Chapter Bull-dog to Burbon of B by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Bunch (Mother), an alewife, mentioned by Dekker in his drama called Satiromastix (1602). In 1604 was published Pasquil’s Jests, mixed with Mother Bunch’s Merriments.

There are a series of “Fairy Tales” called Mother Bunch’s Fairy Tales.

Bunch (Mother), the supposed possessor of a “cabinet broken open” and revealing “rare secrets of Art and Nature,” such as love-spells (1760).

Buncle, messenger to the earl of Douglas.—Sir W. Scott: Fair Maid of Perth (time, Henry IV.).

Buncle (John), “a prodigious hand at matrimony, divinity, a song, and a peck.” He married seven wives, and lost all in the flower of their age. For two or three days after the death of a wife he was inconsolable, but soon became resigned to his loss, which he repaired by marrying again.—T. Amory: The Life, etc., of John Buncle, Esq.

Bundalinda, the beau-ideal of obscurity.

Transformed from a princess to a peasant, from beauty to ugliness, from polish to rusticity, from light to darkness, from an angel of light to an imp of hell, from fragrance to ill-savour, from elegance to rudeness, from Aurora in full brilliancy to Bundalinda in deep obscurity.—Cervantes: Don Quixote, II. ii. 13 (1615).

Bundle, the gardener, father of Wilelmina, and friend of Tom Tug the waterman. He is a plain, honest man, but greatly in awe of his wife, who nags at him from morning till night.

Mrs. Bundle, a vulgar Mrs. Malaprop, and a termagant. “Everything must be her way, or there’s no getting any peace.” She greatly frequented the minor theatres, and acquired notions of sentimental romance. She told Wilelmina, if she refused to marry Robin—

“I’ll disinherit you from any share in the blood of my family, the Grograns, and you may creep through life with the dirty, pitiful, mean, paltry, low, ill-bred notions which you have gathered from [your father’s] family, the Bundles.”—Dibdin: The Waterman (1774).

Bungay, in Thackeray’s Pendennis, bookseller and publisher of the Pall Mall Gazette, edited by captain Shannon (1849). The real Pall Mall Gazette was started in 1865.

“Why Pall Mall Gazette?” asks Wagg. “Because the editor was born in Dublin, the sub-editor in Cork, …the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row, and the paper is published in Catherine Street, Strand.”

Bungay or Bongay (Frier), one of the friars in a comedy by Robert Green, entitled Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay. Both the friars are conjurers, and the piece concludes with one of their pupils being carried off to the infernal regions on the back of one of friar Bacon’s demons (1591).

Bungen [Bung-’n], the street in Hamelin down which the pied piper Bunting led the rats into the river Weser and the children into a cave in the mountain Koppenberg. No music of any kind is permitted to be played in this street.

Bungey (Friar), personification of the charlatan of science in the fifteenth century.

In The Last of the Barons, by lord Lytton, friar Bungey is an historical character, and is said to have “raised mists and vapours,” which befriended Edward IV. at the battle of Barnet.

Bunsby (Captain John or Jack), owner of the Cautious Clara. Captain Cuttle considered him “a philosopher, and quite an oracle.” Captain Bunsby had one “stationary and one revolving eye,” a very red face, and was extremely taciturn. The captain was entrapped by Mrs. McStinger (the termagant landlady of his friend captain Cuttle) into marrying her.—Dickens: Dombey and Son (1846).