Woad

“ What can be more violent than the fling of boughs in a gale, the tree yielding itself all up the trunk, to the very tip of the branch, streaming and shuddering the way the wind blows, yet never flying in dishevelment away? ”

“ Beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking East between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire, and not many stones’ throw from us appeared and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent. ”

“ To see them is a spectacle of a rather curious kind, though repulsive. Coupled two and two—for the precaution is taken, and not unfrequently needed—to keep their leg-chains on; up in mud to the middle of their bodies, and above bespattered with it—such mud too! many of them with faces that, even when clean, are aught but nice to look at; their eyes now flashing fierce defiance, now bent down and sullen, they seem either at enmity or out of sorts with all mankind. ”

“ The light sylph-like garments, so tenderly pinn’d,
That blew into shape, and embodied the wind!
There was white on the grass—there was white on the spray—
Her garden—it look’d like a garden of May!
But now all is dark—not a shirt’s on a shrub—
You’ve ruined her prospects in life, Mr. Scrub!
You’ve ruin’d her custom—now families drop her—
From her silver reduced—nay, reduced from her copper!
The last of her washing is done at her eye,
One poor little kerchief that never gets dry! ”

“ Of sickness, too, the causes and the signs
I'll teach thee. Loathly scab assails the sheep,
When chilly showers have probed them to the quick,
And winter stark with hoar-frost, or when sweat
Unpurged cleaves to them after shearing done,
And rough thorns rend their bodies. Hence it is
Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams,
While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell,
The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide. ”

“ She trembles like a frightened lamb, which, wounded, being snatched from the mouth of a hoary wolf, does not as yet seem to itself in safety; and as a dove, its feathers soaked with its own blood, still trembles, and dreads the ravening talons wherein it has been lately held. ”

“ How the mud goes round in the mind—what a swirl these monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there, striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear and still, and there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again. ”

“ It is difficult to say which would be worse--a fall from the stool by daylight into the embers of a wood fire, or the shuddering slimy waking about midnight, after a nod more vigorous than the rest, to find oneself plunged in eight cold inches of soft mud. ”

“ It shakes the earth; the earth trembles before her master.
"Blood is good, the red blood is bright; there is no smell like the smell of new-shed blood. The lions shall lap it up and roar, the vultures shall wash their wings in it and shriek with joy. ”

“ Worms, as thick and long as my little finger, themselves rose coloured and also spattered with blood, are wriggling their white bodies with many limbs from their stronghold in the inner of the wound towards the light. Poor young man, there’s no helping you. I have found out your great wound. ”

“ Out of the ceaseless winds that drive them, the carnal look at us, and we watch the heretic rending his flesh, and the glutton lashed by the rain. We break the withered branches from the tree in the grove of the Harpies, and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds with red blood before us, and cries aloud with bitter cries. ”

“ Their leafless branches, and the air
Filled with the arrows of the rain,
And heard amid the mist below,
Like voices of distress and pain,
That haunt the thoughts of men insane,
The fateful cawings of the crow. ”

“ How deeply and warmly and spotlessly Earth’s nakedness is clothed!—the ‘wool’ of the Psalmist nearly two feet deep. And as far as warmth and protection are concerned, there is a good deal of the virtue of wool in such a snow-fall. ”

“ Beneath the boudoir-bough of some fast-married bird,
Some dove that cooed to some one else's lawful dove,
And felt the dagger-beak pierce while his lady heard.
Then, maybe, dangling from thy gloomy gallows boughs,
A human corpse swings, mournful, rattling bones and chains—
His eighteenth century flesh hath fattened nineteenth century
cows—
Ghastly Æolian harp fingered of winds and rains. ”

“ Thine eyes are as dove's,
or
Thou hast dove's eyes.
The hawk is a beautiful bird, and has beautiful eyes, quick and penetrating; but the Bridegroom desires not hawk's eyes in His bride. The tender eyes of the innocent dove are those which He admires. It was as a dove that the Holy Spirit came upon Him at His baptism, and the dove-like character is that which He seeks for in each of His people. ”

“ Blood and foam covered the animal's chest, the girl's cloak, and the garments of the men, who, on account of the inextricable knotting of the leads which bound the animals one to another, and the three sets of teeth which were snapping and tearing at everything within their reach, found themselves helpless to calm the tumult. ”

“ It is rather the sudden evolution of a seed that had sunk too deep for the warmth and exciting air to reach, but which a casual spade had turned up and brought close to the surface, and I now know the meaning as well as feel the truth of the Scottish proverb, Blood is thicker than water. ”

“ A heavy rain poured down in streams, and a storm wind arose which rooted up the tallest trees. Everything glimmered before his eyes and his ears were deafened. But he held his sword in his hand, and stood as firm as a rock. ”

“ He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the well or a rag being tied to the tree. ”

“ Not unsuitably came a dove, to point out the Son of God; for nothing so well corresponds to a lamb as a dove. As the lamb among beasts, so is the dove among birds. There is the utmost innocence in each, the utmost gentleness, the utmost guilelessness. What is so opposed to all malice as a lamb and a dove? ”

