"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 'vigor' which the united ministers commended as 'just,' made 'a discovery of the wicked instrument of the devil.' The culprit was evidently a wild Irishwoman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin, who made the complaint, 'had no proof that could have done her any hurt;' but the 'scandalous old hag,' whom some thought 'crazed in her intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strange answers, which were taken as confessions, sometimes, in excitement, using her native dialect. . . . It was plain the prisoner was a Roman Catholic; she had ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... 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; ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... The old hag laughed hoarsely to herself until the scraggy sinews of her withered neck stood out like whipcord. She was still chuckling and coughing when the merchant ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 it.—But ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... like of them to be getting twenty pounds! mightn't he as well have said twenty thousand? and tin pounds on Tim too! More power to you, Jonas Brown; tin pounds for a poor boy's warming his shins, and gagging over an owld hag's ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... incommoding clothes that rationalism ordains, I rejoice and gloat over the slavery of those who have failed to catch even glimpses of the loveliness of liberty, who are yet afeared of opinion—"that sour-breathed hag." How can a man with hoop-like collar, starched to board-like texture, cutting his jowl and sawing each side of his neck, be free? He may rejoice because he is a very lord among creation, and has trousers shortened by turning up the ninth part of a hair after London vogue, and may be proud ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... boys! there she stands—a 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 ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... dark lantern of the spirit, Which none see by but those who bear it, That makes them in the dark see visions And hag themselves with apparitions, Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt Of their own misery ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... of the Baboo's garden-house on the Durumtollah Road, a gray and withered hag, all crippled and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of her sex, and he had the exceedingly bad taste to array her in an old calico gown bought from an emigrant woman, instead of the neat and graceful tunic of whitened deerskin worn ordinarily by the squaws. The moving spirit of the establishment, in more senses than one, was a hideous old hag of eighty. Human imagination never conceived hobgoblin or witch more ugly than she. You could count all her ribs through the wrinkles of the leathery skin that covered them. Her withered face more resembled an old skull than the countenance of a living being, even to the hollow, darkened ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and counterfeiting a woman's voice, said, "Cannot you lend me a pair of scales? I am newly come from Persia, have brought five hundred pieces of gold with me, and would know if they are weight." "Good woman," answered the old hag, "you could not have applied to a fitter person: follow me, I will conduct you to my son, who changes money, and will weigh them himself to save you the trouble. Let us make haste, for fear he should go to his shop." My brother followed her to the house where she carried him at first, and the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... little hard luck story and knew what she'd always been up against, I didn't wonder that she stole or committed any crime. She had had a regular Cinderella stepmother who had licked her when she was a kid because she took food from the pantry when she was hungry. The old hag called it stealing and warned the school teacher, and the other kids got hold of it and of course you know what it does to any one to get a black eye. She had the name of a thief wished on her until she got to be one. She was expelled ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... said the prince; but with that the witch dragged it away again, and came back with an old, wrinkled, toothless hag, whose hands trembled with age. 'You can have no other princess,' said she. 'Will ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... 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
... laughed at me, and said, "That old hag ought to be hanged." I urged him to give his heart to God, and prayed with him, but to no effect. He was thrown from his cart, and killed the following Saturday, coming home ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... that I've come to make a fuss of you, you crafty old hag!" stormed Anders Olsen in his thin cracked voice. "No, I've come to fetch you, I have, and that at once. So you'd better come!" seizing ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had one warning just before he went up the postern stair that led to his Uncle Jasper's. The old hag who mixed the opium in the London garret where the choir master smoked the drug, had more than once tried to find out who her strange, gentlemanly visitor was. She had listened to his mutterings in his drunken slumber, and at length that day had followed him from ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... his room, where he dozed and woke and dozed again 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. He arose ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... with that old hag, the housekeeper, eh? Haven't you been telling tales, eh? Tell me, aren't you bringing all sorts of stories up against the defenceless girl? I suppose it's not your doing that she's been degraded from laundrymaid to washing dishes in the scullery? And it's not your doing ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... departed, followed by Loveday, leaving Aurelia standing in the middle of the hall, the old hag gazing on her with a malignant leer. "Ho! ho'! So that's the way! He has begun that work early, has he? What's your name, my lass? Oh, you need give yourself airs! I cry you mercy," and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... goose-girl, and through the prophetic gift possessed by poets he recognizes in her a rightly born princess for his people. By the power of his art he is enabled to put aside the threatening spells of the witch and compel the hag to deliver the maiden into his care. He persuades her to break the enchantment which had held her bound hitherto and defy the ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... know just as well as I do that it's a sure melting pot for tar!" exclaimed Larry, hoarsely. "Anybody with one eye could see that, because there's tar all over it. Guess they use it with some of their boats. And Phil, look at that old hag toting that awful bag on her head. What d'ye suppose is in that but geese feathers as old as the hills! Oh, murder! we're up against it good and hard. I can almost feel my wings beginning to sprout ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... de 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
