"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of emotion travelled through the woman's body, and she gave utterance to a harsh inarticulate sound. She came confusedly forwards, groping with hands outstretched. Balder, though not wont to fail in courtesy to the sorriest hag, could scarce forbear recoiling; especially because he fancied that an expression of affectionate interest was struggling to get through the scarred incrustation ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... so!—the great scholar must be right; so lead the poor creatures to their death! Do you see that group of children and half- grown girls, and, among them, an old, hag-like Indian woman, Tituba by me? Those are the Afflicted Ones. Behold, at this very instant, a proof of Satan's power and malice! Mercy Parris, the minister's daughter, has been smitten by a flash of Martha Carrier's eye, and falls down in the street, writhing ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. "Run me through the body!" said his Grace, "but the comptroller-general's lady, there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the ——" Here the Duc de la Roche ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old hag, carrying a basket of water-bottles, "'tis she, and the other is Terere. I lived with them once at Tutuila. She who is now made a wife and looketh so good and holy went away but a year ago with the captain of a ship—a pig of a German—and now, ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... rattlesnake, and draggled hair coloured like the moss upon an aged fir, stood by the spit, which every few moments she turned. Silent Poll had some lard in a cup, and a small quantity of this she put upon the meat each time that the hag turned the spit. Nancy extended a sort of camp-table and upon it placed the drinking vessels; and Roland perceived that these lawless persons lived in ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... and tended him carefully, and when a month had passed he was as well as ever. His one thought was how to be revenged on that wicked old hag, and for this purpose he had a purse made large enough to contain five hundred gold pieces, but filled it instead with bits of glass. This he tied round him with his sash, and, disguising himself as an old woman, he took a sabre, which he hid under ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... threatened with the worst fate that can befall a helpless maiden—the loss of her honor. Her loud shrieks penetrated not beyond the precincts of that massive building—her calls for help were answered only by the taunting laugh of the black hag outside, who loaded her with alternate abuse, threats, and curses. At last, exhausted and despairing, poor Fanny threw herself upon the carpet, and prayed—oh, how earnestly!—that no harm might happen ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... story somewhat resembles that of the old hag seen by Lord Seaforth when lying ill of scarlet fever with several of his schoolfellows. The narrative has been reprinted several times, and is included in Stead's More ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Nothing more. Your friend, Don Carlos, is now at the village Showing to Pedro Crespo, the Alcalde, The proofs of what I tell you. The old hag, Who stole you in your childhood, has confessed; And probably they'll hang her for the crime, To ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... idea of the doctor, and yet more violently at that old hag Randall's confounded carelessness. Mrs. Melwyn looked miserable; she saw the case was bad, and yet she knew that to send for the doctor, and take it out of Randall's hands, would be an insult never ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... his brother Henry and often sighed for him) cared to risk a shot from his strong eyes. They were like blue stones, full of the cold glitter of their fire. It was at times like this, when a man stands naked confronting his purpose, that one saw the hag riding on ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... her lodge and laid off her mantle, which was entirely composed of the scalps of women. Before folding it, she shook it several times, and at every shake the scalps uttered loud shouts of laughter, in which the old hag joined. Nothing could have frightened him more than this horrific exhibition. After laying by the cloak she came directly to him. She informed him that she had known him from the time he left his father's lodge, and watched his movements. She told him not to fear or despair, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... a start) "What you have now!" I don't like that phrase! He knows I have this money just as well as I do! The old hag's been blabbing! ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... group of women standing on a low knoll gazed intently, and nothing of them but the heads showed above the unstirring stalks of a maize field. Suddenly within a cluster of empty huts near by the voice of an invisible hag was heard scolding with shrill fury ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... remnant of his band approach. Groaning and sighing, a ghastly procession, it dragged its wretchedness past. It was given to Koolau to taste a deeper bitterness, for they hurled imprecations and insults at him as they went by; and the panting hag who brought up the rear halted, and with skinny, harpy-claws extended, shaking her snarling death's head from side to side, she laid a curse upon him. One by one they dropped over the lip-edge and surrendered ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... something rapidly in French—too rapidly for me to follow, and then motioned us to sit down as he placed two wooden chairs for us. Mother sank down, almost too wearied to return the greeting which the old hag ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... heard favorable opinions, comparatively favorable; but can myself say nothing: famed Savigny finds it superior in intelligence and law-knowledge to the CODE NAPOLEON,—upon which indeed, and upon all Codes possible to poor hag-ridden and wig-ridden generations like ours, Savigny feels rather desperate. Unfortunate mortals do want to have their bits of lawsuits settled, nevertheless; and have, on trial, found even the ignorant CODE NAPOLEON a mighty ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of some lord, who could only be brought to concede something to the Warden by the force of the impledgment of his mother; and, again, that she was the duenna of an heiress, who could only be got through the confinement of the old hag. Be who she might, however, Christie's Will declared, upon the faith of the long shablas of Johnny Armstrong, that he would carry her off through fire and water, as sure as ever Kinmont Willie was carried away by old Wat of Buccleuch ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... harsh and shrill, and starting as from an uneasy dream, he looked on Life with wide-open eyes and soul that understood. He found her far less fair than in the heydey of his youth, when he reveled in her voluptuous charms and loved her well. Her face was hard and stern as that of some hag from Hell; the sunlight had faded from her hair, the cestus of red roses become a poisonous serpent, her fragrant breath a consuming flame, her robe of glory, a sackcloth suit, begrimed with ashes, torn by thorns and stained with blood. "Thou hast changed, O Life!" he cried in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... There's the nose and chin exactly of the extraordinary hag you gave your silk pocket-handkerchief to at parting. Now, I never saw such a miserable old woman ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... out. Says I, on second thoughts, 'I guess I won't kick you, old fellow.' 'Wise Stubb,' said he, 'wise Stubb;' and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn't going to stop saying over his 'wise Stubb, wise Stubb,' I thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot for it, when he roared out, 'Stop ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... suddenly came to me that she must have been hidden in the ruin, and have heard me when I called the name of Ysidria, and I mentally cursed the old hag. Then I thought of the whispered sentence, and of the three syllabled echo; and knew they ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... in too, my chabo, bring the gras in too; there is room for the gras in my little stable." We entered a large court, across which we proceeded till we came to a wide doorway. "Go in, my child of Egypt," said the hag; "go in, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... non-aesthetic use; but when we speak of a beautiful woman there is. When an ordinary man speaks of a beautiful woman he certainly does not mean only that she moves him aesthetically; but when an artist calls a withered old hag beautiful he may sometimes mean what he means when he calls a battered torso beautiful. The ordinary man, if he be also a man of taste, will call the battered torso beautiful, but he will not call a withered hag beautiful because, in the matter of ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Exod. xii. 51 ff.); since this day was, as such, marked out by the annually returning feast of the Passover, we must, here also, take [Hebrew: ivM], "day," in its proper sense. And there is the less reason for abandoning this most obvious sense that, in Exod. vi. 4; Ezek. xvi. 8; Hag. ii. 5, a covenant with Israel is spoken of, which was not first concluded on Sinai, but was already concluded when they went out from Egypt. Farther—No obligation is spoken of in reference to the new covenant; blessing and gifts are ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... with satisfaction, and yet with misgiving, a remark made to him, a judgment passed on him, by a very old woman very many years before. This discerning hag, the Widow Hullins by name, had said to him briefly, "Well, you're ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... left eye. This time it might be serious, might have injured the eye-ball. Those swing-boards were deadly. Marise snatched up the screaming child and carried him into the kitchen, terrible perspectives of blindness hag-riding her imagination; saying to herself with one breath, "It's probably nothing," and in the next seeing Mark groping his way about the world with a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... you in dark. Lady Macbeth as a child might have been like that—or Antigone with the doom on her, or perhaps Elektra. No, I expect Elektra took after her mother: red-haired girl, I fancy. But there you are. She was a lovely, solemn, deep-eyed, hag-ridden goose. Not a word to say—thought mostly of pudding. I found that out by supposing that she thought of me. Then I was piqued, and we parted. I suppose she's vast now, and glued to an upper window-ledge ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... her yet, Harry, my boy. I'll get an order to have poor old father exhumed, and the doctors shall tell us how much of the arsenic that cursed old hag gave him.' ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... some one had shut me up in prison for some great offence; they had condemned me to many years' imprisonment, condemned me to spend all my youth behind iron-barred windows and they would only let me free again when I had become a wrinkled old hag. Would you love me if I was in prison? Would you come and stand outside my iron bars and speak to me now ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... with whom Meriem came in contact was, almost without exception, either indifferent to her or cruel. There was, for example, the old black hag who looked after her, Mabunu—toothless, filthy and ill tempered. She lost no opportunity to cuff the little girl, or even inflict minor tortures upon her, such as pinching, or, as she had twice done, ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... peal through empty vastness gave a character of profound desolation to the silence in which it was swallowed. More than once the summons was repeated, and at last a faint light gleamed upon the windows, and the door was timorously unbarred and opened. A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion—the genius loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... replied the cure frankly. "I believe in her; she is afraid of nothing. You see her as a vagabond—an outcast, and the next instant, Parbleu! she forces out of you your camaraderie—even your respect. You shake her by the hand, that straight old hag with her clear blue eyes, her square jaw and her hard face! She who walks with the stride of a man, who is as supple and strong as a sailor, and who looks you squarely in the eye and studies you calmly, at ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... mere (the mere was calm), And goodly seemed my beard, and goodly seemed My solitary eye, and, half-revealed, My teeth gleamed whiter than the Parian marl. Thrice for good luck I spat upon my robe: That learned I of the hag Cottytaris—her Who fluted lately ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... "Pish!" said an old hag; "I love to see the proud ones tasting the bitter wind and rain as we bear alway; 'tis but a mile longer round to the ford. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it belonged to the lord—the finder took a different view, somebody cried "Halves!" and somebody else said, "Til give information," and somebody else replied, "So will I," whereupon arose a bloody battle as has been told. About the same time at Hunstanton, Catherine Busgey, evil-disposed old hag that she was, had stript a dead man of his leather jerkin. Did she proceed to wear the manly attire that she might be dagger-proof for the next encounter? Rash woman! The dead man's friends recognized the well- known coat, it was ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... wretch! I thought, and the husband recently dead, too! I could not think of her as a widow, for, in truth, she did not look human enough. She was not over thirty years of age, but a coarser-looking hag I never saw the picture of. Presently a man in crossing the street indulged in some pleasantry at her expense, when she threatened to call her husband to chastise him. Husband? Yes, sure enough, there he was, walking leisurely behind the cart, with his hands in his pockets, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... and lifted up my garment to cover my face, that I might not be defiled with the shower of curses which were thrown at me like mud, and sat there watching till the storm was over. Unfortunately, in lifting up my garment, I exposed to the view of the old hag the cursed goat's-skin bag, which hung at my girdle, and contained, not only her money, but the remainder of my own. "Mashallah—how wonderful is God!" screamed the old beldame, flying at me like a tigress, and clutching ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... establishments. One of them shall serve as a specimen. Descending through a rickety door-way, we passed into a room about sixteen feet square and eight feet high. At one end was a stove in which a fire burned feebly, and close by a small kerosene lamp on a table dimly lighted the room. An old hag, who had lost the greater part of her nose, and whose face was half hidden by the huge frill of the cap she wore, sat rocking herself in a rickety chair by the table. The room was more than half in the shadow, and the air was so dense and foul that I could scarcely breathe. By the dim light ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Air." His own business was based on a "Bank of Air," "wind-capital," as Cadell, Constable's partner, calls it, and the bubble was just about to burst, though Scott had no apprehension of financial ruin. A horrid power is visible in Scott's second picture of la mauvaise pauvre, the hag who despises and curses the givers of "handfuls of coals and of rice;" his first he drew in the witches of "The Bride of Lammermoor." He has himself indicated his desire to press hard on the vice of gambling, as in "The Fortunes of Nigel." Ruinous at all times ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... know," she said, "that I believe Brant spoke the truth. There is no war yet, as far as concerns the Mohawks. The smoke we saw was a secret signal; that hag was scuttling around to collect the False-Faces for a council. They may mean war; I'm sure they mean it, though Brant wore no war-paint. But war has not yet been declared; it is no scant ceremony when ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... He might have had a fairy godmother if anybody had remembered to ask one to the christening, but as no one took enough interest in him for that, it was neglected, and poor Florio became the property of a hideous, hateful old hag, who was never so happy as when she was making trouble. Of course Florio was compelled to do her bidding. Naturally inoffensive and gentle, he was continually obliged to do violence to his ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... behind, at the entrance, the dingy parlours of "Mme. Levin, Modes et Toilettes," on the first landing the wailing-rooms of a hag-ridden teacher of vocal culture, on the next several dusty chambers perennially unrented, and gained at the top an open door whose panels sported a simple rectangle of cardboard advertising the tenancy of (in engraved script) Miss Lucy Spode, (in ink) M. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... two lines consist in a senseless plagiarism from the counterfeited madness of Edgar in Lear, who, in imitation of the gypsy incantations, puns on the old word mair, a hag; and the no less senseless adoption of Dryden's forest fiend, and the wisard stream by which Milton, in his Lycidas, so finely characterizes the spreading Deva, fabulosus amnis. Observe too these images ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sister," remarked the Comandante; "and mother too, for that matter, hag as she is! Still, my dear Roblado, a man likes his own life better than anything else. Near is the shirt, etcetera. He knows well that to stay here is to get into our hands some time or other, and he knows what we'll do with him if he should. Though he has made some clever escapes, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Adrian," said Foy rising, "and don't make such a stir about a couple of cowardly footpads and an old hag. You don't want us to think you a hero because you didn't turn tail and leave Elsa and her companions in their hands, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... supposed to possess any medical talents; the one skilled in bleeding, drawing teeth, and setting a limb; the other, from his knowledge in the diseases of horses, being often consulted in human ailments. There was also a gis sefid, or grey wig, an old woman of a hag-like and decrepit appearance, who was looked up to as an oracle in all cases where the knowledge of the barber and farrier was of no avail, and who had besides a great many nostrums and recipes for all sorts of aches. Each came to me in succession: all were agreed that my disorder proceeded from ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... hundreth part of what hag been published in abolition papers, during the last fifty years, in regard to Southern slavery, is true; and those who have received their impressions of African slavery in the South, from that source, are ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture of the Witch raising up Samuel—(O that old man covered with a mantle!) I owe—not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy—but the shape and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow—a sure bed-fellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while the book was permitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... she went for confinement, she took the small-pox. When she came out, with her baby in her arms, her face was covered with red blotches. Not even the lowest refuge was open to her, her appearance was so frightful. With her baby dragging at her empty breast, she wandered through the streets. An old hag took pity on both; and, carefully nursed till health returned, her good humor and native wit made those about her forget her ugly face. She was in a brothel, where she soon took the lead. Her child died, and she once more ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... in the voodoo craft, or in the power of an evil-eye, I should also have feared. Those who have ever witnessed a sea-island witch-dance can bear me out, and I think a man may dread a hag and be no coward either. But distance and time allay the memories of such uncanny works. I had forgotten whether I was afraid or not. So I said, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... on it—hurried aghast from it, Hair of him frozen with horror straightway, Chased by a sudden strange pestilent blast from it— Where is the speech of him—what can he say? Hath he not seen the fierce ghost of a hag in it? Heard maledictions that startle the stars? Dumb is his mouth as a mouth with a gag in it— Mute is his life as a life within bars. Just the one glimpse of that grey, shrieking woman there Ringed by a circle of furnace and fiend! He that went happy and healthy ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... still survive on Hogarth's canvas. Substitute him for the luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat, who represents the successful candidate in the first picture of the series. A drunken voter is dropping lighted pipe ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is picking his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his neighbour's broken head; an alderman—a ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... induced to admit La Corriveau into her secret chamber and take her into her confidence, the rest—all the rest," muttered the hag to herself, with terrible emphasis, "would be easy, and my reward sure. But that reward shall be measured in my own bushel, not in yours, Mademoiselle des Meloises, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Till metamorphos'd by his grasp, It grew an all-devouring asp; Would hiss, and sting, and roll, and twist. By the mere virtue of his fist: But, when he laid it down, as quick Resum'd the figure of a stick. So, to her midnight feasts, the hag Rides on a broomstick for a nag, That, rais'd by magic of her breech, O'er sea and land conveys the witch; But with the morning dawn resumes The peaceful state of common brooms. They tell us something strange and odd, About ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... violent blow with her fist, which started it to bleeding afresh, and, in spite of himself, caused Algernon to utter a sharp cry of pain, at which all laughed heartily. Thinking doubtless this species of amusement as interesting as any, the old hag was on the point of repeating the blow, when Girty arrested it, by saying something to her in the Indian tongue, and all three turned aside, as if to consult together, leaving our hero standing ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... proud man, so young and so untried!" "Nay," said the Doctor, "dare you trust your wives, The joy, the pride, the solace of your lives, To one who acts and knows no reason why, But trusts, poor hag! to luck for an ally? - Who, on experience, can her claims advance, And own the powers of accident and chance? A whining dame, who prays in danger's view, (A proof she knows not what beside to do;) What's her experience? In the time that's gone, Blundering she wrought, and still she blunders ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... about twenty four years old. and indians at that age are as old as white women are at fifty. if there is any beauty in Creoles, or Indians believe me it fades before they are thirty, and leaves you a homely hag. ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... finde that they acknowledge one God: but represent him by such things as they haue most vse and good by. And therefore they worship the Sunne, the Ollen, the Losh, and such like. [Sidenote: Slata Baba or the golden Hag.] As for the story of Slata Baba, or the Golden hagge, which I haue read in some mappes, and descriptions of these countries, to be an idole after the forme of an old woman that being demanded by the Priest, giueth them ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... the Hydrographic Office records, the fate of the steamship Sarah Calkins. Old was Sarah; weather-scarred, wave-battered, suffering from all the internal disorders to which machinery is prone; tipsy of gait, defiant of her own helm, a very hag of the ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lanes off the street, which, save for the light of a great fire, would have been pitch dark at mid-day, and in which he found a little wrinkled old woman, as yellow as the smoke that filled the apartment. "Choose," said the hag, as she looked at the injured part, "one of two things—a cure slow but sure, or sudden but imperfect. Or shall I put back the hurt altogether till you get home?" "That, that," said Jock; "if I were ance home I could bear it well ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you?"—"O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they'll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?" The poor girl asked this question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the common people of this generally enlightened nation! ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Beldam implies "hag" as early as Shakespeare, but he also uses it in its proper sense of "grandmother," e.g., Hotspur refers to "old beldam earth" and "our grandam earth" in the same speech (1 Henry IV., iii. 1), and Milton speaks ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Against the undiminished herd Of antlered monarchs of the glen That never crossed their eagle ken: But a' unfrettit turn and say, 'Hoots, but the sport's been grand the day!' For none but Scotsmen born and bred, When ither folk lie snug in bed, Would face yon cauld and watery pass, The eerie peat-hag's dark morass, Where wails the whaup wi' mournful screams, Tae wade a' day in icy streams An' flog the burn wi' feckless flies Though ilka trout declines tae rise, Then hameward crunch wi' empty creel Tae sit and hark wi' unquenched zeal Tae dafties' tales o' lonesome tarns Cramfu' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you may never die till you'll get a blue hag for ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... to be prevailing, when the savage old hag, fearing that her influence would be lost, should her orders not be obeyed, shouted ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... you look at it. When I realized what was going on I wanted to leave, and, I repeat, had the chief actress been an old hag or the usual sloven who plays this game, I would have fled; but she was as beautiful as a statue as she lay there, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... that at a touch would snap; The second weaving it with warp and woof Into strange textures, some stained dark and foul, Some sanguine-colored, and some black as night, And rare ones white, or with a golden thread Running throughout the web: the farthest hag With glistening scissors cut her sisters' work. To these Hyperion, but they never ceased, Nor raised their eyes, till with soft, moderate tones, But by their powerful persuasiveness Commanding all to listen and obey, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... look upon the corse With idiot visage, like the hag Remorse That gloateth over on a nameless deed Of darkness and of dole unhistoried. And were there that might hear him, they would hear The murmur of a prayer in deep fear, Through unbarr'd lips, escaping by the half, ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... (blemish) 848; want of symmetry, inconcinnity^; distortion &c 243; squalor &c (uncleanness) 653. forbidding countenance, vinegar aspect, hanging look, wry face, spretae injuria formae [Vergil]. [person who is ugly] eyesore, object, witch, hag, figure, sight, fright; monster; dog [Coll.], woofer [Coll.], pig [Coll.]; octopus, specter, scarecrow, harridan^, satyr^, toad, monkey, baboon, Caliban, Aesop^, monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum [Lat.] [Vergil]. V. be ugly &c adj.; look ill, grin horribly ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... relation of circumstance and individual hidden, no one would know from a given speech whether Cynthia, Tellus, or Dipsas was speaking; nor would Endymion, Eumenides and Geron be better distinguished. This, for example, is from the lips of the old hag, Dipsas, as, spreading her enchantments around her victim, she mutters over his head the curse ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... been descending the valley which terminated in the plain where the recent battle of the Springs had been fought. Here, as they galloped across the field, which was still strewn with the bodies of the slain, they came upon the blackened ruins of a hut, around which an old hag was moving, actively engaged, apparently, in raking among the ashes with a forked stick for anything that she could ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... down so that one plump white shoulder gleamed against the background of her streaming hair. The room was in almost comic disorder. It was a room in which a struggle has taken place between its occupant and that burning-eyed hag, Sleeplessness. The hag, it was plain, had won. A half-emptied glass of milk was on the table by the bed. Warmed, and sipped slowly, it had evidently failed to soothe. A tray of dishes littered another table. Yesterday's dishes, their contents ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... we have had enough of this;' and in fact we had already moved on, so that he had to make some long steps to overtake us, muttering, 'So we've started a Meg Merrilies! My father won't keep such a foul-mouthed hag in the parish long!' ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she always kept in her pocket, and acted occasionally in parts where age was no drawback and ugliness desirable,—such as a witch, or duenna, or whatever in the dialogue was poetically called "Hag." Indeed, Hag was the name she usually took from Rugge; that which she bore from her defunct husband was Gormerick. This lady, as she braided the garland, was also bent on the soothing system, saying, with ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friend's face and went on. "You look horrified, and the thing is horrible. But other things are horrible, too. If some obscure man had been hag-ridden by a blackmailer and had his family life ruined, you wouldn't think the murder of his persecutor the most inexcusable of murders. Is it any worse when a whole great nation is set free as well as a family? By this warning to Sweden we shall probably prevent war and not precipitate ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... to a hedge so thick and wide and so set with thorns that Blanche did not see how they could pass it without being torn to pieces, but the old hag waved her staff, and the branches parted before them and left the path clear. Then, as they passed, the ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... the room above came the soft, racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... wins aboon the mill amang the haws, First promis'd that she'd help me with her art, To gain a bonny thrawart lassie's heart. As she had trysted, I met wi'er this night; But may nae friend of mine get sic a fright! For the curst hag, instead of doing me good— The very thought o't's like to freeze my blood! Rais'd up a ghaist, or deil, I kenna whilk, Like a dead corse in sheet as white as milk; Black hands it had, and face as wan as death. Upon me fast the witch and it fell baith, And gat ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul and the Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan hag. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... be that which you are now!" pursued the hag, still attentively reading the lines of ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Mrs. Malone!" screamed his mother. "What a mean, grasping, greedy old hag! I shall speak to her about it and make her disgorge. She has no right to your money; whilst I am ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... of "le bonhomme Briggs." There are rough stepping-stones at some of the crossings, and the passage of these, after nightfall, resembles greatly that of a "shaking" bog, where the traveler has to leap from tussock to moss-hag with agile audacity; the consequences of a false step being, in both cases, about the same. I began to think, regretfully of certain rugged continental paves execrated in days gone by; they, at least, had a firm bottom, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... putrefaction, and amid the decaying remains eight Kami of thunder have been born and are dwelling. Izanagi, horrified, turns and flees, but Izanami, enraged that she has been "put to shame," sends the "hideous hag of hades" to pursue him. He obtains respite twice; first by throwing down his head-dress, which is converted into grapes, and then casting away his comb, which is transformed into bamboo sprouts, and while the hag stops to eat these delicacies, he flees. Then Izanami sends in his pursuit ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... interview with his uncle, and to ask, as usual, for George's advice and opinion, Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, was the only person whom Arthur found in the dear old chambers. George had taken a carpet-hag, and was gone. His address was to his brother's house, in Suffolk. Packages addressed to the newspaper and review for which he wrote lay on the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blind wife, has a general likeness to some old witch out of a fairy tale, but she is far from being a witch; and Widow Quinn the incomparable might be compared, were she not too high-hearted, to the hag of "The Lout ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... of several other classes of subordinate spirits, acknowledged by the nations of the north. The abstraction of children, for example, the well known practice of the modern Fairy, seems, by the ancient Gothic nations, to have rather been ascribed to a species of night-mare, or hag, than to the berg-elfen, or duergar. In the ancient legend of St Margaret, of which there is a Saxo-Norman copy, in Hickes' Thesaurus Linguar. Septen. and one, more modern, in the Auchinleck MSS., that lady encounters a fiend, whose profession it was, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... The old hag showed her toothless gums in a hideous smile, the woman that was left in the dried shell still tickled at the reference to marriage. But her look changed to one of intense pain as Pinkey, trembling with excitement, nudged her violently in the ribs as a signal to keep on bidding. However, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... sense of the word. It was the contrast—the contrast between his gentle clothing and ungentle heart, which moved my spleen. What a self-sufficient and inhuman brood were the Victorians of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty; a brood that has never yet been called by its proper name. Victorians? Why, not altogether. The mischief has its roots further back. Addison, for example, is a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... denied that I recognized the house, I saw some men prowling stealthily between the rows of name-boards and naked prostitutes. Too late I realized that I had been led into a brothel. After cursing the wiles of the little old hag, I covered my head and commenced to run through the middle of the night-house to the exit opposite, when, lo and behold! whom should I meet on the very threshold but Ascyltos himself, as tired as I was, and almost dead; you ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... for thy white man," exclaimed the old woman before Pocahontas had spoken a word. "I have them here ready for thee," and she thrust a bundle into the astonished maiden's hands. "But," continued the hag, "though they would cure any of our people, they will not have power with the white man's malady save he have ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... make the girl disclose the secret of the retreat; but she was neither to be intimidated nor cajoled, and told them plainly that she would rather die, as her granduncle had done before her, than betray her trust. They threw her into a peat-hag filled with water, and left her to sink or swim. She did not swim, however, but sank never to rise again. Her spirit had been broken, and life had been rendered a burden to her. She expressed to her murderers, again and again, a wish that they would ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... cold—an unsheltered creature; and the chill fancy of the villager followed him out to the heath on a journey that had no law. Was it he in person, or a poet for him, that made the swinging song: "From the hag and the hungry goblin"? If a poet, it was one who wrote like a madman and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... once that she had made some starch, and set it in a red wooden bowl to cool. While her back was turned, the sparrow hopped down on the edge of the bowl, and pecked at some of the starch. In a rage the old hag seized a pair of scissors and cut the sparrow's tongue out. Flinging the bird in the air she cried out, "Now be off." So the poor sparrow, all ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... Molokai, an old sorceress or priestess sent him word that she had made a garment for him—a robe of honor—which she desired him to come and get. He returned for answer a command that she should bring it to him; and when the old hag appeared, the king desired her to tell him something of the future. She replied that he would conquer all the Islands, and rule over them but a brief time; that his own posterity would die out; and that finally all his race would be gathered together on Molokai; ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... not be compared with Goya, that their methods and themes are dissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcieres de San Millan) are in the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter—a hideous crew. At once you think of the Caprichos of Goya. The hag with the distaff, whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkey profile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsive creature in spectacles—Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't varied since his days—these ladies and their companions, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... was returned to him as his letters had been, and that he was ashamed to reclaim the money at the express-office. "It wouldn't be a bad specilation to go East, get some smart gal, for a hundred dollars, to dress herself up and represent that 'Hag,' and jest freeze onto that eight thousand," suggested a far-seeing financier. I may state here, that we always alluded to Hawkins's fair unknown as the "Hag" without having, I am confident, the least justification ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... way," he said, as he put on his great coat, "it is a curious fact that, with all his incredulity, he is exceedingly superstitious. You can hardly believe how troubled he is about some gibberish of that old hag that sets charms for lame horses, etc. I'm not at all sure but that she set charms in the other way for ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... coverlet," said Mr. Larkspur, dragging the little silken covering from his carpet-bag, and displaying it before those to whom it was so familiar. "That's about the ticket, I think, my lady. Yes, just so. I found a nice old hag waiting to claim her five pounds reward; for, you see, the men at the police-office at Murford Haven contrived to keep her dancing attendance backward and forwards—call again in an hour, and so on—till I was there to cross-question her. A precious deep one she is, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Ziemianitch to the gentleman to prove there were no lies told. And he would show him drunk. His woman, it seems, ran away from him last night. "Such a hag she was! Thin! Pfui!" He spat. They were always running away from that driver of the devil—and he sixty years old too; could never get used to it. But each heart knows sorrow after its own kind and Ziemianitch was a born fool all his days. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... blue-eyed hag[383-80] was hither brought, And here was left by th' sailors. Thou, my slave, As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant; And, for[383-81] thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... meanwhile was making the 'kyrkoherde' aware of the position of things; when the latter, suspending his labours for a moment, uttered a sound no doubt understood between horses and farriers, and immediately a tall and ugly hag appeared from the hut. She must have been six feet at the least. I was in great alarm lest she should treat me to the Icelandic kiss; but there was no occasion to fear, nor did she do the honours ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... that tort'ring Castlereagh On his own Dublin rack, sir; We'll drown the King in Eau de vie, The Laureate in his sack, sir, Old Eldon and his sordid hag In molten gold we'll smother, And stifle in his own green bag The Doctor ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a close lane as I pursu'd my journey, I spy'd a wrinkled Hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself. Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red; Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seem'd withered; And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapped The tatter'd remnants of an old strip'd hanging, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... ever 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, were in her whole bearing. Her eyes looked out from black hollows, her cheeks were pallid, her mouth was nerveless. Three sleepless nights, he thought, could not have changed a woman thus—no, nor thrice three; and he who ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... not far engaged in the Waste, which was then, and is now, traversed only by such routes as are described in the text, when two or three fellows, disguised and variously armed, started from a moss-hag, while, by a glance behind him (for, marching, as the Spaniard says, with his beard on his shoulder, he reconnoitred in every direction), Charlie instantly saw retreat was impossible, as other two stout men appeared behind him at some distance. ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... supreme. One case may serve as an example of many others. A fisherman, well known in the place, a handsome and popular young fellow, was seized, while working in his boat, with the first symptoms of cholera. He was carried to his mother's house. The old woman, a villainous-looking hag, watched the little procession as it approached her dwelling, and taking in the situation at once, she shut ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... convicted perpendicular in petticoats. There's contamination in her circumference, and she trembles with guilt down to the extremities of her corollaries. Ah! you're found out, you rectilineal antecedent, and equiangular old hag! 'Tis with you the devil will fly away, you porter-swiping similitude of the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... shooting,—so much so that before we knew anything of him except his name we had heard that he had been on our coast after seals and sea birds. We have very high cliffs near here,—some people say the highest in the world, and there is one called the Hag's Head from which men get down and shoot sea-gulls. He has been different times in our village of Liscannor, and I think he has a boat there or at Lahinch. I believe he has already killed ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... 'Like Delphic Hag of old, by Fiend possest, He swells, wild Frenzy heaves his panting breast, His bristling hairs stick up, his eyeballs glow, And from his mouth ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... be the out-scourers of Murray's party; let us lie down in the peat-hag, and keep ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... bitterly, her grip upon his hand becoming hard and fierce. "You have made me a tigress. I must cower and hide through life like a wild beast in a jungle. And you are dying and going to hell," she hissed in his ear, "and by and by, when I get to be an old ugly hag, I will come and torment you there ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... "The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps, And took the youthful pleasures from his days, And chased the youthful smoothness from his brow, That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned To a pale skeleton of what he was; And would have died, but for ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... off the black paint, and after a few more speeches and ceremonies, I was handed over to the hideous old hag, whose neck was still decorated with the two ears of my companion. To say that I would have preferred the torture would be saying too much, but that I loathed the creature to excess was certain. However, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... is given as monopolized by the sense of 'bewitched', or of 'lean and gaunt', related to haggard. This does not suit. The intention is probably an independent use of the p.p. of the transitive verb 'to hag'; defined as 'to torment or terrify as a hag, to ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... size, and encouraged by the nods and winks of the wooers who sat near, Irus was only too ready to take up the challenge. "Hark to the old starveling cur!" he shouted. "How glib of tongue he is, like any scolding hag! Get thee to thy fists then, since thou wilt have it so, and I will knock all thy teeth out, if thou hast any left"; and he thrust ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... for your papers! Hola! wife!" continued Arroyo, turning to the hag who still stood by the fainting victim, "here's a little work for you, as I am somewhat fatigued. I charge you with making this spy confess who sent him here, and what design he had in coming. Make him speak out whatever ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... came into its place. "The cool softness of the air, the brilliant sparkle of the stars! And then the magic of the moonlight! Young child-moon, half-grown girl-moon, voluptuous woman-moon, sallow, old-hag-moon, it was alike to me. Pete says I'm 'fey' in the moonlight. He, says ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... shape of a bee and went along buzzing, and buzzing, and buzzing. Her keen sense of smell soon brought her to the beautiful princess, to whom she appeared as an old hag, holding in one hand a stick by way of support. She introduced herself to the beautiful princess and said, "I am your aunt, whom you have never seen before, because I left the country just after your birth." She also embraced and kissed the princess by way of adding force to her words. ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... 1598-9, but it was acted, as appears by the same authority, as early as 5th January 1592. She is noticed in "Westward Hoe!" 1607, where Clare says: "O Master Linstock, 'tis no walking will serve my turn: have me to bed, good, sweet Mistress Honeysuckle. I doubt that old hag Gillian of Braineford has bewitched me." Sig. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... get him a big shop. He'll pike along doing his own work—unless you, his wife, go help him, go help him in the shop, and stand over a table all day, pushing a big heavy iron. Your complexion will look fine after about fifteen years of baking that way, won't it! And you'll be humped over like an old hag. And probably you'll live in one room back of the shop. And then at night—oh, you'll have your artist—sure! He'll come in stinking of gasoline, and cranky from hard work, and hinting around that if it hadn't been for you, he'd ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... hag," said the baronet, whose vexation at meeting her was for the moment beyond any superstitious impression which he felt, "what brought you here? What devil sent you across my path now? Who are you, or what are you, for you look like ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... could not even keep a cigarette alive, but burned more matches than tobacco. A heavy sweat bedewed his forehead; the ruddy colour of that plump countenance grew sadly faded, the good-natured features drawn and pinched with worry. By nine o'clock the man was hag-ridden by fear of the unknown, by terror of learning what fault had developed in the calculations ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... doubtless have worn it on gala days when she went to Lucifer's drawing-room on the Blocksberg. Look at this scarlet bodice, with its gold tassels and fringe, at this cap besmeared with the last fee the hag got from Beelzebub or his imps: it will give me a right worshipful air. To match such jewels, there is this green velvet petticoat with its saffron-coloured trimming, and this mask would melt even Medusa to a grin. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... sat alone at table, making a feint of dining. Her cheeks were mottled, her eyes heavy; she had neither slept nor eaten; even her dress had been neglected. In short, she was out of health, out of looks, out of heart, and hag-ridden by her conscience. The Countess drew a swift comparison, and shone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more closely into a small human ball than ever. She had feared the minister since the time she had talked off his warts with the wizard words she had learned from a hag living on ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... with a headache, only to be awakened by this crashing, and the cry of fire, and she seemed utterly beside herself with terror. A beautiful woman by day, when carefully gowned and controlled, she was a veritable hag just now! It seemed as if terror and dismay let loose her unbeautiful soul to dominate her well-kept body. She looked older, by a score of years, and was as unlike her ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in driving about the town, taking note of the condition of the people. These, as I saw, looked on us sullenly enough, more so than before, I thought, perhaps because we were unguarded. Indeed, turning round I caught sight of a man shaking his fist and of an old hag spitting after us, and wished that we were out of the land of Goshen. But when I reported it to the Prince he only laughed ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... proper sacrifices—two black rams, which were duly slaughtered upon the little altar before the shrine and sprinkled with sweetened water. The priestess, a gray hag herself, asked her visitor if he would enter the cavern and proffer his petition to the mighty goddesses. Leaving his friends outside, the orator passed through the door which the priestess seemed to open in the side of the cave. He saw only a jagged, unhewn cranny, barely ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... last, amidst the grey mists afar off, between sky and earth, I can just make out a dark speck. The next morning that black spot has grown larger. The Count of Nideck goes to bed with chattering teeth. The next day again we can make out the figure of the old hag; the fierce attacks begin; the count cries out. The day after, the witch is at the foot of the mountain, and the consequence is that the count's jaws are set like a vice; his mouth foams; his eyes turn in his head. Vile creature! Twenty times I have had her within ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... like her words and gestures. Instead of those distinguished men and women, the flower of all political parties, with whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of equal friendship, she was to have for her perpetual companion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and of temper which, naturally savage, had now been exasperated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Frances might console herself for the loss of Burke's ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... One glance at it told Laura what it meant. The bride in the court below was shedding tears: the bridegroom was lighting his pipe and consoling her; women were chattering, men shrugging. Some said they had seen an old grey-haired hag (hexe) stand at the gates and fling down a piece of paper. A little boy whose imagination was alive with the tale of the steinbock, declared that her face was awful, and that she had only the, use of one foot. A man patted him on the shoulder, and gave him a gulp of wine, saying with his shrewdest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the valley Autumn was a fearsome hag, a little crazy, two-double, gathering sticks in a scarlet cloak. When she turned her wicked old eyes upon you, the life died within you, and wherever you walked she was always somewhere in the bushes muttering ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... hag, dragging her up rudely by one of those delicate hands, fit for no harsher labor than that of weaving the flowers which made her pleasure or her trade; 'stuff! these fine scruples are not ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 as I could get them would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Captain Duncombe as she descended into private life. "There's a wonderful filly that absorbs all his attention. All Wil'sbro' might burn as long as Dark Hag thrives! When do I expect him? I don't know; it depends on Dark Hag," she said in a tone of superior good-natured irony, then gathered up the radiant mantle and tripped off along the central street of the little old- fashioned country town, with ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every stick there's a witch astride, The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut come caper, he gives a twitch. As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a gleam ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... my father, seeing that he could do nothing, that I was wasting away, and was on the road to join my mother in the cemetery, decided to let me complete my folly. So one evening, after we had returned from fishing and I got up from supper without tasting it, he said to me, 'Marry the hag's daughter, and let's have no more of this.' I remember it distinctly, because, when I heard the old fellow call my love such a name, I flew into a great passion, and almost wanted to kill him. Ah, one never gains anything by marrying in opposition ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Why, what pest is this that has befallen my house? May all the Gods and Goddesses destroy me in the worst of fashions, if I don't kill this old hag with thirst, ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... say no evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... force!" muttered the Baron. "Every old hag in the village knows about a thing whenever it's supposed to be conducted in absolute secrecy." Then he continued angrily: "He'd have indeed to be a stupid devil of a criminal who would ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various |
