"Beldame" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one unlooked-for blessing come already to console poor Roger; and no little compensation for his trouble was the way his wife received the news. He, unlucky man, had expected something little short of a virago's talons, and a beldame's curse; he had experienced on less occasions something of the sort before; but now that real affliction stood upon the hearth, Mary Acton's character rose with the emergency, and she greeted her ruined husband with a kindness towards ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... tales of fearful dark decrees Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; Or of those hags, who at the witching time Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell: Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart, Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... The beldame changed herself to a crane, And flew to the clouds on high; But Vitting donned a feather robe, And pursued ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... me, and I am lost if you do not dissemble a little love for me. I am not without hopes; because I am not like the tawdry gay things that are fit only to make bone-lace. I am neither childish-young, nor beldame-old, but, the world ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... Heauens on fire, And not in feare of your Natiuitie. Diseased Nature oftentimes breakes forth In strange eruptions; and the teeming Earth Is with a kinde of Collick pincht and vext, By the imprisoning of vnruly Winde Within her Wombe: which for enlargement striuing, Shakes the old Beldame Earth, and tombles downe Steeples, and mosse-growne Towers. At your Birth, Our Grandam Earth, hauing this distemperature, In ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... matters what my luck is," returned the Dame, "an old beldame such as me, so long as you and your brother come off safe, and find the blessed princes at home well and sound? Would that we were out of this sandy hole, or that any one would resolve me why we cannot go straight to Jerusalem ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his friends about him, that is, all the other boys of the court, and the fight begins. Johnny and his mates make a very good fight, but certain heavy Buckinghamshire countrymen—fellows of fifty stone—are brought to the assistance of that screaming beldame Mother Tory, and poor Master Johnny has no other election than to listen to the shouts of triumph that declare there never shall be plenty of flour, plenty of sugar, or, in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... by surprise, was some time before she could shake off the old beldame's hateful caresses; but at last getting free and tucking up her hair, which her imaginary mother-in-law had clawed about her ears, she exclaimed in no ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... here, thou ancient beldame? Ha! I hate thee most of all this Colchian crew. One glance at thy dim eyes and wrinkled brow, And lo! before my troubled sight there swims The dusky shore of Colchis! Why must thou Be ever hovering close beside my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with their friends above. The respect with which he had inspired them, however, prevented any overt insult on their part. As for me, my temper had flared up like the burning of a loose charge of powder, and by instinct my right hand sought the handle of the mate's hanger. The beldame saw the motion. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ghoul, gorilla, vulture; gyrfalcon|!, gerfalcon|!. wild beast, tiger, hyena, butcher, hangman; blood-hound, hell-hound, sleuth-hound; catamount [U. S.], cougar, jaguar, puma. hag, hellhag[obs3], beldam, Jezebel. monster; fiend &c. (demon) 980; devil incarnate, demon in human shape; Frankenstein's monster. harpy, siren; Furies, Eumenides. Hun, Attila[obs3], scourge of the human race. Phr. faenum habet ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... stage; the poet shall be burlesqued with his own doggrel rhymes; the painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary landscape; and the physician shall want food more than his patients do physic. In short, without self-love, instead of beautiful, you shall think yourself an old beldam of fourscore; instead of youthful, you shall seem just dropping into the grave; instead of eloquent, a mere stammerer; and in lieu of gende and complaisant, you shall appear like a downright country clown; it being so necessary that every one should think well of himself ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... days of wickedness and wit, When Villiers criticised what Dryden writ, The tragic queen, to please a tasteless crowd, Had learn'd to bellow, rant, and roar so loud, That frighten'd Nature, her best friend before, The blustering beldam's company foreswore; Her comic sister, who had wit 'tis true, With all her merits, had her failings too: And would sometimes in mirthful moments use A style too flippant for a well-bred muse; Then female modesty abash'd began To seek the friendly refuge of the fan, Awhile behind that slight ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... that he was not at all glad; that the same thought which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam, with her beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our childhood days; she had shut us up in a ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... name of a gentleman, your ladyship may be sure," the beldam answered; "'tis always the name of a gentleman. And this is one I know well, for I have heard more than one poor soul mumbling it and raving at him in her last hours. One there was, and I knew her, a pretty rosy thing in her country days, not sixteen, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Kate, "as perchance thou knowest, since the match pleased not thy father. And she was not the first Wyvern who had married a Trevlyn. It was Isabel Wyvern, her aunt, who had wedded with the redoubtable Sir Richard who had burnt the old witch, and I trow had he been married when the old beldam was brought before him he would have dealt more mercifully with her; for the Wyverns ever protected and helped the gipsy folk, and thought better of them than the rest of the world. Well, be that as it may, my grandam had many stories about them and their strange ways, ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... me! abandoned on the lonesome plain, As yet poor Edwin never knew your lore, Save when against the winter's drenching rain, And driving snow, the cottage shut the door. Then, as instructed by tradition hoar, Her legends when the Beldam 'gan impart, Or chant the old heroic ditty o'er, Wonder and joy ran thrilling to his heart; Much he the tale admired, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... first assertion. "An old she it is, surrounded by wolves. Ha! it's her cubs they're after! Voila, messieurs! She's got one of them on her back. Enfant de garce, how the old beldam keeps them at bay! She's fighting her way ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid |
