Chapter Klabotermann to Knights of K by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Klabotermann to Knights

Klabotermann, a ship-kobold of the Baltic, sometimes heard, but rarely seen. Those who have seen him say he sits on the bowsprit of a phantom ship called Carmilhan, dressed in yellow, wearing a night- cap, and smoking a cutty pipe.

Kläs (Kaiser), a nickname given to Napoleon I. (1769, 1804–1814, 1821).

Hort liid, en bitgen still,
Hort wat ick vertellen will,
Van den gröten kaiser Kläs,
Dat wär mal en fixen Bäs,
Ded von Korsika her tën
Wall de welt mal recht besehn.
Helena de Jumfer is
Nu sîn Brüt, sin Paradis;
Kläs geit mit ër op de Jagd
Drömt nich mehr von krieg um Schlacht,
Un het he mâl Langewil
Schleit he Rötten d’ôt mil’n Bil.
   —Kaiser Kläs.

Klaus (Doctor), hero and title of a comedy by Herr Adolph l’Arronge (1878). Dr. Klaus is a gruff, but noble-minded and kind-hearted man, whose niece (a rich jeweller’s daughter) has married a poor nobleman of such extravagant notions that the wife’s property is soon dissipated; but the young spendthrift is reformed. The doctor has a coachman, who invades his master’s province, and undertakes to cure a sick peasant.

Klaus (Peter), the prototype of Rip van Winkle. Klaus [Klows] is a goatherd of Sittendorf, who was one day accosted by a young man, who beckoned him to follow. Peter obeyed, and was led into a deep dell, where he found twelve knights playing skittles, no one of whom uttered a word. Gazing around, he noticed a can of wine, and, drinking some of its contents, was overpowered with sleep. When he awoke, he was amazed at the height of the grass, and when he entered the village everything seemed strange to him. One or two companions encountered him, but those whom he knew as boys were grown middle- aged men, and those whom he knew as middle-aged were grey-beards. After much perplexity, he discovered he had been asleep for twenty years. (See Sleepers.)

Your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named “Rip van Winkle.”—Carlyle.

Kleiner (General), governor of Prague, brave as a lion, but tenderhearted as a girl. It was Kleiner who rescued the infant daughter of Mahldenau at the siege of Magdeburg. A soldier seized the infant’s nurse, but Kleiner smote him down, saved the child, and brought it up as his own daughter. Mahldenau being imprisoned in Prague as a spy, Meeta his daughter came to Prague to beg for his pardon, and it then came to light that the governor’s adopted daughter was Meeta’s sister.—Knowles: The Maid of Mariendorpt (1838).

Knag (Miss), forewoman of Mme. Mantalini, milliner, near Cavendish Square, London. After doting on Kate Nickleby for three whole days, this spiteful creature makes up her mind to hate her for ever.—Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby, xviii. (1838).

Knickerbocker (Diedrich), a name assumed by Washington Irving, in his History of New York (1809).

Knight. An early British king knighted by Augustus. Cunobelinus or Cymbeline.

Thou art welcome, Caius,
Thy Cæsar knighted me.
   —Shakespeare: Cymbeline, act iii. sc. I (1603).

N.B.—Holinshed (vol. i. p. 33) says, “It is reported that Kymbeline, being brought to Rome, and knighted in the court of Augustus, ever shewed himselfe a friend to the Romans.”

Knight (A lady), Queen Elizabeth knighted Mary (wife of sir Hugh Cholmondeley of Vale Royal, near Chester), who was therefore called “the bold lady of Cheshire.”

Knight of Arts and Industry, the hero of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence (canto ii. 7-13, 1748).

Knight of La Mancha, don Quixote de la Mancha, the hero of Cervantes’s novel called Don Quixote, etc. (1605, 1615).