Chapter Picts to Pietro of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

About 200 years ago, the people of Ispahan were tormented with rats, when a little dwarf named Giouf, not above two feet high, promised, on the payment of a certain sum of money, to free the city of all its vermin in an hour. The terms were agreed to, and Giouf, by tabor and pipe, attracted every rat and mouse to follow him to the river Zenderou, where they were all drowned. When the dwarf demanded payment, the people gave him several bad coins, which they refused to change. Next day, they saw with horror an old black woman, fifty feet high, standing in the marketplace with a whip in her hand. She was the genie Mergian Banou, the mother of the dwarf. For four days she strangled daily fifteen of the principal women, and on the fifth day led forty others to a magic tower, into which she drove them, and they were never after seen by mortal eye.—Gueulette: Chinese Tales (“History of Prince Kader-bilah,” 1723).

The syrens of classic story had, by their weird spirit-music, a similar irresistible influence.

(See Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.)

(Weird music is called Alpleich or Elfenseigen.)

Pieria, a mountainous slip of land in Thessaly. A portion of the Mountains is called Pierus or the Pierian Mountain, the seat of the Muses.

Ah! will they leave Pieria’s happy shore,
To plough the tide where wintry tempests roar?
   —Falconer: The Shipwreck (1756).

Pierre [Peer], a blunt, bold, outspoken man, who heads a conspiracy to murder the Venetian senators, and induces Jaffier to join the gang. Jaffier (in order to save his wife’s father, Priuli) reveals the plot, under promise of free pardon; but the senators break their pledge, and order the conspirators to torture and death. Jaffier, being free, because he had turned “king’s evidence,” stabs Pierre to prevent his being broken on the wheel, and then kills himself.—Otway: Venice Preserved (1682).

John Kemble [1757–1823] could not play “sir Pertinax” like Cooke, nor could Cooke play “Pierre” like Kemble.—C. R. Leslie: Autobiography.

Charles M. Young’s “Pierre,” if not so lofty, is more natural and soldierly than Kemble’s.—New Monthly Magazine (1822).

Macready’s “Pierre” was occasionally too familiar, and now and then too loud; but it had beauties of the highest order, of which I chiefly remember his passionate taunt of the gang of conspirators, and his silent reproach to “Jaffier” by holding up his manacled hands, and looking upon the poor traitor with stedfast sorrow [1793–1873].—Talfourd.

Pierre, a very inquisitive servant of M. Darlemont, who long suspects his master has played falsely with his ward Julio count of Harancour.—Holcroft: The Deaf and Dumb (1785).

Pierre Alphonse (Rabbi Moï Sephardi), a Spanish Jew converted to Christianity in 1062.

All stories that recorded are
By Pierre Alfonse he knew by heart.
   —Longfellow: The Wayside Inn (prelude).

Pierre du Coignet or Coigneres, an advocate-general in the reign of Philippe de Valois, who stoutly opposed the encroachments of the Church. The monks, in revenge, nicknamed those grotesque figures in stone (called “gargoyles”), pierres du coignet. At Notre Dame de Paris there were at one time gargoyles used for extinguishing torches, and the smoke added not a little to their ugliness.

You may associate them with Master Pierre du Coignet,…which perform the office of extinguishers, …Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1533-45).