because she had wished to put her to death while in the form of a toad. The straw was, of course, pure gold; but the girl foolishly cast it all away except a few stalks which clung to her dress. So a countryman who accidentally spilt some hot broth on a witch, disguised as a toad, is presented by her another day with a girdle for his little son. Suspecting something wrong, he tries it on his dog, which at once swells up and bursts. This is a Saxon saga from Transylvania; ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... understand it all. He—I know he would never have ventured it. But it is your 'noble lady Damia'—that old woman, who has told you what to say. You are her echo, and as for Marcus. . . . Confess, confess at once, you witch. . . ." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... subject to convulsions accompanied by extraordinary symptoms, supposing they were bewitched, cast his suspicions on an Indian woman who lived in the house, and who was whipped until she confessed herself a witch; and the truth of the confession, although obtained in this way, was not doubted. During the same year more than fifty persons were terrified into the confession of witchcraft, twenty of whom were put to death. Neither age, sex, nor station ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... brought you together—I, the cruelest man in all Asia! It must have been a divine night, that night on the great river, Peter Moore, when she came into your arms. Love blazed in your hearts that night; and this gray-eyed witch said, with downcast eyes: 'I like you, Peter Moore!' What difference what she said? Any words would have dripped as much ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... have a domestic piece—a quiet description of a New England country scene touched with a grace which reminds us of the creators of Sir Roger de Coverley or the Vicar of Wakefield. Occasionally there is a fragment of pure diablerie, as in the story of the lady who consults the witch in the hollow of the three hills; and more frequently he tries to work out one of those strange psychological problems which he afterwards treated with more fulness of power. The minister who, for an ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Havana's Witch-fog murks my Horoscope Until my dream-enamoured Senses grope Towards the Light, where in her opal Shrine Smiles Hopefulness, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... taken against all supposed to be attached to the Regency. Concini's wife, the favorite Leonora, is burned as a witch,—Regent Mary is sent to Blois,—Richelieu is banished to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Laodice, a very beautiful Greek virgin, though noted for his abilities elsewhere, found himself quite another man with his wife, and could by no means enjoy her; at which he was so enraged, that he threatened to kill her, suspecting her to be a witch. As 'tis usual in things that consist in fancy, she put him upon devotion, and having accordingly made his vows to Venus, he found himself divinely restored the very first night after his oblations and sacrifices. Now women are to blame ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity on him and burned him. They were a hard lot! All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them. Yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our family from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine years. The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your progenitors was an ancestor of mine—for I am of a mixed breed, an infinitely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... opinion that we have been the policemen of the world long enough. We policed the seas for pirates and slavers. Now we police the land for Dervishes and brigands and every sort of danger to civilisation. There is never a mad priest or a witch doctor, or a firebrand of any sort on this planet, who does not report his appearance by sniping the nearest British officer. One tires of it at last. If a Kurd breaks loose in Asia Minor, the world wants to know why Great Britain ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... bazaar knows Selim, the most insolent, avaricious, money-grabbing Lala in Stamboul. He is more like a Persian than anything else. He is the Lala of Laleli Khanum Effendi, who lives at Yeni Koej. They say she is a witch since her husband died," added Abraham, lowering ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... him in a somber walk with witch elms on either side and listening for the least noise, looking at the closed windows of the house, and nearly fainting, as much from fear as from happiness. They spoke in a low voice. She was close to him and he must have heard the beating of her heart, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... are satisfied that things are really very promising here. Of course, much old heathen ignorance, and much that is very wrong, will long survive. So you recollect perhaps old Joe (great- Uncle Edward's coachman) declaring that C. S. as a witch, and there is little proof of practical Christianity in the morals of our peasants of the west, and of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for a long play-day; the school-master's a witch, and we are free;" and some twenty boys came flocking and tumbling out of the school-house door, and went swarming up the street. Not much like the boys of to-day, except for the noise, were these twenty youngsters of nearly two centuries ago, who skipped and ran up the streets ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Irish usurer or money-lender? Your correspondent at page 332. requests information respecting Roger Outlaw. Sir William Betham, in a note to the "Proceedings against Dame Alice Ugteler," the famous pseudo-Kilkenny witch, remarks that "the family of Utlagh were seated in Dublin, and filled several situations in the corporation." Utlagh and Outlaw are the same surnames. The named Utlagh also occurs in the Calendar of Printed Irish Patent Rolls. William Utlagh, or Outlaw, was a banker ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually arous'd—(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to think ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... had a spell put on me by one, but I knowed a woman once who had a spell put on 'er, an' it hurt her feet, but a ole white man witch doctor helped take de spell off, but I think it wus de Lord who took it off. I is a Christain an' I believes eberythin' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... he-witch or something," chuckled Neil, as he propelled his steed toward the campus. "Maybe he will put a curse upon me and my right foot will wither up and I won't be ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... imp and sprite! Elf of eve! and starry fay! Ye that love the moon's soft light, Hither—hither wend your way; Twine ye in a jocund ring; Sing and trip it merrily, Hand to hand and wing to wing, Round the wild witch-hazel tree.'" ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the royal camp, and her services engaged in the king's cause. A wooden tower was built, and pushed along the causeway in front of the troops, the old woman within it actively dispensing her incantations and calling down the powers of witch-craft upon Hereward's head. Unfortunately for her, Hereward tried against her sorcery of the broomstick the enchantment of the brand, setting fire to the tower and burning it and the sorceress within it. We could scarcely go back to a later date than ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... this theory is to be found in a paper by Mr. J.F. Campbell, in which he stated, "It is somewhat remarkable that traditions still survive in the Highlands of Scotland which seem to be derived from the habits of Scotch tribes like the Lapps in our day. Stories are told in Sutherlandshire about a 'witch' who milked deer; a 'ghost' once became acquainted with a forester, and at his suggestion packed all her plenishing on a herd of deer, when forced to flit by another and a bigger 'ghost;' the green mounds in which 'fairies' are supposed to dwell closely resemble the outside of Lapp ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... of the Delaware prophet, as used by Pontiac. The Indians were to cease white-man habits. They must quit fire-water poison, must cherish the old and sick, must not marry with the white people, must cease bad medicine-making (witch-craft) and tortures; and must live happily and peacefully, sharing their ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... claimed to possess a charm. He wore an amulet around his neck to protect him against the "bullets of lead, of copper, or of brass" of his enemies, through which, he said, nothing could penetrate but the mystic "balls of silver," the same with which "witch rabbits" are killed. He would fill his pockets, after battle, with spent and battered bullets, and exhibit them as specimens of his art in the catching of bullets ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... was the "world-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane, London." In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining-rod," "dissipating witch spells," and so on. By and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stays, he stays!" and I heard the words repeated among the groups of negresses, who loved her; it seemed to be the burthen of a general song, the glad realisation of some prophecy; for, ere the night was an hour old, the old witch, who had had the tuition of Josephine, had already made a mongrel sort of hymn of the affair, whilst a circle of black chins were wagging to ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... ascertain the fitness of the river La Plata and its tributaries for navigation by steam, the United States steamer Water Witch was sent thither for that purpose in 1853. This enterprise was successfully carried on until February, 1855, when, whilst in the peaceful prosecution of her voyage up the Parana River, the steamer ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... need just now is not a discourse, but a bath and court-plaster and witch-hazel and cold-water bandages," Mr. Bronson said; "so to bed with you. You 'll need all the sleep you can get, and you 'll feel stiff and sore to-morrow morning, ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... They'd cry: and straight the plash of oar, And creak of sail were stilled; And every ear Was tent to catch the strains her sweet voice trilled. Avast to gloomy thoughts and boding fear! Alack the day when she should witch their ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... mixed with water and drunk: if the body ejected the poison it was a sign of innocence. This method was the surest and least troublesome—for the investigation, sentence, and punishment were carried out simultaneously—unless the witch-doctor had been influenced, which sometimes happened, for there were various means of ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... ground, and fled to the loftier cliffs, leaving two of their women as trophies to the assailants. These two, one "being olde," says the record, "the other encombred with a yong childe, we took. The olde wretch, whom divers of our Saylors supposed to be eyther the Divell, or a witch, had her buskins plucked off, to see if she were cloven-footed; and for her ougly hewe and deformitie, we let her goe; the young woman and the childe we ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and so many thoughts to think about them, that Father Beckett and Brian decided on an all night stop at Bar-le-Duc. The town hadn't had an air raid for weeks, and it looked a port of peace. As well imagine enemy aeroplanes over the barley-sugar house of the witch in the enchanted forest, as over this comfortable ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lassie, till I spread the sheet for you to tread on. You will no be for going right intil the cave? Would it no do you to shout when you got to the mouth of it? I dinna like that cave with the red sides till it. I'm thinking maybe there was red sides to the cave where the witch of Endor dweft. Are you no sure that there isna something of that kind, something no right in ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... sent him home. In spite of all I had gone through, I was not sorry to have acquired the information, and to have followed the advice of the good Capuchin who really believed me to be in deadly peril. He had doubtless heard of it in the confessional from the woman who had carried the blood to the witch. Auricular confession often works miracles ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rushed out like one man. They saw the smoke, with a lurid flame licking out here and there amid the blackness, and seeing the Indian flying down the beach as if he were witch-possessed—as indeed he was—they uttered a united howl, and made off in the ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and we'll bind his head up," said Mrs. Rover. "I'll wash the wound first and we can put on some witch hazel." ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... accusers did," continued Grandfather, "was to cry out against the governor's own beloved wife. Yes; the lady of Sir William Phips was accused of being a witch, and of flying through the air to attend witch meetings. When the governor heard this, he probably trembled, so that our ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Aunt Parser was to blame for it. She lived with his father's folks, and used to fill him and the rest o' the child'n with all sorts o' ghost stories and stuff. I used to tell him she'd a' be'n hung for a witch if she'd lived in them old Salem days. He always used to be tellin' what everything was the sign of, when we was first married, till I laughed him out of it. It made me kind of notional. There's too much now we can't make sense ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and very handsome middle-aged brown woman, in a limp print gown and a gorgeous turban, stood at the gangway in a glare of light, which made her look like some splendid witch by a Walpurgis night-fire. 'Tell your boatman to go round to the other side,' quoth the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... God, Forget to visit thy wrath upon these people; For they have sworn away the life of Thy servant Who hath lived long in the land keeping Thy commandments. I am old, Lord, and betrayed; By neighbor and kin am I betrayed; A Judas kiss hath marked me for a witch. Possessed of a devil? Here be a legion of devils! Smite them, O God, yea, utterly destroy them that persecute the innocent." Before this mother in Israel the judges cowered; But still they suffered her to die. Through the tragic, guilty walls I hear the sighs ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... thy unlucky familiars carried thee? Hast thou bestridden the enchanted horse, or wert thou bidden to a witch-feast?" ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... flashed! She advanced her horse a step or two nearer the witch and raised her riding ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... bushes, The boy running on, each nerve a twitch, Through a jungle of spear-grass pushes. And where it trickles and crackles apace Is the Spinner's unholy hiding-place, The home of the cursed Spinning-witch Who turns her wheel ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... "sun-myth"—some remnants of this belief still linger. In Devonshire folks speak shyly and with bated breath of the "good people;" and even in the year of grace 1879 a Warwickshire laborer was had up before the magistrates for having with a pitchfork half killed a poor old woman whom he declared to be a witch. But be that as it may, in the reign of James I. no one doubted the existence of the spirit-world about us, and on St. John's Eve all its denizens, good and bad, were supposed to wander freely where they would. One only thing they feared, and that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... his mind to one thing: Joan was either a witch or a saint, and he meant to find out which it was. So he brought a priest with him to exorcise the devil that was in her in case there was one there. The priest performed his office, but found no devil. He merely hurt Joan's feelings and ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... And others said, wailing for friends and goods:— "Who was that woman, with mad eyes, that came Into our camp, ill-favored, hardly cast In mortal mould? By her, be sure, was wrought This direful sorcery. Demon or witch, Yakshi or Rakshasi, or gliding ghost, Or something frightful, was she. Hers this deed Of midnight murders; doubt there can be none. Ah, if we could espy that hateful one, The ruin of our march, the woe-maker, With stones, clods, canes, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... who was an Academician and corresponding member on history. "She is the very image of Eve," broke forth the prior of the Franciscans. "She is a fine woman," exclaimed the colonel of militia. "She is a serpent, a witch, a siren, an imp," added the corregidor. "But she is a good woman, an angel, a lovely creature, and as innocent as a child four years old," all agreed in saying on leaving the mill, crammed with grapes or nuts, on their way to their dull ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked human, she was so battered and bloody. The mob ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a witch," said old Peter; "a terrible old woman she is, but sometimes kind enough. You know it was she who told Prince Ivan how to win one of the daughters of the Tzar of the Sea, and that was the best daughter ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... and evening was filled with preparation for a great hunt—spears were overhauled, quivers were replenished, bows were restrung; and all the while the village witch doctor passed through the busy throngs disposing of various charms and amulets designed to protect the possessor from hurt, or bring him good fortune in ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... assembled for a drinking-bout. He is simply disgusted with the grossness and vulgarity of it all. He is too old—so the Devil concludes—for the role he is playing and must have his youth renewed. So they repair to an old witch, who gives Faust an elixir that makes him young again. The scene in the witch's kitchen was written in Italy in 1788, by which time Goethe had come to think of his hero as an elderly man. The purpose of the scene was to account for the sudden change of Faust's character ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... asked how it was possible for him, the thought-worn grey-haired professor, to care for, or take part in, what Mephistopheles looked upon as 'life.' Mephistopheles therefore takes him to a witch, from whom he is to receive a magic draught that will 'strip off some thirty years from his body,' so that he becomes a young, man of, say, about twenty-seven. This scene in the Witches' Kitchen is sometimes ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... creepers and vines tangled with underbrush, and thickly strewn with larger and smaller fragments and boulders of granite rock. But how beautiful it was! The alders, reddish and soft-tinted, looked when the sun struck through them as if they were exotics out of witch-land; the Cornus family, from beautiful dogwood a dozen feet high stretching over Elizabeth's head, to little humble nameless plants at her feet, had edged and parted their green leaves with most dainty ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... up to receive him with her sweetest smile,—and her smile could be very sweet. She was a witch of a woman, and, as like most witches she could be terrible, so like most witches she could charm. 'Only fancy,' she said, 'that you should have come the only day I have been two hundred yards from the house, except that evening when you took ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... peal of your laughter than in all the psalms that this whole people ever whined through their noses. You're one of the rare few who can go through life being yourself—not just a copy and reflection of others. A hundred years ago your own people would probably have burned you as a witch for that. They've discontinued that form of worship now, but the cut of their moral and intellectual jib is, in some essentials, the same. Thank God, you have a different pattern of soul and I want you to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... also in "The Witch" of Thomas Middleton, Act 5, Sc. 2, and it is uncertain to which the priority should ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... The wind poured in my ear Immortal names—Lear, Hamlet, Hal, Macbeth, And thro the night I heard the rushing breath Of ghost and witch and fool go whirling by. I followed them, under the phantom sphere Of the pale moon, along the Avon's near And nimbused flowing, followed to his bier— Who had evoked them first with mighty eye. And as I gazed upon the peaceful spire That points above earth's most immortal dust, ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... young Bulls. I saw young Harry with his Beuer on, His Cushes on his thighes, gallantly arm'd, Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his Seat, As if an Angell dropt downe from the Clouds, To turne and winde a fierie Pegasus, And witch the World ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... news of their brethren. The lodge trembled, the sorcerer sweated drops of blood, and the devil came at last and told him that the warriors would come back with scalps and prisoners. A sorcerer in the medicine lodge is exactly like the Pythoness on the tripod or the witch Canidia invoking the shades." The diviner was not wholly at fault. Three days after, the warriors came back with ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... troops; and perhaps soon after that, I should be able to get there, or near there, and make enquiries myself. To make sure that I should forget nothing, he drew the family photographs from under his pillow, and handed them over: the little witch-grandmother, with a face like a withered walnut, the father, a fine broken-looking old boy with a Roman nose and a weak chin, the mother, in crape, simple, serious and provincial, the little sister ditto, and Alain, ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... he was bringing her here to destroy his daughter's happiness. So that was why she held off from Mr. Hope,' cried Albinia, burning with such indignation, that on some one she must expend it, but a tirade against the artfulness of the little French witch was cut off short ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... do about it, Beauty?" Leila asked almost sharply, when the affair had been thoroughly gone over from both standpoints. Dressed as Finestra, a Celtic witch woman, Leila made a striking figure in her white and green robes as she sat on the low wall bench, hands loosely clasped over one knee, her vivid ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... chick mah craney crow Went to de well to wash ma toe When I come back ma chick was gone What time, ole witch? ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... accusers did was to cry out against the Governor's own beloved wife. Yes, the lady of Sir 10 William Phips was accused of being a witch and of flying through the air to attend witch meetings. When the Governor heard this, he ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... adept in conjuring, which she firmly believed the Widow Keswick to be; but, as she possessed no such gift, she made up the deficiency, as well as she could, by mixing up her mind, her soul, and her desires, into a sort of witch's hodge-podge, which she thrust as a spell into the affairs of other people. Twice had the devices of this stupid-looking wooden peg of a negro girl stopped Lawrence Croft in the path he was following in his pursuit ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... of you have been waiting for this story of the Tin Woodman, because many of my correspondents have asked me, time and again, what ever became of the "pretty Munchkin girl" whom Nick Chopper was engaged to marry before the Wicked Witch enchanted his axe and he traded his flesh for tin. I, too, have wondered what became of her, but until Woot the Wanderer interested himself in the matter the Tin Woodman knew no more than we did. However, he found her, after many thrilling adventures, ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... I do not think there is much good in a kind of witch-smelling among Italian enterprises to find the hidden German. Certain things are necessary for Italian prosperity and Italy must get them. The Italians want intelligent and helpful capital. They want a helpful France. They want bituminous coal for metallurgical ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... beautiful stanza from Drayton's "Barons' Warres," also in Mr. Bullen's selection, must have been unconsciously present to Shelley's mind when he wrote in "The Witch of Atlas"— ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... lonely roads on moonlight nights, or haunt peaceful people in their own homes; of funeral processions, with long trains of mourners, watched from a distance, but which, on nearer approach, melt into a line of mist; of wild witch-dances in deserted houses, and balls of fire bounding out of doors and windows—stories which cause the flesh of children to creep upon their bones, and make cowards of them where there is no reason for fear. For you may lay it down as a fact, established beyond dispute, that not ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton |
