"Black art" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I said. "I think I have read somewhere that they were great magicians, whose names these conjurers have taken." (Since then I have discovered that they are mentioned in the Koran as masters of the Black Art.) ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... re-making the brazen speaking head of Roger Bacon and Albertus. Many persons might have felt alarmed at the peculiarity of my situation, but being accustomed to mingle with eccentric characters, and having no fear from any pretensions of the black art, I was infinitely gratified by all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... Jew, stop his horses, and strike him till he fell from the wagon. How can we look with indifference on such a survival of barbarism?" The commonest manifestations of hatred and superstition, however, were, as in other countries, the charge that Jews were magicians, using the black art to avenge themselves on their persecutors, and that they used Christian blood for their observance of the Passover. The latter crime, the imputing of which was sternly prohibited by an edict of the liberal Bathory, in 1576, was so frequently laid at their door, that in the short period ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... of the romance was laid in Thessaly, the original land of witchcraft, and took one up and down its mountains, and into its old weird towns, haunts of magic and [58] incantation, where all the more genuine appliances of the black art, left behind her by Medea when she fled through that country, were still in use. In the city of Hypata, indeed, nothing seemed to be its true self—"You might think that through the murmuring of some cadaverous spell, all things had been ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... convinced that it was playing in an honorable and respectable private house, and very naturally spread abroad the fame of it throughout the whole city. But when the fat pigeon at last appeared, the band put forth all its forces, all the wiles of the black art, and in a few hours made up for the generous losses of a month of honorable and irreproachable play ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... doll-eyed Violet Mauling at the cigar stand. And all the long night and all the long day, the genii, working on the Harvey job, cast spells, put on charms, and did their deepest sorcery to take off the power of the magic runes that young Tom's black art were putting upon her; and day after day the genii felt their highest potencies fail. So no wonder they mumbled and grumbled as they bent over their chores. For a time, the genii had tried to work on Tom Van Dorn's heart after he dropped Lizzie Coulter and sent her away ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... strange to some readers that the Rabbis should represent the sagacious Solomon in the character of a practitioner of the Black Art. But the circumstance simply indicates that Solomon's acquirements in scientific knowledge were considerably beyond those of most men of his age; and, as in the case of our own Friar Bacon, his superior attainments were popularly attributed ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... early communications with the Moors of Spain, who were the chief philosophers of the dark ages, and between whom and the natives of France and Italy, a great communication existed. Toledo, Seville and Salamanca, became the greatest schools of magic. At the latter city predilections on the black art from a consistent regard to the solemnity of the subject were delivered within the walls of a vast and gloomy cavern. The schoolmen taught that all knowledge might be obtained from the assistance of the fallen angels. They were skilled in ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... deal in the black Art then, for no human means will do't—and now I talk of the black Art, Master, try your Power once more with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... malcontent catholics, it seems, were accused of employing practices of this nature; their predictions of her majesty's death had given uneasiness to government by encouraging plots against her government; and it was feared, "by many good and sober men," that these dealers in the black art might even bewitch the queen herself. That it was the learned bishop Jewel who had led the way in inspiring these superstitious terrors, to which religious animosities lent additional violence, may fairly be inferred from the following passage of a discourse ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... pearls, their lustre more brilliant than the light of the sun, which will be used in the Messianic time when "the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed."[312] Also Abraham taught them the black art, wherewith they held sway over demons and spirits. It is from this city in the east that Laban, Balaam, and Balaam's father ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... so difficult, although if we tried to do it we should not find it so easy as we think. Anyhow, let me give you a hint. If you want to make a good impression on a chemist don't tell him that he seems to you a sort of magician, master of a black art, and all that nonsense. The chemist has been trying for three hundred years to live down the reputation of being inspired of the devil and it makes him mad to have his past thrown up at him in this fashion. If his tactless admirers would stop saying "it is all ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... The creature instantly sat up, with a surge of splendid passion, hissing, bowing, and expanding angrily its great tawny hood. The garuda put his pungi to his lips, and blew for a while upon it a low and wheezy drone,—the invariable prelude to a little jadoo, or black art,—which the beautiful animal appeared to appreciate: and then, pointing with the end of his pipe to the "spectacles" on its hood, he said, with that silky, insinuating smile which is characteristic of the scamp: Huzoor, dekho, ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... are for dogs, not gentlemen!" Meanwhile his brother, sly John Doughty, sought To fan the seamen's fear of the unknown world With whispers and conjectures; and, at night, He brought old books of Greek and Hebrew down Into the foc'sle, claiming by their aid A knowledge of Black Art, and power to tell The future, which he dreadfully displayed There in the flickering light of the oily lamp, Bending above their huge and swarthy palms And tracing them to many a grisly doom. So many ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... tale hath a particular bearing to other and more terrific days—"the olden time," so fruitful in marvels and extravagances—the very poetry of the black art; when Satan communed visibly and audibly with the children of men—thanks to the invokers of relics and the tellers of beads—and was so familiar and reasonable withal, as to argue and persuade men touching the propriety of submitting ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... to the wall Of those who wish and work its fall, With deeper skill in War's black art, Than Othman's sons, and high of heart As any Chief that ever stood Triumphant in the fields of blood; 100 From post to post, and deed to deed, Fast spurring on his reeking steed, Where sallying ranks the trench assail, And make the foremost Moslem quail; Or where the battery, guarded well, Remains ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... And looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of His bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My Conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense; But felt through all this fleshly dress ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... from the nursery as to have altogether escaped from the weird influence which many a nursery tale had wrapped around them; and as for old Bill, fifty years spent in "ploughing the ocean" had only confirmed him in the belief, that the "black art" is not so mythical as philosophers would ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... in order that he might learn what this writer calls "his peculiar system for developing and strengthening the memory," although this "peculiar" system was simply the Lullian method. What the nobleman really wanted to learn seems to have been the Black Art. He complained, and Bruno resolved to leave him; whereupon the "nobleman," who had harbored Bruno for months, forcibly detained him, and denounced him to the Inquisition as a heretic and a blasphemer. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... beans, whose long slender shoots had been vainly feeling round for a support the last few days. Her first impulse was to clap her hands with delight and exclaim: "How, in the name of wonder, could he do it all in a night! Oh, Malcom, you are a canny Scotchman, but you put the 'black art' to very white uses." ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... supremacy in the black art the sole legacy that Chaldaea bequeathed to the coming generations: its language survived, and reigned for centuries afterwards in the regions subjugated by its arms. The cultivated tongue employed by the scribes of Nineve and Babylon in the palmy days of their race, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... quite evident, that Mr. Cornelius Littlepage was, to agree at least, a believer in the fortune-teller's art. This was, however, no more than was common, a century since. Quite within my recollection, the Albanians had a celebrated dealer in the black art, who was regularly consulted, on the subject of all lost spoons, and the pilfering of servants, by the good housewives of the town, as recently as my school-boy days. The Dutch, like the Germans, appear to have been prone to this species of superstition; from which, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... and diabolical which had been latent throughout the Middle Ages, was brought into especial prominence by the new religious movements. The popular feeling that the line between natural magic and the black art was somewhat doubtful, that the one had a tendency to shade off into the other, now received fresh stimulus. The notion of compacts with the devil was a familiar one, and that they should be resorted to for the purpose of acquiring an acquaintance ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... authority, and struck fear into the councils of his foes. In fact, the power of the upstart marquis appeared so firmly rooted, the career before him so splendid, that there were not wanted whisperers who, in addition to his other crimes, ascribed to Roderigo Calderon the assistance of the black art. But the black art in which that subtle courtier was a proficient is one that dispenses with necromancy. It was the art of devoting the highest intellect to the most selfish purposes—an art that thrives tolerably well for a time in ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the person of the opposite sex whom you sincerely love. There is no black art about this, but merely psychological attraction, and by its use you can win the love of the person whose affection ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... I had once seen in the gallery of the Louvre. Ombos told me that the life of Albert Magnus had been written by Dr. Sighart. This Dominican, magnus in magia, major in philosophia, maximus in theologia, was distinguished alike for his knowledge of the black art and his great virtue, for austerity of regimen, and dislike of any form of society. For other details of this philosopher I must refer you to Sighart's excellent monograph and Mr. James Mew's work on ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... shook her head sorrowfully, but said nothing. She knew no more than Beatrice of Unorna's intention, but she believed in the existence of a Black Art, full of sacrilegious practices, and credited Unorna vaguely with the worst designs which she could think of, though in her goodness she was not able to imagine anything much worse than the saying ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... not my fortune there's no meaning in it to me. But I should like to see the fun, if there's nothing of the black art in it, and if a man may look on without cost or getting into ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... haunted before the advent of the H—— family. Yet he is a Highlander, and not without superstition; for he gave it as his opinion that if there was anything in these noises, they must be due to Black Art. Asked what Black Art might be, he said he could not tell, but he had often heard about it, and had been told that when once set going it would go on without the assistance of its authors. He was quite clear, ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... the girl; "I knew he would cause me to destroy him sooner or later." Ku dragged it into the house, and said, "Let us wait till to-morrow to talk it over; we shall then be more calm." Next day the young lady arrived, and Ku inquired about her knowledge of the black art; but she told Ku not to trouble himself about such affairs, and to keep it secret or it might be prejudicial to his happiness. Ku then entreated her to consent to their union, to which she replied that she had already ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Salisbury into marrying him while her lord was beyond seas, of poisoning my Lord of Pembroke, Sir Fulk de Breaut, and my sometime Lord of Canterbury's Grace. He might have spent his life in poisoning every body! Then, lastly, they said he had obtained favour of the Lord King by help of the black art." ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... benevolence of heart than soundness of judgment. As to the charge, still believed, of their giving the King drugs to injure his faculties, it is too absurd to be refuted. Their oppressors had better have accused them of dabbling in the black art, for the potent spell still keeps his wits ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... off, or burned, most of us would still be living in mud caves at the foot of the cliff on which stood the nobleman's castle; and kings would still be kings by divine decree, scientists—if there were any —workers in the black art, and every phenomenon we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... objects, such as forks, spoons and jackknives, which have been shown to the audience and which can have no strings attached to them, fly about in the box at the will of the operator. One thing changes to another and back again, and black art reigns supreme. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... were all sitting together in the dark sea-fog beneath the shelter of the high mountain, and whispering about all manner of secret and hidden things, and blowing spirits into the novices of the black art. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... Iamblicus, I read what I certainly had not seen or thought of for more than thirty years, that he was an author on "the mysteries of the Egyptians," and was bracketed with Porphyry as a professor of the black art. Was then this unpleasant visitor to Fitzroy Square no other than that magician redivivus? ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... came to pay their respects to him, "to examine into the genuineness of the possession, but to force those to believe who still doubted, and to discover the classes which Urbain had founded to teach the black art to pupils of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Little did we fear his magic we who feared nothing in heaven or earth or in the waters beneath Alvaro and I, old freebooters of the Spanish Main; but they others Luiz Fonseca, Jose Albuquerque, and Antonio Mendez brave men, but ignorant shipmen, they were fearful of the witch-doctor and his black art. ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... hommes, imploring them to come down and succour them against the Aristocrats and the sword of Munchausen. Their cries were horrible, like the shrieks of witches and enchanters versed in magic and the black art, while the thunder growled, and storms shook the battlements, and Rousseau, Voltaire, and Beelzebub appeared, three horrible spectres; one all meagre, mere skin and bone, and cadaverous, seemed death, that hideous skeleton; it was Voltaire, and in his hand were a lyre and a dagger. On the other ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... me till Monday morning; and then, whether the root had lost its virtue, or whether my tormentor had gone deeper into the black art than myself (as was sometimes said of him), or whether he had obtained a special indulgence, for his faithful Sabbath day's worship, it is not necessary for me to know, or to inform the reader; but, this I may say—the ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... against it on the scientific side; and, as to the theological side, it was the period when that great churchman, Dean Cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of York Minster, and the Rev. Mellor Brown denouncing geology as "a black art," "a forbidden province" and when, in America, Prof. Moses Stuart and others like him were belittling the work of Benjamin ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and by warrant of Privy Council a Commission visited Balgarnock to take evidence of her condition. In the presence of these Commissioners, of whom the Lord Blantyre was president, the young lady flatly accused one Janet Burns, her mother's still-room maid, of tormenting her with aid of the black art, and for witness showed her back and shoulders covered with wales, some blue and others freshly bleeding; and further, in the midst of their interrogatories cast herself into a trance, muttering and offering faint combat to divers unseen spirits, and all in so lifelike a manner that, notwithstanding ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... surrendered when an attendant was about to chastise me. But at least a score of patients in the ward were not so well equipped mentally, and these were viciously assaulted again and again by the very men who had so thoroughly initiated me into the mysteries of their black art. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the reign of his holiness Meramen-Ramses the Nile was late in its overflow. Earth-tillers, ascribing this misfortune to the black art of foreigners resident in the province of Hak, fell to wrecking the houses of Hittites, Jews, and Phoenicians, during which time a number of persons were slain by them. At command of his worthiness the nomarch, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... things the actors in them were so certain, that many witches were led to the stake, their guilt being principally established on their own confessions. But the most memorable matters in the history of the black art, were the contracts which those who practised it not unfrequently entered into with the devil, that he should assist them by his supernatural power for ten or twenty years, and, in consideration of this aid, they consented ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... quantity of gold had been stolen, and that a disaster of some kind had occurred in the Treasury vaults. Then a ridiculous story had been printed which asserted that Professor Seigfried, one of Austria's honoured dead, had in some manner that savoured of the Black Art, encompassed this wholesale destruction. The Government now begged to make the following declarations: First, not a penny had been stolen out of the Treasury; second, the so-called war-chest was intact; third, the two hundred million florins ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... Lilly, a noted and extraordinary character of that day, the following account is taken from his own Life and Times, a lively book, full of amusing lies and astrological gossip, in which the author describes himself as a student of the Black Art. He was born in 1602 at Diseworth, an obscure town in the north of Leicestershire. His family appear to have been yeomen in this town for many generations. Passing over the measles of his infancy, and other trivial details of childhood, which he describes ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... tales was the mention of witch-craft—witchcraft with which Kilbuck was now preparing to deal; not because he hoped to benefit the natives and free them from the curse of superstition, but because owing to a belief in the black art, the Indians of Katleean were not bringing in the amount of furs expected, and this meant a loss of money to the Alaska Fur ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... she going! Well God forgive her then! if she has dealt In the black art. I'll tell my dame of it, And she shall send ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... regarded by the Indian as essential to the existence of man. Magic, however, as a black art is the most heinous crime which he can conceive. The difference between the two consists mainly in their purpose; the manipulations are substantially the same, so are the objects. To know those details is one of ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... good service then, Master Potts," replied Nicholas. "But since you are so learned in the matter of witchcraft, resolve me, I pray you, how it is, that women are so much more addicted to the practice of the black art ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fantastique! I had read of the Rosicrucians, of Count Cagliostro, and of Doctor Dee. I had peeped into more than one curious treatise on Demonology, and I fancied there could be nothing in the world half so marvellous as that last surviving branch of the Black Art entitled the Science ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Alchemy and the black art gave way to chemistry. Science is destined to take the place of superstition. In my judgment, the religion of the future ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... a little on this point, for I wish you to leave this room with a very clear conviction that scientific investigation is not, as many people seem to suppose, some kind of modern black art. I say that you might easily gather this impression from the manner in which many persons speak of scientific inquiry, or talk about inductive and deductive philosophy, or the principles of the "Baconian philosophy." I do protest that, of the vast number of cants in this world, there are none, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Phoenixsistography, and other branches of the black art, the names of which are as mysterious as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... latter supernaturally. That mystery which lesser minds found in the occult, he saw in nature all about him. He denied the existence of spirits, just as he urged the foolishness of the will-o'-the-wisps of former ages,—alchemy and the black art. In one sentence he destroyed the pretensions of palmistry. "You will see," he wrote, "great armies slaughtered in an hour's time, where in each individual the signs of the hands ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... laid claim to a knowledge of astrology, and when the "witchcraft" was the town talk he gave out that he could develope the whole mystery. The consequence was that he was suspected of dealing in the black art, and was accused, tried, and narrowly ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... greyhound, but we are told that the only age that ever knew the truth, or had the right to express it, was the age which burned witches, executed dumb animals as criminals, whipped church bells for heresy, held chemistry a black art and electricity a manifestation of the devil or ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... in the Falcon Yard," at Cambridge; and I have no doubt almost every village had at least by repute its wise woman who could, for a consideration, unravel all mysteries about stolen property, malicious injuries, and a host of things amenable to the black art often vulgarly called witchcraft, in the name of which perfectly innocent creatures had in a previous age got a ducking in a horse pond, if ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... the Babylonish priests spoken of by Daniel, and that of some others, who, to satisfy their irregular passions, pretended that their God required the company of certain women, proved that what is usually taken for the effect of the black art is only produced by the knavishness of priests, magicians, diviners, and all kinds of persons who impose on the simplicity and credulity of the people; I do not deny that the devil sometimes takes part in it, but more rarely ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... lies in the fact that for the most part he assumes that the facts of mediumship are somehow, and necessarily, in opposition to somebody's religion. He finds it sustained (or opposed) by the Bible, or he fancies it mixed with deviltry or the black art. He trembles for fear it will affect the scheme of redemption or assist some theosophical system. Whereas, a man like Bottazzi is engaged merely with the facts; he lets the inferences fall where they may. He is not concerned with whether Eusapia's ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... died in London on the 16th November 1585; his body was brought back to Ireland and interred in St. Brigid's Cathedral, in Kildare. He was known as 'the Wizard Earl' on account of his practising the black art, whereby he was enabled to transform himself into other shapes, either bird or beast according to his choice; so notorious was his supernatural power that he became the terror of ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... Rufus Smith, and he lived 'by Dudley Wood side, where the wind blows cold,' as the local ballad puts it His mother had dealt in the black art before him, and was ducked to death in the Severn by the bridge in the ancient town of Bewdley. He was a lean man, with a look of surly fear. It is likely enough that he half expected some of his invocations to come true one ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Huss! 10 And with grim triumph and a truculent glee[448:3] Absolves anew the Pope-wrought perfidy, That made an empire's plighted faith a lie, And fix'd a broad stare on the Devil's eye— (Pleas'd with the guilt, yet envy-stung at heart 15 To stand outmaster'd in his own black art!) Yet Milner— ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... by the wearer might almost have passed for that of Mynheer Ten Broek of many-trowsered memory. But it was vastly more amusing to watch him than to play with him. He had a devil 'most undoubted.' Only with the help of black art and by mortgaging one's soul would it have been possible to accomplish some of the things which he accomplished. For the materials of croquet are so imperfect at best that chance is an influential element. I've seen tennis-players in ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black art upon my future. I shall never forget the strange, wild look of the wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed her wicked old eyes on my young countenance. After this examination she shook her head and muttered some words, which as nearly ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... these offensive words; she knew that she had gained the child's love by very different means from the "black art." With far more reason, she dimly felt, the sick child might have been reproached for exerting a secret spell upon her. Her name, "Julie," which she owed to her patron saint, Kuni supposed was the same ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cave. The Earl sits at the head, and his troopers in complete armour on either side, their heads resting on the table. Their horses, saddled and bridled, stand behind their masters in stalls on either side. The Earl was a leader of the Irish; he was very skilful at weapons, and deep in the black art. He could change himself into any shape he pleased. His lady was always begging him to let her see him in some strange shape; but he always put her off, for he told her that if during his transformation she showed the least ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... new turns are here! Well, sir, I shall tell my lady of the METAMORPHOSES that have taken place, though by what magic (as I have not the honour to deal in the black art) I can't guess. But, since it seems annoying and inopportune, I shall take my FINALE, and shall thus have a verbal P.P.C.—as you are leaving town, it seems, for Buxton so early in the morning. My Lord ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Latin or Greek, for his curiosity in hearing a little upon all known branches of human learning is boundless. When a lad is designed for the priesthood, he is, as if by a species of intuition, supposed to know more or less of everything—astronomy, fluxions, Hebrew, Arabic, and the black art, are subjects upon which he is frequently expected to dilate; and vanity scruples not, under the protection of their ignorance, to lead the erudite youth through what they believe to be the highest regions of imagination, or the profoundest ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... blowing from the castle towards the camp, he flung upon the breeze some powdered hellebore, which caused a violent sneezing throughout the army. Then, while his foes were wiping their streaming eyes, the necromancer, who had learned his black art in the famous school of Toledo, slipped through their ranks unseen, and journeyed on to Mount Vulcanus, where he encountered his ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber |
