=Talking-Bird= (_The_), called Bulbulhe´zar. It had the power of human speech, and when it sang all the song-birds in the vicinity came and joined in concert. It was also oracular, and told the sultan the tale of his three children, and how they had been exposed by the sultana’s two jealous sisters.--_Arabian Nights_ (“The Two Sisters,” the last tale). The talking bird is called “the little green bird” in “The Princess Fairstar,” one of the _Fairy Tales_ of the Comtesse D’Aunoy (1682). =Tallboy= (_Old_), forester of St. Mary’s Convent.--Sir W. Scott, _Monastery_ (time, Elizabeth). =Talleyrand.= This name, anciently written “Taileran,” was originally a sobriquet derived from the words _tailler les rangs_ (“cut through the ranks”). Talleyrand is generally credited with the _mot_: “La parole a été donnée à l’homme pour l’aider à cacher sa pensée [_or_ déguiser la pensée];” but they were spoken by Comte de Montrond, “the most agreeable scoundrel in the court of Marie Antoinette.”--Captain Gronow, _Recollections and Anecdotes_. Voltaire, sixty years previously, had said: “Ils n’employent les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées.”--_Le Chapon et la Poularde._ And Goldsmith, in 1759, when Talleyrand was about four years old, had published the sentence: “The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.”--_The Bee_, iii. =Talos=, a son of Perdix, sister of Dædălos, inventor of the saw, compasses, and other mechanical instruments. His uncle, jealous of him, threw him from the citadel of Athens, and he was changed into a partridge. _Talos_, a man of brass, made by Hephæstos (_Vulcan_). This wonderful automaton was given to Minos to patrol the island of Crete. It traversed the island thrice every day, and if a stranger came near, made itself red hot, and squeezed him to death. =Talus=, an iron man, representing power or the executive of a state. He was Astræa’s groom, whom the goddess gave to Sir Artĕgal. This man of iron, “unmovable and resistless without end,” “swift as a swallow, and as a lion strong,” carried in his hand an iron flail, “with which he threshed out falsehood, and did truth unfold.” When Sir Artegal fell into the power of Radigund, queen of the Amăzons, Talus brought Britomart to the rescue.--Spenser, _Faëry Queen_, v. 1 (1596). =Talut.= So the Mohammedans call Saul. Verily God hath sent Talût king over you .... Samuel said, Verily God hath chosen him, and hath caused him to increase in knowledge and stature.--_Al Korân_, ii. =Talvi=, a pseudonym of Mrs. Robinson. It is simply the initials of her maiden name, Therese Albertine Louise von Iakob. =Tam o’ Todshaw=, a huntsman, near Charlie’s Hope Farm.--Sir W. Scott, _Guy Mannering_ (time, George II.). =Tam o’ the Cowgate=, the sobriquet of Sir Thomas Hamilton, a Scotch lawyer, who lived in the Cowgate, at Edinburgh (*-1563).