Part 28

The etymology of “Picts” from the Latin _picti_ (“painted men”) is about equal to Stevens’s etymology of the word “brethren” from _tabernacle_ “because we breathe-therein.[TN-93]

=Picture= (_The_), a drama by Massinger (1629). The story of this play (like that of the _Twelfth Night_, by Shakespeare) is taken from the novelette of Bandello, of Piedmont, who died 1555.

=Pi´cus=, a soothsayer and augur; husband of Canens. In his prophetic art he made use of a woodpecker (_picus_), a prophetic bird sacred to Mars. Circé fell in love with him, and as he did not requite her advances, she changed him into a woodpecker, whereby he still retained his prophetic power.

“There is Picus,” said Maryx. “What a strange thing is tradition! Perhaps it was in this very forest that Circê, gathering her herbs, saw the bold friend of Mars on his fiery courser, and tried to bewitch him, and, failing, metamorphosed him so. What, I wonder, ever first wedded that story to the woodpecker?”--Ouida, _Ariadnê_, i. 11.

=Pied Horses=, Motassem had 130,000 _pied horses_, which he employed to carry earth to the plain of Catoul; and having raised a mound of sufficient height to command a view of the whole neighborhood, he built thereon the royal city of Shamarah´.--Khondemyr, _Khelassat al Akhbar_ (1495).

_The Hill of the Pied Horses_, the site of the palace of Alkoremmi, built by Motassem, and enlarged by Vathek.

=Pied Piper of Hamelin= (3 _syl._), a piper named Bunting, from his dress. He undertook, for a certain sum of money, to free the town of Hamelin, in Brunswick, of the rats which infested it; but when he had drowned all the rats in the river Weser, the townsmen refused to pay the sum agreed upon. The piper, in revenge, collected together all the children of Hamelin, and enticed them by his piping into a cavern in the side of the mountain Koppenberg, which instantly closed upon them, and 130 went down alive into the pit (June 26, 1284). The street through which Bunting conducted his victims was Bungen, and from that day to this no music is ever allowed to be played in this particular street.--Verstegan, _Restitution of Decayed Intelligence_ (1634).

Robert Browning has a poem entitled _The Pied Piper_.

Erichius, in his _Exodus Hamelensis_, maintains the truth of this legend; but Martin Schoock, in his _Fabula Hamelensis_, contends that it is a mere myth.

“Don’t forget to pay the piper” is still a household expression in common use.

⁂ The same tale is told of the fiddler of Brandenberg. The children were led to the Marienberg, which opened upon them and swallowed them up.

⁂ When Lorch was infested with ants, a hermit led the multitudinous insects by his pipe into a lake, where they perished. As the inhabitants refused to pay the stipulated price, he led their pigs the same dance, and they, too, perished in the lake.

Next year, a charcoal-burner cleared the same place of crickets; and when the price agreed upon was withheld, he led the sheep of the inhabitants into the lake.

The third year came a plague of rats, which an old man of the mountain piped away and destroyed. Being refused his reward, he piped the children of Lorch into the Tannenberg.

⁂ About 200 years ago, the people of Ispahan were tormented with rats, when a little dwarf named Giouf, not above two feet high, promised, on the payment of a certain sum of money, to free the city of all its vermin in an hour. The terms were agreed to, and Giouf, by tabor and pipe, attracted every rat and mouse to follow him to the river Zenderou, where they were all drowned. Next day, the dwarf demanded the money; but the people gave him several bad coins, which they refused to change. Next day, they saw with horror an old black woman, fifty feet high, standing in the market-place with a whip in her hand. She was the genie Mergian Banou, the mother of the dwarf. For four days she strangled daily fifteen of the principal women, and on the fifth day led forty others to a magic tower, into which she drove them, and they were never after seen by mortal eye.--T. S. Gueulette, _Chinese Tales_ (“History of Prince Kader-Bilah,” 1723).

⁂ The syrens of classic story had, by their weird spirit-music, a similar irresistible influence.

(Weird music is called Alpleich or Elfenseigen.[TN-94]

=Pierre= [_Peer_], a blunt, bold, outspoken man, who heads a conspiracy to murder the Venetian senators, and induces Jaffier to join the gang. Jaffier (in order to save his wife’s father, Priuli), reveals the plot, under promise of free pardon; but the senators break their pledge, and order the conspirators to torture and death. Jaffier, being free, because he had turned “king’s evidence” stabs Pierre, to prevent his being broken on the wheel, and then kills himself.--T. Otway, _Venice Preserved_ (1682).

_Pierre_, a very inquisitive servant of M. Darlemont, who long suspects his master has played falsely with his ward, Julio, count of Harancour.--Thomas Holcroft, _The Deaf and Dumb_ (1785).

=Pierre Alphonse= (_Rabbi Moïse Sephardi_), a Spanish Jew converted to Christianity in 1062.

All stories that recorded are By Pierre Alfonse he knew by heart.

Longfellow, _The Wayside Inn_ (prelude).

=Pierre du Coignet= or =Coignères=, an advocate-general in the reign of Philippe de Valois, who stoutly opposed the encroachments of the Church. The monks, in revenge, nicknamed those grotesque figures in stone (called “gargoyles”), _pierres du coignet_. At Notre Dame de Paris there were at one time gargoyles used for extinguishing torches, and the smoke added not a little to their ugliness.

You may associate them with Master Pierre du Coignet, ... which perform the office of extinguishers.--Rabelais, _Gargantua and Pantagruel_ (1533-45).

=Pierrot= [_Pe´-er-ro_], a character in French pantomime, representing a man in stature and a child in mind. He is generally the tallest and thinnest man in the company, and appears with his face and hair thickly covered with flour. He wears a white gown, with very long sleeves, and a row of big buttons down the front. The word means “Little Peter.”

=Piers and Palinode=, two shepherds in Spenser’s fifth eclogue, representing the Protestant and the Catholic priest.

Piers or Percy again appears in ecl. x. with Cuddy, a poetic shepherd. This noble eclogue has for its subject “poetry.” Cuddy complains that poetry has no patronage or encouragement, although it comes by inspiration. He says no one would be so qualified as Colin to sing divine poetry, if his mind were not so depressed by disappointed love.--Spenser, _The Shepheardes Calendar_ (1579).

=Pie´tro= (2 _syl._), the putative father of Pompilia. This paternity was a fraud to oust the heirs of certain property which would otherwise fall to them.--R. Browning, _The Ring and the Book_, ii. 580.

=Pig.= Phædrus tells a tale of a popular actor who imitated the squeak of a pig. A peasant said to the audience that he would himself next night challenge and beat the actor. When the night arrived, the audience unanimously gave judgment in favor of the actor, saying that his squeak was by far the better imitation; but the peasant presented to them a real pig, and said, “Behold, what excellent judges are ye!”

=Pigal= (_Mons. de_), the dancing-master who teaches Alice Bridgenorth.--Sir W. Scott, _Peveril of the Peak_ (time, Charles II.).

=Pigeon and Dove= (_The_). Prince Constantio was changed into a pigeon, and the Princess Constantia into a dove, because they loved, but were always crossed in love. Constantio found that Constantia was sold by his mother for a slave, and in order to follow her, he was converted into a pigeon. Constantia was seized by a giant, and in order to escape him was changed into a dove. Cupid then took them to Paphos, and they became “examples of a tender and sincere passion; and ever since have been the emblems of love and constancy.”--Comtesse D’Aunoy, _Fairy Tales_ (“The Pigeon and Dove,” 1682).

=Pigmy=, a dwarf. (See PYGMY.)

=Pigott Diamond= (_The_), brought from India by Lord Pigott. It weighs 82-1/4 carats. In 1818 it came into the hands of Messrs. Rundell and Bridge.

=Pigrogrom´itus=, a name alluded to by Sir Andrew Ague-cheek.

In sooth thou wast in very gracious fooling last night when thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapian passing the equinoctial of Queubus. ’Twas very good, i’ faith.--Shakespeare, _Twelfth Night_,

## act ii. sc. 3 (1614).

=Pigwig´gen=, a fairy knight, whose amours with Queen Mab, and furious combat with Oberon, form the subject of Drayton’s _Nymphidia_ (1593).

=Pike= (_Gideon_), valet to old Major Bellenden.--Sir W. Scott, _Old Mortality_ (time, Charles II.).

=Pila´tus= (_Mount_), in Switzerland. The legend is that Pontius Pilate, being banished to Gaul by the Emperor Tiberius, wandered to this mount, and flung himself into a black lake at the summit of the hill, being unable to endure the torture of conscience for having given up the Lord to crucifixion.

=Pilgrim Fathers.= They were 102 puritans (English, Scotch, and Dutch), who went, in December, 1620, in a ship called the _Mayflower_, to North America, and colonized Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. These states they called “New England.” New Plymouth (near Boston) was the second colony planted by the English in the New World.

Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in deportment.... God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.

Longfellow, _Courtship of Miles Standish_, iv. (1858).

=Pilgrim--Palmer.= _Pilgrims_ had dwellings, _palmers_ had none. _Pilgrims_ went at their own charge, _palmers_ professed willing poverty, and lived on charity. _Pilgrims_ might return to a secular life, _palmers_ could not. _Pilgrims_ might hold titles and follow trades, _palmers_ were wholly “religious” men.

=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).

=Pilot= (_The_), an important character and the title of a nautical burletta by E. Fitzball, based on the novel so called by J. Fenimore Cooper, of New York. “The pilot” turns out to be the brother of Colonel Howard, of America. He happened to be in the same vessel which was taking out the colonel’s wife and only son. The vessel was wrecked, but “the pilot” (whose name was John Howard) saved the infant boy, and sent him to England to be brought up, under the name of Barnstable. When young Barnstable was a lieutenant in the British navy, Colonel Howard seized him as a spy, and commanded him to be hung to the yardarm of an American frigate, called the _Alacrity_. At this crisis, “the pilot” informed the colonel that Barnstable was his own son, and the father arrived just in time to save him from death.

=Pilpay´=, the Indian Æsop. His compilation was in Sanskrit, and entitled _Pantschatantra_.

It was rumored he could say ... All the “Fables” of Pilpay.

Longfellow, _The Wayside Inn_ (prelude).

=Pilum´nus=, the patron god of bakers and millers, because he was the first person who ever ground corn.

Then there was Pilumnus, who was the first to make cheese, and became the god of bakers.--Ouida, _Ariadnê_, i. 40.

=Pinabello=, son of Anselmo (king of Maganza). Marphi´sa overthrew him, and told him he could not wipe out the disgrace till he had unhorsed a thousand dames and a thousand knights. Pinabello was slain by Brad´amant.--Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_ (1516).

=Pinac=, the lively, spirited fellow-traveller of Mirabel, “the wild goose.” He is in love with the sprightly Lillia-Bianca, a daughter of Nantolet.--Beaumont and Fletcher, _The Wild Goose Chase_ (1652).

=Pinch=, a schoolmaster and conjuror, who tries to exorcise Antiph´olus (act iv. sc. 4).--Shakespeare, _Comedy of Errors_ (1593).

_Pinch_ (_Tom_), clerk to Mr. Pecksniff “architect and land surveyor.” Simple as a child, green as a salad, and honest as truth itself. Very fond of story-books, but far more so of the organ. It was the seventh heaven to him to pull out the stops for the organist’s assistant at Salisbury Cathedral; but when allowed, after service, to finger the notes himself, he lived in a dreamland of unmitigated happiness. Being dismissed from Pecksniff’s office, Tom was appointed librarian to the Temple Library, and his new catalogue was a perfect model of workmanship.

_Ruth Pinch_, a true-hearted, pretty girl, who adores her brother, Tom, and is the sunshine of his existence. She marries John Westlock.--C. Dickens, _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1844).

=Pinchbeck.= Sham doctor and matrimonial agent in John Brougham’s play, _Playing With Fire_.

_Pinchbeck_ (_Lady_), with whom Don Juan placed Leila to be brought up.

Olden she was--but had been very young; Virtuous she was--and had been, I believe ... She merely now was amiable and witty.

Byron, _Don Juan_, xii. 43, 47 (1824).

=Pinchwife= (_Mr._), the town husband of a raw country girl, wholly unpractised in the ways of the world, and whom he watches with ceaseless anxiety.

Lady Drogheda ... watched her town husband assiduously as Mr. Pinchwife watched his country wife.--Macaulay.

_Mrs. Pinchwife_, the counterpart of Molière’s “Agnes,” in his comedy entitled _L’école des Femmes_. Mrs. Pinchwife is a young woman wholly unsophisticated in affairs of the heart.--Wycherly, _The Country Wife_ (1675).

⁂ Garrick altered Wycherly’s comedy to _The Country Girl_.

=Pindar= (_Peter_), the pseudonym of Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819).

_Pindar_ (_The British_), Thomas Gray (1716-1771). On his monument in Westminster Abbey is inscribed these lines:

No more the Grecian muse unrivalled reigns; To Britain let the nations homage pay: She felt a Homer’s fire in Milton’s strains, A Pindar’s rapture in the lyre of Gray.

_Pindar_ (_The French_), (1) Jean Dorat (1507-1588); (2) Ponce Denis Lebrun (1719-1807).

_Pindar_ (_The Italian_), Gabriello Chiabrera (1552-1637).

=Pindar of England.= Cowley was preposterously called by the duke of Buckingham “The Pindar, Horace and Virgil of England.” Posterity has not endorsed this absurd eulogium (1618-1667).

=Pindar of Wakefield= (_The_), George-a-Green, pinner of the town of Wakefield--that is, keeper of the public pound for the confinement of estrays.--_The History of George-a-Green, Pindar of the Town of Wakefield_ (time, Elizabeth).

=Pindo´rus and Aride´us=, the two heralds of the Christian army in the siege of Jerusalem.--Tasso, _Jerusalem Delivered_ (1575).

=Pine-Bender= (_The_), Sinis, the Corinthian robber who used to fasten his victims to two pine trees bent towards the earth, and leave them to be torn to pieces by the rebound.

=Pingree= (_Nancy_), called “Old Lady Pingree” because of her pride and black lace turban. She lives by herself in the lower part of the old Pingree house, and is so poor that to give an egg to the lodgers above stairs is an act of self-denying generosity. She has money and burial-clothes laid away for her funeral, yet when the neighbor upstairs dies, Nancy “lends” it to the daughter to keep her mother out of the Potter’s field. A sudden rise in property brings Nancy a few hundreds, and enables her to face death with calm certainty of an independent burial in the Pingree lot.--Mary E. Wilkins, _A Humble Romance, and Other Stories_ (1887).

=Pinkerton= (_Miss_), a most majestic lady, tall as a grenadier, and most proper. Miss Pinkerton kept an academy for young ladies on Chiswick Mall. She was “the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the friend of Dr. Johnson, and the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone.” This very distinguished lady “had a Roman nose, and wore a solemn turban.” Amelia Sedley was educated at Chiswick Mall academy, and Rebecca Sharp was a pupil-teacher there.--Thackeray, _Vanity Fair_, i. (1848).

=Pinnit= (_Orson_), keeper of the bears.--Sir W. Scott, _Kenilworth_ (time, Elizabeth).

=Pinto= (_Ferdinand Mendez_), a Portuguese traveller, whose “voyages” were at one time wholly discredited, but have since been verified (1509-1583).

Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.--W. Congreve, _Love for Love_ (1695).

=Pious= (_The_), Ernst I., founder of the house of Gotha (1601-1674).

Robert, son of Hugues Capet (971, 996-1031).

Eric IX. of Sweden (*, 1155-1161).

=Pip=, the hero of Dickens’s novel called _Great Expectations_. His family name was Pirrip, and his Christian name Philip. He was enriched by a convict named Abel Magwitch; and was brought up by Joe Gargery, a smith, whose wife was a woman of thunder and lightning, storm and tempest. Magwitch, having made his escape to Australia, became a sheep farmer, grew very rich, and deposited £500 a year with Mr. Jaggers, a lawyer, for the education of Pip, and to make a gentleman of him. Ultimately, Pip married Estella, the daughter of Magwitch, but adopted from infancy by Miss Havisham, a rich banker’s daughter. His friend, Herbert Pocket, used to call him “Handel.”--C. Dickens, _Great Expectations_ (1860).

=Pipchin= (_Mrs._), an exceedingly “well-connected lady,” living at Brighton, where she kept an establishment for the training of _enfants_. Her “respectability” chiefly consisted in the circumstance of her husband having broken his heart in pumping water out of some Peruvian mines (that is, in having invested in these mines and been let in). Mrs. Pipchin was an ill-favored old woman, with mottled cheeks and grey eyes. She was given to buttered toast and sweetbreads, but kept her _enfants_ on the plainest possible fare.--C. Dickens, _Dombey and Son_ (1846).

=Piper= (_Tom_), one of the characters in a morris-dance.

So have I seen Tom Piper stand upon our village green, Backed with the May-pole.

William Browne, _Shepherd’s Pipe_ (1614).

_Piper_ (_Paddy, the_), an Irish piper, supposed to have been eaten by a cow. Going along one night during the “troubles,” he knocked his head against the body of a dead man dangling from a tree. The sight of the “iligant” boots was too great a temptation: and as they refused to come off without the legs, Paddy took them too, and sought shelter for the night in a cowshed. The moon rose, and Paddy, mistaking the moon-light for the dawn, started for the fair, having drawn on the boots and left the “legs” behind. At daybreak, some of the piper’s friends went in search of him, and found, to their horror, that the cow, as they supposed, had devoured him with the exception of his legs--clothes, bags, and all. They were horror-struck, and of course the cow was condemned to be sold; but while driving her to the fair, they were attracted by the strains of a piper coming towards them. The cow startled, made a bolt, with a view, as it was supposed, of making a meal on another piper. “Help, help!” they shouted; when Paddy himself ran to their aid. The mystery was soon explained over a drop of the “cratur,” and the cow was taken home again.--S. Lover, _Legends and Stories of Ireland_ (1834).

=Piper of Hamelin= (_The Pied_), Bunting, who first charmed the rats of Hamelin into the Weser, and then allured the children (to the number of 130) to Koppenberg Hill, which opened upon them. (See PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.)

=Piperman=, the factotum of Chalomel, chemist and druggist. He was “so handy” that he was never at his post; and being “so handy,” he took ten times the trouble of doing anything that another would need to bestow. For the self-same reason, he stumbled and blundered about, muddled and marred everything he touched, and being a Jack-of-all-trades was master of none.

There has been an accident because I am so handy. I went to the dairy at a bound, came back at other, and fell down in the open street, where I spilt the milk. I tried to bale it up--no go. Then I ran back or ran home, I forget which, and left the money somewhere; and then, in fact, I have been four times to and fro, because I am so handy.--J. R. Ware, _Piperman’s Predicament_.

=Pipes= (_Tom_), a retired boatswain’s mate, living with Commodore Trunnion to keep the servants in order. Tom Pipes is noted for his taciturnity.--Tobias Smollett, _The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle_ (1751).

(The incident of Tom Pipes concealing in his shoe his master’s letter to Emilia was suggested by Ovid.[TN-95]

Cum possit solea chartas celare ligatas, Et vincto blandas sub pede ferre notas,[TN-96]

_Art of Love._

=Pippa.= Peasant maid who sings in tripping through the streets on the morning of her holiday. The song reaches the windows of those who sorrow, doubt and sin, and thus influences other lives than her own.--Robert Browning, _Pippa Passes_ (1842).

=Pirate= (_The_), a novel by Sir W. Scott (1821). In this novel we are introduced to the wild sea scenery of the Shetlands; the primitive manners of the old udaller, Magnus Troil, and his fair daughters Minna and Brenda; lovely pictures, drawn with nice discrimination, and most interesting.

⁂ A udaller is one who holds his lands on allodial tenure.

=Pirner= (_John_), a fisherman at Old St. Ronan’s.--Sir W. Scott, _St. Ronan’s Well_ (time, George III.).

=Pisa.= The banner of Pisa is a cross on a crimson field, said to have been brought from heaven by Michael the archangel, and delivered by him to St. Efeso, the patron saint of that city.