Hag

“ The young, the all-beautiful Ione, seated by that rude fire—her lover already forgetful of the presence of the hag, at her feet, gazing upward to her face, and whispering sweet words—the pale and affrighted slave at a little distance—and the ghastly hag resting her deadly eyes upon them; yet seemingly serene and fearless (for the companionship of love hath such power) were these beautiful beings, things of another sphere, in that dark and unholy cavern, with its gloomy quaintness of appurtenance. ”

“ See, Gagool, mother of evil, thou art so old that thou canst no longer love thy life. What can life be to such a hag as thou, who hast no shape, nor form, nor hair, nor teeth—hast naught, save wickedness and evil eyes? It will be mercy to make an end of thee, Gagool. ”

“ THE OLD HAG'S INTRIGUE. On the morning after she had received the visit from the Reverend Reginald Tracy, the old hag rose early, muttering to herself, "I must lose no time—I must lose no time."
She then proceeded to dress herself in her holiday attire, each article of which was purchased with the wages of her infamous trade.
Female frailty—female shame had clothed the hag: female dishonour had produced her a warm gown, a fine shawl, and a new bonnet.
When she was young she had lived by the sale of herself: now that she was old she lived by the sale of others. ”

“ In a twinkling the cat altered form once more, and as an old hag scuttled across a turnip field. She was merely an ordinarily powerful witch. She possessed only the two forms—cat and hag. Nor did she have a gift of magic to baffle or cripple the hungry black loong. Nevertheless, the witch was not despairing. At the edge of the turnip field lay Ah Tcha's miserable patch of thick bushes. So thick were the bushes as to be almost a wall against the hag's passage. As a hag, she could have no hope of entering such a thicket. But as a cat, she could race through without hindrance. ”

“ The hag Grana was never heard of more; but the stone remains, and deeply imprinted in it, is still to be seen the mark of the hag’s fingers. That stone is far taller than the tallest man, and the power of forty men would fail to move it from the spot where it fell.
The grass may wither around it, the spade and plough destroy dull heaps of earth, the walls of castles fall and perish, but the fame of the Finnii of Erin endures with the rocks themselves, and Clough-a-Regaun is a monument fitting to preserve the memory of the deed! ”

“ Then he lay down among the dead men to see what it was brought them to life. There came a hag, with one leg out of her haunch, one eye in her forehead, a bottle of the water of healing on a button that was on her breast. There was a feather in the bottle. She rubbed the feather on the first man she came to. She made nine of them alive. The champion of the red belt arose and killed the nine. Then he and the one-legged hag struck together. They were fighting a long time. ”

“ A hag, that holds high rank, indeed, in lewdness! In her face Are witnesses that testify to filth and wantonness.
When she’s unclean, she bawds; and when she’s clean, she plays the whore: So, all her time, she’s either bawd or else adulteress. ”

“ While I, who shake with ague and with age,
In Litanies engage.
Amen! and woe is me!
I lie here rotting like a broken tree;
Each acorn has its day and needs must fall,
Time makes an end of all!
I had my day with kings!
We drank the brimming mead, the ruddy wine,
Where now I drink whey-water; for company more fine
Than shrivelled hags, hag though I am, I pine.
The flood-tide thine!
Mine but the low down-curling ebb-tide's flow,
My youth, my hope, are carried from my hand,
Thy flood-tide foams to land.
My body drops
Slowly but sure towards the abode we know ”

“ Away they went, and the lad after them. You may fancy how they tore over hill and dale, through bush and bog. When the lad had run so a long time, he began to get weary, and when he had held on a while longer, he had more than enough of his watching, and just there, he came to a cleft in a rock, where an old hag sat and spun with a distaff. As soon as she saw the lad who was running after the foals till the sweat ran down his brow, this old hag bawled out:
“Come hither, come hither, my pretty son, and let me comb your hair.” ”

“ Now the Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd feet. That is, she had one foot that was too big for her, so that when she lifted it up it pulled her over; and she had one foot that was too small for her, so that when she lifted it up she didn't know what to do with it. She was so long that you thought you would never see the end of her, and she was so thin that you thought you didn't see her at all. One of her eyes was set where her nose should be and there was an ear on its place, and her nose itself was
The Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd feet. ”

