=Owl a Baker’s Daughter= (_The_). Our Lord once went into a baker’s shop to ask for bread. The mistress instantly put a cake in the oven for Him, but the daughter, thinking it to be too large, reduced it to half the size. The dough, howover,[TN-57] swelled to an enormous bulk, and the daughter cried out, “Heugh! heugh! heugh!” and was transformed into an owl. Well, God ’ield you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter.--Shakespeare, _Hamlet_ (1596). =Ox= (_The Dumb_), St. Thomas Aqui´nas; so named by his fellow-students on account of his taciturnity (1224-1274). An ox once spoke as learned men deliver.--Beaumont and Fletcher, _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_, iii. 1 (1640). _Ox._ _The black ox hath trod on his foot_, he has married and is hen-pecked; calamity has befallen him. The black ox was sacrificed to the infernals, and was consequently held accursed. When Tusser says the best way to thrive is to get married, the objector says: Why, then, do folk this proverb put, “The black ox near trod on thy foot,” If that way were to thrive? _Wiving and Thriving_, lvii. (1557). The black oxe had not trode on his or her foote; But ere his branch of blesse could reach any roote, The flowers so faded that in fifteen weekes A man might copy the change in the cheekes Both of the poore wretch and his wife. Heywood (1646). =Oxford= (_John, earl of_), an exiled Lancastrian. He appears with his son Arthur as a travelling merchant, under the name of Philipson. ⁂ _The son of the merchant Philipson_ is Sir Arthur de Vere. _The countess of Oxford_, wife of the earl.--Sir W. Scott, _Anne of Geierstein_ (time, Edward IV.). _Oxford_ (_The young earl of_), in the court of Queen Elizabeth.--Sir W. Scott, _Kenilworth_ (time, Elizabeth). =Ozair= (2 _syl._), a prophet. One day, riding on an ass by the ruins of Jerusalem, after its destruction by the Chaldeans, he doubted in his mind whether God could raise the city up again. Whereupon God caused him to die, and he remained dead a hundred years, but was then restored to life. He found the basket of figs and cruse of wine as fresh as when he died, but his ass was a mass of bones. While he still looked, the dry bones came together, received life, and the resuscitated ass began to bray. The prophet no longer doubted the power of God to raise up Jerusalem from its ruins.--_Al Korân_, ii. (Sale’s notes). ⁂ This legend is based on _Neh._ ii. 12-20. =P= Placenticus, the Dominican, wrote a poem of 253 Latin hexameters, called _Pugna Porcorum_, every word of which begins with the letter _p_ (died 1548). It begins thus: Plaudite, Porcelli, porcorum pigra propago Progreditur ... etc. There was one composed in honor of Charles le Chauve, every word of which began with _c_. The best known alliterative poem in English is the following:--