"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... least, are impossible. So-and-so" (a fashionable woman whom he had known) "was far from being perfect, but, after all, one did find in her a fundamental delicacy, a loyalty in her conduct which made her, whatever happened, incapable of a felony, which fixes a vast gulf between her and an old hag like Verdurin. Verdurin! What a name! Oh, there's something complete about them, something almost fine in their trueness to type; they're the most perfect specimens of their disgusting class! Thank God, it was high time that I stopped condescending to promiscuous ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sliding up and down My limbs, as they were public roads, impart A singularly interesting chill. The circumstance and passion of the time, The cast and manner of the place—the spirit Of this confederate environment, Command the rights we come to celebrate Obedient to the Inspired Hag— The seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, Who rules all destinies from Minna street, A dollar a destiny. Here at this grave, Which for my purposes thou, Jack of Spades— (To Grimghast) Corrupter than the thing that reeks below— Hast opened secretly, we'll work the charm. Now ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... it as a girl, when she often visited it in company with her father-in-law, the appreciative but dissolute Francois, and had ever longed to possess it for her own, before even her husband, now dead, had given it to "that old hag Diane de Poitiers, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... brush, which turned into a dense growth of reeds, through which the old hag forced her way with much difficulty and ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... nearly at an end, and I had no reason to economize my provisions, I gave some to the villagers, and the women especially who had hardly ever tasted rice or tinned meat, were delighted. One old hag actually made me a declaration of love, which, unfortunately, I could not respond ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... having put that cassock on, it poisoned him: he was strangled in his bands. He goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony—what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant! It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... a boot half ruined while I watched the bootblack. Sometimes I bought a variety of evening papers from a ragged gnome who might be a wonder-child, and made mistakes over the payment to prolong the interview. I leaned against gaunt houses and saw the dancing waifs yield their poor lives to ugly, hag-ridden music. I endured the wailing hymns of voiceless women on winter days in order that I might observe the wretched ragamuffins squalling round their knees the praise of a Creator who had denied them everything. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the street, leaning half tipsily against the wall, stood the old hag to whom Hester had once given twopence. Her eyes brightened when she saw who ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... Loki? Was it Hel, goddess of death? Or was it Thor who wrestled with that toothless hag, Thokk?" ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... have him, the guilty man!" cried Louis XI. abruptly. "If you are robbed again to-night, I shall know to-morrow who did it. Make that old hag you call your sister come ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... Ferrando. He sang of how the cry of the nurse on that morning years before had brought the servants running and they had put the gipsy out; but almost at once the baby grew ill, and the Count and his people believed the old hag had put a spell upon it, so that it would die. They sought wildly for her, and, when they finally found her, they burned ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... poor room in Galway with outer and inner door. Noises of a fair outside. A Hag sitting by the fire. ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... here? A girl. Monsieur woos her, but she is turned away. The maiden flies; Monsieur follows, and he overtakes the maiden. Then he bears her away with guards around her, through a deep valley, till he reaches a hut. Now he hands her over to an ugly hag— and the name of that hag is Jubal. Is it not so, Monsieur?" and the crone, turning from the cup, looked with a hideous grin in the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... 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 ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and hence the twelve birds of Russian Story. To the same cycle belong the Seal-tales of the Faroe Islands (Thorpe's Northern Mythology) and the wise women or mermaids of Shetland (Hibbert). Wayland the smith captures a wife by seizing a mermaid's raiment and so did Sir Hagn by annexing the wardrobe of a Danubian water-nymph. Lettsom, the translator, mixes up this swan-raiment with that of the Valkyries or Choosers of the Slain. In real life stealing women's clothes is an old trick and has often induced them, after having been seen naked, to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... am young, my chin is bare, And I have wonder'd much when men have told. How youth was free from sorrow and from care, That thou shouldst dwell with me, and leave the old. Sure dost not like me!—Shrivel'd hag of hate, My phiz, and thanks to thee, is sadly long; I am not either, beldame, over strong; Nor do I wish at all to be thy mate, For thou, sweet Fury, art my utter hate. Nay, shake not thus thy miserable pate; I am yet young, and do not like thy face; And, lest thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... it grinned, A foul and withered shape, that cast Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind Went rattling through it as it passed; It filled the heart with a strange dread, Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound, And gibbered like the wandering dead In ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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 bleeding, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 ever ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... accommodated in a little canvas hut. Dressed in a black skirt and a red bodice, with a yellow-and-red bandana handkerchief tied round his black wig, he looked—sharp-nosed, brown, and wrinkled—like the Bohemian Hag of Frith's Derby Day. A placard pinned to the curtain of the doorway announced the presence within the tent of "Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana." Seated at a table, Mr. Scogan received his clients in mysterious silence, indicating with a movement of the finger that they were to sit down ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... old hag who keeps the fruit-stall. And it seems you gave her and all her family tea and cake in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... afflicted, George thought, and he glanced at them furtively, looking for the various symptoms of which he had read. Or were there, perhaps, some like himself—merely victims of a foolish error, coming to have the hag of dread pulled from off ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... for assurance, was in herself the best advertisement for her wares. Rachel was a fat old hag. Anne, prettily fair, little-boned, and deliciously fleshed, was neat and elegant. The impression one gets of her from all the records, even the most prejudiced against her, is that she was a very cuddlesome morsel indeed. She was, in addition, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... he turned her limp body so that she lay upon her back. She was quite dead, but he was neither startled nor horrified; he was bitterly disappointed, and again and again he ground his heel into the thick Sine carpet under his feet. What was it to him whether this hideous old hag were dead in one way or another? She had died with her secret. There she lay in her shapeless bag-like gown of snuff-colored stuff, under the brilliant lights and the gorgeous mirrors, upon the delicate satin cushions, her white eyes staring wide, her hands clenched ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... negative result of a growing annoyance. "God knows why they all show at once," she exclaimed discontentedly, seated—as customary—before the eminently truthful reflection of a newly discovered set of lines. "I'm not old enough to begin to look like a hag." ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... tragic face and great eyes that seemed to drown 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 with her great eyes peering through a slat ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... was 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. The Borderer lost not ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... as a refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought such ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... The definite article. Crows-an-wra, the witch’s cross. (Murray says that it means “the wayside cross,” but gwragh, gwrah, gwra, Breton gwrac’h, certainly means a hag or witch, and the change of initial after the article shows that the noun is feminine.) Chy-an-dowr, the house ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... exclaimed. "Woman would you see me die like a dog? The neighbors! for all I know, they have got me at their finger-ends now,—the vile rabble! That old hag, Madame Justine, at the ribbon-shop below,—some demon possessed her to look out that night when SHE came crawling home. She noted her well with her greedy eyes; some one so like my dear first wife, she told me. There is mischief and death ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... at his 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 ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... skinny 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 ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... questions, and indeed had but little conversation with her; for, as I have told you, I put her in a carriage, with the old hag who was in charge of her, and rode myself by the side of it, in case the old ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... the vile hag put down. She is in possession of the family plate, that is mine by right, as well as a thousand valuable relics, and great riches besides, all of which the old profligate gifted shamefully away. And it is said, besides all these, that she ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... With walls embattled and strong towers bedight. Now seeing that the sun was getting low, Our travellers at quicker pace did go. Thus as in haste near to the gate they came, Before them limped a bent and hag-like dame, With long, sharp nose that downward curved as though It beak-like wished to peck sharp chin below. Humbly she crept in cloak all torn and rent, And o'er a staff her tottering limbs were bent. So came she to the gate, then cried in fear, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the Justice cried; "I know that woman well," he cried aloud; "The shepherd Aveland's widow: God me guide! A pauper kneeling on my hearth": and bowed The hag, like one at home, its warmth to share! "How dares she to intrude? What ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... a horn growing out of her right shoulder, she was 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
... said 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
... 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 ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... home, however, and Tyr recognised in the elder—an ugly old hag with nine hundred heads—his own grandmother; while the younger, a beautiful young giantess, was, it appeared, his mother, and she received her son and his companion hospitably, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... well—whether at a book-sale, or in a bookseller's catalogue. There are copies upon LARGE PAPER, which, when priced, sell high.——HULSIUS. Bibliotheca Hulsiana, sive Catalogus Librorum quos magno labore, summa cura et maximis sumptibus collegit Vir Consularis Samuel Hulsius. Hag. Com. 1730, four vols. 8vo. (the second and third being in two parts, and the fourth in three). This is, in sober truth, a wonderful collection of books; containing nearly 34,000 articles—which, allowing three volumes to an article, would make the owner to have been in possession ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... The tender passions! yes, they would become those impenetrable features! Why, thou deceitful hag! I placed thee as a guard to the rich blossoms of my daughter's beauty. I thought that dragon's front of thine would cry aloof to the sons of gallantry: steel traps and spring guns seemed writ in every wrinkle of ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Berengarius are older! See this scene of the plague-patient, the doctor smelling at his pouncet-box, the old nurse standing square at the bedside, the young nurse with the bowl, holding back and turning her head away, and the old burial-hag behind her, shoving her forward, a very curious book, Doctor, and has the first phrenological picture in it ever made. Take a look, too, at my Vesalius,—not the Leyden edition, Doctor, but the one with the grand old original figures,—so good that they laid ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lost the texture of youth; and then, where were youth's contours? Ah, Madame! wise as you were, even you knew weakness. Never had I pitied Madame before, but my heart softened towards her, when she turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had come upon her. That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly "All-hail," and her soul rejected ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... dusty mirror that stood away in some corner, I got in front of the fire, spied where the mirror was, threw myself upon it, and bounded from its face upon the oval pool of dim light on the ceiling, assuming, as I passed, the shape of an old stooping hag, who poured something from a phial into a basin. I made the handle of the spoon with my own nose, ha! ha!" And the shadow-hand caressed the shadow-tip of the shadow-nose, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... me an old hag! I wanted to go after him, but there was two hoodlums hangin' round, and I knew they'd carry off some of my apples, when, just as I was at my wits' end, ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... guarding his treasure, surrounded by masterpieces! He is a cunning connoisseur by this time; he has increased his capital tenfold; he is not to be cheated; he knows the tricks of the trade. The monster among his treasures looks like some old hag among a score of young girls that she offers to the public. Beauty and miracles of art are alike indifferent to him; subtle and dense as he is, he has a keen eye to profits, he talks roughly to those who know less than he does; he has learned to ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... which in the fight with Grendel has analogies with the plainer kind of goblin story, rather alters its tone in the fight with Grendel's mother. There are parallels in Grettis Saga, and elsewhere, to encounters like this, with a hag or ogress under water; stories of this sort have been found no less credible than stories of haunting warlocks like Grendel. But this second story is not told in the same way as the first. It has more of the fashion and temper of mythical fable or romance, and less of matter of fact. More ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Cat thought to herself, "I ate a basketful of cakes, I ate my friend the Parrot, and shall I blush to eat this old hag?" ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... in a dress composed of ropes made of alternate pumpkin-seeds and bits of reed strung together, and wound round the body in a figure-of-eight fashion. They are inured in this way to bear fatigue, and carry large pots of water under the guidance of the stern old hag. They have often scars from bits of burning charcoal having been applied to the forearm, which must have been done to test their ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... 'Avaunt! hag,' exclaimed Blackbeard, as Elvira ceased speaking, 'begone I say, and if ever thou darest to call thyself, my mother, in my hearing, I will stab you ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... that this vile witch-business were well over! Dost promise me I shall recover In this hodge-podge of craziness? From an old hag do I advice require? And will this filthy cooked-up mess My youth by thirty years bring nigher? Woe's me, if that's the best you know! Already hope is from my bosom banished. Has not a noble mind found long ago Some balsam to ...
— Faust • Goethe
... him to an under-ground room in one of the narrow 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 enouch." The ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... submit to the indignity of allowing this dessicated hag to pass her fumbling hands all over her body, pinching her and prodding her. The old woman smelt horribly of daikon (pickled horse-radish). Furthermore the terrified girl had to answer a battery of questions ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... be Bicrobes, as they say, This Idfluedza pest; What batters? I bust cough—ad pay! The Doctor orders "Rest"! Bicrobes be blowed, ad Rest go hag! I'll stad this thig do bore! BARY! was that the door-bell rag? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... give up her place in the house, and the old family-jewels, and all the splendid things,—and so one time, when the poor young thing was all dressed up in a set of the old family-lace, what does the old hag do but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He had a feck o' books wi' him—mair than had ever been seen before in a' that presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had wi' them, for they were a' like to have smoored in the Deil's Hag between this and Kilmackerlie. They were books o' divinity, to be sure, or so they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang in the neuk ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... long a hag may live,' said Elizabeth, 'but she could not have been less than a hundred and thirty years old in the time of ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... variation of the Angelica of the same poet, combined with Ariosto's Alcina; but her passionate voluptuousness makes her quite a new character in regard to the one; and she is as different from the painted hag of the Orlando as youth, beauty, and patriotic intention can make her. She is not very sentimental; but all the passion in the world has sympathised with her; and it was manly and honest in the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that Betsy Jennings desarves it—was she ever ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... had thy desolated Queen, sir, No blue eyes ever known, nor had she beauteous been, sir, The envy of our old rival hag she might have baffled, sir, Nor with her guiltless blood have crimson'd o'er the ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... days. At first she stood fixed, as if the extremity of distress had converted her into stone; but in a minute, the pride and violence of her temper, outbraved as she thought herself on her own threshold, enabled her to reply, "Yes, insulting hag, my fair-haired boy may die, but it will not be with a white hand. It has been dyed in the blood of his enemy, in the best blood of a Cameron—remember that; and when you lay your dead in his grave, let it be his best epitaph that he was killed by Hamish Bean for essaying ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... sensual eye that gives evil the appearance of good, and out of a crooked hag makes a bewitching siren. The reason enlightened by the grace of God sees it as it truly is, full of stench and corruption.[86] It is this office of reason which Dante undertakes to perform, by divine commission, in ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... healing herbs 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 ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... euphemise it now-a-days. The hot pebbles, at high-tide mark,—crowned with a long black row of herring and mackerel boats, laid up in ordinary for the present—are beautifully variegated with mackerels' heads, gurnets' fins, old hag, lobworm, and mussel-baits, and the inwards of a whole ichthyological museum; save at one spot where the Cloaca maxima and Port Esquiline of Aberalva town (small enough, considering the place holds ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... courtesy, and I spoke words that are of all words the farthest from my mind. For I know well that I grow old, and have put off that beauty with which I was adorned of yore, and that held thee to me. 'Carline' Eric Brighteyes named me, and 'carline' I am—an old hag, no more! Now, forgive me, and, in memory of all that has been between us, let me creep to my place in the ingle and still watch and serve thee and thine till my service is outworn. Out of Ran's ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... walls she was 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 to her, which could call the blush of shame to her cheek, or make her poor grandfather ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... abandon his fear, his betters their hope, that only the low class woman will vote—the unlettered wench of the slums, the raddled hag of the dives, the war-painted protegee of the police. Into the vortex of politics goes every floating thing that is free to move. The summons to the polls will be imperative and incessant. Duty will thunder it from every platform, conscience ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... "Hag," said the doctor, "you are lying. This fine young man has confessed to me the agreeable truth. Madam," he turned to Donna Aurelia, "here is a confessed lover of yours. Pray have you anything ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time for? The old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It's out of my way. And where the devil she can have got to, I can't make out. She sits here from year's end to year's end, the old hag; her legs are bad and yet here all of a sudden she ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... family, of which Francesco assured him he knew he was the father. Then the mare Filomena came in for her share of vilifications, being called a 'giovinastra (naughty girl), a vecchierellaccia (vile old hag), a—' Here the rain, pebbles, lightning, and thunder interrupted the driver, and Rocjean told him to take breath and a pull at his flask, which was filled with Sambuca. Thus refreshed, although soaked to the skin, Francesco livened up, and from despondency passed to hope, then ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was returning to the warehouse from this mortifying interview, I encountered an ancient hag,—a sort of superintendent Cerberus or manager of the Mongo's harem,—who, by signs, intimated that she wanted the key to the "cloth-chest," whence she immediately helped herself to several fathoms of calico. The ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat-hag on the Kye-skairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long, and dying on a sudden in a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this we knew before; 'Tis infamous, I grant it, to be poor: And who, so much to sense and glory lost, Will hug the curse that not one joy can boast? From the pale hag, oh! could I once break loose, Divorced, all hell should not re-tie the noose! Not with more care shall H— avoid his wife, Nor Cope[1] fly swifter, lashing for his life, Than I to leave ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... us very frequently, and often brings his wife with him. She is a pleasant, buxom body, with a contented smile always on her face. Though not young, being probably between thirty and forty, she has not yet grown at all hag-like, as Maori women generally do. She dresses cleanly and nicely—cotton or chintz gowns being her usual wear—but she leans to an efflorescence of colour in her bonnet, and has a perfect passion for brilliant tartan shawls. I think I once ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... to Lucia's apartment, and found her still huddled up in a corner, but sleeping. The hag explained that she could not be prevailed upon ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... Tales of the Genii, by H. Ridley, is a wealthy merchant of Bag dad, who goes in quest of the talisman of Oroma'nes, which he is driven to seek by a little old hag, who haunts him every night and makes his life wretched. He finds at last that the talisman which is to free him of this hag [conscience] is to "fear God and keep ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the present," she screamed, infuriated. "Look at what the present has given me—a mouthful of blood and teeth. I, who was beautiful, am spoiled for ever; I am become an old hag. Pharaoh burst the ball with his hand, and threw the pieces at me. I saw him do it, and you set him there. Wretch, I will pay you back for this evil trick," and springing at Kaku, she tore of his astrologer's cap, and the wig beneath it, and beat his bald head ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... but your nymphs, I believe, which keep you here" (meaning Mesdames de Chevreuse and Guemenee). "I expect," she said, "to be befriended for my own sake, and don't I deserve it? I cannot conceive how you can be amused by a wicked old hag and a girl, if possible, still more foolish. We are continually disputing about that silly wretch" (pointing to M. de Beaufort, who was playing chess); "let us take him with us ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... them—smooth down their plumage gently, stretch their legs out, and hang them by the heads, running the button down close to the neck of each. In this way this bag, which is, as you see, half a yard long, by a quarter and a half a quarter deep, made double, one hag of fustian, with a net front, which makes two pockets— will carry fifty-one quail or woodcock, no one of them pressing upon, or interfering with, another, and it would carry sixty-eight if I had put another row of loops in the inner bag; which I did not, that I might have the bottom ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... punish woeful intruders. And she had brought me to China to punish me. As is her wont, Nature milked the manhood out of me, racked me with aches and pains, shattered me with chills, scorched me with fever fires, pursued me with despairing visions, and hag-rode me without mercy. Accursed newspapers, with their accursed routine, came back to me; all the stories and legends that I had ever heard, all the facts that I had ever learnt, came to me in a fashion wonderfully contorted ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... supposed to be even further removed from the possibilities of such contact than he was himself. His memory reverted to that horribly ugly old woman whom Father Forbes had spoken of as his housekeeper. Life under the same roof with such a hag must be even ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... her eyes open better. She says if she had only had the least suspicion beforehand that the minx (she dared to call Jessie a minx) was going, she'd have known where, or her name would have been somebody else's. And yet she admits that Jessie was looking ill and worried. Stupid old hag!" ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... the voodoo craft, or in the power of an evil-eye, I should also have feared. Those who have ever witnessed a sea-island witch-dance can bear me out, and I think a man may dread a hag and be no coward either. But distance and time allay the memories of such uncanny works. I had forgotten whether I was afraid or not. So I said, "There are ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... inquired about her misfortune, and she told him the sad tale of the journey and Henriette's kidnapping.... Their talk was broken in upon by the entry of the hag Mere Frochard and ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... for the scene that met us when we drove into the porte cochere. The place seemed deserted, not a servant was to be seen but one old wrinkled hag, who hobbled up to the door saying something in Dutch that made Madame van Hunker clasp her hands and exclaim: 'All fled! Oh, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Vac paced the length of this black alley in search of the little doorway of the building he sought. At length he came upon it, and, after repeated pounding with the pommel of his sword, it was opened by a slatternly old hag. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... betimes and hard at work, as evil-looking a pair as ever I saw. The man's face was still puffed and discolored, where my fists had punished him, and his disposition had not improved overnight. His hag-like dam also regarded us with suspicion and disfavor, I could note, and I saw her glance from me to her son, making mental comparisons; and guessed she had heard explanations regarding black eyes which did ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... through the hot, airless hours. The memory of the girl, the impression of her attitude, of her pale, unsmiling face, of her low, strong voice, tormented him; he felt himself alone with her in a hag-ridden land where all men were murderers or murdered; and she would have none of him. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... think it must have been her mother that I saw that morning when little Felix dragged me to a cigar-shop in quest of an ornamental crab-a handsome, slatternly hag sort of woman, who might have been on ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interminable. On a sudden she raised her head and listened for a moment, replaced the papers deftly, closed the desk without noise, except for the tiny click of the lock, extinguished the candle, and rustled stealthily out of the room, leaving in the darkness the malign and hag-like face on which the candle had just shone still ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... old hag!" Mr Arthur answered, with unnecessary fierceness. "I don't see what Satan has been about, all these years, that he's not taken her ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... know," said he, wistfully, "for I shall consult the fates. I have here a sacred coin. An old dame found it when she was digging in the side of Soracte. See, it has on its face the head of Apollo, and opposite is an arrow in a death-hand. And the hag had an odd dream of this coin, so she told me—that it fell out of the sky, and was, indeed, from the treasury of the gods, and had in it a wonderful power in all mysteries. And one might tell by tossing ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... these warriors were a nearly equal number of squaws. These were to be seen lounging carelessly about in small groups, and were of all ages; from the hoary-headed, shrivelled-up hag, whose eyes still sparkled with a fire that her lank and attenuated frame denied, to the young girl of twelve, whose dark and glowing cheek, rounded bust, and penetrating glance, bore striking evidence of the precociousness ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... money out of people," said Diana, who was disgusted at the avarice of the hag. "However, for the present you must be content with what I have given you. If, in cleaning this house, you find any other article, whatever it may be, you shall have another ten shillings, on consideration that you take it at once ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Orchard.—What is the derivation of orchard? Is the last syllable "yard," as in vineyard, rickyard? If so, what is "orch?" By the way, is the provincial word "hag-gard" hay-yard? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... The Hag is astride, This night for to ride, The devil and she together; Through thick and through thin, Now out, and then in, Though ne'er so foul be ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... answered my question, he delivered himself of a comprehensive anathema which included Miss Blake, River Hall, the late owner, and ourselves. He further wished he might be essentially etceteraed if he believed there was another solicitor, besides Mr. Craven, in London who would allow such a hag to haunt his offices. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... could take it upon his conscience to say, his honour would have exceeding pleasure in seeing him. Would not Mr. Waverley choose some refreshment after his journey? His honour was with the folk who were getting doon the dark hag; the twa gardener lads (an emphasis on the word TWA) had been ordered to attend him; and he had been just amusing himself in the meantime with dressing Miss Rose's flower-bed, that he might be near to receive his honour's orders, if need were: he was ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... required no supernatural wisdom for any man on the floor to see that Bob Brownley's seed had fallen in superheated soil, that his until now secret hellite was about to be tested. It needed no expert in the mystic art of deciphering the wall hieroglyphics of Old Hag Fate to see that the hands on the clock of the "System" were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to the stock-gambling ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... alarmed, looked out of the window. His face became red with anger, and he said, "What did I know about the water-witch, and her abominable washing-day? Spiteful, mischievous hag!" ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman |
