"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plainly be seen to have lost the texture of youth; and then, where were youth's contours? Ah, Madame! wise as you were, even you knew weakness. Never had I pitied Madame before, but my heart softened towards her, when she turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had come upon her. That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly "All-hail," and her soul rejected ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... lie, but one that will grow darker every day. At a distance she presents the semblance of a very fair woman, but I have been unable to detect a single element yet that will prevent her from developing into an old and ugly hag, in spite of all that art and costume ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... education, going to what he called the "sweetest place in the world," having reached the summit of ambition, confident in himself, assured of the public good will, happy to meet his wife restored to health, himself robust and to be, he thought, hag-ridden no more; rejoicing to meet the dearest of old friends, kindling with the realization of his superb and commanding position, glowing with his just pride of place; no heart beating higher, no imagination ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... At the left her nightgown had slipped down so that one plump white shoulder gleamed against the background of her streaming hair. The room was in almost comic disorder. It was a room in which a struggle has taken place between its occupant and that burning-eyed hag, Sleeplessness. The hag, it was plain, had won. A half-emptied glass of milk was on the table by the bed. Warmed, and sipped slowly, it had evidently failed to soothe. A tray of dishes littered another table. Yesterday's dishes, their contents congealed. Books and magazines, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... to be awakened by this crashing, and the cry of fire, and she seemed utterly beside herself with terror. A beautiful woman by day, when carefully gowned and controlled, she was a veritable hag just now! It seemed as if terror and dismay let loose her unbeautiful soul to dominate her well-kept body. She looked older, by a score of years, and was as unlike her usual ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... door-way, we passed into a room about sixteen feet square and eight feet high. At one end was a stove in which a fire burned feebly, and close by a small kerosene lamp on a table dimly lighted the room. An old hag, who had lost the greater part of her nose, and whose face was half hidden by the huge frill of the cap she wore, sat rocking herself in a rickety chair by the table. The room was more than half in the shadow, and the air was so dense and foul ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... at home, however, and Tyr recognised in the elder—an ugly old hag with nine hundred heads—his own grandmother; while the younger, a beautiful young giantess, was, it appeared, his mother, and she received her son and his companion hospitably, and gave ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... were commonly called hag-stones, and were often attached to the key of the stable door to prevent witches riding the horses. One of these suspended at the head of the bed was celebrated for the prevention of nightmare. In the "Leech book"[152] we find the following: "If ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... no questions, and indeed had but little conversation with her; for, as I have told you, I put her in a carriage, with the old hag who was in charge of her, and rode myself by the side of it, in case the old woman ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... much, I trust Her words may prove untrue; Though in a tomb the hag accurst Muttered: "Prepare thee for the worst!" Whilst the ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of (comp. Exod. xii. 51 ff.); since this day was, as such, marked out by the annually returning feast of the Passover, we must, here also, take [Hebrew: ivM], "day," in its proper sense. And there is the less reason for abandoning this most obvious sense that, in Exod. vi. 4; Ezek. xvi. 8; Hag. ii. 5, a covenant with Israel is spoken of, which was not first concluded on Sinai, but was already concluded when they went out from Egypt. Farther—No obligation is spoken of in reference to the new covenant; blessing and gifts are mentioned, and nothing ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... yards farther on a hideous hag leaned from a second story window where she laughed and jibbered and made horrid grimaces at all who passed her. Others went their ways apparently attending to whatever duties called them, as soberly as the inhabitants ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... snows it grinned, A foul and withered shape, that cast Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind Went rattling through it as it passed; It filled the heart with a strange dread, Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound, And gibbered like the wandering dead ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... hag added some infernal drug to the refreshment? I wonder; for there is something ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... That never crossed their eagle ken: But a' unfrettit turn and say, 'Hoots, but the sport's been grand the day!' For none but Scotsmen born and bred, When ither folk lie snug in bed, Would face yon cauld and watery pass, The eerie peat-hag's dark morass, Where wails the whaup wi' mournful screams, Tae wade a' day in icy streams An' flog the burn wi' feckless flies Though ilka trout declines tae rise, Then hameward crunch wi' empty creel Tae sit and hark wi' unquenched zeal Tae dafties' tales o' lonesome tarns ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... her as they parted, "you're looking an absolute wreck. Everyone can see it. Three months more of the same pace would make you a hag." ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... closely into a small human ball than ever. She had feared the minister since the time she had talked off his warts with the wizard words she had learned from a hag living on the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... doth the hag propound? My brain it doth well-nigh confound. A hundred thousand fools or more, Methinks I hear in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a state of putrefaction, and amid the decaying remains eight Kami of thunder have been born and are dwelling. Izanagi, horrified, turns and flees, but Izanami, enraged that she has been "put to shame," sends the "hideous hag of hades" to pursue him. He obtains respite twice; first by throwing down his head-dress, which is converted into grapes, and then casting away his comb, which is transformed into bamboo sprouts, and while the hag stops to eat these delicacies, he flees. Then Izanami ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... said the old hag, the English occupied a spot in Tartary, where they lived sulkily by themselves, unknowing and unknown. By a great convulsion that took place in China, the inhabitants of that and the adjoining ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of the room, banging the door, so that it shook and rattled as though it had listened to the conversation and fully sympathised with the old hag. ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... hag was there without being asked. Not to be asked was just what she wanted, that she might have a sort of reason for doing what she wished to do. For somehow even the wickedest of creatures likes a pretext for doing the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... So the foul hag, in screaming wild alarms O'er a dead carcase muttering her charms, 410 (And with her frequent and tremendous yell Forcing great Hecate from out of hell) Shoots in the corpse a new fictitious soul; With instant glare the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... of the window. His face became red with anger, and he said, "What did I know about the water-witch, and her abominable washing-day? Spiteful, mischievous hag!" ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman
... hag gone up into the room," cried the Hunter, "and she'll give the alarm. We must go ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... a variety of evening papers from a ragged gnome who might be a wonder-child, and made mistakes over the payment to prolong the interview. I leaned against gaunt houses and saw the dancing waifs yield their poor lives to ugly, hag-ridden music. I endured the wailing hymns of voiceless women on winter days in order that I might observe the wretched ragamuffins squalling round their knees the praise of a Creator who had denied ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... he, wistfully, "for I shall consult the fates. I have here a sacred coin. An old dame found it when she was digging in the side of Soracte. See, it has on its face the head of Apollo, and opposite is an arrow in a death-hand. And the hag had an odd dream of this coin, so she told me—that it fell out of the sky, and was, indeed, from the treasury of the gods, and had in it a wonderful power in all mysteries. And one might tell by tossing it in the air and noting its fall, ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... three horsemen. There was a confused outcry of 'St. Denys! St. Andrew!' on one side, 'Yield!' on the other. Madame's rein was seized, and though she drew her dagger, her hand was caught before she could strike, by a fellow who cried, 'None of that, you old hag, or it shall ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a pack of grimy cards, sat Old Meg, a horrible old hag, wrinkled in face like a mummy, with only the stumps of teeth which had more the appearance of tusks. Her unkempt hair was matted and ugly wisps of it hung down over her bleary eyes. For clothes she wore an old-fashioned faded gingham wrapper and around her shoulders a dirty ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... Jean, "they have two or three places handy for lying up in. They are snug by this time. At least Fergus and Agnew are. Stair I met on my way here. He was lurking in a moss-hag with his gun ready for the first red-coat or blue-jacket who should lift ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... of the tumble-down shacks near the sea we found the Sultana, Inchy Jamela, mother of the present Sultan, who had preceded her son to Sulu on a little visit. She was a most repulsive old hag, blear-eyed and skinny with blackened teeth, from which the thin lips curled away in a chronic snarl, but she rose on her elbow from the couch where she was reclining, and shook hands in good American fashion. Then she threw us ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... fear, his betters their hope, that only the low class woman will vote—the unlettered wench of the slums, the raddled hag of the dives, the war-painted protegee of the police. Into the vortex of politics goes every floating thing that is free to move. The summons to the polls will be imperative and incessant. Duty will thunder it from every platform, conscience whisper it into every ear, pride, interest, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Mary answered. "Yet the miracle I have seen. Once did I plant in the soil a root, brown like a dead leaf and wrinkled like a hag's face. It hath been born again. Lo—here it is," and she took the red lily from the vase by Joseph's cup. "See its glad color? Smell its rare fragrance? Here is a miracle, for this that is beautiful, is only a changed form of that which was uncomely. A miracle—yet ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... sure that terror and tragedy should haunt the edifice, one saw, on entering,—either at the main door or in the corridor,—a drunken, delirious hag who begged alms and spat insults at everybody. They called her Death. She must have been very old, or at least appeared so. Her gaze was wandering, her look diffident, her face purulent with scabs; one of her lower eyelids, drawn in as the result of some ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... toward Thor, her eyes gleaming under her falling fringes of gray hair. Thor stood, unable to move as the hag came toward him. She laid her hands upon his arms. Her feet began to trip at his. He tried to cast her from him. Then he found that her feet and her hands were as strong against his as bands and stakes ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... poets; Ariosto makes them literally flights—flights on a hippogriff, and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty; therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; so Angelica, queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... at an end, and I had no reason to economize my provisions, I gave some to the villagers, and the women especially who had hardly ever tasted rice or tinned meat, were delighted. One old hag actually made me a declaration of love, which, unfortunately, I could not respond ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Her eyes were bleared with the smoke, and her face was wrinkled and dried, with a few white hairs straggling over her brow, while the long yellow tusks which protruded beyond her thin lips gave her a peculiarly hag-like look. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Northlands. Adrian professed to be in the robustest of health and to have not a care in the world. The holiday, said he, had done him incalculable good. Already he had begun to work in the full glow of inspiration. We thought him looking old and hag-ridden, but Doria seemed happy. She had her own reason for happiness, which she confided to Barbara. It would be early in the New Year. . . . Her eyes, I noticed, were filled with a new and wonderful love for Adrian. On the Sunday afternoon as we were sauntering about the garden, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... decrepit hag, who personated the righteous Sallasalsor, from Nechal, now stripped of the garments of hypocrisy, filled the eyes of the sages with terror and amazement. Her lean bones, wrapped round with yellow skin, appeared like the superstitious mummies of western Egypt. She was ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... for the scene that met us when we drove into the porte cochere. The place seemed deserted, not a servant was to be seen but one old wrinkled hag, who hobbled up to the door saying something in Dutch that made Madame van Hunker clasp her hands and exclaim: 'All fled! ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it would be?' growled the old hag. 'From shelter we shall proceed to demand supper, and from supper money to take us on our way. Upon my word, if I could be sure of finding some one every day whose head was as soft as his heart, I wouldn't wish for a more agreeable ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... wasn't fair to believe till one heard; and to hear in such a case was to hear Godfrey himself. Whatever she had tried to imagine about him she hadn't arrived at anything so belittling as an idiotic secret marriage with a dyed and painted hag. Adela repeated this last word as if it gave her comfort; and indeed where everything was so bad fifteen years of seniority made the case little worse. Miss Flynn was portentous, for Miss Flynn had had it out with the ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... motionless cutter, and Olaf's mother, having learnt all she wanted, bade her rower quit Thorbiorn; the little boat shot swiftly and suddenly away, leaving Thorbiorn with an uneasy sense of witchcraft. So disquieted did he feel that he would have pursued her and drowned "the old hag," as he called her, had he not been prevented by Brand the Strong, who had been helped in his need ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... So, my attendance should to-morrow prove More tranquil here; for thou should'st leave, I judge, Ulysses' mansion, never to return. 30 Then answer'd Irus, kindling with disdain. Gods! with what volubility of speech The table-hunter prates, like an old hag Collied with chimney-smutch! but ah beware! For I intend thee mischief, and to dash With both hands ev'ry grinder from thy gums, As men untooth a pig pilf'ring the corn. Come—gird thee, that all here may view the strife— But how wilt thou oppose one young as I? Thus on the threshold of the lofty ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... ghosts At dread mysterious meetings. (35) Never sun Shed his pure light upon that haggard cheek Pale with the pallor of the shades, nor looked Upon those locks unkempt that crowned her brow. In starless nights of tempest crept the hag Out from her tomb to seize the levin bolt; Treading the harvest with accursed foot She burned the fruitful growth, and with her breath Poisoned the air else pure. No prayer she breathed Nor supplication to the gods for help Nor knew the pulse ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... first been humble. The lady warned him he must become her slave if he wished to prosecute his suit. Before their interview terminated, the appearance of the beautiful lady was changed into that of the most hideous hag in existence. A witch from the spital or almshouse would have been a goddess in comparison to the late beautiful huntress. Hideous as she was, Thomas felt that he had placed himself in the power of this hag, and when she bade him take leave of the sun, and of the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... believed in the voodoo craft, or in the power of an evil-eye, I should also have feared. Those who have ever witnessed a sea-island witch-dance can bear me out, and I think a man may dread a hag and be no coward either. But distance and time allay the memories of such uncanny works. I had forgotten whether I was afraid or not. So I said, "There ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... bay be Bicrobes, as they say, This Idfluedza pest; What batters? I bust cough—ad pay! The Doctor orders "Rest"! Bicrobes be blowed, ad Rest go hag! I'll stad this thig do bore! BARY! was that the door-bell rag? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... go that night, Rob? Straight away? How did they go? Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Tell me all about it,' cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that was drawn through his arm against her other hand, and searching every line in his face with her bleared eyes. 'Come! Begin! I want to be told all about it. What, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... true. I believe before another day passes, the place of the girl's seclusion can be found. Down on Clark street is Mother Scarlet's place, a played-out old hag, and she has been hand and glove with this red-haired ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... threat that had hung over her so long, was this sense of awful space, of barren nothingness with which the desert oppressed her. Instinctively she turned to look for human companionship. Kut-le and Alchise were not to be seen but Molly nodded beside Rhoda's blankets and the thin hag Cesca was curled in ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... be a recompence for sin. Besides, to affirm that God saveth defiled man for the sake of his defiled duties—for so, I say, is every work of his hand—what is it but to say, God accepteth of one sinful act as a recompence and satisfaction for another? (Hag 2:14). But God, even of old, hath declared how he abominates imperfect sacrifices, therefore we can by no means be saved from sin but by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... made 'a discovery of the wicked instrument of the devil.' The culprit was evidently a wild Irishwoman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin, who made the complaint, 'had no proof that could have done her any hurt;' but the 'scandalous old hag,' whom some thought 'crazed in her intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strange answers, which were taken as confessions, sometimes, in excitement, using her native dialect. . . . It was plain the prisoner was a Roman Catholic; ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... attributes of several other classes of subordinate spirits, acknowledged by the nations of the north. The abstraction of children, for example, the well known practice of the modern Fairy, seems, by the ancient Gothic nations, to have rather been ascribed to a species of night-mare, or hag, than to the berg-elfen, or duergar. In the ancient legend of St Margaret, of which there is a Saxo-Norman copy, in Hickes' Thesaurus Linguar. Septen. and one, more modern, in the Auchinleck MSS., that lady encounters a fiend, whose profession it was, among other malicious tricks, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... sensual eye that gives evil the appearance of good, and out of a crooked hag makes a bewitching siren. The reason enlightened by the grace of God sees it as it truly is, full of stench and corruption.[86] It is this office of reason which Dante undertakes to perform, by divine commission, in the Inferno. There can be no doubt that he looked upon himself as invested ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... take us long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... was he by slumber, that he never awoke when that venerable institution called the college woman—the hag whom the virtue of unerring dons insists o imposing as a servant on resident students—entered, made up the fire, swept up the room, and arranged the breakfast-table. It was only as she jogged his arm ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Melissa's lore Advised, he to behold the fay returned, And that good ring of sovereign virtue wore, Which, on the finger placed, all spells o'erturned; For that fair damsel he had left before, To his surprise, so foul a dame discerned, That in this ample world, examined round, A hag so old and hideous ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "You accursed hag," said the baronet, whose vexation at meeting her was for the moment beyond any superstitious impression which he felt, "what brought you here? What devil sent you across my path now? Who are you, or what are you, for you look ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... only because it is really a game of "see the thimble." Suppose that at the end of such a game the thimble had not been found at all; suppose its place was unknown for ever: the result on the players would not be playful, it would be tragic. That thimble would hag-ride all their dreams. They would all die in asylums. The pleasure is all in the poignant moment of passing from not knowing to knowing. Mystery stories are very popular, especially when sold at sixpence; but that is because the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... "rescued") from many of his old associations with Montparnasse, she warmly encouraged my friendship with him—yea, in spite of my living so deep in the wrong bank that the first time he brought her to my studio, she declared she hadn't seen anything so like Bring-the-child-to-the- old-hag's-cellar-at-midnight since her childhood. She is a handsome woman, large, and of a fine, high colour; her manner is gaily dictatorial, and she and I ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... The hag screamed at sight of me, and crouched down on the floor; and doubtless, with my drawn sword, and the blood dripping from my chin and staining all the front of my doublet, I looked fierce and uncanny enough. But I felt ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... woods, wold, wildwood. Associated Words: sylvan, sylviculture, nemophilist, nemophily, nemoral, afforest, afforestation, Silenus, hamadryad, glade, reforestize, reforestation, reboise, reafforest, forestry, forester, disboscation, disforest disforestation, hag, assart, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... that he went on, and he reached Sligach just at the time O'Conchubar was setting out with the men of Connacht to avenge the Connacht hag's basket on the hag of Munster. And this time he gave himself the name of the Gilla Decair, the Bad Servant. And he joined with the men of Connacht, and they went over the Sionnan westward into Munster, and there they hunted and drove every creature that could be made travel, cattle ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the reaction of sudden fury and maddened pride, springing up to the full height of his stature. "Hag! thou hast passed the limits to which, remembering who thou art, my forbearance gave thee licence. I had well-nigh forgot that thou hadst assumed my part—I am the Accuser! Woman!