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Witch   Listen
noun
Witch  n.  
1.
One who practices the black art, or magic; one regarded as possessing supernatural or magical power by compact with an evil spirit, esp. with the Devil; a sorcerer or sorceress; now applied chiefly or only to women, but formerly used of men as well. "There was a man in that city whose name was Simon, a witch." "He can not abide the old woman of Brentford; he swears she's a witch."
2.
An ugly old woman; a hag.
3.
One who exercises more than common power of attraction; a charming or bewitching person; also, one given to mischief; said especially of a woman or child. (Colloq.)
4.
(Geom.) A certain curve of the third order, described by Maria Agnesi under the name versiera.
5.
(Zool.) The stormy petrel.
6.
A Wiccan; an adherent or practitioner of Wicca, a religion which in different forms may be paganistic and nature-oriented, or ditheistic. The term witch applies to both male and female adherents in this sense.
Witch balls, a name applied to the interwoven rolling masses of the stems of herbs, which are driven by the winds over the steppes of Tartary. Cf. Tumbleweed.
Witches' besoms (Bot.), tufted and distorted branches of the silver fir, caused by the attack of some fungus.
Witches' butter (Bot.), a name of several gelatinous cryptogamous plants, as Nostoc commune, and Exidia glandulosa. See Nostoc.
Witch grass (Bot.), a kind of grass (Panicum capillare) with minute spikelets on long, slender pedicels forming a light, open panicle.
Witch meal (Bot.), vegetable sulphur. See under Vegetable.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books



... a turmoil of thoughts that seethed in his brain, like a brew in a witch's cauldron—some of them dark and some golden bright, and some of them red with lust for many things—he proceeded down street to McCoppet's place, to find himself locked out of the private den, where the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... small waterfalls as it tumbles over the rocks, and is bordered by green and flowering trees. Amongst these, is one with a smooth, satin-like bark, of a pale golden colour, whose roots have something snakish and witch-like in their appearance, intertwining with each other, grappling as it were with the hard rock, and stretching out to the most ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... her by herself to be coddled by her maid, as Uncle John (vulgarly) said. Or perhaps was there somebody else coming, some old friend whom he knew nothing of, somebody, some one or other like that old witch in the carriage whom Pippo ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... graceful branches by the shore; music of the softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors and sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm; without, are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But the witch herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin in the painted banquet-halls and among ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... have reason to. Grandmother Parker was a good woman if ever there was one, and she was bewitched. And would it have said in the Bible—'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' if ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... future had lost their existence to him, and he was living in the glorified present. He no more coolly realized the situation than would one in an ecstatic trance. In one sense he verified the popular superstition, and was bewitched; and, with the charming witch ever near to weave a new spell a dozen times a day, how could he disentangle himself? He was too innocent, too unhackneyed, to understand what was going on in his ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... about like a feather. Her face was brown and puckered and lined in a most wonderful fashion. Where a wrinkle could be, there a wrinkle was, and her nose and chin were of the true nutcracker order, as a witch's should be. Only her eyes betrayed the powerful vitality that still animated the tiny frame, for these were large and dark, and had in them a piercing look which seemed to gaze not at any one, but through and beyond. Her figure, dried ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... there can still be seen near Thrums the pool where these unfortunates used to be drowned, and in the session book of the Glen Quharity kirk can be read an old minute announcing that on a certain Sabbath there was no preaching because "the minister was away at the burning of a witch." To the storm-stayed shows came the gypsies in great numbers. Claypots (which is a corruption of Claypits) was their headquarters near Thrums, and it is still sacred to their memory. It was a clachan of miserable little huts built entirely of clay from the dreary and sticky pit ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... hope that she might never again see sign nor sight of any such a hijjis baste hobblin' anywheres on her road; to which he had rejoined that she might go to blazes and welcome for anythin' he had to say agin it, and that bedad a crosser-tempered ould weasel of a wizened-up ould witch wouldn't be apt to land there in a hurry. At last, being very tired, she escaped for a while from these fluctuations of wrath and ruth into a nook of sleep, but the bitter cold routed her out of it soon after sunrise, and she took the road again, cramped ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... curtain was almost ready to rise. And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green! And Mrs. Robson carefully picked out in the chorus the stout sister of a former servant who had worked for her mother! And the wicked old witch swept from the wings on the traditional broomstick! From that moment until the final transformation scene, when scintillating sea-shells yielded up one by one their dazzling burdens of female loveliness and a rather Hebraic Cupid descended from an invisible wire to wish everybody ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... soothsayers of the court; and by the aid of significant glances and shrugging of shoulders, and interchange of signs and whispers, with feminine telegraphy and secret service, most of those interested arrived at the sage conclusion that their lord had fallen under the spells of a witch or enchantress. