Chapter Fiddler to Fights and Runs Away of F by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Field of Peterloo, the site of an attack made by the military upon a reform meeting held in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, August 16, 1819. As many as 60,000 persons were wounded in this absurd attack. The word is a burlesque on Waterloo.

Battles and bloodshed, September massacres, bridges of Lodi, retreats of Moscow, Waterloos, Peterloos, ten-pound franchises, tar-barrels, and guillotines.—Carlyle.

Field of the Cloth of Gold, a large plain between Ardres and Guisnes [Gheen], where François I. interviewed Henry VIII. in 1520.

They differ, as a May-day procession of chimney-sweepers differs from The Field of the Cloth of Gold.—Macaulay.

Field of the Forty Footsteps, at the back of the British Museum, once called Southampton Fields. The tradition is that two brothers, in the Monmouth rebellion, took different sides, and engaged each other in fight. Both were killed, and forty impressions of their feet were traceable in the field for years afterwards.

(Jane and Anna Maria Porter wrote a novel called The Field of the Forty Footsteps, and the Messrs. Mayhew took the same subject for a melodrama.)

Field Sports, a poem in blank verse by Somerville (1742).

Fielding (Mrs.), a little querulous old lady with a peevish face, who, in consequence of once having been better off, or of labouring under the impression that she might have been if something in the indigo trade had happened differently, was very genteel and patronizing indeed. When she dressed for a party, she wore gloves, and a cap of state “almost as tall and quite as stiff as a mitre.”

May Fielding, her daughter, very pretty and innocent. She was engaged to Edward Plummer, but heard that he had died in South America, and consented to marry Tackleton the toy merchant. A few days before the day fixed for the wedding, Edward Plummer returned, and May Fielding married him. Tackleton gave them as a present the cake he had ordered for his own wedding feast.—Dickens: The Cricket on the Hearth (1845).

Fielding of the Drama, George Farquhar, author of The Beaux’ Stratagem, etc. (1678–1707).

Fielding’s Proverbs. These were in reality compiled by W. Henry Ireland, the Shakespeare impostor, who published Miscellaneous Papers and Instruments, under the hand and seal of William Shakespeare, including the tragedy of King Lear and a small fragment of Hamlet, from the original, 1796, folio, £4 4s. The whole a barefaced forgery.

Fierabras (Sir) [Fe-a-ra-brah], a Saracen of Spain, who made himself master of Rome, and carried away the crown of thorns and the balsam with which the Lord had been embalmed. His chief exploit was to slay the giant who guarded the bridge of Mantible, which had thirty arches, all of black marble. Baland of Spain assumed the name of sir Fierabras.

Balsam of Fierabras, the balsam used in embalming the body of Christ, stolen by sir Fierabras. It possessed such virtues that one single drop, taken internally, sufficed to heal the most malignant wound. (See Balsam, p. 85.)

Fierabras of Alexandria, the giant son of admiral Baland of Spain. He possessed all Babylon, even to the Red Sea, was seigneur of Russia, lord of Cologne, master of Jerusalem, and of the Holy Sepulchre. This huge giant ended his days in the odour of sanctity, “meek as a lamb, and humble as he was meek.”

Fierce (The), Alexander I. of Scotland. So called from the impetuosity of his temper (*, 1107–1124).