—the boy!—shrink not! equivocate not! lie not!—thou wert ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Doul, blind Martin's blind wife, has a general likeness to some old witch out of a fairy tale, but she is far from being a witch; and Widow Quinn the incomparable might be compared, were she not too high-hearted, to the hag of "The Lout ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... not keeping her eyes open better. She says if she had only had the least suspicion beforehand that the minx (she dared to call Jessie a minx) was going, she'd have known where, or her name would have been somebody else's. And yet she admits that Jessie was looking ill and worried. Stupid old hag!" ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... bands. He goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony—what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant! It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... word here and now that you will do the next thing that I ask of you, whatever it is, if it is in your power," said the hag when she heard the story, "and I will ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... "You old hag!" he exclaimed, grinding his teeth, "then I will make you answer!" With these words he drew a pistol from his pocket. At the sight of the pistol, the Countess for the second time exhibited strong emotions. She shook her head, and raised her hands as ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... it may be noted that they very frequently resorted to hills and mountains, their meetings taking place "on the mead, on the oak sward, under the lime, under the oak, at the pear tree." Thus the fairy rings which are often to be met with on the Sussex downs are known as hag-tracks,[4] from the belief that "they are caused by hags and witches, who dance there at midnight."[5] Their love for sequestered and romantic localities is widely illustrated on the Continent, instances of which have ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... fair young face defaced by patches and by liniments, so that none might covet her, she addressed the young man at the gate in a cracked and trembling voice; and they were scarcely civil to the "old hag," as they called her. She said that she bore important tidings for Sir Counsellor himself, and must be conducted to him. To him accordingly she was led, without even any hoodwinking, for she had spectacles over her eyes, and made believe not to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... countenance grew ferocious as she spoke, "and the treatment that rendered me miserable, seemed to sharpen my wits. Confined then in a damp hovel, to rock the cradle of the succeeding tribe, I looked like a little old woman, or a hag shrivelling into nothing. The furrows of reflection and care contracted the youthful cheek, and gave a sort of supernatural wildness to the ever watchful eye. During this period, my father had married another fellow-servant, who loved him less, and knew better how to manage his ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of tottering wall with foliage impending above their heads, formed a striking picture, which I stayed contemplating from my pillar, till the fire went out, the assembly dispersed, and none remained but a withered hag, raking the embers, and muttering to herself. I thought also it was high time to retire, lest the unwholesome mists, which were streaming from the opening before the Coliseo, might make me repent my stay. Whether they had already ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... and making speeches, be sure to send this hame to tell your fouk, that it was Queen Elizabeth who made the first European law to buy and sell human beings like brute beasts. She was England's glory as a Protestant, and Scotland's shame as the murderer of their bonnie Mary. The auld hag skulked away like a coward in the hour of death. Mary, on the other hand, with calmness and dignity, repeated a Latin prayer to the Great Spirit and Author of her being, and calmly resigned herself into the hands of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... not to be justify'd too fast: Hear all, and then let justice hold the scale. What follow'd was the riddle that confounds me. Through a close lane, as I pursu'd my journey, And meditating on the last night's vision, I spy'd a wrinkled hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself; Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red: Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seem'd wither'd, And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapp'd The tatter'd remnant of an old strip'd hanging, Which serv'd ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... and hated it the worse that it was within his reach—hated its cold staring rebuke as he hated virtue—hated it as if its well were in the churchyard where the old captain was buried sixty years ago. —Confound him! why wouldn't he lie still? He made some effort to be polite to the old hag, as he called her, in that not very secret chamber of his soul, whose door was but too ready to fall ajar, and allow its evil things to issue. He searched his lumber-room for old stories to tell, but found it difficult to lay hold on any fit for the ears present, though ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... entered into the city of the Amaurots, and how Panurge married King Anarchus to an old lantern-carrying hag, and made him a crier of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... old hag! Would you believe it, Bob, that Mrs Rowbottom has wanted to grapple with me these last two years—wants to make me landlord of the Goose and Pepper-box, taking her as a fixture with the premises. I suspect I should be the goose and she the pepper-box;—but ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... pound on them boys!" observed the more earnest Joe; "the like of them to be getting twenty pounds! mightn't he as well have said twenty thousand? and tin pounds on Tim too! More power to you, Jonas Brown; tin pounds for a poor boy's warming his shins, and gagging over an owld hag's bit of turf!" ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... serve as an example of many others. A fisherman, well known in the place, a handsome and popular young fellow, was seized, while working in his boat, with the first symptoms of cholera. He was carried to his mother's house. The old woman, a villainous-looking hag, watched the little procession as it approached her dwelling, and taking in the situation at once, she shut and ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... honey." The first time I partook of this dainty I had unfortunately seen it in course of preparation, which somewhat marred the relish with which I might otherwise have eaten it. The confectioner was a toothless old hag, who mixed the ingredients in a wooden dish dirtier than anything I ever saw before, and filled with reindeer hairs, which, however, were not conspicuous when well mingled with the half-churned grass and moss. She extracted the oil from the blubber by crunching it between her ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... 'Avaunt! hag,' exclaimed Blackbeard, as Elvira ceased speaking, 'begone I say, and if ever thou darest to call thyself, my mother, in my hearing, I will stab you to ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... instil The angry essence of her deadly will; If like a snake she steal within your walls, Till the black slime betray her as she crawls; If like a viper to the heart she wind, And leaves the venom there she did not find,— What marvel that this hag of hatred works Eternal evil ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this unhappy state of mind. They declare that it is impossible longer to interest students successfully in a general theoretical course, and they are experimenting with all kinds of substitutes—de-nicotinized tobacco and Kaffee Hag—from which poisonous theory has been extracted. At the same time, economics "with a punch in it," economics "with a back bone," is being taught by strong young teachers of the new faith more successfully, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... gradually come into use during the past few years. Its meaning is well shown in the following examples:—"Domo", house; "domacxo", hovel. "Virino", woman; "virinacxo", hag. "Ridi", to laugh; "ridacxi", to grin (maliciously). "Cxevalo", horse; "cxevalacxo", a sorry nag, a screw. "Obstina", persistent, stubborn; "obstinacxa", pig-headed. "Popolo", a people; "popolacxo", populace. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... her lodge and laid off her mantle, which was entirely composed of the scalps of women. Before folding it, she shook it several times, and at every shake the scalps uttered loud shouts of laughter, in which the old hag joined. The boy, who lingered at the door, was greatly alarmed, ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... done tuck ter ther bottle," she said with forced cheerfulness to the hag-like Mirandy Sloane. "Mebby when I gits back thar'll be a mite more flesh on them puny leetle bones of his'n." Her words caught sob-like in her throat as she wheeled resolutely and caught up her shawl ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... confidential attendant on a lady moving in high society, who wished to be initiated into the most secret refinements of Parisian high life, and who had done me the honor of choosing me for her companion. But then, this preliminary test! 'By Jove!' I said to myself, 'this old German hag is not so stupid as she looks!' And I laughed in my sleeve, as I listened inattentively to what she was saying ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... pole to a witch-meeting; but the pole broke, and she hanging about Carrier's neck, they both fell down, and she then received an hurt by the fall whereof she was not at this very time recovered.... This rampant hag, Martha Carrier, was the person, of whom the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed, that the devil had promised her she ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... way with the king's keys, and break the neck of every living soul we find in the house, if ye dinna gie it ower forthwith!' menaced the incensed Hobbie. 'Threatened folks live lang,' said the hag, in the same tone of irony; 'there's the iron gate—try your skeel on't, lads—it has kept out as good men as you or ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... exhibit all the others in their ivory whiteness, with an expression resembling that of the hyena. This is considered beauty,—a fashion in full vogue among her countrywomen, who cultivate it with great care,—though to the eyes of the old sailor it rendered the hag all the more hideous. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... near them. The former laughed and chatted in their rebuked and quiet manner, though one who knew the habits of the people might have detected that everything was not going on in its usual train. Most of the young women seemed to be light-hearted enough; but one old hag was seated apart with a watchful soured aspect, which the hunter at once knew betokened that some duty of an unpleasant character had been assigned her by the chiefs. What that duty was, he had no means of knowing; but he felt satisfied it must be ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... muttered the Baron. "Every old hag in the village knows about a thing whenever it's supposed to be conducted in absolute secrecy." Then he continued angrily: "He'd have indeed to be a stupid devil of a criminal who would let ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... concerned a book-keeper in the office of the auditor of disbursements. It seems he was at most times thoroughly reliable, hard-working, industrious, ambitious. But at long intervals the vice of drunkenness seized upon the man and for three days rode him like a hag. Not only during the period of this intemperance, but for the few days immediately following, the man was useless, his work untrustworthy. He was a family man and earnestly strove to rid himself of his habit; he was, when sober, valuable. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... They would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden by ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and said there was always a serpent in every Paradise, and that Experience was a horrid hag, with a bony finger pointing to the snake.... This is my recantation, Ban. I know now that you were the true Prophet; that Experience has shining wings and eyes that can lock to the future as well as the past, and immortal Hope for a lover. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... is the derivation of orchard? Is the last syllable "yard," as in vineyard, rickyard? If so, what is "orch?" By the way, is the provincial word "hag-gard" hay-yard? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... delicate lady—and such only, I was sure, could have left the foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had seen—could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to stare, and she would have had ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... no evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... was called Sapeur, because he had served in Africa in his youth, entertained other aversions. He said, with a roguish air: "She is an old hag who has ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Soulis had been ower-lang at the college. He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He had a feck o' books wi' him—mair than had ever been seen before in a' that presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had wi' them, for they were a' like to have smoored in the Deil's Hag between this and Kilmackerlie. They were books o' divinity, to be sure, or so they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang in the neuk of a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... ken—sauf us! what a fearsome night this is! The trees will be all broken. What a noise in the lum! I daresay there's some auld hag of a witch-wife gaun to come rumble doun't. It's no the first time, I'll swear. Hae ye a silver sixpence? Wad ye like that?" he bawled up the chimney. "Ye'll hae heard," said he, "lang ago, that a wee ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... an uncommonly pretty little sprite, and the selfish hag of a sister only left orders that I was to take care of the bike! I could see where there was a stone as ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... at home once in awhile, you old hag!' he growled. 'Now both my horse and I will come to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... cloth bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thy hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy men appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the feast of unleavened bread, of weeks, and of tabernacles (hag ha-maccoth,— shabuoth,—sukkoth), and they shall not appear before me empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of Jehovah thy God, which He hath given thee" (ver. 13-17). As regards the essential nature of the two last-named ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... are both in league with Canadian spies, and enemies of Red River. One of the said spies is myself! It appears that you are to be taken to the common jail; and mademoiselle Marie is to be lodged in the house of a Metis hag, who is a depraved instrument of Riel's will. Therefore, I have brought hither an escort sufficient to accomplish your safe retreat to some refuge beyond the American frontier. Paul tells me that you had proposed going to your brother's. I do not consider this a safe plan. Your malignant ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... never quite won to knowing the simple fact that the thing had already been done and surpassingly well done: he, who did so much to liberate poetry from rhyme—he—even he who in the grand choruses of "Samson Agonistes" did so much to liberate it from strict metre never quite realised, being hag-ridden by the fetish that rides between two panniers, the sacred and the profane, that this translation of "Job" already belongs to the category of poetry, is poetry, already above metre, and in rhythm far on its way to the insurpassable. If rhyme be allowed ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... very poor room in Galway with outer and inner door. Noises of a fair outside. A Hag sitting by the fire. Another standing ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise, he had ten going pleas before the Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat-hag on the Kye-skairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long, and dying on a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you don't find out my name within a week you will have to give me your heart's blood—a drop of heart's blood for every ball of wool I spin for you." The hag went away then. Bloom-of-Youth was greatly frightened, but after a while she said to herself "I need not be afraid, for in a week I'll surely find out the name of the black and crooked woman who can't live far ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... you're saying," shouted Isak. And to make his meaning perfectly clear, he added: "You cursed old hag!" ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... show Ziemianitch to the gentleman to prove there were no lies told. And he would show him drunk. His woman, it seems, ran away from him last night. "Such a hag she was! Thin! Pfui!" He spat. They were always running away from that driver of the devil—and he sixty years old too; could never get used to it. But each heart knows sorrow after its own kind and Ziemianitch was a born fool all his days. And then he would fly to the bottle. "'Who could bear life ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... that he and his rich pardner, the American Govermunt, sees goin' on all the time in their countless places of bizness, murders, suicides, etc., that they evidently seemed to consider this a very commonplace affair; and so of the other house kep' by the two pardners, the brazen-faced old hag and Christian America, there, too, so many more terrible things wuz occurrin' all the time that this wuz a very tame thing ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... and I repeated it to Colonel Walton the next time I went to the hotel where he was then living—I have since learned, with a lady not his wife, though he was then three score and ten—and he cried, "That old hag! Good Lord! Don't ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... we were not to be long unmolested for, roused by a shuffling step, I glanced hastily up and beheld an old woman hobbling towards us bent upon a stick, a miserably ragged, furtive, hag-like creature who nodded and leered ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... called Marsipo-branchii, and contains the lamprey, the Myxine (or Glutinous Hag), and the Bdellestoma. They are fishes of parasitic habits and of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... but she is turned away. The maiden flies; Monsieur follows, and he overtakes the maiden. Then he bears her away with guards around her, through a deep valley, till he reaches a hut. Now he hands her over to an ugly hag— and the name of that hag is Jubal. Is it not so, Monsieur?" and the crone, turning from the cup, looked with a hideous grin in the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... admonition to turn no more to the hill of doom, but boldly to climb the hill of peace, will fall stricken through the soul. That warning voice, which once shook the desert, has now promised (ver. 26)—for a promise, the promise of an eternal redemption, lies deep in that threatening (Hag. ii. 6)—that not earth only but heaven is yet to feel His shaking, and once for ever when it comes. He, "yet once more," shall work one vast "removing"; and then (ver. 27) a stability irremovable shall ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... patched up her old house, and adopted five or six orphan-asylum kids, and I suppose the poor thing thinks she's having a good time." Even to the most prejudiced eye Annabel could not have looked beautiful at that moment. The venom that poisoned her spirit, disfigured her face like a scar. Hag-ridden by those unlovely twins, jealousy and hate, she looked for the instant ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... but none the less cautious. See Nehemiah. (4) There is a wise providence of God that includes all nations and displays perfect righteousness, perfect knowledge and perfect power. See the book of Esther, also the others. (5) Contentment may be false and harmful. See Hag. and Zech. (6) The comparative strength of the friends and enemies of a proposition does not determine the results. God must also be considered. (7) It pays to serve God. the Moral Governor of the world. See Mal. (8) The safety of a people demands ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... appear to have been imprudent. Her father believed that the "old hag" breathed upon her while she was with her mother, who was sketching in the Palace of the Casars; but the Palatine Hill is on high ground, with a foundation of solid masonry, and was guarded by French soldiers, and it would have been difficult to find a more cleanly spot in the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... old hag is so very persistent, I suppose I had better spend an evening at her house and inspect ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... society. But, at the same time, it is most irritating to a man of a speculative turn of mind. Fiction teems with most splendid murders. Captain Marryat, in Snarleyow, created an almost perfect horror in the attempted slaughter of the boy Smallbones by the hag mother of Vanslyperken; the lad's reversal of the situation and his plunging a bayonet into the wrinkled throat, makes the chapter an accomplishment difficult ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... going to cut up this peerless robe into strips. He bought it of an old crone, who must doubtless have worn it on gala days when she went to Lucifer's drawing-room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice, with its gold tassels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps: it will give me a right worshipful air. To match such jewels, there is this green velvet petticoat with its saffron-coloured trimming, and this mask would melt even Medusa to a grin. Thus accoutred I mean to lead the chorus of Graces, myself their mother-queen, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... I do fly Amidst the aery welkin soon, And, in a minute's space, descry What things are done below the moon. There's neither hag nor spirit shall wag, In any corner where I go; But Robin I, their feats will spy, And make good ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... out the wretched man, and he again burst forth into a fit of hideous laughter, which froze the hearts of Adam and his son. "Begone, old hag, begone, begone," he shouted, and endeavoured to raise himself up, but his strength, from some internal injury, was fast giving way. The effort produced a paroxysm of pain. He shrieked out, and sinking back on the ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... prettier. We call stealing "swiping" and cheating "cribbing." When we have been drunk we say we were "squiffy." As soon as we face the facts, we realize that what we call peccadilloes in ourselves are the black sins that have slain the innocents and have hag ridden humanity through all its history. That is the beginning of social vision. Personal repentance is ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch |
