Chapter DEMETRIUS to Derry-Down Triangle of D by Brewer's Readers Handbook

taking prisoners nine earls and nearly all the barons, knights, and squires (1345). Next year he took the fortresses of Monsegur, Monsepat, Villefranche, Miremont, Tennins, Damassen, Aiguilon, and Reole.

That most deserving earl of Derby, we prefer
Henry’s third valiant son, the earl of Lancaster,
That only Mars of men.
   —Drayton: Polyolbion, xviii. (1613).

Derby (Countess of), Charlotte de la Tremouille, countess of Derby and queen of Man.

Philip earl of Derby, king of Man, son of the countess.—Sir W. Scott: Peveril of the Peak (time, Charles II.).

Derceto, Dercetis, or Derce , a deity adored at Ascalon. She was a beautiful woman, who had a natural daughter, and was so ashamed that she threw herself into a lake and was metamorphosed in the lower parts into a fish; hence the Syrians of Ascalon abstained from fish as a food. Her infant became the famous Semiramis, who registered her mother among the deities. She is sometimes confounded with the god Dagon.—Diodorus Siculus: Bibliothekê; Lucian: Dialogues, etc., 2; Pliny, ix. 13.

Dermat O’Dyna [of the Bright Face], one of the bravest of Fingal’s heroes. He figures in most of the chief events of that mythical period. The princess Grania, daughter of king Cormac Mac Art, to whom Fingal was to be betrothed, fell in love with him and persuaded him to elope with her. Fingal’s “pursuit” of the runaways, and the series of adventures which befell the parties, form one of the best and weirdest of old Celtic romances. Numerous dolmens and other remains still exist in Ireland bearing the names of these two lovers. (See Diarmid.)—Old Celtic Romances, translated by P. W. Joyce (1879).

Deronda (Daniel), a novel by “George Eliot” (Mrs. J. W. Cross, née Marian Evans), (1876).

Derrick, hangman in the first half of the seventeenth century. The crane for hoisting goods is called a derrick, from this hangman.

Derrick (Tom), quarter-master of the pirate’s vessel.—Sir W. Scott: The Pirate (time, William III.).

Derry-Down Triangle (The), lord Castlereagh; afterwards marquis of Londonderry; so called by William Hone. The first word is a pun on the title, the second refers to his lordship’s oratory, a triangle being the most feeble, monotonous, and unmusical of all musical instruments. Tom Moore compares the oratory of lord Castlereagh to “water spouting from a pump.”

Q. Why is a pump like viscount Castlereagh?
A. Because it is a slender thing of wood,
That up and down its awkward arm doth sway,
And coolly spout, and spout, and spout away,
In one weak, washy, everlasting flood.
   —Thomas Moore.