“ How small the little figures looked wandering through the trees! She became acutely conscious of the little limbs, the thin veins, the delicate flesh of men and women, which breaks so easily and lets the life escape compared with these great trees and deep waters. A falling branch, a foot that slips, and the earth has crushed them or the water drowned them. ”

“ When at dayspring he is dappled with spots and sunk in a mist, and his orbed centre retires, mistrust thou of showers; for a gale is bearing hard from seaward, ill-ominous for trees and crops and herds. ”

“ Bat-like, out of the holes, and caverns, and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam pool ”

“ Their feet as they go strike the dust from the sunbaked path into a cloud behind them. The herd-girl herself looms large across the pasture—all things grow quickly dim, as if the air were filled with rising dust. ”

“ Be ye harmless as doves. "Be mild, and meek, and dispassionate; not only do nobody any hurt, but bear nobody any ill will; be without gall, as doves are; this must always go along with the former." They are sent forth among wolves, therefore must be as wise as serpents, but they are sent forth as sheep, therefore must be harmless as doves. We must be wise, not to wrong ourselves, but rather so than wrong any one else; must use the harmlessness of the dove to bear twenty injuries, rather than the subtlety of the serpent to offer or to return one. ”

“ One wretch is represented attempting to climb a tree, his brains being picked out by a bird from above, and his feet being torn off by dogs from beneath; another is seated on the ground, while two men are sawing him in halves, right through the head downwards, the blood all the while flowing in gallons! ”

“ The circumstances are not precisely known to us, beyond the fact that a young girl found him early in the morning lying in the shadow of a pile of timber, a prey to one of those strange fevers that make one shiver with cold even under a sky of fire. ”

“ I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn ear and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps, and with a narrow streamlet from which this mist came meandering down the centre. ”

“ 'Grass no longer grows where my horse has trod.' Look here, before you and around you! There is not a grain of sand that has not been bathed in blood, and what is that grain of sand itself, if not the dust of death? But how rich this blood is, and how fertile is the dust! ”

“ The green hopes will have died away,
As utterly gone to decay
As they had never been.
The wreath that bound your heart and hair
Were made the self-same fate to share.
Your shining curls flow wild on air,
Their braiding wreath undone ”

“ In the most stupendous scenes you will see delicate and fragile features, as slight wreaths of vapor, dewlines, feathery sprays, which suggest a high refinement, a noble blood and breeding, as it were. It is not hard to account for elves and fairies ”

“ Clouds of dust were driven up into the skies, and the plain became covered with banners, lances, and all kinds of arms, and with emblems of every colour and device, torn and broken, and soiled with blood and dust. ”

“ One of us must be killed, and her blood put in a kettle, and have added to it the blood of one of these doves flying about here. When this blood is well mixed, it must be heated, and with this blood the whole body of the king must be anointed. ”

“ For the bristly coat which covers its body is a kind of filter, which strains out the mud from the water which passes to the gills; and it soon becomes so choked with mud that you cannot see what the animal is really like at all. ”

“ I can pound a toad in a mortar, and make broth of it, and stir the broth with a dead man’s hand. Sprinkle it on thine enemy while he sleeps, and he will turn into a black viper, and his own mother will slay him. With a wheel I can draw the Moon from heaven, and in a crystal I can show thee Death. ”

“ And thus William Wood to my fancy appears In fillets of brass roll'd up to his ears; And over these fillets he wisely has thrown, To keep out of danger, a doublet of stone. [1] The louse of the wood for a medicine is used Or swallow'd alive, or skilfully bruised. And, let but our mother Hibernia contrive To swallow Will Wood, either bruised or alive, She need be no more with the jaundice possest, Or sick of obstructions, and pains in her chest. The next is an insect we call a wood-worm, That lies in old wood like a hare in her form ”

“ Supposing any one to fall down and knock his nose against a stone, he could instantly stop the bleeding if he only had in his pocket a toad that had been pierced through with a piece of wood and dried in the shade or smoke. ”

“ VIII And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell,—this wonder fled. ”

“ Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. ”

“ The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock; and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord."
The dove has been used from most ancient times as a sacred symbol. In Scripture it signifies the Holy Spirit, the meekness of Christ, and the desire of saints for the heavenly rest. ”

“ It is interesting for a stranger visiting the country at this period to view the processes of washing and shearing the animals—sorting, pressing, and packing the wool;—to often hear the terms of short and long staple wool, and to see the specimens of it arranged in small locks, showing the different degrees of fineness. ”

“ South-running water, salt, rowan-tree, enchanted flints (probably elf-arrow heads) , and doggrel verses (generally a translation of the Creed or Lord’s Prayer) were the means employed for effecting a cure. Diseases again were laid on by forming pictures of clay or wax, which were placed before the fire or buried with the heads downward; by placing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in the house of the intended victim ”

“ And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. ”

“ If, instead of using a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to {215} represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—a remnant of my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a sacred tree, or a nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the tree—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity ”

“ The fleas are everywhere, and attack you at all points, and travel over you until you feel like tearing your hair in utter desperation. And yet we have been told by some that they have not seen a flea. ”