Chapter Aberdeen Philosophical Society to Accidente of A by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Aberdeen Philosophical Society to Accidente

Aberdeen Philosophical Society, instituted 1840.

Abessa, the impersonation of abbeys and convents in Spenser’s Faërie Queene, i. 3. She is the paramour of Kirkrapine, who used to rob churches and poor-boxes, and bring his plunder to Abessa, daughter of Corceca (blindness of heart).

Abif (Hiram), one of the three grand-masters of Freemasonry. The other two were Solomon and Hiram of Tyre. Hiram, like Pharaoh, is a dynastic name, and means noble; and ab of Abif means “father;” ab- i means “my father” (see I Kings vii. 13; 2 Chron. ii. 12-14).

Abney, called Young Abney, the friend of colonel Albert Lee, a royalist.—Sir W. Scott: Woodstock (time, the Commonwealth).

Abou Hassan, a young merchant of Bagdad, and hero of the tale called “The Sleeper Awakened,” in the Arabian Night’s Entertainments. While Abou Hassan is asleep he is conveyed to the palace of Haroun- al-Raschid, and the attendants are ordered to do everything they can to make him fancy himself the caliph. He subsequently becomes the caliph’s chief favourite.

Shakespeare, in the induction of Taming of the Shrew, befools “Christopher Sly” in a similar way, but Sly thinks it was “nothing but a dream.”

Philippe le Bon, duke of Burgundy, on his marriage with Eleonora, tried the same trick.—Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, ii. 2, 4.

Abra, the most beloved of Solomon’s concubines.

Fruits their odour lost and meats their taste,
If gentle Abra had not decked the feast;
Dishonoured did the sparkling goblet stand,
Unless received from gentle Abra’s hand; …
Nor could my soul approve the music’s tone
Till all was hushed, and Abra sang alone.
   —M. Prior: Solomon (1664–1721).

Solomon had above 1000 concubines, from among the Moabites, Ammonites, Sidonians, and Hittites. The mother of Rehoboam, his successor, was Naamah, an Ammonitess (I Kings xiv. 20, 21).

Abradas, the great Macedonian pirate.

Abradas, the great Macedonian pirat, thought every one had a letter of mart that bare sayles in the ocean.—Greene: Penelope’s Web (1601).

Abraham, calling his wife “sister” (Gen. xii. II). The special correspondent of the Standard, writing from Afghanistan (March 12, 1888), says, “If a Mahometan’s scruples are overcome to such an extent that he will permit a Christian physician to treat his wife, he will call her his “sister.”

Abraham’s Offering (Gen. xxii.). Abraham at the command of God laid his only son Isaac upon an altar to sacrifice him to Jehovah, when his hand was stayed and a ram substituted for Isaac.

So Agamemnon at Aulis was about to offer up his daughter Iphigenia at the command of Artêmis (Diana), when Artemis carried her off in a cloud and substituted a stag instead.

This ram was one of the 10 animals taken to heaven, according to Mahomet’s teaching.

Abrocomas, the lover of Anthia in the Greek romance of Ephesiaca, by Xenophon of Ephesus (not the historian).

Absalom. The general idea is that Absalom, fleeing through a wood, was caught by the hair of his head on the bough of a tree, and thus met his death; but the Bible says (2 Sam. xviii. 9), “Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of