moss-hag

A moss-hag is a cut on the hillside, formed by frost and rain; and overhung with moss, heather, and other growths.

Sketches of the Covenanters J. C. McFeeters

Following the sound, he came to a moss-hag, where a group of

Sketches of the Covenanters J. C. McFeeters

Dead eyes, cold eyes, immovable and clear -- horribly clear they were -- eyes that simply stared, neither showing accusation nor denunciation; but there they were at every tuft of yellow grass, behind every moss-hag, and staring like pools of clear silent death, which struck horror to his heart.

The Underworld The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner James C. Welsh

Those who had come in, soaked and surly, ate their dinner in silence and discomfort and took themselves away, leaving the freshly scrubbed floor as mucky as a moss-hag on the moor.

Greyfriars Bobby Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson 1902

Only here and there he could see a deep black gash which was the side of a moss-hag at the bottom of which a pool of ink-black water lay frozen solid.

Patsy 1887

They filled their creels, helped each other to get them on their backs, and were setting out on their weary tramp home, when up rose two of Mr. Palmer's men, who had been watching them, cut their ropes and took their loads, emptied the peats into a moss-hag full of water, and threw the creels after them.

What's Mine's Mine — Volume 3 George MacDonald 1864

They filled their creels, helped each other to get them on their backs, and were setting out on their weary tramp home, when up rose two of Mr. Palmer's men, who had been watching them, cut their ropes and took their loads, emptied the peats into a moss-hag full of water, and threw the creels after them.

What's Mine's Mine — Complete George MacDonald 1864

There are rough stepping-stones at some of the crossings, and the passage of these, after nightfall, resembles greatly that of a "shaking" bog, where the traveler has to leap from tussock to moss-hag with agile audacity; the consequences of a false step being, in both cases, about the same.

Border and Bastille 1851

Were we to go near these lads of the laird's belt, your letter would do you little good, and my pack would do me muckle black ill; they would tirl every steek of claithes from our back, fling us into a moss-hag with a stone at our heels, naked as the hour that brought us into this cumbered and sinful world, and neither Murray nor any other man ever the wiser.

The Monastery Walter Scott 1801

He was not far engaged in the Waste, which was then, and is now, traversed only by such routes as are described in the text, when two or three fellows, disguised and variously armed, started from a moss-hag, while by a glance behind him

Guy Mannering — Complete Walter Scott 1801