_Gertrude._ Brave heroine of Maria S. Cummins’s _Lamplighter_. She raises herself by sheer force of energy and talent from the lowly station in which she was born to a position of highest respectability and influence (1853). =Gerun´dio= (_Fray_), _i.e._ Friar Gerund, the hero and title of a Spanish romance, by the Jesuit De l’Isla. It is a satire on the absurdities and bad taste of the popular preachers of the time (1758). =Ge´ryon’s Sons=, the Spaniards; so called from Geryon, an ancient king of Spain, whose oxen were driven off by Her´culês. This task was one of the hero’s “twelve labors.” Milton uses the expression in _Paradise Lost_, xi. 410 (1665). =Geryon´eo=, a human monster with three bodies. He was of the race of giants, being the son of Geryon, the tyrant who gave all strangers “as food to his kine, the fairest and the fiercest kine alive.” Geryoneo promised to take the young widow Belgê (2 _syl._) under his protection; but it was like the wolf protecting the lamb, for “he gave her children to a dreadful monster to devour.” In her despair she applied to King Arthur for help, and the British king, espousing her cause, soon sent Geryoneo “down to the house of dole.”—Spenser, _Faëry Queen_, v. 10, 11 (1596). ⁂ “Geryoneo” is the house of Austria, and Philip of Spain in particular. “King Arthur” is England, and the earl of Leicester in particular. The “Widow Belgê” is the Netherlands; and the monster that devoured her children the inquisition, introduced by the duke of Alva. “Geryoneo” had three bodies, for Philip ruled over three kingdoms—Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. The earl of Leicester, sent in 1585 to the aid of the Netherlands, broke off the yoke of Philip. =Ges´mas=, the impenitent thief crucified with our Lord. In the apocryphal _Gospel of Nicodemus_, he is called Gestas. The penitent thief was Dismas, Dysmas, Demas, or Dumacus. Three bodies on three crosses hang supine; Dismas and Gesmas and the power Divine. Dismas seeks heaven, Gesmas his own damnation. The Mid-one seeks our ransom and salvation. _Translation of a Latin Charm._