=Tam O’ Shanter=, drunken peasant who looks into the lighted windows of Alloway Kirk one night, on his way home from the tavern, and watches the witches dance. He is discovered and chased by the hags. In crossing the bridge, a witch who has sprung upon his crupper, seizes his horse’s tail, and he leaves it with her, since she cannot cross running water.--Robert Burns, _Tam O’ Shanter_. =Tamburlaine the Great= (or _Timour Lengh_), the Tartar conqueror. In history called Tamerlane. He had only one hand and was lame (1336-1405). The hero and title of a tragedy by C. Marlowe (1587). Shakespeare (_2 Henry IV._ act ii. sc. 4) makes Pistol quote a part of this turgid play. Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia. What! can ye draw but twenty miles a day, And have so proud a chariot at your heels, And such a coachman as great Tamburlaine. (In the stage direction in Marlowe’s play: Enter Tamburlaine, drawn in his chariot by Treb´izon and Soria, with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right a whip with which he scourgeth them.) N. Rowe has a tragedy entitled _Tamerlane_ (_q. v._). =Tamer Tamed= (_The_), a kind of sequel to Shakespeare’s comedy _The Taming of the Shrew_. In the _Tamer Tamed_, Petruchio is supposed to marry a second wife, by whom he is hen-pecked.--Beaumont and Fletcher (1647). =Tamerlane=, emperor of Tartary, in Rowe’s tragedy so called, is a noble, generous, high-minded prince, the very glass of fashion for all conquerors, in his forgiveness of wrongs, and from whose example Christians might be taught their moral code. Tamerlane treats Bajazet, his captive, with truly godlike clemency, till the fierce sultan plots his assassination. Then, longer forbearance would have been folly, and the Tartar has his untamed captive chained in a cage, like a wild beast.--N. Rowe, _Tamerlane_ (1702). It is said that Louis XIV. was Rowe’s “Bajazet,” and William III. his “Tamerlane.” ⁂ Tamerlane is a corruption of _Timour Lengh_ (“Timour, the lame”). He was one-handed and lame also. His name was used by the Persians _in terrorem_. (See TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT.) =Taming of the Shrew= (_The_), a comedy by Shakespeare (1594). The “shrew” is Kathari´na, elder daughter of Baptista, of Padua, and she is tamed by the stronger mind of Petruchio into a most obedient and submissive wife.