"Witchcraft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... near her face. Thrice o'er her brow she drew her languid hand, That, if it were a dream, she might dispel The gay enchantment; and thrice murmured o'er The spells learned of her nurse in infancy, Which would all witchcraft render innocent; But that great cavern of the northern world Was not by nurse's spells to be dissolved, Growing more wond'rous, ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... the source of earthly misery, which derived—at least in one case—'femina' from 'fe' faith, and 'minus' less, because women had less faith than men; which represented them as of more violent and unbridled animal passions; which explained learnedly why they were more tempted than men to heresy and witchcraft, and more subject (those especially who had beautiful hair) to the attacks of demons; and, in a word, regarded them as a necessary evil, to be tolerated, despised, repressed, and if possible shut up ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... to publish family secrets, also to quarrel, to strike, to take revenge, to do evil, to steal, to tell lies, to deceive, to blaspheme; carelessness about the children, intemperance, luxury, excessive prodigality, drunkenness, uncleanness, immodesty, application to magic and witchcraft, impiety, with several other causes. By legitimate causes we do not here mean judicial causes, but such as are legitimate in regard to the other married partner; separation from the house also is seldom ordained ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... skill as far as simples were concerned. But it was their practice to profess to cure diseases, rather by jugglery and witchcraft, than by those means which were simple and near at hand. Could they be brought to look upon a disease as purely natural, which they cannot, and treat it accordingly, their materia medica would possess wonderful efficacy in their hands. The great use which they make of their simples is for the cure ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... pride; That oftener does her giddy fancies change, Than glittering dew-drops in the sun do colours— Now, shame upon it! was our reason given For such a use; to be thus puff'd about? Sore there is something more than witchcraft in them, That masters ev'n the wisest ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... prison by an inquisitor; and on May 24, the Thursday after Pentecost, upon a scaffold conspicuously placed in the Cemetery of St. Ouen, she publicly recanted, abjuring her "heresies" and asking the Church's pardon for her "witchcraft." We may be sure that the Church dignitaries would not knowingly have made such public display of a counterfeit Jeanne; nor could they well have been deceived themselves under such circumstances. It ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... two ways of it, Simon," said the minister. "Either ye are the victim of witchcraft, or ye are a self-deluded man. If the former (whilk I am loth to believe), then it behoves ye to watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation. If the latter, then ye maun put a strict watch over a vagrant fancy, and ye'll be quit o' ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... over an area of half an acre—spouts of yellowish flame burning like giant torches ten or fifteen feet in the air. And between them he very soon made out great bustle and activity. Many figures were moving about. They looked like dwarfs at first, gnomes at play in a little world made out of witchcraft. But Bateese was sending the canoe nearer with powerful strokes, and the figures grew taller, and the spouts of flame higher. Then he knew what was happening. The Boulain men were taking advantage of the cool hours of the night ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... he. "There is therein writ a Scripture, that shall bear you safe through all perils of journeying, and an hair of a she-bear, that is good against witchcraft; and the carnelian stone appeaseth anger. Trust me, it shall do you no harm ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... John V. to his son Peter, who resided here and rebuilt the castle. When attacked by his mortal illness, the physicians attributed his malady to witchcraft, and declared it could only be remedied by counter-spells. The Prince refused to have recourse to such means, saying, "I had rather die by the will of God, than live by the will of the Devil."—"J'aime mieux mourir de par Dieu, que de vivre de par ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... the water. Owing to this, water, and mercury even, may be frozen in a red-hot vessel if the experiment is managed cleverly. A little more than a couple of centuries ago, this would have been thought witchcraft." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... identify herself. "Is it I?" she said. "Am I, indeed, myself? Am I awake? I know that I am lady of honor to the Duchess Amelia, and that upon the upper story is my room. Do not be foolish, and imagine that witchcraft comes to pass; the door is there, and it can be found." Thusnelda renewed her search with out-spread arms and wide-spread fingers, feeling first this side of the wall and ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... weird composition the wretched abbess is described as an alchemist as well as a sorceress, and she descends to the depths of the lowest and most revolting witchcraft. She practises shape-shifting and similar arts. She has power over natural forces, and knows the past, the present, and the things to be. She possesses sufficient Druidic knowledge to permit her to gather the greatly prized serpent's egg, to acquire which was the grand aim of the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... "What witchcraft is this!" cried the King, spurring his steed cruelly. But the animal, like the dogs, obeyed the Hermit's will rather than ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... yeast. If you walk through Harvard, you will be wise; if you stand on Bunker Hill, treason flees your soul forever; and if you once gaze upon the Common, you are safe from the heresy of the Quaker and the sin of witchcraft." ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... fair garden Had with all poison'd herbs of Thessaly At first been planted; made a nursery For witchcraft, rather than a burial ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... and curious, and occasionally we had a real piece of dramatic "fat," in the shape of charges of witchcraft. Assaults or threatening language "likely to cause breaches of the Peace" were also regarded as highly diverting. Charges of witchcraft were usually levelled by one old lady against another. One might hear accounts of how intrepid men and women nailed down the footsteps ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... outright at that. His mood was growing exultant, buoyant, and joyous, and this was the first expression of it. "Bewitched her? You're determined never to lack for a charge. First 'twas piracy, then abduction and murder, and now 'tis witchcraft!" ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Fitz-James. Thus watch I o'er insulted laws, Thus learn to right the injured cause.' Then, in a tone apart and low,— 'Ah, little traitress! none must know What idle dream, what lighter thought What vanity full dearly bought, Joined to thine eye's dark witchcraft, drew My spell-bound steps to Benvenue In dangerous hour, and all but gave Thy Monarch's life to mountain glaive!' Aloud he spoke: 'Thou still cost hold That little talisman of gold, Pledge of my faith, Fitz-James's ring,— What seeks fair Ellen of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... lived! The vast twilight seemed to take the impress of her image like wax. What did Seraphina think of me? I knew nothing of her but her features, and it was enough. Strange, this power of a woman's face upon a man's heart—this mastery, potent as witchcraft and mysterious like a miracle. I should have to go and tell her. I did not suppose she could have understood all of Sebright's argumentation. Therefore, it was for me to explain to what a pretty pass I ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... own hand; and while another of the Tories was going to draw the trigger of his gun to shoot him, his hand was cut off by one of the parson's servants.' Here, again, is a singular announcement to be published 'by authority.' 'A warm report having been spred about of some unusual effects of witchcraft in the province of Daleicarly, near the best copper-mines in Suedeland, it is said several persons are sent to make an enquiry in to the matter of fact, with power to proceed to the punishment of such persons as shall be ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... unfavourable to the intentions of the court. Joan Bocher was burnt under the common law, for her opinions were condemned by all parties in the church, and were looked upon in the same light as witchcraft, or any other profession definitely devilish. But it was difficult to treat as heresy, under the common law, a form of belief which had so recently been sanctioned by act ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... irresistible tendency to go on with it; but whether this resulted from a conviction that he was exercising some unknown influence, or from mere experimental curiosity, he would not undertake to say—"this only was the witchcraft ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... was when slaves were exported like cattle from the British Coast and exposed for sale in the Roman market. These men and women who were thus sold were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, debt, blasphemy or theft. Or else they were prisoners taken in war—they had forfeited their right to freedom, and we sold them. We said they were incapable of self-government and so must be looked after. Later we quit selling ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... brown stones of the edifice, and make the horror pleasing! That sound so far below, is the sound of a stream the eye cannot reach—of a waterfall echoing for ever among the black rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history of the old Castle—but that little is of war, and witchcraft, and imprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals him—he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at midday. There and then it was that we first saw a Starling. We heard something wild and wonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge of the battlements, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... customs, traditions, and language has been preserved. It looks like a piece of England of the Middle Ages, left behind on the march. Witches still hold their sway on Dartmoor, where there exist no less than three distinct kinds— white, black, and grey,*[9]—and there are still professors of witchcraft, male as well as female, in ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... up last of all, and the witnesses would all be examined before he himself was called to make his defence. He was nervous and anxious. Even while he was sitting there, Giovanni might be finding out some new accusation against him or the officer of archers might be accusing him of witchcraft and of having a compact with the devil himself. He was innocent, but he had broken the law, and no doubt many an innocent man had sat on that same bench before him, who had never again returned to his home. It was not strange that his lips should be parched, and that ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... not the uses hypocritically vaunted by theatrical devotion which affronts the majesty of God, that ever and in all things loves Truth—prefers sincerity that is erring to piety that cants. Rebellion which is the sin of witchcraft is more pardonable in His sight than speechifying resignation, listening with complacency to its own self-conquests. Show always as much neighbourhood as thou canst to grief that abases itself, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... far-reaching consequences, was entirely undifferentiated from any other powerful instinct. Every woman of the tribe belonged to every male who happened to desire her. As is still the case with the aborigines of Central and Northern Australia, the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth were attributed to witchcraft.[1] The concept of father had not yet been formed; the family congregated round the mother and saw in her its natural chief; gynecocracy was the prevailing form of government. In early historical and pre-classical times, promiscuity was systematised by religion in India and the countries ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... common fault of those who think they have more self-sufficiency than the vulgar. So was I formerly minded; and if I heard anybody speak either of ghosts coming back, or of the prophecy of coming things, of spells, of witchcraft, or of any other ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... mystery, the first fierce passion of an uncommonly hard-fisted youth. To this day it persists the only glamour between the covers of our geography. For more than fifty years its only name has been a witchcraft, and its spell is stronger now than ever, as shall be coolly demonstrated. This has meant something in the psychology of so unfanciful a race. The flowering of imagination is no trivial incident, whether in one farm boy's life ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... such stories as these, Bernadette often found it difficult to get to sleep; and this was especially the case on the evenings when the books were left aside, and some person of the company related a tale of witchcraft. The girl was very superstitious, and after sundown could never be prevailed upon to pass near a tower in the vicinity, which was said to be haunted by the fiend. For that matter, all the folks of the region were superstitious, devout, and simple-minded, the whole countryside ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... circumstances Stalky and Beetle would have fallen upon him, for that song was barred utterly—anathema—the sin of witchcraft. But seeing what he had wrought, they danced round him in silence, waiting till it pleased ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Without jostling or crowding they pass side by side, Through a wonderful wicket, not half an inch wide; Then I lodge them at ease in a very large store, Of no breadth or length, with a thousand things more. All this I can do without witchcraft or charm, Though sometimes they say, I bewitch and do harm; Though cold, I inflame; and though quiet, invade: And nothing can shield from my spell but a shade. A thief that has robb'd you, or done you disgrace, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish? Contemplation Chelas and Lay Chelas Ancient Opinions upon Psychic Bodies The Nilgiri Sannyasis Witchcraft on the Nilgiris Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes Mahatmas and Chelas The Brahmanical Thread Reading in a Sealed Envelope The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac The Sishal and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... horrid tusks, a wild and untame'd boar. But virtue prepares its possessor for the skies. Upon the upright and the good, attendant angels wait. With heavenly spirits they converse. On them the dark machinations of witchcraft, and the sullen spirits of darkness have no power. Even the outward form is impressed with a beam of celestial lustre. By slow, but never ceasing steps, they tread the path of immortality and honour. Then, mortals, love, support, and ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... things vncleane. And to bee short, they think that all things are to be purged by fire. Therefore, when any ambassadours, princes, or other personages whatsoeuer come vnto them, they and their giftes must passe betweene two fires to be purified, lest peraduenture they haue practised some witchcraft, or haue brought some poyson ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... is that of a chant sung by an old woman to incite the men to avenge the death of a young man who died from a natural cause, but whose death she attributed to witchcraft and sorcery; the natives, who listened to her attentively, called her chanting goranween, or abusing. She stood with her legs wide apart, waving her wanna, or long digging stick in the air, and rocking ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... fire to confirm this," was derived from this custom of our rude ancestors. Challenging the accuser to single combat, when frequently the stoutest champion was allowed to supply their place; swallowing a morsel of consecrated bread; sinking or swimming in a river for witchcraft; or weighing a witch; stretching out the arms before the cross, till the champion soonest wearied dropped his arms, and lost his estate, which was decided by this very short chancery suit, called the judicium crucis. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... some ingenious Saracen who certainly could have heard nothing about the Abbott of Hirschau and his striking bells. Indeed, when one considers the superstition of the age, we cannot but grant it was almost fortunate a clock such as ours was not then invented, for people were great believers in witchcraft and were liable to attribute to evil spirits anything they did not ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in their incantations, yet, as Aubrey says, it 'hinders witches from their will,' a circumstance to which Drayton further refers when he speaks of the vervain as ''gainst witchcraft much avayling.'" Now we understand why the children of Shakespeare's time hung vervain and dill with a horseshoe over ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... he said, "that is enough to cast you. None who was a Christian man would have such a thing. Say paternoster." [This seems to have been one of the tests in trials for witchcraft.] ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... Charles was justly deemed an age of high civilization, it was also one of extreme credulity. Unbelief in religion went hand in hand with blind faith in astrology and witchcraft; in omens, divinations, and prophecies: neither let us too strongly despise, in these their foibles, our ancestors. They had many excuses for their superstitions; and for their fears, false as their ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... a singular incident about this Doctor Mather, as follows: "How exceedingly strange that such a work as this should have been written by the man who, in 1692, at Salem, when nineteen people were hanged and one was pressed to death for witchcraft, appeared among the crowd, openly exulting in the spectacle! Probably his zeal against the witches was as much the offspring of his benevolence as his 'Essays to do Good.' Concede his theory of witches, and it had been cruelty to man not to hang them. Were ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... visible substance to his numerous ghosts, he merely conformed himself to the state of knowledge in his day, when Demonology was sanctioned by royal authority, and when the calendars at the assizes were filled with victims of superstition, under charges of witchcraft! It is, however, time that we banish such credulity from the minds even of the lowest vulgar, as disgraceful to ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... habits, the manners,' etc. 8. 'If it shall give satisfaction to those who have(,) in any way(,) befriended it, the author will feel,' etc. 9. 'Formed(,) or consisting of(,) clay.' 10. 'The subject [witchcraft] grew interesting; and(,) to examine Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Proctor, the deputy-governor(,) and five other magistrates(,) went to Salem.' 11. 'The Lusitanians(,) who had not left their home(,) rose as a man,' etc. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... she had been speaking, I had been weighing her story in my mind. I had hitherto put cases of witchcraft on one side, as mere superstitions; and my uncle and I had had many an argument, he supporting himself by the opinion of his good friend Sir Matthew Hale. Yet this sounded like the tale of one bewitched; or was it merely the effect of a life of extreme seclusion telling on the nerves of ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... element contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the later peoples of the West. mediaeval magic and witchcraft were, in large part, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... spirits impelled by witches. Thus the savage holds that, violence apart and the action of witches apart, man would even now be immortal. 'There are rude races of Australia and South America,' writes Dr. Tylor, {178} 'whose intense belief in witchcraft has led them to declare that if men were never bewitched, and never killed by violence, they would never die at all. Like the Australians, the Africans will inquire of their dead "what sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts."' 'The natives,' says Sir George Grey, speaking of the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... for the hunchback, he was broken on the wheel, being condemned on his own confession. It does not appear that he was put to the torture to make him confess. If this had been done his admissions would, of course, have been as valueless as those of the victims in trials for witchcraft. ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... the region where the famous witchcraft delusion took its rise; but reminiscences of this cruel drama are cut short by the abrupt transition to the closely-built streets of Salem, where our friends soon find themselves moving on through Essex Street, passing the East India Marine ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... wills full of entertaining legacies to people dead hundreds of years ago; they found excommunications; they found indulgences to men for relieving the poor, repairing roads, and building bridges, long before there was any poor law, or any county council; they found trials for heresy and witchcraft; they found accounts of miracles worked at the tombs of saints and even of some quite unsaintly people, such as Thomas of Lancaster, and Edward II, and Simon de Montfort; they found lists of travelling expenses when the bishops rode round their dioceses; in one they even found a ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the early days of the 17th century; a ruffling young theologue new to the city; a beautiful and innocent girl, suspected of witchcraft; a crafty scholar and metaphysician seeking to give over the city into the hands of the Savoyards; a stern and powerful syndic whom the scholar beguiles to betray his office by promises of an elixir which shall save him from his fatal illness; a brutal ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Goody Martin lived more than two hundred years ago, and the cellar of her house was still to be seen when, in 1857, Whittier first told the story of "The Witch's Daughter," the poem now known as "Mabel Martin." She was the only woman who suffered death on a charge of witchcraft on the north side of the Merrimac. One other aged woman in this village was imprisoned, and would have been put to death, but for the timely collapse of the persecution. She was the wife of Judge Bradbury, and lived on the ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... that he intended the booty for a sacrifice to Jehovah. His statement, however, makes no impression. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams: behold, rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, He also hath rejected thee." The king acknowledges his guilt, and tries to pacify Samuel; but the latter turns from him in anger, and when Saul lays hold ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Bombay; long warps from Russia, short ones from Buenos Ayres; little Spanish fleeces, and our own Westmoreland and Cumberland skins, that beat every thing in the world for size. And then to see them turned into cloth as fast as steam can do it! My word, squire, there never was magic or witchcraft like the steam and metal ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Reverend Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, burned publicly in the college yard. But the pity of it is that the layman had not cried out earlier and louder, and saved the community from the horror of those judicial murders for witchcraft, the blame of which was so largely attributable to ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... privileges, and that even the most despicable creatures alive may find some pleasures. Now observe this comment; who are the most despicable creatures? Certainly, old women. What pleasure can an old woman take? Only witchcraft. I think this argument as clear as any of the devout Bishop of Cloyne's metaphysics: this being decided in a full congregation of saints, only such atheists as you and Lady Fanny can deny it. I own all the facts, as many witches have done before me, and go every night in a public manner ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... days witchcraft was implicitly believed in, so, when they saw the old creature hobble towards them, they experienced feelings of alarm that had never yet affected their manly bosoms in danger or in war. Their faces paled a little, but their courage stood the test, for ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... not uncommon in those days, is one which we find it difficult to realise at the present time. His mother, Catherine Kepler, had attained undesirable notoriety by the suspicion that she was guilty of witchcraft. Years were spent in legal investigations, and it was only after unceasing exertions on the part of the astronomer for upwards of a twelvemonth that he was finally able to procure her acquittal ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... elastic or pliant, magnetic or non-magnetic, more or less conductive to electricity, by slight changes of composition or mere differences of treatment. No wonder that the medieval mind ascribed these mysterious transformations to witchcraft. But the modern micrometallurgist, by etching the surface of steel and photographing it, shows it up as composite as a block of granite. He is then able to pick out its component minerals, ferrite, austenite, martensite, pearlite, graphite, cementite, and to show how their abundance, shape ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... late in a morning. She regarded early rising as a virtue on a par with faith and charity; while to appear at the breakfast-table after the breakfast itself had already appeared thereon was, in her eyes, as the sin of witchcraft. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... be talking about him. While he had come to a considerable revision of his original opinion about the culture-level of these people, it was not impossible that they might suspect him of having caused the whole thing by witchcraft; at any moment, they might fall upon him and put him to death. In any case, there was no longer any use in his staying here, and it might be wise ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... reflected, and I might learn perhaps something of value. So very carefully I repeated a tale I said I had heard at Durban of a great wizard somewhere in the Berg, and asked if any one knew of it. They shook their heads. The natives had given up witchcraft and big medicine, they said, and were more afraid of a parson or a policeman than any witch-doctor. Then they were starting on reminiscences, when old Coetzee, who was deaf, broke in and asked to ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it's witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the party were rescued except Rebecca, who was carried off by Bois-Guilbert and accused of witchcraft. You will have to read the novel, Ivanhoe, to learn of the further adventures of her, Rowena, the Black Knight, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... leaves a sting, May be by man employ'd on one, whose trust He wins, or on another who withholds Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... hereby declare, Urbain Grandier duly accused and convicted of the crimes of magic and witchcraft, and of causing the persons of certain Ursuline nuns of this town and of other females to become possessed of evil spirits, wherefrom other crimes and offences have resulted. By way of reparation therefor, we have sentenced, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... best of two great countries have been pitted against each other—yet the second-hand impression of Borrow's description leaves a more vivid remembrance upon my mind than any of them. This is the real witchcraft of letters. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... acknowledgment of attendant miracles, wrought in physical nature by an intervention of God. Such a contention, however, is as futile and desperate as was John Wesley's declaration, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible." Such mischievous fallacies succeed only in blinding many a mind to the real issue which the moral and spiritual Revelation of Jesus makes with men of the twentieth century. It is these fallacies, and not their critics, ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... circumscribed. We of this day may be disposed possibly to think such opinions too absurd to have been ever seriously entertained. I am not bound to contend for the credibility of the opinions. They were at least as reasonable as the belief in witchcraft. They were opinions in which the Jews of that age had from their infancy been instructed; and those who cannot see enough in the force of this reason to account for their conduct towards our Saviour, do not sufficiently consider how such opinions may sometimes ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... witchcraft in old Connecticut has never been told. It has been hidden in the ancient records and in manuscripts in private collections, and those most conversant with the facts have not made them known, for one reason or another. It ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... the house and her daughter had similar bags attached to their necks, containing charms, which, they said, prevented the witches having power to harm them. The belief in witchcraft is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of the Alemtejo, and I believe of other provinces of Portugal. This is one of the relies of the monkish system, the aim of which, in all countries where it has existed, seems to have been to beset the minds of the people, that they might be more easily ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... oh, what witchcraft of a stronger kind, Or cause too deep for human search to find, Makes earth-born weeds imperial man enslave,— Not little souls, but ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... verily you look as if you were troubled; and I beleeve you have the feeling of a first lying-in through all your joints. Well Cousin, saies the t'other, it seems that you are deeply studied in the Art of Witchcraft, for I fear its too true. I went from home on purpose to take my pleasure for three weeks or a month, that I might store my self with fresh provisions, and sing a sweet ditty in commendations of my Betty. Ho, Ho, saith Master ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... excited a murmur of surprise, and the younger knights told each other with their eyes, in silent correspondence, that Brian's best apology was in the power of her real charms, rather than of her imaginary witchcraft. But Higg, the son of Snell, felt most deeply the effect produced by the sight of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... intellectual faculties sometimes derive from mocking and drawing down to their own level the spiritual powers, the intuitive powers, which are higher than they, higher, yet less capable of justification or verification by the common tests of sense and understanding. The witchcraft of the brain degrades the god ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... whether or not it came off those smaller lakes I had seen on the road the day before I crossed the river; but no one would listen to my project. They all said I must have the king's sanction first, else people, from not knowing my object, would accuse me of practising witchcraft, and would tell their king so. They still all maintained that the river did come out of the lake, and said, if I liked to ask the king's leave to visit the spot, then they would go and show it me. I gave way, thinking it prudent ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... chanced, however, Mahometan faith in the miraculous took another turn; for the energetic defenders of the post had repaired the damage by the end of the month; and the enemy, finding no signs of the earthquake when they invested the place, ascribed the supposed immunity of Jellalabad to English witchcraft. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... one more blithe than the lean Prince de Gatinais. The latest gossip of Versailles was delivered, with discreet emendations; he laughed gayly; and he ate with an appetite. There was a blight among the cattle hereabouts? How deplorable! witchcraft, beyond doubt. And Louis passed as a piano-tuner?—because there were no pianos in Manneville. Excellent! he had always given Louis credit for a surpassing cleverness; now it was demonstrated. In fine, the Prince de Gatinais became so jovial ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... critical, attentive, self-controlled. When a covered, leaden day shuts the sun out, and the meaning of the place in, hills and city and human life, one might fancy, utter the old answer of the woman accused of witchcraft:—"While I hold my thought, it is my own; when I speak it, it is my master." Out in the near hills the quietude deepens, loosening and falling back out of the rigid reserve of the city into the unconscious silence of a fresh Nature: no solitudes near a large town are so solitary as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Divinity, and at another time at Metz, where he resided some time and took part in the government of the city. There, in 1521, he was bereaved of his beautiful and noble wife. There too we read of his charitable act of saving from death a poor woman who was accused of witchcraft. Then he became involved in controversy, combating the idea that St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, had three husbands, and in consequence of the hostility raised by his opinions he was compelled to leave the city. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... of the party had spoken, but she was conscious of the fact that by virtue of the strange witchcraft which became hers on such nights she held them all ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... and their religious superstitions. It was not till the 17th century that paganism was even nominally abolished in some parts, and there is probably no district in Europe where the popular Christianity has assimilated more from earlier creeds. Witchcraft and the influence of fairies are still often believed in. The costume of both sexes is very peculiar both in cut and colour, but varies considerably in different districts. Bright red, violet and blue are much used, not only by the women, but in the coats and waistcoats ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... not be indifferent to the reader to know, that the Highland cattle are peculiarly liable to be taken, or infected, by spells and witchcraft, which judicious people guard against by knitting knots of peculiar complexity on the tuft of hair which terminates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... which is said to exist all the way between Cockhoolet Castle and Edinburgh—the private telegraph of those days, when wires in the air or under the sea by which to send messages would have cost the inventors their lives as guilty of witchcraft. While shaking hands with this old woman and speaking to her, you lost sight of her and the present time and felt the air of the sixteenth century blow in your face. Mary came up before you in moving ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... you have faith in witchcraft?" he ejaculated, incredulously. "Why, girl, that's positively against ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the man once more saw this he said to himself, 'What a bad business this is! Can they all have been so heavy-hearted that they have all three hanged themselves? No, I can't believe that it is anything but witchcraft! But I will know the truth,' he said; 'if the two others are still hanging there it is true but if they are not it's nothing ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... stared upon the strange boy, and the boy stared back at him. And then the warder crossed himself. "'Tis some witchcraft," he muttered. "Here cometh the young lord, and all the time I know that the young lord ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... Kundry is devoted utterly to her task of winning Parsifal. Into this she throws all the intensity of her wild and desperate nature; but in turn she is strangely affected by the spiritual atmosphere of the "guileless one"—a feeling comes over her, in the midst of her witchcraft passion, that he is in some way to be her savior too; yet, womanlike, she conceives of her salvation as possible only in union with him. Yet was this the very crime to which Klingsor would drive her for the ruin of Parsifal. Strange confusion of thought, ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... music of Stephen on his surging and uneasy throne, as he was shifted from one bearer to another when each in turn grew tired of his weight. Just, however, as they were nearing their own neighbourhood, a counter cry broke out, "Witchcraft! His arrows are bewitched by the old Spanish sorcerer! Down with Dragons and Wizards!" And a handful of mud came full in the face of the enthroned lad, aimed no doubt by George Bates. There was a yell and rush of rage, but the enemy was in numbers too ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... attempted to prove that this country was peopled from the moon—or that the first inhabitants floated hither on islands of ice, as white bears cruise about the northern oceans—or that they were conveyed hither by balloons, as modern aeronauts pass from Dover to Calais—or by witchcraft, as Simon Magus posted among the stars—or after the manner of the renowned Scythian Abaris, who, like the New England witches on full-blooded broomsticks, made most unheard-of journeys on the back of a golden arrow, given him by ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... him that air weighed around 900 times less than an identical volume of the purest water, and 19,000 times less than a gold ducat. The little dwarf from Saturn, surprised at their responses, was tempted to accuse of witchcraft the same people he had refused ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... your relative?" I said to my companion. "Where does he live? what is his business? There is some witchcraft about this; he cannot be a man like other men: tell me ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... plantations there were some slaves who did not wish to work, consequently, for this, or similar reasons, hid themselves in the woods.] They smuggled food to their hiding place by night, and remained away [HW: lost] in some instances, many months. Their belief in witchcraft caused them to resort to most ridiculous means of avoiding discovery. Phil told the story of a man who visited a conjurer to obtain a "hand" for which he paid fifty dollars in gold. The symbol was a hickory stick which he used ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... their juggling and superstitious belief, From it the medicine men obtain their supernatural powers, and a great part of their religion springs from this god." [258] Brinton also says of this large Indian nation, "that Muktahe, spirit of water, is the master of dreams and witchcraft, is the belief of the Dakotahs." [259] We know that the Dakotahs worshipped the moon, and therefore see no difficulty in identifying that divinity with their god of dreams and water. "In the legend of the Muyscas it is Chia, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... of the sufferer, and stuck needles into it; and such was the power of the witch that, wherever the person was, he felt the stab of the cruel needle. Hence the witch had to be found and burnt. If the corn crops failed, was not witchcraft the cause? for had not old Mother Maggs been heard to threaten Farmer Giles, and had not her black cat been seen running over his fields? Even good Bishop Jewel did not disbelieve in the power of the evil ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... and cautious, so that when sometimes marching among the gardens and vineyards of enemies, they neither desire nor touch anything, from fear of poison or witchcraft. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... A glittering row, Hang pit irons less for use than show, With horse-shoe brightened as a spell, Witchcraft's evil powers ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... the number of innocent creatures that suffered death in the same State on the ridiculous charge of witchcraft toward the end of the seventeenth century? Well does it become their descendants to taunt Catholics with the horrors of the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... to work. The interests of workingmen resent political trifling. Our political education, shaped almost entirely to the interest of slavery, has been false and vicious in the extreme, and it must be corrected with as much suddenness, almost, as that with which Salem witchcraft came to an end. The only question that remains to decide is how the change ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the human race? Are not nearly all the inhabitants of the earth imbued with the idea of magic—in the habit of acknowledging occult powers—given to divination—believers in enchantment—the slaves to omens—supporters of witchcraft—thoroughly persuaded of the existence of ghosts? If some of the most enlightened persons are cured of these follies, they still find very zealous partizans in the greater number of mankind, who accredit them ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... can remember when a child the maids Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, As silly women use, and tell me stories Of Witches—make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft," And in conclusion show me in the Bible, The old Family Bible, with the pictures in it, The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, Which so possest my fancy, being a child, That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came And sat ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... through keyholes and to exercise charms which would destroy their victims. While Phips and Frontenac were struggling for the mastery of Canada, a fever of excitement ran through New England about these perils of witchcraft. When, in 1692, Phips became Governor of Massachusetts, he named a special court to try accused persons. The court considered hundreds of cases and condemned and hanged nineteen persons for wholly imaginary crimes. Whatever the faults of the rule of the priests at Quebec, they never equaled ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... two ladies in waiting discovered the Queen of Hearts, with a nail of Iron knocked through the forehead, and thus fastened to the bottom of the chair: they durst not pull it out, remembering that her like thing was used to the old Countess of Sussex, and afterwards proved a witchcraft, for which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... written in the Decretals (XXVI, qu. v, can. Sortes): "We decree that the casting of lots, by which means you make up your mind in all your undertakings, and which the Fathers have condemned, is nothing but divination and witchcraft. For which reason we wish them to be condemned altogether, and henceforth not to be mentioned among Christians, and we forbid the practice thereof under ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... rises in the form of a lofty cupola, and on the summit of it, they say, are the remains of an Atush Kudu or Fire Temple. It is superstitiously held to be the residence or Deeves or Sprites, and many marvellous stories are recounted of the injury and witchcraft suffered by those who essayed in former days to ascend or ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... at your door before it was opened to them would fill me with pride, did I not know the real reason of your sympathy. In order to reach my place among you, gentlemen, I have employed magical spells, I have used witchcraft. Standing on my own merits alone I should not have dared to face your judgment, but I knew that a good genius—that is the right word—was fighting on my behalf, and that you were determined to offer no defense. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... hand, and devoutly wished himself back in the trap. To his childish sense the incongruity of one gifted with demoniac powers being helpless to prevent the depredations of his own domestic animal did not appeal. As for Mrs. Jenny, she had piously believed in witchcraft all her life, and was quite as insensible to the ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... you stand convicted of many and hideous crimes — witchcraft, sorcery, treachery to your King, vile cruelty to his subjects — crimes for which death alone is scarce punishment enough. You well merit a worse fate than the gallows. You well merit some of those lingering agonies that you ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... loops, while I am pirouetting on my heels to achieve the various curves, up comes a woman from the village and stares at me. Oh, how she stares at me, what a look she gives me! At the foot of the cross! Acting in such a silly way! People talked about it. It was sheer witchcraft. Had I not dug up a dead body, only a few days before? Yes, I had been to a prehistoric burial-place, I had taken from it a pair of venerable, well-developed tibias, a set of funerary vessels and a few shoulders of horse, placed there as a viaticum for the great journey. I had done this ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... of these charges to be utterly false, and said that no human being was ever burned at the stake in Massachusetts for the crime of witchcraft, and though at a time when the whole civilized world believed in witchcraft on the authority of certain passages in the Old Testament, the courts