No less praiseworthy are the sisters three, The honor of the noble family Of which I, meanest, boast myself to be, ... Phyllis, Charyllis, and sweet Amaryllis: Phyllis the fair is eldest of the three. Spenser, _Colin Clout’s Come Home Again_ (1594). =Phyllis and Brunetta=, rival beauties. Phyllis procured for a certain festival some marvellous fabric of gold brocade in order to eclipse her rival, but Brunetta dressed the slave who bore her train, in a robe of the same material and cut in precisely the same fashion, while she herself wore simple black. Phyllis died of mortification.--_The Spectator_ (1711, 1712, 1714). =Phynnodderee=, a Manx spirit, similar to the Scotch brownie. Phynnodderee is an outlawed fairy, who absented himself from Fairy-court on the great _levée_ day of the harvest moon. Instead of paying his respects to King Oberon, he remained in the glen of Rushen, dancing with a pretty Manx maid whom he was courting. =Physic a Farce is= (_His_). Sir John Hill began his career as an apothecary in St. Martin’s Lane, London; became author, and amongst other things wrote farces. Grarrick said of him: For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is: His farces are physic, his physic a farce is. =Physician= (_The Beloved_), St. Luke, the evangelist (_Col._ iv. 14). =Physicians= (_The prince of_), Avicenna, the Arabian (980-1037). =Physigna´thos=, king of the frogs, and son of Pelus (“mud”). Being wounded in the battle of the frogs and mice by Troxartas, the mouse king, he flees ingloriously to a pool, “and half in anguish of the flight, expires” (bk. iii. 112). The word means “puffed chaps.” Great Physignathos I from Pelus’ race, Begot in fair Hydromedê’s embrace. Parnell, _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_, i. (about 1712). =Pibrac= (_Seigneur de_), poet and diplomatist, author of _Cinquante Quatrains_ (1574). Gorgibus bids his daughter to study Pibrac instead of trashy novels and poetry. Lisez-moi, comme il faut, au lieu de ces sornettes, Les _Quatrains_ de Pibrac, et les doctes _Tablettes_ Du conseiller Matthieu; l’ouvrage est de valeur, ... _La Guide des pécheurs_ est encore un bon livre. Molière, _Sganarelle_, i. 1 (1660). (Pierre Matthieu, poet and historian, wrote _Quatrains de la Vanité du Monde_, 1629.) =Picanninies= (4 _syl._), little children; the small fry of a village.--_West Indian Negroes._ There were at the marriage the picanninies and the Joblilies, but not the Grand Panjandrum.--Yonge. =Pic´atrix=, the pseudonym of a Spanish monk; author of a book on demonology. When I was a student ... that same Rev. Picatrix ... was wont to tell us that devils did naturally fear the bright flashes of swords as much as he feared the splendor of the sun.--Rabelais, _Pantag´ruel_, iii. 23 (1545).