Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 3: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's HandbookBrewer, Ebenezer Cobham
General
Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 3: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham
Allusions; Fiction -- Dictionaries; Literature -- Dictionaries
=Pilgrim to Compostella.= Some pilgrims on their way to Compostella,
stopped at a hospice in La Calzāda. The daughter of the innkeeper
solicited a young Frenchman to spend the night with her, but he refused;
so she put in his wallet a silver cup, and when he was on the road, she
accused him to the alcaydê of theft. As the property was found in his
possession, the alcaydê ordered him to be hung. His parents went on
their way to Compostella, and returned after eight days, but what was
their amazement to find their son alive on the gibbet, and uninjured.
They went instantly to tell the alcaydê; but the magistrate replied,
“Woman, you are mad! I would just as soon believe these pullets, which
I am about to eat, are alive, as that a man who has been gibbeted eight
days is not dead.” No sooner had he spoken than the two pullets actually
rose up alive. The alcaydê was frightened out of his wits, and was about
to rush out of doors, when the heads and feathers of the birds came
scampering in to complete the resuscitation. The cock and hen were taken
in grand procession to St. James’s Church of Compostella, where they
lived seven years, and the hen hatched two eggs, a cock and a hen, which
lived just seven years, and did the same. This has continued to this
day, and pilgrims receive feathers from these birds as holy relics; but
no matter how many feathers are given away, the plumage of the sacred
fowls is never deficient.
⁂ This legend is also seriously related by Bishop Patrick, _Parable of
the Pilgrims_, xxxv. 430-4. Udal ap Rhys repeats it in his _Tour through
Spain and Portugal_, 35-8. It is inserted in the _Acta Sanctorum_, vi.
45. Pope Calixtus II. mentions it among the miracles of Santiago.
=Pilgrim= (_A Passionate_), American who visits England, as one seeks the
home he has loved throughout a tedious exile. It is like the return of a
weary child to his mother’s arms, as night comes on. He lingers upon
each feature of the landscape as upon the face of his beloved, and
counts the rest of the world but “a garish” place.--Henry James, Jr., _A
Passionate Pilgrim_.
=Pilgrim’s Progress= (_The_), by John Bunyan. Pt. i., 1670; pt. ii., 1684.
This is supposed to be a dream, and to allegorize the life of a
Christian, from his conversion to his death. His doubts are giants, his
sins a pack, his Bible a chart, his minister, Evangelist, his conversion
a flight from the City of Destruction, his struggle with besetting sins
a fight with Apollyon, his death a toilsome passage over a deep stream,
and so on.
The second part is Christiana and her family led by Greatheart through
the same road, to join Christian who had gone before.
=Pillar of the Doctors= (_La Colonne des Docteurs_), William de Champeaux
(*-1121).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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