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?" he demanded. "What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... taken to Auerbach's Cellar, where four jolly companions are 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... red coals, goodman,— For there the child shall lie, Till the black witch comes to fetch her, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... palefaced^, tallow-faced; faint, dull, cold, muddy, leaden, dun, wan, sallow, dead, dingy, ashy, ashen, ghastly, cadaverous, glassy, lackluster; discolored &c v.. light-colored, fair, blond; white &c 430. pale as death, pale as ashes, pale as a witch, pale as a ghost, pale as a corpse, white as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... we need new drugs. As for that witch which hath haunted all of us, "Maladicta," Lilly in his Astrology has a remedy. "Take unguentum populeum, and Vervain and Hypericon, and put a red-hot iron into it: You must anoint the back-bone, or wear it ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... in the good greenwood when the goblin and sprite ranged free, When the kelpie haunted the shadowed flood, and the dryad dwelt in the tree; But merrier far is the trolley-car as it routs the witch from the wold, And the din of the hammer and the cartridges' clamor as they banish the swart kobold! O, a sovran cure for psychic dizziness Is a breath of the air of the world of business! —Idyls of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... not advise you to venture it. Do not go in." "Why not?" asked the King's son. The maiden sighed and said, "My step-mother practises wicked arts; she is ill-disposed toward strangers." Then he saw very well that he had come to the house of a witch, but as it was dark, and he could not go farther, and also was not afraid, he entered. The old woman was sitting in an armchair by the fire, and looked at the stranger with her red eyes. "Good evening," ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... head off!'} exclaim the impetuous 'Smother the old witch!' } Hedzoff, the ardent Smith, and 'Pitch her into the river!'} ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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 ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... afterwards captured by the English, who, to their lasting dishonor, burned her as a witch, her example nerved the French to further resistance. The English gradually lost ground and in 1453 A.D., the year of the fall of Constantinople, abandoned the effort to conquer a land much larger than their own. They retained of the French territories only ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... culo ne' ceci rossi. The phrase seni recocto may imply one who enjoys a green and vigorous old age, as if made young again, as the old woman was by wine, of whom Petronius speaks, Anus recocta vino; or AEson, who was re-cooked by Medaea. That witch, says Valerius Flaccus, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... he; then quoted: "'The daughters of the dream witch come and go,' don't they? 'The black bat hide the starren of the night.' That's it, isn't it?... No—so far as I know! But they are a queer lot. Nobody ever knows what they'll be at next in the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the rosewood shelf, you left your new piano shut, something seemed to worry you. Do you remember it, dear one?' 'All of it, yes, yes.' 'Then you came singing down to that old oak, and kissed the place where I had carved our names with many vows. Tell me, you little witch, who were you thinking of all that time?' 'All the while of you,' she sighed. 'And do you, oh, do you remember that you fell asleep under the oak, and that a little acorn fell into your bosom and you tossed it out in a pet? Ah, Olive dear, I found ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... I am afraid of a Teenchy Duck," said the Prince of the Seven Golden Cows. "I will never give it up." Then, speaking to his servants, he said: "Heat the oven, heat it to a white heat, and throw this witch in." ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... "That old witch! where does she keep her money? It is as good as lost; I can make a better use of it. With four pools at fifty francs each, I could win two hundred thousand francs, and that's much surer than the turning up of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... woman looked as if she had come from a witch's Sabbath, if ever girl, scarce more than child, walked as if she had plucked the fruit of the Tree and savoured it bitter, it was the girl before him. Despair—it seemed to him—rode her like a hag. Dejection, fear, misery, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... the Leicester School (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the final Story about a little Indian ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... thought, was a very graceful invitation for Andrew Drever to give to a stranger who had only a few moments before implied that his mother was a witch. But it was a kindness such as he was ever showing; and I must add that Captain Gordon was one of those easy-mannered sailors who at once give an agreeable impression. I myself liked him from the very first, ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... piazza were Madam Conway and Theo, the former of whom chided her for staying so late at the cottage, while Theo asked what queer things the old witch-woman ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... dropped her flowers to clap her hands softly. "Tata, I have guessed his distemper rightly. Let no one say that I am not a witch for cleverness! Ah, you can have the best fun that ever any maid could have! If you could but make him believe something about that Danishman ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... ole black cat widdee yella eyes Slink round like she atter ah mouse, Den yo' bettah take keer yo'self en frien's, Kase dey's sho'ly a witch en de house." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin

... a sample of the sort of deportment which my future daughter-in-law is expected to outgrow I might as well be shown just what this kind of behavior is like. Let us acquiesce and go to the little witch, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... our rifles, and believe him to be capable to going to considerable lengths to get them; hence his extreme anxiety to keep us here all night. Therefore, when I found that there was no hope of persuading him to let us have a guide to-night, I informed him that we were four very great and powerful witch-doctors, as he must already have seen; and that, if he wished us to remain in the village all night to-night, it would be necessary to light four large fires—one for each of us—to propitiate the evil spirits, so that they should not enter the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... were a witch, the stake would surely be hers; but she is a crafty and wily woman who has lured you on with ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... that she is a witch, Outram," answered the priest with fervour, "a servant of the Evil One, such as are written of in the Scriptures. Last night I saw her praying to her gods; she did not know that I was near, for the place was lonely, but I saw her and I never wish to see anything so horrible again. I will tell you ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... ancestors would have burned me for a witch? Perhaps they would: I think quite likely they burned women who made better martyrs. But I didn't have to call in Flibbertigibbet. The programme is a carefully guarded secret, to be sure; but it is ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... Keep right on utilizing your vocal chords. Chatter on incessantly. Be a consistent ass until the last man is out and the umpire crawls into his cyclone cellar. Then go home and bathe what's left of your voice in witch hazel, and get ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott

... related to perform many supernatural acts by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the places where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense, anoint thee, Witch, will mean, Away, Witch, to your infernal assembly. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word aroint in no other authour till looking into Hearne's Collections I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... see them now going to school together, he carrying her satchel. Then—she had a long bout of slow fever, I remember. Pottle attended her, and it's a wonder—h'm! But wasn't that about the time when that little witch, Ada Vere, came here, and turned both the boys' heads, and carried off poor Willy, and half broke Arthur's heart? H'm! Well, I don't know what I can do about it. Hum! pretty it all looks here! If there ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... if I recollect my discussion with you going down to Southampton. Very well, my dear Hal, and your appearance especially, which, in that witch's travelling-cap of yours, is so extremely agreeable to me that you recur to me in it constantly, and as often I execrate your bonnet. How much I do love beauty! How I delight in the beauty of any one that I love! How thankful I am that I am not ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... who was also more than suspected of being somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother did know it—that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly to that place where alone she could ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... betwixt two cities; and so of the rest: Reason, therefore, can sooner be led, by imagination, to step from one room into another, than to walk to two distant houses, and yet rather to go thither, than to fly like a witch through the air, and be hurried from one region to another. Fancy and Reason go hand in hand; the first cannot leave the last behind: And though Fancy, when it sees the wide gulph, would venture over, as the nimbler, yet it is with-held by Reason, which will refuse to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... Moloch have been grafted upon them, and so forth, until the very Druid himself is lost in a mass of crystallisations from without. The insular Druids, to which our national traditions refer, were far more likely to be mere "wise men," or "witch doctors," with perhaps a spice of the conjuror. This, at all events, seems to be the case at the time when we first acquire any positive information concerning them. Theirs it would be to summon the rain clouds and to terrify ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... another) behold three thousand courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.—"O divine Athenais! what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.—THAT a goddess?—a pretty goddess forsooth;—a witch, rather, who, for a while, kept our gracious monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond ear-rings?"* The same tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gray hair and grimy face of a hideous old woman showed themselves slowly at the end of the passage, rising from the strong-smelling obscurity of the kitchen regions. "What do you want?" said the half-seen witch of the London slums. "Does Madame Marillac live here?" Stella asked. "Do you mean the foreigner?" "Yes." "Second door." With those instructions the upper half of the witch sank and vanished. Stella gathered her skirts together, and ascended a filthy ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... the dog's shadow, the man will immediately die. Then came the endless procession of sorcerers and sorceresses. In one of these tales Bernadette evinced a passionate interest; it was the story of a clerk of the tribunal of Lourdes who, wishing to see the devil, was conducted by a witch into an untilled field at midnight on Good Friday. The devil arrived clad in magnificent scarlet garments, and at once proposed to the clerk that he should buy his soul, an offer which the clerk pretended to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... But time and tide o'er all prevail— On Christmas eve a Christmas tale— Of wonder and of war—'Profane! 135 What! leave the lofty Latian strain, Her stately prose, her verse's charms, To hear the clash of rusty arms: In Fairy Land or Limbo lost, To jostle conjurer and ghost, 140 Goblin and witch!'—Nay, Heber dear, Before you touch my charter, hear; Though Leyden aids, alas! no more, My cause with many-languaged lore, This may I say:—in realms of death 145 Ulysses meets Alcides' WRAITH; Aeneas, upon Thracia's shore, The ghost of murder'd Polydore; ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... which he leaped down to the road, into a little grotto of Antiparos. Some old rough rails and boards that dropped over it are sheathed in plates of transparent silver. The trunks of the black alders are mailed with crystal; and the witch-hazel, and yellow osiers fringing its sedgy borders, are likewise shining through their glossy covering. Around every stem that rises from the water is a glittering ring of ice. The tags of the alder and the red berries of last summer's wild roses glitter now like a lady's pendant. As for the brook, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... she got her message ready. She plied the man with wine and strong liquor till evening, when he slept so fast that nothing could wake him. While he was asleep she opened his letters and read all that the governor had written. Then this wicked old woman wrote to Alla that his wife Constance was a witch who had bewitched him and all his people, but now her true character became plain, and she had given birth to a horrible, fiend-like creature, who, she said, was his son. This she put in place of the governor's letter, and dispatched ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... for life, seem scarcely consistent with his duties as knight of the Grail, and, save for their mutual love, neither hero nor heroine have much claim upon our sympathies. But the grouping of the characters is admirable; the truculent witch Ortrud is a fine foil to the ingenuous Elsa, and Lohengrin's spotless knighthood is cast into brilliant relief by the dastardly treachery of Telramund. The story of 'Lohengrin' lacks the deep human interest of 'Tannhaeuser,' and the music never reaches the heights to which the earlier work sometimes ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... Witches apprehended, examined, and executed for notable villanies, by them committed both by land and water, with a strange and most true triall how to know whether a woman be a witch or not: with the plate. Extra rare, 4to. 3 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... the woods with its long dark shadows and its aroma of pine and balsam. Gradually the forest with its dells and its thickets, its ferns and witch-hazel, its bird-song and its chattering squirrels, its sense of freedom and peace, was left behind and they emerged into dusty roadways bordered by ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... twenty-three when they returned to New York, Kathi having begged some more money from Vienna. She was already a worn, old witch of a woman, dressed gayly in remnants of past grandeur and always painting her face. She and her son held together in a partnership strained and rasping, but unbreakable, united by the mysterious tie of blood and a deep-rooted moral resemblance. They led a ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Ellen, dear!" exclaimed Margery "if that isn't you! Aren't you come in the very nick of time! How do you do? I am very glad to see you uncommon glad, to be sure. What witch told you to come here just now? Run in; run into the parlour, and see ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... false alarm, and is precipitated into the area. Or, to come to the actresses, she may be the fairy who resides for ever in a revolving star with an occasional visit to a bower or a palace. Or the actor may be the armed head of the witch's cauldron; or even that extraordinary witch, concerning whom I have observed in country places, that he is much less like the notion formed from the description of Hopkins than the Malcolm or Donalbain of the previous scenes. This society, in short, says, "Be you ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... generation, may be punished for the sins of our fathers," rejoined Nicholas. "You have Scripture against you, Dick. The only thing I see in favour of your argument is, the instance you allege of Alizon. She does not look like a witch, certainly; but there is no saying. She may be only the more dangerous for her rare beauty, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... The old witch winks— The fat begins to fry; There's nobody home but Jumping Joan, Father and mother ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... Port Lincoln. Here a little open boat was obtained, and Mr. Scott, Eyre's courageous companion, undertook to attempt to reach Adelaide and obtain further supplies. This he successfully accomplished, returning in the Water Witch with stores and provisions, two more men, and some kangaroo dogs. Thus reinforced, the party reached Fowler's Bay in the great Bight of South Australia. The map shows that a journey of more than 200 miles must ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest

... quarter millions of Irish Catholics. History concedes to Catholic Ireland the cleanest record in respect of religious tolerance to be found anywhere in Europe. We never martyred a saint, and amid all the witch-hunting devilries of Scotland and England we burned only one witch, a namesake of my own. Deny or suppress all this. Imagine into the eyes of every Catholic neighbour the slumbering but unquenched fires of Smithfield. But be good enough to respect mathematics. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... to touch? so that men seeing her face, And how she sighed out little Ahs of pain And soft cries sobbing sideways from her mouth, Fell in hot love, and having lain with her Died soon? one time I could have told it through: Now I have kissed the sea-witch on her eyes And my lips ache with it; but I shall sleep Full soon, and a good space ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... knew that of all things it is most impossible to run counter to the superstitions of her people. Perhaps she retained a touch of these herself. But, as she said, "The grace of the Lord can overcome all the wiles of the Evil One! And Mary Lyon would like to see witch or warlock, ghost or ghostling, that would come in her road when she went forth under His banner." On the darkest night she marched unafraid, conquering and to conquer, having the superstitions born in her, but knowing all the same (and all the better ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... safe!" exclaimed the incensed waiting-woman, while Magdalen Graeme left the apartment; "I say, duck her in the loch, and then we will see whether she is witch or not, as every body in the village of Lochside will say and swear. I marvel your ladyship could bear so long with her insolence." But the commands of the Lady were obeyed, and the old dame, dismissed from ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... past winter from diphtheria; it was sad to see how painfully the mother clung to the two that death had left her; she could not bear them out of her sight for an instant. A very weird-looking cummer was the grand-dame—with a broken, piping voice—tremulous hands, and jaws that, like the stage witch wife's, ever munched and mumbled. She seldom spoke aloud, except to groan out a startlingly sudden ejaculation of "Oh, Lord," or "O dear;" these widows' mites cast into the conversational treasury did not greatly enhance ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... jolly old tar, Captain Whitmore; quizzing the old witch, his sister; and making love to his charming daughter. Upon my word, sir, she is a delightful creature, and sings and plays divinely! Her personal charms I might have withstood, but her voice has taken me by surprise. You know that ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... here in the Highlands the distribution is very marked. South of the village I invariably find one species of birds, north of it another. In only one locality, full of azalea and swamp-huckleberry, I am always sure of finding the hooded warbler. In a dense undergrowth of spice-bush, witch-hazel, and alder, I meet the worm-eating warbler. In a remote clearing, covered with heath and fern, with here and there a chestnut and an oak, I go to hear in July the wood sparrow, and returning by a stumpy, shallow pond, I am sure to find ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... fellow in the School Whose batting simply was a dream: A dozen times by keeping cool And hitting hard he saved the Team. But oh! his fielding was so vile, As if by witch or goblin cursed, That he was called by Arthur ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... late that night thinking it over, and, arter looking at it all ways, he made up 'is mind to go and see Mrs. Prince, an old lady that lived all alone by 'erself in a cottage near Smith's farm. He'd set 'er down for wot he called a white witch, which is the best kind and on'y do useful things, such as charming warts away or telling gals about their future 'usbands; and the next arternoon, arter telling 'is wife's mother that fresh air and travelling was the best cure for ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... hour runs the te-rain?' He rose to his feet, looked round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of Huneefa as the low sun stole across the floor. 'Is there money to be paid that witch?' ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... gaunt hands the leaves are shed In headlong troops and nightmare herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... his daughter, was entertained by Madame au salon, and who was overheard to declare, as he got into his grand carriage, that "that Frenchwoman was the finest woman, by Jove, he'd ever seen!" to the tiny witch Elise, whom nobody could manage, but who, at the first rustle of Madame's gown, would cease from her mischief, fold her small hands, and, sinking her bead-like black eyes, look as demure as such a sprite could. We all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... a stable, Mr. Brice, before they ruined gentleman's sport with these trotters ten years ago. Yes sir, we used to be at Lexington one week, and Louisville the next, and over here on the Ames track after that. Did you ever hear of Water Witch and Netty Boone?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... chamber, in her hand, she walked undauntedly to Slipslop's room; where she entered just at the instant as Adams had discovered, by the two mountains which Slipslop carried before her, that he was concerned with a female. He then concluded her to be a witch, and said he fancied those breasts gave suck to a legion of devils. Slipslop, seeing Lady Booby enter the room, cried help! or I am ravished, with a most audible voice: and Adams, perceiving the light, turned hastily, and saw the lady (as she did him) just as she came ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... which neared the stream presently there came a glow and then the shine of a great fire ahead, with massed figures that leaped and sprang, fantastic as a witch's carnival, and a roar of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... brooding Where the pine-tree column Rises dark and solemn To the airy lair, Where, the day eluding, Night is couched dream laden, Like a deep witch-maiden ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... "Yesum, one witch tried ter ride me onct. I wus in de bed, an' she thought dat I wus 'sleep. I feels her when she crawls up on my lef' leg an' stops de circulation. I knows how ter fix her do' so I gits up an' puts ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... where it affords a meal to the foul hyenas; but the Batoka reverently bury their dead, and regard the spot henceforth as sacred. The ordeal by the poison of the muave is resorted to by the Batoka, as well as by the other tribes; but a cock is often made to stand proxy for the supposed witch. Near the confluence of the Kafue the Mambo, or chief, with some of his headmen, came to our sleeping-place with a present; their foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an unusual seriousness marked their demeanour. Shortly before our arrival they had been accused of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... meeting, mingling, parting tides, ever came and went; where chariots rushed past in hot haste, or moved stately by in jubilant procession; where at night lonely forms would steal through the city of the silent, with but the moon to see them go, bent on ghastly conference with witch or enchanter; and—" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... the century had as its principal subject a woman accused of the power to cause sickness. In an age when weapon salve was wiped on the weapon and not the wound, and when astrology was intimately associated with the practice of medicine, it is not surprising to find, also, the witch and her power to cause disease. Goodwife Wright stood accused of such powers in the colony's general court ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... of second sight you have," said Jim admiringly. "A few hundred years ago you'd have got yourself ducked as a witch or something." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... indeed he repeated it an hundred times every day; in truth, he talked of nothing else, and seemed not only to be satisfied in general of his being bewitched, but actually to have fixed with good certainty on the person of the witch, whom, had he lived in the days of Sir Matthew Hale, he would have infallibly indicted, and very possibly have hanged, for the detestable sin of witchcraft; but that law, and the whole doctrine that supported it, are now out of fashion; and witches, as a learned divine once chose ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... into his heart, doubtless—he crossed himself like this.... And it was so hard for him to make that cross, brothers; he said, "My hand was simply like a stone; it would not move." ... Ugh! the horrid witch.... So when he made the cross, brothers, the russalka, she left off laughing, and all at once how she did cry.... She cried, brothers, and wiped her eyes with her hair, and her hair was green as any hemp. So Gavrila looked and looked ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... "He 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 ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... for a witch, My father was hanged on a tree, And it's because I'm a fool There's nobody meddled ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... since you were taken sick. Nellie! I say, Nellie! you witch of Endor! bring some wine-whey here. Irene, how do you ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... who sat around the card-table in the cabin of the "Merry Witch" regarded the fifth man with a steady, implacable look of scorn. The solitary one could not face that terrible glance. His head drooped, and his gaze rested upon some cards which he idly fumbled as he waited, numbed and ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... John of England!' screamed the young man, like a witch in the air; then Burgundy began his ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... I get my pieces to do out of school; and when I come home mother lectures me, and sends me to my bedroom. But I am free to-night. I have been good all day; and it is on account of you, Nora; just because you are a little Irish witch; and I sympathize with you to the bottom of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... upon block Island and killing many of his men after a peace concluded betwixt them certifyed to Newhaven by the Massachusetts Commissioners by a Complaints made by Awsuntawney the Indian Sagamore near Milford and two other western Indians against the said Montackett Sachem for hiering a witch to kill Uncas with the said Milford Sachem and his son giveing eight fathom of wampam in hand promising a hundred or a hundred and twenty more when the said murthers were committed; Notice whereof being given to the said Montackett Sachem and hee Required to attend the Commissioners ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker

... Daddy Hannah, the black root-and-yarb doctor, who could throw spells and weave charms and invoke conjures. He wore a pair of shoes which had been worn by a man who was hanged, and these shoes, as is well known, leave no tracks which a dog will nose after or a witch follow, or a ha'nt. Small boys did not gibe at Daddy Hannah, you bet you! There was Major Burnley, who lived for years and years in the same house with the wife with whom he had quarreled and never spoke a word to her or she to him. But the list is overlong for calling. With us, in that ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... give a fairly shrewd guess at its plot. This is an agreeable affair of a maid, reputed Catholic heir to the English Crown, and used as pretext for an abortive rising against KING JAMES I. You can see that in practised hands (as here) and decorated with a pretty trimming of sentiment, abductions, witch-finding and other appropriate accessories, this furnishes a theme rich in romance. Perhaps I was a thought disappointed that more was not made of the actual conspiracy, and that, having started "too near ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various

... And spy some crumb and dash to win it, And with a witty chirping twit Our sheltering Time—there's nothing in it! In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's, We nest, content, our season flighty, Nor guess we brush the powerful wires Might witch the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... is such a witch that she could have magnetized the Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to influence—you yourself," replied Rastignac, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... opening the boxes, and showing them that all I had was perfectly useless to them, they consented to receive some beads off Sekwebu's waist, and I promised to send four yards of calico from Tete. As we came away from Monina's village, a witch-doctor, who had been sent for, arrived, and all Monina's wives went forth into the fields that morning fasting. There they would be compelled to drink an infusion of a plant named "goho", which is used as an ordeal. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... of a grey rock which smokes like a hot cinder after a shower, and where no man would care to venture a naked sole before sunset. On the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick bulging trunk rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles a dismal bunch of dead leaves above the coarse sand. The Great Isabel has a spring of fresh water issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine. Resembling an emerald green wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat upon the sea, it bears ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... years ago in the newspapers. A young farmer in Warwickshire, finding his hedges broke, and the sticks carried away during a frosty season, determined to watch for the thief. He lay many cold hours under a hay-stack, and at length an old woman, like a witch in a play, approached, and began to pull up the hedge; he waited till she had tied up her bottle of sticks, and was carrying them off, that he might convict her of the theft, and then springing from his concealment, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... myself to the Reynolds for there own. Mrs. Reynolds is not happy with Reynolds' slams of doors and crossness be cause they have no child. They will be pretty sprised to see me to night and glad with my big shiny bag witch I have borrowed from my once very loved father. I have my pink dress witch will soon be a rose in it and my other things. I wore my hat and coat even if it is warm. You will not miss me much because ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... period to the book on which he was then engaged, and he invariably refers to it as his Life. On 21st January 1843 he writes to John Murray, Junr.: "I meditate shortly a return to Barbary in quest of the Witch Hamlet, and my adventures in the land of wonders will serve capitally to fill the thin volume of My Life, a Drama, By G. B." Again and again Borrow refers to My Life. Hasfeldt and Ford also wrote of it as the "wonderful life" and ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... imp, a witch, an emissary of the Evil One," he vehemently declared; and turned away, murmuring, as it seemed to me, those sacred words of Scripture, "Be sure your sin ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... perpetration of outrages upon each other, shocking to humanity. If an individual, and especially a chief, was supposed to be hostile to his plans, or doubted the validity of his claim to the character of a prophet, he was denounced as a witch, and the loss of reputation, if not of life, speedily followed. Among the first of his victims were several Delawares,—Tatepocoshe (more generally known as Teteboxti,) Patterson, his nephew, Coltos, an old woman, and an aged man called Joshua. ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... religious persecution, witchcraft, during all the years we did these "inevitable" things, were defended in the same way, and those who resented all criticism of them pointed in triumph to the cannibal feast, the dead child, the maimed witness, the slain heretic, or the burned witch. But the fact did not prove the wisdom of those habits, still less their inevitability; for we have ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... and gusty words, Kisses and wine again, And her lips and brow were red with stains From the hairy mouths of men, Red as the stain on the brow of Cain That burned with his Maker's hate, Or the lips of the witch that Adam loved Ere God ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... the trial of Aim Bodenham, who was executed at Salisbury as a witch in 1653, Aubrey says:-] Mr. Anthony Ettrick, of the Middle Temple, a very judicious gentleman, was a curious observer of the whole triall, and was not satisfied. The crowd of spectators made such a noise that the judge [Chief Baron Wild] ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... fairies, and sing them old songs. Jean would crawl close to Randal and hold his hand, for fear the Red Etin, or some other awful bogle, should get her: and in the dancing shadows of the firelight she would think she saw Whuppity Stoorie, the wicked old witch with the spinning-wheel; but it was really nothing but the shadow of the wheel that the old nurse drove with her foot—birr, birr—and that whirred and rattled as she span ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... the skin, or sore wounded in the flesh, If in the blood thou wert shot, or in the bone thou wert shot, If in the joint thou wert shot, there will be no jeopardy to your life. If some deity shot it, or some devil shot it, 25 Or if some witch has shot it, now I am willing to help thee. This is a remedy for a deity's shot; this is a remedy for a devil's shot; This is a remedy for a witch's shot. I am willing to help thee. Flee there into ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... then, I say. You are not the first woman, my dear, who has quarrelled with a wish fulfilled. It is a way your sex has of rewarding gods and men.—Here, you old witch, here is a treasure-trove for you. You can sell it for ten francs ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeated it, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a "witch," instead of a brother of ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... minute, but the influence of the Intendant was all-powerful over him. He gave way. "Damn De Repentigny," said he, "I only meant to do honor to the pretty witch. Who would have expected him to take it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... rat-holes in the garret, and Sara detested rats, and was always glad Emily was with her when she heard their hateful squeak and rush and scratching. One of her "pretends" was that Emily was a kind of good witch and could protect her. Poor little Sara! everything was "pretend" with her. She had a strong imagination; there was almost more imagination than there was Sara, and her whole forlorn, uncared-for child-life was made up of imaginings. She imagined and pretended things ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... to drink"; or simply to an inherited tendency to apoplexy. Did Donatello have furry, leaf-shaped ears, or was this merely his companions' teasing? Did old Mistress Hibben, the sister of Governor Bellingham of Massachusetts, attend witch meetings in the forest, and inscribe her name in the Black Man's book? Hawthorne does not say so, but only that the people so believed; and it is historical fact that she was executed as a witch. Was a red letter A actually seen in the midnight sky, or was ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... meane? my Doues are back returnd, Who warne me of such daunger prest at hand, To harme my sweete Ascanius louely life. Iuno, my mortall foe, what make you here? Auaunt old witch and trouble ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe

... had mowed down the forest, walls of lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion—through everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little pellet of some dark green substance that he took from a flat silver ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... Marilla fairly stopped them with witch hazel. Their little fat hands and their shoulders were swollen already. She kissed them, but she couldn't take them both and they wanted to be cuddled. So she sat down and hugged them and really ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas

... called Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils." A commentator on Skinner, quoted in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, says that the English word Lullaby is derived from Lilla, abi (begone, Lilith)! In the demonology of the Middle Ages, Lilis was a famous witch, and is introduced as such in the Walpurgis night scene in Goethe's ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... Claus had cut was a rod of witch-hazel, which has the power of showing wherever treasure lies buried. But Claus knew no more of that than the chick in ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her, one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's conspire, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... I get rid of the pain I can do as I like. When I've got red hot needles eating into my toes, am I likely to like anything? Of course not, you may just as well take medicine then as anything else, but as to taking orders from a pack of ill-bred bumpkins, full of witch magic as a dog of fleas, I see myself! Don't stand grinning there, Charles, like a dirty, shock-headed barmaid's dropped hair pin! I won't stand it! I can't see why all my sons should have thin legs, neither you nor I, Sarah, ever ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... woman with a face like that of a witch. Von Holzen pointed upward to the room above them. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... was my perpetual fool that caused all this; and now he stands yonder, laughing at his mischief, as the devil is pictured, grinning behind the witch upon ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... the melancholy event appears to have been more generally ascribed to witchcraft. An examination being instituted, a waxen image was discovered in his chamber with a hair of the color of the earl's drawn through the body; also, an old woman in the neighbourhood, a reputed witch, being required to recite after a prompter the Lord's Prayer in Latin, was observed to blunder repeatedly in the same words. But these circumstances, however strong, not being deemed absolutely conclusive, the poor old woman was apparently ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... it now? so flap ee hand, and make wry mouth oo-self, sauci doxi. Now comes DD. Why sollah, I did write in a fortnight my 47th; and if it did not come in due time, can I help wind and weather? am I a Laplander? am I a witch? can I work miracles? can I make easterly winds? Now I am against Dr. Smith. I drink little water with my wine, yet I believe he is right. Yet Dr. Cockburn told me a little wine would not hurt me; but it is so hot and dry, and water is so dangerous. The worst thing ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... wild. Fishermen. Divers. Raft Fowl. Bull-necks. Redheads. Tropick-birds. Pellican. Cormorant. Gannet. Shear-water. Great black pied Gull. Marsh-hens. Blue Peter's. Sand-birds. Runners. Tutcocks. Swaddle-bills. Mew. Sheldrakes. Bald Faces. Water Witch, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... projected it was the writer's purpose to take up the subject of English witchcraft under certain general political and social aspects. It was not long, however, before he began to feel that preliminary to such a treatment there was necessary a chronological survey of the witch trials. Those strange and tragic affairs were so closely involved with the politics, literature, and life of the seventeenth century that one is surprised to find how few of them have received accurate or complete record in history. It may be said, in fact, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... is an old witch" was the announcement that met Crefton's inquiring scrutiny, and he hesitated a moment before giving the statement wider publicity. For all he knew to the contrary, it might be Martha herself to whom he was speaking. It was possible that Mrs. Spurfield's maiden name had been Pillamon. And the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... down my throat. The faithful old creature shrieked for joy when I opened my eyes again, and then told me that my daughter had not suffered herself to be racked, but had freely confessed her crimes and fyled herself as a witch. This seemed pleasant news to me in my misery, inasmuch as I deemed the death by fire to be a less heavy punishment than the torture. Howbeit when I would have prayed I could not, whereat I again ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... our widening V-shaped wake glowed with opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions, went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake three or four hundred yards wide and eight inches deep. Slipping poles under the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... witch of a Molly Winston contrived to gather the clan together round her and Jack, and give me a chance to play guide to Pat. To be sure, Mrs. Shuster, loyal to her absent partner, tried to form a hollow square around us. But she couldn't spare more than half an eye from Larry; and ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... the witch," said her father "and sends us, living, to the happy hunting-grounds. Will you ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... inertrans lining. Jupiter gas is hellishly reactive at room temperature. The metallic complexes especially; but think what a witch's brew the stuff is in every respect. Once it's been refined, of course, we have less trouble. That particular pipe ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... along the dark, chilly streets to his hotel, "what a perfectly dazzling little witch she is! Was there ever such another sparkling, bewildering little fairy ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... 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 ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... domestic affection and fidelity to trusts. Two characters in particular are original creations,—"Dominie Sampson" and "Meg Merrilies," whom no reader can forget,—the one, ludicrous for his simplicity; and the other a gypsy woman, weird and strange, more like a witch than a sibyl, but intensely human, and capable of the strongest attachment ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... returne from Macedony to Larissa was spoyled and robbed, and how he fell acquainted with one Meroe a Witch. ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... that clattered in her shaking hands. Then she sat down and proceeded to oil them all. Before she had finished, out from the tub, the water of which had kept a slow motion ever since she had ceased stirring it, came the head and half the body of a huge gray snake. But the witch did not look round. It grew out of the tub, waving itself backwards and forwards with a slow, horizontal motion, till it reached the princess, when it laid its head upon her shoulder, and gave a low hiss in her ear. She started—but with joy; and, seeing the head resting on her shoulder, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... Abel, sartinly. But I'll never read like thee," he added, despairingly. "Drattle th' old witch; why didn't she give I some schooling?" He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and Abel, too well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil reference to his mother, said with ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... said, he went. But he wasn't much better on the train than he had been in the station. He was as nervous and fidgety as a witch, and he acted as if he did so wish it would be over and over quick. But at the junction—at the junction a funny thing happened. He put me on the train, just as Mother had done, and spoke to the conductor. (How I hated to have him ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... on the witch," Matilda warned her brother, "but she has a sense about nursing that can ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... has again proceeded to a new and unexplored region in India, in the prosecution of his important botanical labors. THE AUTHOR OF THE AMBER WITCH, the Pomeranian pastor, Meinhold, has been condemned to three months' imprisonment, and a fine of one hundred thalers, besides costs, for slander against another clergyman named Stosch, in a communication published in the New Prussian Zeitung. The sentence was rendered ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... solitary hovel, known as Black Mary's Hole. This spot, which still retains its name, acquired the appellation from an old crone who lived there, and who, in addition to a very equivocal character for honesty, enjoyed the reputation of being a witch. Without inquiring into the correctness of the latter part of the story, it may be sufficient to state, that Black Mary was a person in whom Jack Sheppard thought he could confide, and, as Edgeworth Bess was incapable of much further exertion, he ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... tooth, long and narrow In a closely wrought triangle, Set three mussel-pearls of purple, Smooth and polished with much rubbing. To an arrow of witch-hazel, New, and fashioned very slender, Set the shark's tooth, long and narrow, With its pearl-inlaid triangle. From the wing of living heron Pluck one feather, white and trusty; With this feather wing the arrow, That it swerve not as it flyeth. ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten

... the whole morning with that tiresome Bergenheim on my hands, and I verily believe he made me count every stick in his park and every frog in his pond. Tonight, when that old witch of Endor proposed her infernal game of whist, to which it seems I am to be condemned daily, you-excused yourself upon the pretext of ignorance, and yet you play as good ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... the heath; but it is more likely that “Tab” had a reference to the cat, “Tabby” being the term for a brindled cat. And Bishop Harsnet, in his curious book on “The Superstitions of the Day” (1605), says a witch, or elf, “can take the form of hare, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter



Words linked to "Witch" :   hex, imaginary being, enchant, witch hazel plant, witch broom, old witch grass, witch doctor, vernal witch hazel, witch-hunter, witch's brew, witch hazel, Virginian witch hazel, Wiccan, jinx, pythoness, enchantress, beldam, beldame, witchery, imaginary creature, becharm, water witch, pagan, coven, old woman



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