of Massachusetts did execute some nineteen or twenty persons of both sexes for the alleged crime of witchcraft, it was also true that the people of Massachusetts ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... near that he could see only with one eye, then the whistle that hung round his neck, then a little piece of paper that he took from his poke. He cried out in a deep voice—'Aye! aye! Not over well. Witchcraft and foul weather and rocks, my mates and masters all!' so that he appeared to be a seaman—and indeed he traded to the port of Antwerp, in the Low Countries, where he had learned ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... they speak of murders with approval; and the cowardly and atrocious act of committing murders with bombs not only meets with your approval, but you hail the advent of the bomb into India as if something had come to India for its good." The bomb was extolled in these articles as "a kind of witchcraft, a charm, an amulet," and the Kesari delighted in showing that neither the "supervision of the police" nor "swarms of detectives" could stop "these simple playful sports of science," Whilst professing to deprecate such methods, it threw the responsibility upon Government, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Dunstan had a curious clock, which was considered a very wonderful piece of mechanism, almost a work of witchcraft. Standing out on the side of the church, in full view of the passers-by, were two figures of Hercules, holding clubs, with which they struck on two bells the hours and the quarters. All children took delight in watching ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition of supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Stan-gyour, or the second part of the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... with Salem, in effacing all memorials of the witchcraft persecution, except a picturesque old house at the corner of North and Essex Streets, where there are said to have been preliminary examinations for witchcraft,—a matter which concerns us now but slightly. The youthful associations of a genius are valuable to us on account ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... charitable, the merry concubine of Edward IV., and, after his death, of his favourite, the unfortunate Lord Hastings. After the loss of her protectors, she fell a victim to the malice of crook-backed Richard. He was disappointed (by her excellent defence) of convicting her of witchcraft, and confederating with her lover to destroy him. He then attacked her on the weak side of frailty. This was undeniable. He consigned her to the severity of the church: she was carried to the bishop's palace, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... young and beautiful Lady Glamis of this place was actually tried and executed for witchcraft. Only think, now! what capabilities in this old castle, with its gloomy pine shades, quaint architecture, and weird associations, with this bit of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... This magician was dumb. But this infirmity could only increase the consideration with which they were disposed to surround him. He only made a guttural sound, low and languid, which had no signification. The more reason for being well skilled in the mysteries of witchcraft. ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... government. Hastings replied that they merited the punishment of traitors. "These traitors," cried the Protector, "are the sorceress, my brother's wife, and Jane Shore, his mistress, with others their associates; see to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft!" Upon which he laid bare his arm, all shrivelled and decayed; but the councillors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and, above all, Lord Hastings, who, as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... last at Mount Holly, about eight miles from this place, nearly three hundred people were gathered together to see an experiment or two tried on some persons accused of witchcraft. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... analogous to those in music, and rendered it altogether worthy to utter the manifold thoughts and feelings of himself and his lady Christabel. He even ventures, with an exquisite sense of solemn strangeness and licence (for there is witchcraft going forward), to introduce a couplet of blank verse, itself as mystically and beautifully modulated as anything in the music ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... sitting on opposite sides of a cross road facing each other, it is to be presumed that they are up to witchcraft and contemplate mischief. What in that case must you do? Go by another road, if there is one, and if not, with a companion, should such turn up, passing the crones arm-in-arm with him; but should there be no other road and no other man, then walk straight on repeating the counter-charm, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... aggravated her guilt and ingratitude. Another young woman was concerned in the assassination of her own uncle, who had been her constant benefactor and sole guardian. A poor old woman, having, from the ignorance and superstition of her neighbours, incurred the suspicion of sorcery and witchcraft, was murdered in Hertfordshire by the populace, with all the wantonness of barbarity. Rape and murder were perpetrated upon an unfortunate woman in the neighbourhood of London, and an innocent man suffered death for this complicated outrage, while the real criminals ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce! won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen; O, Hamlet, what a falling off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity That ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... WITCHCRAFT, Illustrated by Copies of the Plays on the Lancashire Witches, by Heywood and Shadwell, viz., the "Late Lancashire Witches," and the "Lancashire Witches and Tegue o'Divelly, the Irish Priest." Eighty ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... who came within her radius. Never any member of her sex quite like this one. Had she been born in the Middle Ages, superstition would have had it that Venus herself was revisiting the haunts of men in fresh guise. But she would then probably have perished at the stake, accused of witchcraft by her political opponents. As it was, even in the year 1848 a sovereign demanded that a professional exorcist should "drive the devil ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... The celebrated Archie Armstrong, and another jester called Drummond, mounted on other people's backs, used to charge each other like knights in the tilt-yard, to the monarch's great amusement. The following is an instance of the same kind, taken from Webster upon Witchcraft. The author is speaking of the faculty ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... governor, a great deal of fault was found with him. Almost as soon as he assumed the government, he became engaged in a very frightful business, which might have perplexed a wiser and better cultivated head than his. This was the witchcraft delusion." ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the counsels of Jewish craft may establish the domination of Jewish ambition. How knowest thou," he added as he observed that Ferdinand listened to him with earnest attention—"how knowest thou but what the next step might have been thy secret assassination, so that the victim of witchcraft, the minion of the Jewess, might reign in the stead of ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... we attended even-song at the cathedral. I shall not say what I felt when the white-surpliced boy choir entered, winding down those vaulted aisles, or when I heard for the first time that intoned service, with all its "witchcraft of harmonic sound." I sat quite by myself in a high carved-oak seat, and the hour was passed in a trance of serene delight. I do not have many opinions, it is true, but papa says I am always strong ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the prudence of the legislator encouraged the ignoble practice of bartering honor and revenge for a pecuniary compensation. The ignorance of the Lombards in the state of Paganism or Christianity gave implicit credit to the malice and mischief of witchcraft, but the judges of the seventeenth century might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of Rotharis, who derides the absurd superstition, and protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... several forerunners in American art, Martin, Ryder and Fuller who, in their painting, may be linked not without relativity to our artists in literary imagination, Hawthorne and Poe. Fuller is conspicuously like Hawthorne, not by his appreciation of witchcraft merely, but by his feeling for those eery presences which determine the fates of men and women in their time. Martin is the purer artist for me since he seldom or never resorted to the literary emotion in the sense of drama or narrative, whereas in the instances of Ryder or Fuller ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... nay, Gaston—they are too knightly to merit such measure. Then it is the old accusation of witchcraft, I suppose. So I was in league with the Castilian witch and her ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... himself upon the bed. "Why, didn't you know that the Popes used to raise money by selling their pardons and indulgences? That fellow Tetzel, back in Luther's time, rated sacrilege at nine ducats, murder at seven, witchcraft at six, and so on. Ever since the time of Innocent VIII. immunity from purgatory could be bought. It was his chamberlain who used to say, 'God willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he should pay and live.' Ha! ha! Those were good ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... he exclaimed. "Allan has been wi' me twenty-seven years, and Scott twenty, and Grey nearly seventeen. And the lads I have aye been kindly to. Maist o' them have wives and bairns, too; it's just a sin o' them. It's no to be believed. It's fair witchcraft. And the pride o' them! My certie, they all looked as if their hands were itching for a sword ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... intelligence, and they had a code by which the signals could be read with practically the same accuracy as if they had been printed words. The movements of the lights looked curious and strange, something elf-like, with a suspicion of witchcraft, or deviltry of some kind, about them. They would make all sorts of gyrations, up, down, a circle, a half circle to the right, then one to the left, and so on. Sometimes they would be unusually active. Haines' Bluff would talk to Snyder's; Snyder's to Sherman's headquarters; Sherman's ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... me, good people," said the cat. "I am a human being like yourselves, and have been changed into the shape of a cat by witchcraft, though it was a just return for my wickedness. I was the housekeeper in the palace of a great king a long way from here, and the old woman was the queen's first chambermaid. We were led by avarice to plot together secretly to steal the king's three daughters and a great ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... struggles, from the shelter of their own roofs, on the plea that death would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, obtained secure possession of the entire island, with no reversionary fear over our heads, (as, up to Waterloo, we always had,) that possibly at a general peace we might find ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... to avert the whisper of witchcraft. And one day, when Parson Morth had ridden off to the wrestling matches ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there's nothing to keep up with, and I'm inclined to agree with him." The old spacehound's voice took on a quarter-deck rasp. "It's a combination of psionics, witchcraft and magic. None of it makes ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... is witchcraft!' he cried, as he saw the defences all in their places; for Broadfoot's men had worked so well that in a week everything had been rebuilt exactly ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... room appears to have been chosen for its secluded position, being hidden by a garden filled with gooseberry-trees; but the very secrecy of their operations aroused suspicion, and popular superstition at once connected them with some kind of witchcraft or sorcery. Two old women who lived close by averred that they heard strange noises in it of a humming nature, as if the devil were tuning his bagpipes, and Arkwright and Kay were dancing a reel, and so much consternation was produced that many ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... but it's soul hunger, for a glimpse of all the dear old rooms and places. Come—there are four hours yet before sunset, and I want to cram into them all I've missed out of these three years. Let us begin right here with the garden. Oh, daddy, by what witchcraft have you coaxed ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... itself ajar by deeply brooding on abstruse matters, an illusion of eyes that he had tried too much by poring over the inscrutable manuscript, and of intellect that was mystified and bewildered by trying to grasp things that could not be grasped. A thing of witchcraft, a sort of fungus-growth out of the grave, an unsubstantiality altogether; although, certainly, she had weeded the grave with bodily fingers, at all events. Still he had so much of the hereditary mysticism of his race in him, that he might have ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which had hung the sky with rose, painted the mountain-tops and turned the West into a blazing smeltery of dreams, had slowly yielded to a night starlit, velvety, breathless, big with the gentle witchcraft of an amber moon. Nature went masked. The depths upon our left seemed bottomless; a grey flash spoke of the Gave de Pau: beyond, the random rise and fall of a high ridge argued the summit of a gigantic screen—the foothills to wit, odd twinkling points of yellow ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... my country, formerly, A wondrous great archdeacon,—who but he? Who boldly did the work of his high station In punishing improper conversation, And all the slidings thereunto belonging; Witchcraft, and scandal also, and the wronging Of holy Church, by blinking of her dues In sacraments and contracts, wills and pews; Usury furthermore, and simony; But people of ill lives most loathed he: Lord! how he made them sing if they were caught. ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... The word "witchcraft" set the boy to thinking, and he suddenly remembered that he had been warned not to speak to an old woman named Martha Pladsen, because she was a witch. Now, she was probably the very one who could tell ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... filling it at the river, marched up to the bazaar. No sooner did I appear than all the water-carriers called out, 'That villain, Yussuf, is about to take away our bread. May Shitan seize him. Let us go to the cadi and complain.' The cadi listened to their story, for they accused me of witchcraft, saying that no five men could lift the skin when it was full. He sent one of his beeldars to summon me before him. I had just filled my skin at the river, when the officer came from this distributor of bastinadoes. I followed him to the court, laden as I was. The crowd opened ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat |
