"Hag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Banks of Air." His own business was based on a "Bank of Air," "wind-capital," as Cadell, Constable's partner, calls it, and the bubble was just about to burst, though Scott had no apprehension of financial ruin. A horrid power is visible in Scott's second picture of la mauvaise pauvre, the hag who despises and curses the givers of "handfuls of coals and of rice;" his first he drew in the witches of "The Bride of Lammermoor." He has himself indicated his desire to press hard on the vice of gambling, as in "The Fortunes of Nigel." Ruinous at all times and in every shape, gambling, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to be that which you are now!" pursued the hag, still attentively reading the lines ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... unintelligible, and were succeeded by shrill, piercing yells. Just then the crafty squaw, who had taken the necessary precaution to fire the piles, made her way through the throng, and cleared a place for herself in front of the captive. The squalid and withered person of this hag might well have obtained for her the character of possessing more than human cunning. Throwing back her light vestment, she stretched forth her long, skinny arm, in derision, and using the language of the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... for your papers! Hola! wife!" continued Arroyo, turning to the hag who still stood by the fainting victim, "here's a little work for you, as I am somewhat fatigued. I charge you with making this spy confess who sent him here, and what design he had in coming. Make him speak out whatever way ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... "Curse the hag!" he said. "I could have thought of nothing worse! Nothing that was ever said startled me more than her words, and I know that some evil will befall me from her and her spells. She shall have something to remind her ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... was he by slumber, that he never awoke when that venerable institution called the college woman—the hag whom the virtue of unerring dons insists o imposing as a servant on resident students—entered, made up the fire, swept up the room, and arranged the breakfast-table. It was only as she jogged his arm to ask him for an additional penny to buy more milk, that ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... you what it would be?' growled the old hag. 'From shelter we shall proceed to demand supper, and from supper money to take us on our way. Upon my word, if I could be sure of finding some one every day whose head was as soft as his heart, I wouldn't wish for a more agreeable life ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... rather starve than die in debt—when I heard our cottage door smashed in and the sound of horrible voices. The roar of a gun rang up the stairs, and the crash of someone falling and the smoke came through my bedroom door, and then wailing mixed with curses. "Out of the way, old hag!" I heard, and then another shriek; and then I stood upon the stairs-and looked down at them. The moon was shining through the shattered door, and the bodies and legs of men went to and fro, like branches in a tempest. Nobody seemed to notice me, although I had cast over my night-dress—having ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... their young were near them. The former laughed and chatted in their rebuked and quiet manner, though one who knew the habits of the people might have detected that everything was not going on in its usual train. Most of the young women seemed to be light-hearted enough; but one old hag was seated apart with a watchful soured aspect, which the hunter at once knew betokened that some duty of an unpleasant character had been assigned her by the chiefs. What that duty was, he had no means of knowing; but he felt satisfied it must ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... issue of the last night's interview with his uncle, and to ask, as usual, for George's advice and opinion, Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, was the only person whom Arthur found in the dear old chambers. George had taken a carpet-hag, and was gone. His address was to his brother's house, in Suffolk. Packages addressed to the newspaper and review for which he wrote lay ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... herbs for thy white man," exclaimed the old woman before Pocahontas had spoken a word. "I have them here ready for thee," and she thrust a bundle into the astonished maiden's hands. "But," continued the hag, "though they would cure any of our people, they will not have power with the white man's malady save ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... The old hag showed her toothless gums in a hideous smile, the woman that was left in the dried shell still tickled at the reference to marriage. But her look changed to one of intense pain as Pinkey, trembling with excitement, nudged her violently in the ribs as a signal ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Olaf's mother, having learnt all she wanted, bade her rower quit Thorbiorn; the little boat shot swiftly and suddenly away, leaving Thorbiorn with an uneasy sense of witchcraft. So disquieted did he feel that he would have pursued her and drowned "the old hag," as he called her, had he not been prevented by Brand the Strong, who had been helped in his ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... to a tardy piety as a refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought such ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... my chabo, bring the gras in too; there is room for the gras in my little stable." We entered a large court, across which we proceeded till we came to a wide doorway. "Go in, my child of Egypt," said the hag; "go in, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... into a more manageable and productive form; so that, when Clement began his fine studio behind the old mansion, he felt that at least he could pursue his art, or arts, if he chose to give himself to sculpture, without that dreadful hag, Necessity, standing by him to pinch the features of all his ideals, and give them something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... while in its force, infected at least the imagination of those that had more advantage in education, though their reason set them free from it,) is every day wearing out, seem likely to be of little further assistance in the machinery of poetry. As I recollect, Hammond introduces a hag or witch into one of his love elegies, where the effect is unmeaning ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... read in the Hydrographic Office records, the fate of the steamship Sarah Calkins. Old was Sarah; weather-scarred, wave-battered, suffering from all the internal disorders to which machinery is prone; tipsy of gait, defiant of her own helm, a very hag of the ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... be glad to hear what he had to say, but certainly that could not be, because her husband never left her except when she went to church, and then she was guarded, and more than guarded, by the dirtiest old hag that ever ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... call her, that creature turned her head diagonally backward and let fall a smile. The encroaching beast stopped as if he had been shot! His rider plied whip, and forced him again forward upon the track of the equine hag, but with the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... yet this has been done, apparently with the consent of the great Arabist Sylvestre de Sacy (Paris, Ernest Bourdin). Moreover, holding that the translator's glory is to add something to his native tongue, while avoiding the hideous hag like nakedness of Torrens and the bald literalism of Lane, I have carefully Englished the picturesque turns and novel expressions of the original in all their outlandishness; for instance, when the dust cloud raised by a tramping host is described ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... prayed so much, I trust Her words may prove untrue; Though in a tomb the hag accurst Muttered: "Prepare thee for the worst!" Whilst ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... 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 "farings" at the next ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... a squeeze getting the company stowed away that night, but we managed somehow, and then turned into the kitchen. Here we were entertained with a graphic description by an old hag of how she had been wounded. It seemed that in some of the preliminary fighting she had run across a field between our troops and the Germans and received three bullets. She was quite cheerful about it and showed us two wounds, and when A—— ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... 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
... under-ground room in one of the narrow lanes off the street, which, save for the light of a great fire, would have been pitch dark at mid-day, and in which he found a little wrinkled old woman, as yellow as the smoke that filled the apartment. "Choose," said the hag, as she looked at the injured part, "one of two things—a cure slow but sure, or sudden but imperfect. Or shall I put back the hurt altogether till you get home?" "That, that," said Jock; "if I were ance home I could bear it ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... or "natural man" personified. Phineas Fletcher says "this dam of sin" is a hag of loathsome shape, arrayed in steel, polished externally, but rusty within. On her shield is the device of a mermaid, with the motto, "Hear, Gaze, and Die."—The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... must not be compared with Goya, that their methods and themes are dissimilar. True, but those witches (Les Sorcieres de San Millan) are in the key of Goya, not manner, but subject-matter—a hideous crew. At once you think of the Caprichos of Goya. The hag with the distaff, whose head is painted with a fidelity worthy of Holbein; the monkey profile of the witch crouching near the lantern, that repulsive creature in spectacles—Goya spectacles; the pattern hasn't varied since his days—these ladies and their companions, especially that anonymous ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... in the loft of the other part where the boys sleep;' answered the old woman, and then looking at me with a grin which I thought gave her the appearance of an ugly old hag, she said, 'Why ye ain't afeard ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... derivation of orchard? Is the last syllable "yard," as in vineyard, rickyard? If so, what is "orch?" By the way, is the provincial word "hag-gard" hay-yard? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... associations with Montparnasse, she warmly encouraged my friendship with him—yea, in spite of my living so deep in the wrong bank that the first time he brought her to my studio, she declared she hadn't seen anything so like Bring-the-child-to-the- old-hag's-cellar-at-midnight since her childhood. She is a handsome woman, large, and of a fine, high colour; her manner is gaily dictatorial, and she and I got along very ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... opposite side of the bed, and on that side the curtains had not been closed. The dying man had still enough sight left to perceive the employment of his attendant. What must have been his feelings! He uttered a deep groan, which startled the old hag, and she repaired to the bedside, to examine the state ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... A hag of fish-hooks and lines had been found on board, and a party every day were told off to fish, and who never failed to return ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... old duchess was jealous of her,—'cause, you see, she hated to give up her place in the house, and the old family-jewels, and all the splendid things,—and so one time, when the poor young thing was all dressed up in a set of the old family-lace, what does the old hag do but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... dead cat that put me in this place, And all the pretty young girls I left after me? I came into the house where was the bright love of my heart, And the old hag put me out by the Twisting of ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... doubtful whether one hundreth part of what hag been published in abolition papers, during the last fifty years, in regard to Southern slavery, is true; and those who have received their impressions of African slavery in the South, from that source, are utterly incapable of expressing correct ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... "She's a damned old hag." He rose and took up his hat and cane. "Well, I'll wait a week, and then if you don't relent the proceedings will begin. I shan't get the divorce. Not my line. But he asked me to talk to you and I was ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... mind the whole history of the last three dreadful days. At first she stood fixed, as if the extremity of distress had converted her into stone; but in a minute, the pride and violence of her temper, outbraved as she thought herself on her own threshold, enabled her to reply, "Yes, insulting hag, my fair-haired boy may die, but it will not be with a white hand. It has been dyed in the blood of his enemy, in the best blood of a Cameron—remember that; and when you lay your dead in his grave, let it be his best epitaph that he was killed ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... old hag and the young one; both have bewitched us!—Hence! child of perdition! hence, or ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... which in the fight with Grendel has analogies with the plainer kind of goblin story, rather alters its tone in the fight with Grendel's mother. There are parallels in Grettis Saga, and elsewhere, to encounters like this, with a hag or ogress under water; stories of this sort have been found no less credible than stories of haunting warlocks like Grendel. But this second story is not told in the same way as the first. It has more of the fashion ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Mrs. Malone!" screamed his mother. "What a mean, grasping, greedy old hag! I shall speak to her about it and make her disgorge. She has no right to your money; whilst I am ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... old woman was Martha, and an agreeable contrast to the grim, decrepid hag which my fancy had conjured up, as the depository of all the horrible tales in which I doubted not this ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... "She is an old hag!" Mr Arthur answered, with unnecessary fierceness. "I don't see what Satan has been about, all these years, that he's not taken her ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... many others. A fisherman, well known in the place, a handsome and popular young fellow, was seized, while working in his boat, with the first symptoms of cholera. He was carried to his mother's house. The old woman, a villainous-looking hag, watched the little procession as it approached her dwelling, and taking in the situation at once, she shut and barricaded ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... as to hold up the upper lip, and exhibit all the others in their 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 more hideous. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... vibrations. What "induction" is. How a mental state, or an emotional feeling, tends to induce a similar state in another mind. Many instances cited. The different degrees of vibratory influence, and what causes the difference. The contagious effect of a "strong feeling." Why a strong desire hag a dynamic effect in certain cases. The power of visualization in Psychic Influence. The Attractive Power of Thought. The effect of Mental Concentration. Focusing your Forces. Holding the mind to a state of "one-pointedness." Why the occultist ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... his sketch-book, in which Duke Lodovico is represented alternately as Fortune, driving the squalid figure of Poverty away with a golden wand, and throwing his ducal mantle over a helpless youth who flies before the ugly hag; or as supreme Wisdom, wearing the spectacles which can pierce through all disguises, and pronouncing sentence between Envy on the one hand and Justice on the other. Then Bramante painted those frescoes on the walls ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Grasshopper 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 and ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... be; On every stick there's a witch astride, The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut come caper, he gives a twitch. As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... old hag drew nearer, the girls instinctively shrank back in their chairs. And, indeed, she was not a prepossessing figure. Her head was bound about with an old red handkerchief, tied under the wrinkled chin and framing a face ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... that's e'en true, cummer," said the lame hag, propping herself with a crutch which supported the shortness of her left leg, "for I mind when the father of this Master of Ravenswood that is now standing before us sticked young Blackhall with his whinger, for a wrang word said ower their wine, or brandy, or what not: he gaed in as light ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... child. Where with black cliffs the torrents toil, He watched the wheeling eddies boil, Jill from their foam his dazzled eyes Beheld the River Demon rise: The mountain mist took form and limb Of noontide hag or goblin grim; The midnight wind came wild and dread, Swelled with the voices of the dead; Far on the future battle-heath His eye beheld the ranks of death: Thus the lone Seer, from mankind hurled, Shaped forth a disembodied world. One lingering sympathy ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the street, leaning half tipsily against the wall, stood the old hag to whom Hester had once given twopence. Her eyes brightened when she saw who ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... man, when he had entered and lighted his lamp, pushed some of these rags aside with trembling hands, and raising a piece of the dirty and half-rotten flooring, he produced a stout and rather heavy hag. Out of this he took in succession several smaller hags, each evidently full of money; and having pleased himself with handling and gloating over his treasure, he added the coin which the Caliph had just given him, together with several others, the produce of that day's exertion, ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... with her; stay, quotha? To be yawled and jawled at, and tumbled and thumbled, and tossed and turned, as I am by an old hag, I will not: no, I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... riflemen, and that is why we are here to find the Sagamore, Mayaro. For our Oneidas have told us that he knows where the castles of the Long House lie, and that he can guide our army unerringly to that dark, obscure and fearsome Catharines-town where the hag, Montour, reigns ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... six anonymous letters had been received by various companies. As Taggert had once put it, in quotes, "We seem to have an Abudah chest containing a patent Hag who comes out and prophesies ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... minutes of eight o'clock when, at last, I turned into the squalid street at the end of which stands Springer's. In the sunshine of the mild March morning the facade of the tall buff building looked for all the world like a gaunt, ugly, unkempt hag, frowning between bleared old eyes that seemed to coax—nay, rather to coerce me into entering her ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the voice is the voice of a Jacob from a different world. And a Polynesian at the best makes a singular missionary in the Gilberts, coming from a country recklessly unchaste to one conspicuously strict; from a race hag-ridden with bogies to one comparatively bold against the terrors of the dark. The thought was stamped one morning in my mind, when I chanced to be abroad by moonlight, and saw all the town lightless, but the lamp faithfully burning by the missionary's bed. It requires no law, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... children. Anyway, while Dick and I were busy, digging like niggers and listening like Indians—for Meg didn't bark, not being trained to the work, and all we could hear was a thud, thud now and then, and the hard breathing of the grapple—all of a sudden the old hag spoke, for the ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is a political defeat. I cannot keep these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest loss I have had since that Dutch painter went—a fellow who would paint a hag of 70 with as much enjoyment as ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... "Seize on the hag!" shouted the Bishop, as soon as he could get in a word. "We'll see about a witch's cursing. Back to town she shall go, alongside ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... a greasy yellow kerchief twisted turban-wise round her head. My heart sank. Noemi must be very poor, or very unfortunate, to live under the same roof with such an old sorciere! Nevertheless, I crossed the street, and accosted the hag with a smile. "Good-day, Maman Paquet. Can you tell me anything of your lodger, Noemi Bergeron?" "Hein?" She was deaf and surly. I repeated my question in a louder key. "I know nothing of her," she answered, in a voice that sounded like the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... thousand names on the subscription list of THE WATCHMAN; yet more than half convinced, that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme. But for this very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life so completely hag-ridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was the dictate of duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was announced in London by long bills ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 ailment, exposed the bloody, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... washed off the black paint, and after a few more speeches and ceremonies, I was handed over to the hideous old hag, whose neck was still decorated with the two ears of my companion. To say that I would have preferred the torture would