On Sept. 6, 1620, the Mayflower, a sailing vessel of about 180 tons, started her memorable voyage from Plymouth, England, with about 1001 pilgrims aboard, bound for Virginia to establish a…
Ab′igail A lady's maid, or ladymaid. Abigail, wife of Nabal, who introduced herself to David and afterwards married him, is a well-known Scripture heroine (1 Samuel xxv 3). Abigail was a…
“Let me make the ballads, and who will may make the laws.” Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, in Scotland, wrote to the Marquis of Montrose, “I knew a very wise man of Sir Christopher Musgrave's…
The colour of magic. “Red is the colour of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The caps of fairies and musicians are well-nigh always red.” —Yeates: Fairy…
The slang of the Romany folk. Even Bracton uses the word Frenchman as a synonym of foreigner, and it is not long since that everyone who could not speak English was called a Frenchman. The…
A knavish beggar in the Beggar's Bush, by Beaumont and Fletcher. Prig. A coxcomb, a conceited person Probably the Anglo-Saxon pryt or pryd. Prig. To filch or steal. Also a pick-pocket or…
A sword (glave de la mort, the sword of Sir Bevis of Southampton), a generic name for a sword. (See Sword.) “Had I been accompanied with my Toledo or Morglay.” —Every Woman in her Humour “…
(The). A way to India from Europe round the north extremit of Asia. It had been often attempted even in the 16th century Hence Beaumont and Fletcher. That everlasting cassock, that has…
New-fangled notions. When the calendar was reformed by Pope Gregory XIII. (1582), letters used to be dated stilo novo, which grew in time to be a cant phrase for any innovation. “And so I…
rendered the wearer invisible. Gyges, the Lydian, is the person to whom Candaules showed his wife naked. According to Plato, Gyges descended into a chasm of the earth, where he found a…
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