=Obadiah Prim=, a canting, knavish hypocrite; one of the four guardians of Anne Lovely, the heiress. Colonel Feignwell personates Simon Pure, and obtains the Quaker’s consent to his marriage with Anne Lovely.--Mrs. Centlivre, _A Bold Stroke for a Wife_ (1717). =Obermann=, the impersonation of high moral worth without talent, and the tortures endured by the consciousness of this defect.--Etienne Pivert de Sen´ancour, _Obermann_ (1804). =Oberon=, king of the fairies, quarrelled with his wife, Titania, about a “changeling” which Obĕron wanted for a page, but Titania refused to give up. Oberon, in revenge, anointed her eyes in sleep with the extract of “Love in Idleness,” the effect of which was to make the sleeper in love with the first object beheld on waking. Titania happened to see a country bumpkin, whom Puck had dressed up with an ass’s head. Oberon came upon her while she was fondling the clown, sprinkled on her an antidote, and she was so ashamed of her folly that she readily consented to give up the boy to her spouse for his page.--Shakespeare, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (1592). =Oberon, the Fay=, king of Mommur, a humpty dwarf, three feet high, of angelic face. He told Sir Huon that the lady of the Hidden Isle (_Cephalonia_) married Neptanēbus, king of Egypt, by whom she had a son named Alexander “the Great.” Seven hundred years later she had another son, Oberon, by Julius Cæsar, who stopped in Cephalonia on his way to Thessaly. At the birth of Oberon the fairies bestowed their gifts on him. One was insight into men’s thoughts, and another was the power of transporting himself instantaneously to any place. At death he made Huon his successor, and was borne to paradise.--_Huon de Bordeaux_ (a romance). =Oberthal= (_Count_), lord of Dordrecht, near the Meuse. When Bertha, one of his vassals, asked permission to marry John of Leyden, the count withheld his consent, as he designed to make Bertha his mistress. This drove John into rebellion, and he joined the anabaptists. The count was taken prisoner by Gio´na, a discarded servant, but was liberated by John. When John was crowned prophet-king the count entered the banquet-hall to arrest him, and perished with him in the flames of the burning palace.--Meyerbeer, _Le Prophète_ (opera, 1849). =Obi.= Among the negroes of the West Indies “Obi” is the name of a magical power, supposed to affect men with all the curses of an “evil eye.” =Obi-Woman= (_An_), an African sorceress, a worshipper of Mumbo Jumbo. =Obi´dah=, a young man who meets with various adventures and misfortunes allegorical of human life.--Dr. Johnson, _The Rambler_ (1750-2). =Obid´icut=, the fiend of lust, and one of the five which possessed “poor Tom.”--Shakespeare, _King Lear_, act iv. sc. 1 (1605).