be saying too much, but that I loathed the creature to excess was certain. However, I said nothing, but allowed her to take me by the hand and lead me to her wigwam. As soon ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... attributes of several other classes of subordinate spirits, acknowledged by the nations of the north. The abstraction of children, for example, the well known practice of the modern Fairy, seems, by the ancient Gothic nations, to have rather been ascribed to a species of night-mare, or hag, than to the berg-elfen, or duergar. In the ancient legend of St Margaret, of which there is a Saxo-Norman copy, in Hickes' Thesaurus Linguar. Septen. and one, more modern, in the Auchinleck MSS., that lady encounters a fiend, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... whether to laugh or cry. The room was as cold as a well, and the bed, when I had found my way to it, as damp as a peat-hag; but by good fortune I had caught up my bundle and my plaid, and rolling myself in the latter, I lay down upon the floor under lee of the big bedstead, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... specter's child. 150 Where with black cliffs the torrents toil, He watched the wheeling eddies boil, Till, from their foam, his dazzled eyes Beheld the River Demon rise; The mountain mist took form and limb, 155 Of noontide hag, or goblin grim; The midnight wind came wild and dread, Swelled with the voices of the dead; Far on the future battle-heath His eyes beheld the ranks of death. 160 Thus the lone Seer, from mankind hurled, Shaped forth a disembodied world. One ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... own sensual eye that gives evil the appearance of good, and out of a crooked hag makes a bewitching siren. The reason enlightened by the grace of God sees it as it truly is, full of stench and corruption.[86] It is this office of reason which Dante undertakes to perform, by divine commission, in the Inferno. There can be no ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... than brought up, had run away from a hag known as Old One-eye, she had been arrested and committed to prison for eight years. Taught sewing there, she had saved up some three hundred francs. Ignorant, childishly fond of flowers and the open air of the country, she had made Rigolette's ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... deal of respectful importance. 'He could take it upon his conscience to say, his honour would have exceeding pleasure in seeing him. Would not Mr. Waverley choose some refreshment after his journey? His honour was with the folk who were getting doon the dark hag; the twa gardener lads (an emphasis on the word TWA) had been ordered to attend him; and he had been just amusing himself in the meantime with dressing Miss Rose's flower-bed, that he might be near to receive his honour's orders, if need ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... have him, the guilty man!" cried Louis XI. abruptly. "If you are robbed again to-night, I shall know to-morrow who did it. Make that old hag you call your sister come here," ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... in other people's lives. They would be happier if he were 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 by ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'Stuff!' said the hag, dragging her up rudely by one of those delicate hands, fit for no harsher labor than that of weaving the flowers which made her pleasure or her trade; 'stuff! these fine scruples are not ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... 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. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... 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
... Queen Elizabeth who made the first European law to buy and sell human beings like brute beasts. She was England's glory as a Protestant, and Scotland's shame as the murderer of their bonnie Mary. The auld hag skulked away like a coward in the hour of death. Mary, on the other hand, with calmness and dignity, repeated a Latin prayer to the Great Spirit and Author of her being, and calmly resigned herself into the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... shreds by incessant gales, was hoisted on a long stick lent by Teneskin for the purpose, but I began to think that the shred of silk might as well have fluttered at the North Pole for all the attention it was likely to attract from seaward. So passed a month away, and the grey hag Despair was beginning to show her ugly face when one never-to-be-forgotten morning Harding rushed into the hut and awoke me with the joyful news that a thin strip of blue was visible on the horizon. A few hours later waves were seen breaking near ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... 'Hag!' exclaimed Proserpine. 'King of Hades, I, too, can appeal to you. Have I accepted your crown to be ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... with the worst fate that can befall a helpless maiden—the loss of her honor. Her loud shrieks penetrated not beyond the precincts of that massive building—her calls for help were answered only by the taunting laugh of the black hag outside, who loaded her with alternate abuse, threats, and curses. At last, exhausted and despairing, poor Fanny threw herself upon the carpet, and prayed—oh, how earnestly!—that no harm might happen to her, which could ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... the old hag, 'he niver tol' me a word. He cum an' he go'd; but he kep his red rag to himself, he did. Duvel! he was a cunning ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... endured. His abandonment of Miss Penclosa is in itself a sign that he was never really in her toils. Oh, if he only knew his escape! He has to thank his phlegmatic Saxon temperament for it. I am black and Celtic, and this hag's clutch is deep in my nerves. Shall I ever get it out? Shall I ever be the same man that I was just one short ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... repugnant to the healing aid My friendship proffers, now shalt thou behold The allotted length of life." He stamp'd the earth, And dragging a huge coffin as his car, Two GOULS came on, of form more fearful-foul Than ever palsied in her wildest dream Hag-ridden Superstition. Then DESPAIR Seiz'd on the Maid whose curdling blood stood still. And placed her in the seat; and on they pass'd Adown the deep descent. A meteor light Shot from the Daemons, as they dragg'd along The unwelcome load, and mark'd their brethren glut On carcasses. Below the vault ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... name of Gull. I with a feigned voice do often deceive many men, to their great amazement. Many times I get on men and women, and so lie on their stomachs, that I cause there great pain, for which they call me by the name of Hag, or Nightmare. 'Tis I that do steal children, and in the place of them leave changelings. Sometimes I also steal milk and cream, and then with my brothers, Patch, Pinch, and Grim, and sisters Sib, Tib, Lick, and Lull, I feast with my stolen goods: our little piper hath ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... dark, and deep, O'erpower the passive mind in sleep, Pass from the slumberer's soul away, Like night-mists from the brow of day: Foul hag, whose blasted visage grim Smothers the pulse, unnerves the limb, Spur thy dark palfrey, and begone! Thou darest not face the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... The old hag leered at Monsieur Rambaud as she thus mumbled away. He listened to her with the composure of a brave man. The memories that were being called up before him brought no shadow to his unruffled face. Only it occurred to him that the pertinacity ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... hag; "I love to see the proud ones tasting the bitter wind and rain as we bear alway; 'tis but a mile longer round to the ford. I wish ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was nearly at an end, and I had no reason to economize my provisions, I gave some to the villagers, and the women especially who had hardly ever tasted rice or tinned meat, were delighted. One old hag actually made me a declaration of love, which, unfortunately, I could not respond to in ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... be Bicrobes, as they say, This Idfluedza pest; What batters? I bust cough—ad pay! The Doctor orders "Rest"! Bicrobes be blowed, ad Rest go hag! I'll stad this thig do bore! BARY! was that the door-bell ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... a woman's voice, said, Cannot you lend me a pair of scales? I am a woman newly come from Persia, have brought five hundred pieces of gold with me, and would know if they will hold out according to your weights. Good woman, answered the old hag, you could not have applied to a more proper person. Follow me; I will bring you to my son, who changes money, and will weigh them himself, to save you the trouble. Let us make haste, for fear he be gone to his shop. My brother followed her to the house ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... in the voodoo craft, or in the power of an evil-eye, I should also have feared. Those who have ever witnessed a sea-island witch-dance can bear me out, and I think a man may dread a hag and be no coward either. But distance and time allay the memories of such uncanny works. I had forgotten whether I was afraid or not. So I said, "There ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... was this sense of awful space, of barren nothingness with which the desert oppressed her. Instinctively she turned to look for human companionship. Kut-le and Alchise were not to be seen but Molly nodded beside Rhoda's blankets and the thin hag Cesca was curled in the grass near ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to the frightened black, "the next time you bring me cigars that neither draw nor smoke, I'll make your back smoke for it. Mind that, now;—there's not a single one of them worth a rotten maize stalk. Tell that old coffee-coloured hag of Johnny's, that I'll have no more of her cigars. Ride over to Mr Ducie's and fetch a box. And, d'ye hear? Tell him I want to speak a word with him and the neighbours. Ask him to bring the neighbours with him to-morrow morning. And mind you're home ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... wrinkled, leathery old hag, with her damp, coarse mouth, her skinny hands, and her cunning, ignorant eyes, was her grandmother—Stefanone was her grandfather—her mother had been a peasant, like them, beautified by one of nature's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... forget? No witch hath power i' the sun! She can work no evil i' the sunshine. Seize her!—'tis an accursed hag— seize her! Bring her to the water and see an she can swim with a stone at her hag's neck. All witches are powerless by day. See, thus I spit ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... you must clap your hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural population of England, male and female, and take whatever comes first—be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag, tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age (for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and perennial poverty;—Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... green of trees, They saw afar the town of Canalise, A city fair, couched on a gentle height, With walls embattled and strong towers bedight. Now seeing that the sun was getting low, Our travellers at quicker pace did go. Thus as in haste near to the gate they came, Before them limped a bent and hag-like dame, With long, sharp nose that downward curved as though It beak-like wished to peck sharp chin below. Humbly she crept in cloak all torn and rent, And o'er a staff her tottering limbs were bent. So came she to the gate, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... once in awhile, you old hag!' he growled. 'Now both my horse and I will come to grief ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... a grudge 'gainst their father, the King, A grudge that is old as the sun. And hark ye, old hag, I must have thy aid Before the new moon be risen. Now brew me a charm in thy caldron black, That shall keep them ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon
... with a serious eye, and he could scarce credit her earnestness, but she repeated the same. So presently he thought, 'This old hag appeareth deep in the fountain of events, and she will be a right arm to me in the mastering of one, a torch in darkness, seeing there is wisdom in her as well as wickedness. The thwackings?—sad ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... woman, worn out with arduous toil, rapidly lost the brightness of her youth. At an age when the women of a higher culture are still at the height of their charm and attractiveness the woman of the Hurons had degenerated into a shrivelled hag, horrible to the eye and often despicable in character. The inborn gentleness of womanhood had been driven from her breast by ill-treatment. Not even the cruelest of the warriors surpassed the unhallowed ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... his hands and fall with his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly the big patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the other servants. But he was surprised to see a shrivelled old hag or two, of whose existence within the walls of his house he had not been aware. They must have been the mothers, or even the grandmothers of some of his people. There were a few children, too, more or less naked, crying ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... to walk 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. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... it was within his reach—hated its cold staring rebuke as he hated virtue—hated it as if its well were in the churchyard where the old captain was buried sixty years ago. —Confound him! why wouldn't he lie still? He made some effort to be polite to the old hag, as he called her, in that not very secret chamber of his soul, whose door was but too ready to fall ajar, and allow its evil things to issue. He searched his lumber-room for old stories to tell, but found it difficult to lay hold on any ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... was a very small matter, they thought, and agreed to do it. The Princess with the long nose began to wash as well as she could, but, the more she washed and rubbed, the larger the spots grew. "Ah! you can't wash at all," said the old troll-hag, who was her mother. "Give it to me." But she too had not had the shirt very long in her hands before it looked worse still, and, the more she washed it and rubbed it, the larger and blacker grew ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... insulted by you, you ruffian! How dare you come here and affront a lady in her own house—a lady whose shoestrings your betters are ready to tie, you brute? If you want to be a landed proprietor, go and marry some ugly old hag that's got it, and no eyesight left to see you're no gentleman. Sir Charles's land you'll never have; a better man has got it, and means to keep it for him and his. Here, Polly! Polly! Polly! take this man down to the kitchen, and teach him manners if you can: he is not fit for my drawing-room, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... around her. At a little distance, with folded arms and bent brows, stood the Laird of Ravenswood, yet unable to approach the broken-hearted girl, as her proud, unfeeling mother, the stately Lady Ashton, kept close guard over her; and it made me shudder to behold, also, the old hag, Ailsie Gourley, crouching down by her bonny mistress, and stroking the lily-white hand which hung so listless at her side, mumbling the while what seemed to me must be some incantation to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... favorable opinions, comparatively favorable; but can myself say nothing: famed Savigny finds it superior in intelligence and law-knowledge to the CODE NAPOLEON,—upon which indeed, and upon all Codes possible to poor hag-ridden and wig-ridden generations like ours, Savigny feels rather desperate. Unfortunate mortals do want to have their bits of lawsuits settled, nevertheless; and have, on trial, found even the ignorant CODE NAPOLEON a mighty benefit ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... took a different view, somebody cried "Halves!" and somebody else said, "Til give information," and somebody else replied, "So will I," whereupon arose a bloody battle as has been told. About the same time at Hunstanton, Catherine Busgey, evil-disposed old hag that she was, had stript a dead man of his leather jerkin. Did she proceed to wear the manly attire that she might be dagger-proof for the next encounter? Rash woman! The dead man's friends recognized ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp |
