Chapter Beauty and the Beast to Bees of B by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur is a very close and in many parts a verbal rendering of the same tale in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, iii. 168 (1470).

Bedlam Beggars, lunatics or mad men belonging to Bethlehem Hospital. This institution was designed for six lunatics, but in 1641 the number admitted was forty-four, and applications were so numerous that many were dismissed half cured. These “ticket-of-leave” men used to wander about as vagrants, singing “mad songs” and dressed in the oddest manner, to excite compassion.

He swears he has been in Bedlam, and will talk frantikely of purpose. You see pinnes stuck in sundry places in his naked flesh, especially in his armes, which paine he gladly puts himselfe to only to make you believe he is out of his wits. He calls himselfe.…

“Poore Tom,’ and coming near anybody calls out “Poore Tom is a-cold.” … Some do nothing but sing songs fashioned out of their owne braines; some will dance; others will doe nothing but either laugh or weepe; others are dogged … and spying but a small company in a house … will compel the servants through feare to give them what they demand.—Decker: Bellman of London.

Bedouins [Bed-winz], nomadic tribes of Arabia. In common parlance, “the homeless street poor.” Gutter- children are called “Bedouins” or “street Arabs.”

Bedreddin Hassan of Ba sora, son of Noureddin Ali grand vizier of Basora, and nephew to Schemseddin Mohammed vizier of Egypt. His beauty was transcendent and his talents of the first order. When twenty years old his father died, and the sultan, angry with him for keeping from court, confiscated all his goods, and would have seized him if he had not made his escape. During sleep he was conveyed by fairies to Cairo, and substituted for an ugly groom (Hunchback) to whom his cousin, the Queen of Beauty, was to have been married. Next day he was carried off by the same means to Damascus, where he lived for ten years as a pastry-cook. Search was made for him, and the search-party, halting outside the city of Damascus, sent for some cheese-cakes. When the cheese-cakes arrived, the widow of Noureddin declared that they must have been made by her son, for no one else knew the secret of making them, and that she herself had taught it him. On hearing this, the vizier ordered Bedreddin to be seized “for making cheese-cakes without pepper,” and joke was carried on till the party arrived at Cairo, when the pastry-cook prince was reunited to his wife, the Queen of Beauty.—Arabian Nights (“Noureddin Ali,” etc.).

Bedver, king Arthur’s butler.—Geoffrey: British History, ix. 13. (See Bediyere.)

Bedwin (Mrs.), housekeeper to Mr. Brownlow. A kind, motherly soul, who loved Oliver Twist most dearly.—C. Dickens: Oliver Twist (1837).

Bee. The ancient Egyptians symbolized their kings under this emblem. The honey indicated the reward they gave to the meritorious, and the sting the punishment awarded to the unworthy.

As the Egyptians used by bees
To express their ancient Ptolemies.
   —S. Butler: Hudibras, iii. 2.

In the empire of France the royal mantle and standard were thi ckly sown with golden bees instead of “Louis flowers.” In the tomb of Childeric more than 300 golden bees were discovered in 1653. Hence the emblem of the French empire.

Bee, an American word introduced in the latter half of the nineteenth century, to signify a voluntary competitive examination: thus—

A Spelling Bee meant a competition in spelling.

A Husking Bee, a competition in stripping husks from the ears of maize.

A Musical Bee, a competition in singing or playing music “at sight,” etc., etc.