Chapter Vortigern to Vulture Hopkins of V by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Vran’s Caldron restored to life whoever was put therein, but the revivified never recovered speech. (See Medea’s Kettle, p. 691.)

“I will give thee,” said Bendigeid Vran, “a caldron, the property of which is that if one of thy men be slain to-day, and be cast therein to-morrow, he will be as well as he was at the best, except that he will not regain his speech.”—The Mabinogion (“Branwen,” etc., twelfth century).

Vrience (King), one of the knights of the Round Table. He married Morgan le Fay, half-sister of king Arthur.— Malory: History of Prince Arthur (1470).

Vulcan’s Badge, the badge of cuckoldom. Vulcan was the husband of Venus, with whom Mars intrigued.

We know
Better than he have worn Vulcan’s badge.
   —Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus, act ii. sc. 1 (1593).

Vulnerable Parts.

(1)Achilles was vulnerable only in the heel. When his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx, she held him by the heel, and the water never touched this part.—A Post-Homeric Story.

(2) Ajax, son of Telamon, could be wounded only behind the neck; some say only in one spot of the breast. As soon as he was born, Alcidês covered him with a lion’s skin, which rendered the whole of his body invulnerable, except in a part where the skin had been pierced by Herculês.

(3) Antæos was wholly charmed against death so long as he touched the earth.—Lucan: Pharsalia, iv.

(4) Ferracutewas only vulnerable in the navel.—Turpin: Chronicle of Charlemagne.

He is called Ferrau, son of Landfusa, by Arlosto, in his Orlando Furioso.

(5) Megissogwon was only vulnerable at one tuft of hair on his head. A woodpecker revealed the secret to Hiawatha, who struck him there and killed him.—Longfellow: Hiawatha, ix.,

(6) Orillo was impervious to death unless one particular hair was cut off; wherefore Astolpho, when he encountered the robber, only sought to cut off this magic hair.—Ariosto: Orlando Furioso.

(7) Orlando was invulnerable except in the sole of his foot, and even there nothing could injure him except the prick of a pin.—Italian Classic Fable.

(8) Siegfried was invulnerable except in one spot between the shoulders, on which a leaf stuck when he dipped his body in dragon’s blood.—The Nibelungen Lied.

N. B.—The Promethean unguent rendered the body proof against fire and wounds of any sort. Medea gave Jason some of this unguent.—Classic Story.

Vulture (The Black), emblem of the ancient Turk, as the crescent is of the modern Ottoman empire.

And that black vulture, which with dreadful wing
O’ershadows half the earth, whose dismal sight
Frightened the Muses from their native spring,
Already stoops, and flags with weary wing.
   —P. Fletcher: The Purple Island, vii. (1633).

Vulture Hopkins. John Hopkins was so called from his rapacious mode of acquiring money. He was the architect of his own fortune, and died worth £300,000 (in 1732).

Pope refers to John Hopkins in the lines—

When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch who, living, saved a candle-end,