Chapter O'Connell's Tail to Odyssey of O by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Odoar, the venerable abbot of St. Felix, who sheltered king Roderick after his dethronement.—Southey: Roderick, Last of the Goths, iv. (1814).

Southey sometimes makes the word Odoar[O.dor], and sometimes Odoar , e.g.—

Odoar, the venerable abbot, sat . …
Odoarand Urban eyed him while he spake. …
The l ady Adosinda, Odoar cried. …
Tell him in Odoar’s name the hour is come!

O’Doherty (Sir Morgan), a pseudonym of W. Maginn, LL.D., in Blackwood’s Magazine (1819–1842).

O’Donohue’s White Horses. The boatmen of Killarney so call those waves which, on a windy day, come crested with foam. The spirit of O’Donohue is supposed to glide over the lake of Killarney every May-day on his favourite white horse, to the sound of unearthly music.

Odorico, a Biscayan, to whom Zerbino commits Isabella. He proves a traitor, and tries to defile her, but is interrupted in his base endeavour. Almonio defies him to single combat, and he is delivered bound to Zerbino, who condemns him, in punishment, to attend on Gabrina for twelve months, as her ’squire. He accepts the charge, but hangs Gabrina on an elm, and is himself hung by Almonio to the same tree.—Ariosto: Orlando Furioso (1516).

Odour of Sanctity. To die “in the odour of sanctity” did not mean simply in “good repute.” It was a prevalent notion that the dead body of a saint positively emitted a sweet-smelling savour, and the dead body of the unbaptized an offensive smell. When good persons die, catholic priests attend, and use incense freely, which naturally adds a sweet savour to the body.

Then he smote off his head; and therewithall came a stench out of the body when the soul departed, so that there might nobody abide the savour. So was the corpse had away and buried in a wood, because he was a panim. … Then the haughty prince said unto sir Palimedes, “Here have ye seen this day a great miracle by sir Corsabrin, what savour there was when the soul departed from the body, therefore we require you for to take the holy baptism upon you [that when you die, you may die in the odour of sanctity, and not, like sir Corsabrin, in the disodour of the unbaptized].”—Sir T. Malory: History of Prince Arthur, ii. 133 (1470).

When sir Bors and his fellows came to sir Launcelot’s bed, they found him stark dead, … and the sweetest savour about him that ever they smelled. [This was the odour of sanctity.]—History of Prince Arthur, iii. 175.

In Shakespeare’s Pericles Prince of Tyre, Antiochus and his daughter, whose wickedness abounded, were killed by lightning, and the poet says—

A fire from heaven came, and shrivell’d up
Their bodies, e’en to loathing; for they so stunk
That all those eyes ador’d them ere their fall
Scorn now their hand should give them burial.
   — Act ii. sc. 4.

Odours for Food. Plutarch, Pliny, and divers other ancients tell us of a nation in India that lived only upon pleasing odours. Democritos lived for several days together on the mere effluvia of hot bread.—Dr. Wilkins (1614–1672).

O’Dowd, the hero of a play adapted by Boucicault, in 1880, from the French Les crochets du Père Martin, by Corman and Grangé (1850), from which John Oxenford also drew his Porter’s Knot. The O’Dowd is an old Irishman who having by hard work scraped together a fortune, the whole of which he destined for his only son, finds that by educating that son above his station he has ruined him. To screen the youth from dishonour and infamy, he yields up all his savings, and begins again with a fish-barrow to earn his daily bread.

In Oxenford’s version the man begins again as a porter.