Character Sketches of Romance Volume Iii Part 80

Circe fell in love with him, and as he did not requite her advances, she changed him into a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, 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 Circe, 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r?"--Ouida, _Ariadne_, i. 11.

=Pied Horses=, Mota.s.sem 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, _Khela.s.sat al Akhbar_ (1495).

_The Hill of the Pied Horses_, the site of the palace of Alkoremmi, built by Mota.s.sem, 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, _Rest.i.tution of Decayed Intelligence_ (1634).

Robert Browning has a poem ent.i.tled _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 mult.i.tudinous 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.sic 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 Mose 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 =Coigneres=, 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 a.s.sociate 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 b.u.t.tons 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 n.o.ble 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.= Phaedrus 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 pa.s.sion; 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 pa.s.sing 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 b.e.l.l.e.n.den.--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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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....

G.o.d had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.