Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 2: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's HandbookBrewer, Ebenezer Cobham
General
Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 2: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham
Allusions; Fiction -- Dictionaries; Literature -- Dictionaries
=Giant’s Leap= (_Lam Goëmagot_) or “Goëmagot’s Leap.” Now called Haw,
near Plymouth. The legend is that Cori´neus (3 _syl._) wrestled with
Goëmagot, king of the Albion giants, heaved the monster on his shoulder,
carried him to the top of a high rock, and cast him into the sea.
At the beginning of the encounter, Corineus and the giant, standing
front to front, held each other strongly in their arms, and panted aloud
for breath; but Goëmagot presently grasping Croineus with all his might,
broke three of his ribs, two on the right side and one on his left.
Corineus, highly enraged, roused up his whole strength, snatched up the
giant, ran with him on his shoulders to the neighboring cliff, and
heaved him into the sea.... The place where he fell is called Lam
Goëmagot to this day.—Geoffrey, _British History_, i. 16 (1142).
=Giaour= [_djow´.er_]. Byron’s tale called _The Giaour_ is supposed to
be told by a Turkish fisherman who had been employed all the day in the
gulf of Ægi´na, and landed his boat at night-fall on the Piræ´us, now
called the harbor of Port Leonê. He was eye-witness of all the
incidents, and in one of them a principal agent (see line 352: “I hear
the sound of coming feet....”). The tale is this: Leilah, the beautiful
concubine of the Caliph Hasson, falls in love with a giaour, flees from
the seraglio, is overtaken by an emir, put to death, and cast into the
sea. The giaour cleaves Hassan’s skull, flees for his life, and becomes
a monk. Six years afterwards he tells his history to his father
confessor on his death-bed, and prays him to “lay his body with the
humblest dead, and not even to inscribe his name on his tomb.”
Accordingly, he is called “the Giaour,” and is known by no other name
(1813).
=Giauha´re= (4 _syl._), daughter of the king of Saman´dal, the mightiest
of the undersea empires. When her father was made captive by king Saleh,
she emerged for safety to a desert island, where she met Bed´er, the
young king of Persia, who proposed to make her his wife; but Griauharê
“spat on him,” and changed him “into a white bird with red beak and red
legs.” The bird was sold to a certain king, and, being disenchanted,
resumed the human form. After several marvellous adventures, Beder again
met the under-sea princess, proposed to her again, and she became his
wife and queen of Persia.—_Arabian Nights_ (“Beder and Griauharê”).
=Gibbet=, a foot-pad and a convict, who “left his country for his
country’s good.” He piqued himself on being “the best-behaved man on the
road.”
’Twas for the good of my country I should be abroad.—George Farquhar,
_The Beaux’ Stratagem_, iii. 3 (1707).
I thought it rather odd ... and said to myself, as Gibbet said when he
heard that Aimwell had gone to church, “That looks suspicious.”—James
Smith.
_Gibbet_ (Master), secretary to Martin Joshua Bletson (parliamentary
commissioner).—Sir W. Scott, _Woodstock_ (time, Commonwealth).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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