“ Hag, subs. (old: now recognised) .—1. A witch. Whence (2) an ugly old woman; a she-monster. Also (3) a nightmare. At Charterhouse, a female of any description; at Winchester, a matron. Hence, Hag-ridden = troubled with nightmare. Hag-born = witch-born. Hag-seed (Shakspeare, Tempest) = spawned of a witch. Hag-faced = foul-featured. In another sense, Hags = spots of firm ground in a moss or bog.
d. 1529. Skelton, Duke of Albany, Lyke a Scottish hag.
1606. Wily Beguiled (Dodsley, Old Plays, 4th ed., 1875, ix., 277) . Like to some hellish hag or some damned fiend. ”

“ I would marry any woman if I got the Black Book with her. The Sword of Light and the Black Book were in our family till my grandfather's time, then they were stolen by that cursed old hag."
"I will have the book," said Smallhead, "or die in the trial to get it."
Knowing that stirabout was the main food of the hag, Smallhead settled in her mind to play another trick. Taking a bag she scraped the chimney, gathered about a stone of soot, and took it with her. The night was dark and rainy. ”

“ She is a very good servant."
At night the hag slept in one room, her sister in another, and Smallhead in a third. When the two sisters were sleeping soundly Smallhead rose, stole the hag's magic book, and then took the rod. She went next to where the pig was, and with one blow of the rod made a man of him.
With the help of the magic book Smallhead made two doves of herself and the King's son, and they took flight through the air and flew on without stopping. Next morning the hag called Smallhead, but she did not come. She hurried out to see the pig. The pig was gone. She ran to her book. ”

“ She shall never pass living from this land that is ringed in by the desert and the forest. She shall choose me to reign through her as her high priest, or she shall die—die miserably. For a little while that old hag, Nya, may protect her with her wisdom, but when she passes, as she must, and quickly, for I will light fires beneath this fallen tree of hers, then I tell thee the Beautiful One shall choose between my rule and doom.”
Now Noie would hear no more.
“Dog,” she cried, “filthy night-bird, darest thou speak thus of the Inkosazana? ”

“ said the hag—"for revenge—the sweetest morsel to the mouth that over was cooked in hell!" ”

“ You have a great wrong done to the woman inside, where you left her burying bare.
Second Hag: She to be without a farthing dip for her corpse, and you after lavishing gold.
First Hag: You have a right to bruise your knees making repentance, you that lay on the one pillow with her. You to be putting curses upon others and making attacks on them! I would make no complaint, you to be naked at your own burying and at the very hour of death, and the rain falling down on your head.
McDonough: Little I mind what happens me. There is no word you can put out of your mouth can do me any injury at all. ”

“ Jesus (upon whom be peace!) saw the world revealed in the form of an ugly old hag. He asked her how many husbands she had possessed; she replied that they were countless. He asked whether they had died or been divorced; she said that she had slain them all. "I marvel," he said, "at the fools who see what you have done to others, and still desire you." ”

“ Then the old hag was in a dreadful rage, and said, "If he makes himself ever so heavy next time, he shan't take me in again."
The third day everything went just as it had gone twice before; Goldtooth began to bark, and Buttercup's mother said to him,
"Do run out and see what our dog is barking at."
So out he went, but he soon came back crying out,
"Heaven save us! Here comes the old hag again with her head under her arm and a sack at her back."
"Jump under the kneading-trough and hide," said his mother.
"Good day!" said the hag, as she came in at the door; "is your Buttercup at home to-day?" ”

“ But with a flash of this remaining spirit, I imagine my mother Duty to be a sort of old task-mistress, like the hag of the merchant Abudah, in the Tales of the Genii—not a hag though, by any means; on the contrary, my old woman wears a rich old-fashioned gown of black silk, with ruffles of triple blonde-lace, and a coif as rich as that of Pearling Jean; [496] a figure and countenance something like Lady D.S.'s twenty years ago ”

“ I heard tell, he to throw the pipes up on top of the rafters, they would go sounding out tunes of themselves.
Second Hag: He could do no more with them than what McDonough himself can do—may ill luck attend him! It is inhuman tunes he does be making; unnatural they are.
First Hag: He is a great musician surely.
Second Hag: There is no person can be safe from him the time he will put his "come hither" upon them. I give you my word he set myself dancing reels one time in the street, and I making an attack on him for keeping the little lads miching from school. ”

“ HAG. (1) (Probably a shortened form of the O. Eng. hægtesse, hegtes, cognate with Ger. Hexe, witch, Dutch hecse) , a word common during the 16th and 17th centuries for a female demon or evil spirit, and so particularly applied to such supernatural beings as the harpies and fairies of classical mythology, and also to witches. In modern usage the word is generally used of a hideous old woman whose repulsive exterior is accompanied by malice or wickedness. ”

“ Thus the fairy rings which are often to be met with on the Sussex downs are known as hag-tracks, [5] from the belief that "they are caused by hags and witches, who dance there at midnight." [6] Their love for sequestered and romantic localities is widely illustrated on the Continent, instances of which have been collected together by Grimm, who remarks how "the fame of particular witch-mountains extends over wide kingdoms." ”

“ For the hag tells fortunes, conjures the soul of a given man in his sleep, soothsays and manufactures all kinds of mascots, lucky things, and teaches how, by the intense exertion of will, it is possible to hasten another man's natural demise. ”

“ If there’s one thing I hate, it is railing, ‘specially if made of hard oak and held edgeways.”
So the wicked old hag babbled on, after her hideous fashion, while the Abbot stared at the ceiling.
“Enough of these sad stories of vice and violence. Such mischances will happen, and of course you were not to blame. Now, good Mistress Megges, will you undertake this case, which cannot be left to ignorant nuns? Though times are hard here, since of late many losses have fallen on our house, your skill shall be well paid.” ”

“ Then she donned a gown of fine white wool and rubbed her forehead, till she made a great mark as of a scar and anointed it with an ointment of her own fashion, so that it shone with prodigious sheen. Now the old hag was lean bodied and hollow eyed, and she bound her legs tightly round with cords [FN#412] just above her feet, till she drew near the Moslem camp, when she unwound them, leaving their marks deeply embedded in her ankles. ”

“ Therefore, that her life should be instantly terminated by a private death; and that the old hag, the author of her ruin, should be publicly burned under every ignominious circumstance. To this hard decision the agonised father was persuaded to assent; and a doctor was immediately dispatched for to Forres, to point out the easiest mode of taking her life. Bleeding the temporal arteries was the mode of death agreed on, and the poor innocent victim of the old hag’s depravity was [148] introduced into a private apartment, in order to undergo the awful operation. ”

“ Give me money, and within six months Yorkshire and the North will be up, and within a year Henry the Anti-Christ will be dead and the Princess Mary fast upon the throne, with the Emperor and the Pope for watchdogs. That stiff-necked Cicely must die and her babe must die, and then I’ll twist the secret of the jewels out of the witch, Emlyn—on the rack, if need be. Those jewels—I’ve seen them so often; why, they would feed an army; but while Cicely or her brat lives where is my claim to them? So, alas! they must die, but oh! the hag is right. Who shall give me absolution for a deed I hate? ”

“ The children went into the wood searching one way while the old hag took another direction. When they had arrived at a certain spot they met a fay. This fay said to them: "You are gathering sticks, my children, to heat the oven, but you do not know that the old hag wants to bake you in it." She further told them that the old witch meant to order them to stand on the baker's peel, saying: "Stand on this peel, my little pets, that I may see you dance in the oven ”

“ Been bounced?"
"N-no."
"The old hag 'ain't been making it hot for you, has she?"
"Sh-she—"
"Gad! that old hag gets my fur up. I had a mother-in-law once tried them tricks on me till I learned her they wouldn't work. But the old hag of yourn—"
"It's her eyes; the doctor must have scared her up again to-day. When she gets scared like that about 'em she acts up so, honest, sometimes I—I just wish I was dead. She don't think a girl oughtta have no life." ”