... with a huge basket of clothes poised securely on her head, the driver of an ox-cart, who stopped his team while we sang "America," three women going to market, a party of daintily dressed, sweet-faced senoritas with their chaperone, a dirty, wild-looking old hag who almost frightened me, a young mother carrying a naked baby in her arms, and boys—well, it was no use to count them. What do you think? Are we not ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... to the name of Caponsacchi. His worst fears were thus confirmed. Even so, had he been admitted by Pompilia, weak from her recent sufferings, he might have paused in pity—by Pietro, he might have paused in contempt; but it was the hag Violante who opened to him: the cheat, the mock-mother, the source of all his wrongs. The impulse to stamp out that one detested life involved all three. And now he triumphs in the deed. He has cast a foul burden from his life. He can look his fellow-men in the face again. Far ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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. I can't fancy ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept murmuring to herself a Saxon rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance which her spindle was performing upon the floor. The hag raised her head as Rebecca entered, and scowled at the fair Jewess with the malignant envy with which old age and ugliness, when united with evil conditions, are apt to look upon ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... her fancy and prejudice, and I repeated it to Colonel Walton the next time I went to the hotel where he was then living—I have since learned, with a lady not his wife, though he was then three score and ten—and he cried, "That old hag! Good Lord! Don't they ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... honey." The first time I partook of this dainty I had unfortunately seen it in course of preparation, which somewhat marred the relish with which I might otherwise have eaten it. The confectioner was a toothless old hag, who mixed the ingredients in a wooden dish dirtier than anything I ever saw before, and filled with reindeer hairs, which, however, were not conspicuous when well mingled with the half-churned grass and moss. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... and I were not intended as companions through life, I snap my fingers at her and tell her that Brother Jonathan talks of adopting me, and that he won't have her of his household. "Go to London, you hag," says I, "where they say you're handsome and wholesome; don't grind your long teeth at me, or I'll read the Declaration of Independence to ye." So you see I make uncertain hopes fight certain fears, and borrow from the generous, good-natured Future the motives for content which ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the night-hag when, called In secret, riding through the air she comes Lured with the smell of infant blood to dance With ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... sea, his company being nine. Then he went upon an island, where he saw a withered old woman on her hands at the door of a house. "Whence is the hag?" asked Patrick; "great is her infirmity." A young man answered, and said: "She is a descendant of mine," said the young man; "if you could see the mother of this girl, O cleric! she is more infirm ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... color of it, as I have had already the honor to remark, and she swallowed the mixture with a gusto which was never equalled, except by my poor friend Dando apropos d'huitres. She consumed the first three platefuls with a fork and spoon, like a Christian; but as she warmed to her work, the old hag would throw away her silver implements, and dragging the dishes towards her, go to work with her hands, flip the rice into her mouth with her fingers, and stow away a quantity of eatables sufficient for a sepoy company. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cause 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 ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... 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 ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... 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 away ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... parcel. He obeyed! At the same instant the barbaric and repulsive creature's automobile, about as large as a railway carriage, drove up and forced my frail cab down the street. I had to wait, humiliated and helpless, the taximeter of my cab industriously adding penny to penny, while that offensive hag installed herself, with the help of the maid, the porter and two page-boys, in her enormous vehicle. I should not have minded had she been young and pretty. If she had been young and pretty she would have ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... continued, "don't you think this white satin frock that the Claude hag is going to make me might be my coming-out frock? It will be new for the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... offences. But there is one thing more that you must do in order to find peace. You couldn't find peace if you married Betty and left her in ignorance. You must tell Betty everything—everything that you have told me. Otherwise you would still be hag-ridden. If she learned the horror of the thing afterwards, what would be your position? Acquit your conscience now before God and a splendid woman, and I stake my faith in each that neither will ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... kept, it exhibited the 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
... up of his whole life. Time had to be found. The hours had to be packed closer to make room for her. He grasped after fresh opportunities to make money with a white-hot assiduity. He worked harder. For he was hag-ridden by his unfaithfulness. He drew up a remorseless programme of his days, and after that Francey might only walk home with him from the hospital. And there was an hour on Sunday evening when he was too tired ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... that such wickedness should be in the world (weeping bitterly). But she would never enter the chapel again, and that priest there; nor receive the rites from him. But this was not all; the dear sister must hear how he revenged himself upon her, because she interrupted his toying with the old hag. It was truth, all truth! She (Sidonia) grew so ill with fright and horror that she was unable to disrobe, and threw herself on the bed just as she was, but growing weaker and weaker hour by hour, sent for the priest at last, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... for our ease the raging floods restrain, And sink the mountain level to the plain. Discord, whom in a cavern under ground With massy fetters their late patriot bound; 540 Where her own flesh the furious hag might tear, And vent her curses to the vacant air; Where, that she never might be heard of more, He planted Loyalty to guard the door, For better purpose shall our chief release, Disguise her for a time, and call her Peace.[116] Lured by that ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... drama written very early). Lost Hope. The Deserted House. deg. The Tears of Heaven. Love and Sorrow. To a Lady Sleeping. Sonnet. (Could I outwear my present state of woe.) Sonnet. (Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon.) Sonnet. (Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good.) Sonnet. (The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain.) Love. Love and Death. . The Kraken. The Ballad of Oriana. . Circumstance. . English War Song. National Song. The Sleeping Beauty. . Dualisms. We are Free. The Sea-Fairies. deg. Sonnet ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... slowly, because Gerald walked slowly. A beautiful woman, or any woman not positively hag-like or venerable, who walks slowly in the streets of Paris becomes at once the cause of inconvenient desires, as representing the main objective on earth, always transcending in importance politics and affairs. Just as a true patriotic Englishman cannot be too ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... his wounds 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 ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... palace, his home; and he, too, was touched with a whip—the thrilling whip of pride. It lasted but a moment. His memory threw up a home for the friendless, and upon a background of hunger, squalor and wretchedness his fancy flashed the picture of an Italian hag, crooning ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... crammed full. Presently a head appeared on a pedestal and spoke in a subdued voice. All the others said it was a fraud, but I thought it wonderful. "Antoine" wanted to go beyond the barrier and touch it, which was mean of him, I think. Presently a villainous-looking old hag, who was exhibiting the creature, came over, and whispered in "Antoine's" ear. I only caught "cinq francs," but his face looked interested at once, and he and Jean disappeared behind the curtain and the head disappeared too, so we went outside, and bought ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... pictures which her prophetic vision had contemplated in the future, the old hag forced her way through the circle of negro women around, and rushed away through the field as fast as her feet could ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... very bandy, Mrs. Jiniwin," he says of his friend's legs, "we will confine ourselves to bandy. He is gone, my friends, where his legs would never be called in question." They go on to the discussion of his nose, and Mrs. Jiniwin inclines to the view that it is flat. "Aquiline, you hag! Aquiline," cries Mr. Quilp, pushing in his head and striking his nose with his fist. There is nothing better in the whole brutal exuberance of the character than that gesture with which Quilp punches ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... delicate lady—and such only, I was sure, could have left the foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had seen—could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to stare, and she would have had ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and cheating "cribbing." When we have been drunk we say we were "squiffy." As soon as we face the facts, we realize that what we call peccadilloes in ourselves are the black sins that have slain the innocents and have hag ridden humanity through all its history. That is the beginning of social vision. Personal repentance ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... hag he limpit, [moss] An' aye the tither shot he thumpit, Till coward Death behin' him jumpit Wi' deadly feide; [feud] Now he proclaims, wi' tout o' trumpet, [blast] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... 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 me down, while I, like a great fool, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of her diabolic nature, like a snake's head peeping with a hiss out of her bosom, at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken the trouble to ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... "You accursed hag," said the baronet, whose vexation at meeting her was for the moment beyond any superstitious impression which he felt, "what brought you here? What devil sent you across my path now? Who are you, or what are you, for you look like a libel ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... then came Covetise; can I him no descrive, So hungerly and hollow, so sternely he looked, He was bittle-browed and baberlipped also; With two bleared eyen as a blinde hag, And as a leathern purse lolled his cheekes, Well sider than his chin they shivered for cold: And as a bondman of his bacon his beard was bidrauled, With a hood on his head, and a lousy hat above. And in a tawny tabard,[1] of twelve winter age, Alle torn and baudy, and full of lice ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... times, said the old hag, the English occupied a spot in Tartary, where they lived sulkily by themselves, unknowing and unknown. By a great convulsion that took place in China, the inhabitants of that and the adjoining parts of Tartary were driven from their seats, and after various wanderings took up their ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... it that the word signifying "And I will be glorified," occurs in Hag. i. 8 without the letter which is the symbol for five, though it is sounded as if that letter was there? It indicates the absence of five things from the second Temple which were to be found in the first, (1.) The ark, i.e., the mercy-seat of the cherubim; (2.) the fire from ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... ix. Love, Pride and Forgetfulness x. Chorus 'The varied earth, the moving heaven' xi. Lost Hope xii. The Tears of Heaven xiii. Love and Sorrow xiv. To a Lady sleeping xv. Sonnet 'Could I outwear my present state of woe' xvi. Sonnet 'Though night hath climbed' xvii. Sonnet 'Shall the hag Evil die' xviii. Sonnet 'The pallid thunder stricken sigh for gain' xix. Love xx. English War Song xxi. National Song xxii. Dualisms xxiii. [Greek: ohi rheontes] xxiv. Song 'The lintwhite ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... out all alone. And spoil the whole evening—for us both. No, you don't. Remember—you are Rajputni: not to be hag-ridden by a mere chiragh and a thieving mugger. No more tears and terrors. Look me in the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... held her hand and said, 'Baby shall be taken care of.' She tried to thank me, and died soon after quite peacefully. Well, I went today and hunted up the poor little wretch. Found her in a miserable place, left in the care of an old hag who had shut her up alone to keep her out of the way, and there this mite was, huddled in a corner, crying 'Marmar, marmar!' fit to touch a heart of stone. I blew up at the woman and took the baby straightaway, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the stainless snows it grinned, A foul and withered shape, that cast Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind Went rattling through it as it passed; It filled the heart with a strange dread, Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound, And gibbered like the wandering ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... was dead she begins to develop what she had received from him through both experience and teaching along lines of her own. She had found a formula for the resolution of problems, both physical and mental, which had hag-ridden her for years. She had a natural mental keenness, a speculative mind, a practical shrewdness (the gift of her New England ancestors) and an ample field. The theology, the medical science and indeed the philosophy ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... appears in the opening—if woman she could be called. For it is a hag of most repulsive appearance; her face half hidden by a tangle of long hair, black, despite old age indicated by a skin shrivelled and wrinkled as that of a chameleon. Add to this a pair of dark grey eyes, deep sunken in their sockets, for all gleaming brilliantly, and ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... hag, I admit," goody Liu pursued with a laugh; "but when I was young, I too was pretty and fond of flowers and powder! But the best thing I can do now is to keep to such fineries as befit ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... fortune-tellers."—"And are all the children 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 ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... indeed, I may have my own troubles. God knows I have troubles enough. But I would not change places with you—no, not for all else that God or man could give me. Now what are you smiling at? Woman, do you mean to insult my misfortunes? I am brought low indeed, if I am to be smiled at by a hag in a desert—I who once—O! I see; you don't choose to yield me the small respect of ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... be a great Cross and a holy one that will turn off my charms," said the old hag, with a sneer, "whatever it may do against yours. But on the back of his hand,—that will be a mark to know him by,—there is pricked a bear,—a white bear that he slew." And she told the story of the fairy bear; which Torfrida duly stored up ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... ivory whiteness, with an expression resembling that of the hyena. This is considered beauty,—a fashion in full vogue among her countrywomen, who cultivate it with great care,—though to the eyes of the old sailor it rendered the hag all the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... "That old hag who came to-night and dared to show her filthy face here without her daughter—she told me of your talks and walks. The girl was ready to come. Who stopped her? Who turned her mind? Who ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... cried vehemently for Light, for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... that I dreamt that 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 ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... are very poorly provided, while the packs, for few have attained to the dignity of tin boxes, brought about by the hawkers, contain the most wretched assortment of goods imaginable. The moment, therefore, that the cargo of a vessel hag been purchased by the retail dealers, all that is really elegant or fashionable is eagerly purchased, and the rejected articles, even should they be equally excellent, when once consigned to the dingy precincts of a Bombay shop, lose all their lustre. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... inspires that dread? It is I! They seem to have discovered that all circumstances, all incidents wear a double face and that I am the malignant genius who can make which he pleases the true one—Yes! I am with them! I send the Incubus that hag-rides them in their dreams! They gasp ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... hag gone up into the room," cried the Hunter, "and she'll give the alarm. We must ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... other people, none of whom dared to look each other in the eyes! They must all be 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
... old woman. Mary Doul, blind Martin's blind wife, has a general likeness to some old witch out of a fairy tale, but she is far from being a witch; and Widow Quinn the incomparable might be compared, were she not too high-hearted, to the hag of "The Lout and ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... 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, searing the tender flesh with ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... making and her getting famous and proud through the length of the land and I mind well the cackle of a laugh she gave. 'The loveliest lace, is it? Now, isn't that the great wonder surely? The wizenedy, wrinkled old hag with the God-help-you face makes the loveliest lace—' Then she stopped short off and clapped a claw over her mouth and the scar on her pockmarked face was a pitiful ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... husbands. "I thought this a rather strange recommendation," he adds, "but it was evidently mentioned that she might find favor in my eyes." He found that the best way out of such a dilemma was to engage the first old hag that came along and leave it to her to ward off the others. Masculine coyness under such conditions has its risks. Johnston mentions the case of an Arab who, in the region of the Muzeguahs, scorned a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... "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 ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... 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 ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... 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
... 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 in the shutter. Living in a bed-gown. Imagine ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... 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 ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... stretch 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beard and less discretion, hearing this string of abuse, repaid the old woman in her own coin, saying, "Have you done, you grandmother of witches, you old hag, you child-strangler!" ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... works of thy hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy men appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the feast of unleavened bread, of weeks, and of tabernacles (hag ha-maccoth,— shabuoth,—sukkoth), and they shall not appear before me empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of Jehovah thy God, which He hath given thee" (ver. 13-17). As regards the essential nature of the two last-named feasts, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... that lasted one night, so nobody could sleep on our train, a riot at Evansville 'cause we took on a couple of female trapeze women that came from Honduras, via New Orleans, and a revival of religion, all in one bunch, and pa is beginning to get haggard, like a hag. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... Yon' ribauld nag of Aegypt] The word is in the old edition ribaudred, which I do not understand, but mention it, in hopes others may raise some happy conjecture. [Tyrwhitt: hag] The brieze, or oestrum, the fly that stings cattle, proves that nag is the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... conception until it becomes symbolical of the lowest and most venal form of love? In the Naples version Amor, a fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides; in the Madrid and subsequent interpretations of the legend, a grasping hag, the attendant of Danae, holds out a cloth, eager to catch her share of the golden rain. In the St. Petersburg version, which cannot be accounted more than an atelier piece, there is, with some slight yet appreciable variations, a substantial agreement ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... remembered 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 ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... acquaintance would have kissed her; others would have proved clumsy and abashed, but none could have passed through the test she offered with both denial and calm.... She wanted the interest of Bedient, because the other women fancied him; she wanted to show them and "that hag, Kate Wilkes," what a man desires in a woman; and now a third reason evolved. Bedient had proved to her something of a challenging sensation. He was altogether too calm to be inexperienced. Every instinct had unerringly informed her of his bounteous ardor, yet he had refrained. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... other classes of subordinate spirits, acknowledged by the nations of the north. The abstraction of children, for example, the well known practice of the modern Fairy, seems, by the ancient Gothic nations, to have rather been ascribed to a species of night-mare, or hag, than to the berg-elfen, or duergar. In the ancient legend of St Margaret, of which there is a Saxo-Norman copy, in Hickes' Thesaurus Linguar. Septen. and one, more modern, in the Auchinleck MSS., that lady encounters a fiend, whose profession it was, among other malicious tricks, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the fittings of the door; down she dragged him to the river which flowed through the farm, and Grettir, exhausted with the struggle, was well-nigh at the limit of his endurance. Making one last great effort, he managed to draw his short sword and strike off the hag's arm at the shoulder; then was he free, and she fell into the gulf and was carried down the rapids. This, at least, was Grettir's story; but the men of the neighbourhood say that day dawned on them while they were still wrestling, ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... more than a few weeks old, struggled a dog, with whom she was harnessed to the cart. Poor 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... the dress up hastily, she hurried to offer it for sale to the old woman who had already bought her ear-rings, and then her watch. The fearful old hag seemed to be overcome with surprise when she saw this marvel ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... of a murrain—if disease fastened upon his limbs, or death entered suddenly and snatched a beloved face from his hearth—they were not visitations of Providence, but the works of some neighbouring hag, whose wretchedness or insanity caused the ignorant to raise their finger and point at her as a witch. The word was upon every body's tongue. France, Italy, Germany, England, Scotland, and the far north successively ran mad upon this subject, and for a long series of years furnished their tribunals ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 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, He spoke, and ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... and gray, Watch him as he tries to play; No, he doesn't know the way— He began to learn too late. She's a grim old hag, is Fate, For she let him have his pile, Smiling to herself the while, Knowing what the cost would be, When he'd found the Golden Key. Multimillionaire is he, Many times more rich than we; But at that I wouldn't trade With the bargain that he made. Came here many years ago, Not a person ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hag!" the man puffed. "Let me at yon slave. Out!" He struck at Deborah with a short mace but Kenkenes caught his arm and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... mankind, The thickening darkness surged, and close at hand Those first fierce cloudy fringes of the storm, The Armada sails, gathered their might; and Spain Crouched close behind them with her screaming fires And steaming shambles, Spain, the hell-hag, crouched, Still grasping with red hand the cross of Christ By its great hilt, pointing it like a dagger, Spear-head of the ultimate darkness, at the throat Of England. Under Philip's feet at last Writhed all ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... disposal and may the Messiah never disappoint thy dealings!" Then she donned a gown of fine white wool and rubbed her forehead, till she made a great mark as of a scar and anointed it with an ointment of her own fashion, so that it shone with prodigious sheen. Now the old hag was lean bodied and hollow eyed, and she bound her legs tightly round with cords[FN412] just above her feet, till she drew near the Moslem camp, when she unwound them, leaving their marks deeply embedded in her ankles. Then she anointed the wheels with dragon's blood ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 restore ...
— Faust • Goethe
... over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and answered curtly that Ingeborg had a heart of gold. He laughed boisterously, and said one could not raise anything on that; adding, with an air of authority, that he believed I spoke the truth, for it was not likely the hag would have kept anything from her oldest boarder. 'I dare say the real truth is,' he wound up, 'that you are hard up, like me, and want to ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... hag!" he exclaimed, grinding his teeth, "then I will make you answer!" With these words he drew a pistol from his pocket. At the sight of the pistol, the Countess for the second time exhibited strong emotions. She shook her head, and raised her hands as if to protect herself from ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... not move he gave it a kick and his leg was caught in the birdlime; then he said, "Let me go, you old hag, or I will give you a slap." Then he gave it a slap and his front paw was stuck fast; then he slapped at it with his other paw and that stuck; then he tried to bite the figure and his jaws got caught also; and when he was thus helpless the villagers came out and beat him to death and that ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... witnessed all this, my heart sickened, and I turned with loathing from the disgusting spectacle. Yet the poor negress was wanted only for a domestic slave, and would, probably, be kindly treated, when once the property of the old hag, who, I believe, purchased her at last for 1000 piastres, or fifty dollars. Indeed the girl appeared to be conscious that the change would be advantageous to her, from the meekness with which she bore the treatment of her persecutors. Proceeding a little further ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... I know that very well. I ought to be a Dido and Niobe and Cassandra rolled into one. I'm a brute not to be dead or look a hag. I've gone through horrors, and the secrets I know could put dozens of people in prison, if not electrocute them. But you see I'm not the right type of person for the kind of life I've had, as I ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... called Sapeur, because he had served in Africa in his youth, entertained other aversions. He said, with a roguish air: "She is an old hag who has lived ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... us as American freemen to become free men in every sense the word implies, and exercise both our franchise and our brains in relegating this "Scarlet-Robed Hag of Rome" to ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... "with so much sense and courage as you possess that you will suffer this old hag to frighten you thus? You can have nothing to fear: you are the Dauphine, the first person in the kingdom; no one can do you any mischief without the most serious cause. When, therefore, they threaten you, answer boldly: 'I do not fear pour menaces; Madame de Maintenon is too much ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... that terror and tragedy should haunt the edifice, one saw, on entering,—either at the main door or in the corridor,—a drunken, delirious hag who begged alms and spat insults at everybody. They called her Death. She must have been very old, or at least appeared so. Her gaze was wandering, her look diffident, her face purulent with scabs; one of her lower eyelids, drawn in as the result of some ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... father's death, but each lover is unconscious of the other's name. The gipsy Sizyga alone, who had been betrayed in her youth by Frauenlob's father, recognizes the young knight, and though he has only just saved the old hag from the people's fury, she wishes to avenge her wrongs on him. To this end she betrays the secret of Frauenlob's birth to Hildegund's suitor, Servazio di Bologna, who is highly jealous of this new rival, and determines to lay hands on him, as soon as he enters the gates of ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley |
