Chapter Put to Python of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Put to Python

Put A clown, a silly shallow-pate, a butt, one easily “put upon.”

“Queer country puts extol Queen Bess's reign.” Bramson.

Put the Cart before the Horse (See Cart .)

Put up the Shutters (To). To announce oneself a bankrupt.
   Do you think I am going to put up the shutters if we can manage to keep going?

Putney and Mortlake Race The annual eight-oared boat-race between the two universities of Cambridge and Oxford.

Putting on Frills (American). Giving oneself airs.

Putting on Side Giving oneself airs. Side is an archaic word for a train or trailing gown; also long, as “his beard was side.” A side-coat means a long trailing coat. (Anglo-Saxon sid, great, wide, long- as sid-feax, long hair.)

“I do not like side frocks for little girls.”- Skinner.

Pygmalion A statuary of Cyprus, who hated women and resolved never to marry, but fell in love with his own statue of the goddess Venus. At his earnest prayer the statue was vivified, and he married it. (Ovid: Metamorphoses, x.; Earthly Paradise, August.)

“Few, like Pygmalion, doat on lifeless charms.
Or care to clasp a statue in their arms.”
S. Jenyns: Art of Dancing, canto i.

    In Gilbert's comedy of Pygmalion and Galatea, the sculptor is a married man, whose wife (Cynisca) was jealous of the animated statue (Galatea), which, after enduring great misery, voluntarily returned to its original state. This, of course, is mixing up two Pygmalions, wide as the poles apart.
   John Marston wrote certain satires called The Metamorphoses of Pygmalion's Image. These satires were suppressed, and are now very rare.

Pygmies (2 syl.). A nation of dwarfs on the banks of the Upper Nile. Every spring the cranes made war upon them and devoured them. They cut down every corn-ear with an axe. When Hercules went to the country they climbed up his goblet by ladders to drink from it; and while he was asleep two whole armies of them fell upon his right hand, and two upon his left; but Hercules rolled them all in his lion's skin. It is easy to see how Swift has availed himself of this Grecian legend in his Gulliver's Travels. Stanley met with a race of Pygmies in his search for Emin Pasha.

Pylades and Orestes Two model friends, whose names have become proverbial for friendship, like those of Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan.

Pyramid The largest is that of Cholula, in Mexico, which covers fifty acres of ground. The largest in Egypt is that of Cheops, near Cairo, which covers thirteen acres. Sir William Tite tells us it contains ninety million cubic feet of stone, and could not be now built for less than thirty millions of money (sterling).

Pyramus The lover of Thisbë. Supposing Thisbe to be torn to pieces by a lion, he stabbed himself, and Thisbe, finding the dead body, stabbed herself also. Both fell dead under a mulberry-tree, which has ever since borne blood-red fruit. Shakespeare has a travesty of this tale in his Midsummer Night's Dream. (Ovid: Metamorphoses, bk. iv.)

Pyrocles and Musidorus Heroes whose exploits, previous to their arrival in Arcadia, are detailed in the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney.

Pyrodes (3 syl.), son of Clias was so called, according to Pliny (vii. 56), because he was the first to strike fire from flint. (Greek, pur, fire; = ignitus.)

Pyrrha Sæculum Pyrrhæ. The Flood. Pyrrha was the wife of Deucalion (Horace: 1 Odes, ii. 6). So much rain has fallen, it looks as if the days of Pyrrha were about to return.