Chapter Osmand to Out in the Fifteen of O by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Osmand to Out in the Fifteen

Osmand A necromancer who by his enchantments raised up an army to resist the Christians. Six of the Champions of Christendom were enchanted by Osmand, but St. George restored them. Osmand tore off his hair in which lay his spirit of enchantment, bit his tongue in two, disembowelled himself, cut off his arms, and then died. (The Seven Champions of Christendom, i. 19.)

Osnaburg. The Duke of York was Bishop of Osnaburg Not prelate, but sovereign-bishop. By the treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, it was decreed that the ancient bishop should be vested alternately in a Catholic bishop and a Protestant prince of the House of Luneburg. Frederick, Duke of York, was the last sovereign- bishop of Osnaburg. In 1803 the district was attached to Hanover, and it now forms part of the kingdom of Prussia.
   Osnaburg A kind of coarse linen made of flax and tow, originally imported from Osnaburg.

Osprey or Ospray (a corruption of Latin ossifragus the bone-breaker). The fish-eagle, or fishing hawk (Pandion haliaëtus).

Ossa Heaping Pelion upon Ossa. Adding difficulty to difficulty; fruitless efforts. The allusion is to the attempt of the giants to scale heaven by piling Mount Ossa upon Mount Pelion.

“Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam.
Virgil: Georgics i. 281.

Osse'o Son of the Evening Star. When “old and ugly, broken with age, and weak with coughing,” he married Oweenee, youngest of the ten daughters of a North hunter. She loved him in spite of his ugliness and decrepitude, because “all was beautiful within him.” One day, as he was walking with his nine sisters- in-law and their husbands, he leaped into the hollow of an oak-tree, and came out “tall and straight and strong and handsome;” but Oweenee at the same moment was changed into a weak old woman, “wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly;” but the love of Osse'o was not weakened. The nine brothers and sisters-in-law were all transformed into birds for mocking Osseo and Oweenee when they were ugly, and Oweenee, recovering her beauty, had a son, whose delight as he grew up was to shoot at his aunts and uncles, the birds that mocked his father and mother. (Longfellow: Hiawatha, xii.).

Ossian The son of Fingal, a Scottish warrior-bard who lived in the third century. The poems called Ossian's Pooms were first published by James M'Pherson in 1760, and professed to be translations from Erse manuscripts collected in the Highlands. This is not true. M'Pherson no doubt based the poems on traditions, but not one of them is a translation of an Erse manuscript; and so far as they are Ossianic at all, they are Irish, and not Scotch

Ostend' Manifesto A declaration made in 1857 by the Ministers of the United States in England, France, and Spain, “that Cuba must belong to the United States.”

Oster-Monath The Anglo-Saxon name of April.

Ostler jocosely said to be derived from oat-stealer, but actually from the French hostelier, an innkeeper.

Ostracis'm Oyster-shelling, black-balling, or expelling. Clisthenes gave the people of Attica the power of removing from the state, without making a definite charge, any leader of the people likely to subvert the government. Each citizen wrote his vote on an earthen-ware table (ostracon), whence the term.

Ostrich When hunted the ostrich is said to run a certain distance and then thrust its head into a bush, thinking, because it cannot see, that it cannot be seen by the hunters. (See Crocodile. )

Ostrich Brains It was Heliogabalus who had battues of ostriches for the sake of their brains. Smollett says “he had six hundred ostriches compounded in one mess.” (Peregrine Pickle.)

Ostrich Eggs in Churches Ostrich eggs are suspended in several Eastern churches as symbols of God's watchful care. It is said that the ostrich hatches her eggs by gazing on them, and if she suspends