Chapter Legends to Leoline of L by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Leir and his Three Daughters, a balled inserted by Percy in his Reliques (series i. 2). (See Lear, p. 602.)

L. E. L., initialism of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (afterwards Mrs. Maclean), poetess (1802–1838).

Lela Marien, the Virgin Mary.

In my childhood, my father kept a slave, who, in my own tongue [Arabic], instructed me in the Christian worship, and informed me of the many things of Lela Marien.—Cervantes: Don Quixote, I. iv. 10 (1605).

Lelia, a cunning, wanton widow, with whom Julio is in love.—Beaumont and Fletcher: The Captain (1613).

Lélie, a young man engaged to Célie daughter of Gorgibus; but Gorgibus insists that his daughter shall give up Lélie for Valère, a much richer man. Célie faints on hearing this, and drops the miniature of Lélie, which is picked up by Sganarelle’s wife. Sganarelle finds it, and, supposing it to be a lover of his wife, takes possession of it, and recognizes Lélie as the living original. Lélie asks how he came by it, is told he took it from his wife, and concludes that he means Célie. He accuses her of infidelity in the presence of Sganarelle, and the whole mystery is cleared up.—Molière: Sganarelle (1660).

Lélie, an inconsequential, lightheaded, but gentlemanly coxcomb.—Molière: L’Etourdi (1653).

Leman (Lake), the lake of Geneva; called in Latin Lemannus.

Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their fair height and hue.
   —Byron: Childe Harold, iii. 68 (1816).

Lemnian Deed (A), one of unparalleled cruelty and barbarity. This Greek phrase owes its origin to the legend that the Lemnian women rose one night, and put to death every man and male child in the island.

On another occasion they slew all the men and all the children born of Athenian parents.

Lenore, a name which Edgar Poe has introduced in two of his poems; one called The Raven, and the other called Lenore (1811–1849).

Lenore, the heroine of Bürger’s ballad of that name, in which a spectral lover appears after death to his mistress, and carries her on horseback behind him to the graveyard, where their marriage is celebrated amid a crew of howling goblins. Based on a Dutch ballad.

The Suffolk Miracle is an old English ballad of like character.

Lenormand (Mlle.), a famous tireuse de cartes. She was a squat, fussy little old woman, with an imperturbable eye and a gnarled and knotted visage. She wore her hair cut short and parted on one side, like that of a man; dressed in an odd-looking casaquin, embroidered and frogged like the jacket of an hussar; and snuffed continually. This was the little old woman whom Napoleon I. regularly consulted before setting out on a campaign. Mlle. Lenormand foretold to Josephine her divorce; and when Murat king of Naples visited her in disguise, she gave him the cards to cut, and he cut four times in succession le grand pendu (king of diamonds); whereupon Mlle. rose and said, “La séance est terminée c’est dix louis pour les rois;” pocketed the fee, and left the room taking snuff.

(In cartomancy, le grand pendu signifies that the person to which it is dealt, or who cuts it, will die by the hands of the executioner. See Grand Pendu, p. 442.)

Lent (Galeazzo’s), a form of torture devised by Galeazzo Visconti, calculated to prolong the victim’s life for forty days.