Chapter Sun to Superstitions of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Sun to Superstitions

Sun (The). The device of Edward III. was the sun bursting through a cloud. Hence Edward III. is called “our half-faced sun.”—Shakespeare: 2 Henry VI. act iv. sc. I (1592).

Sun (City of the). Rhodes was so called, because Apollo was its tutelar deity. On or Heliopolis, Egypt, was a sun-city (Greek, helios polis, “sun city”).

Sun Inn, Westminster. This sign was adopted because it was the badge of Richard II. The “sun” was the cognizance of the house of York.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.

Shakespeare: Richard III. act i. sc. 1 (1597).

Sun-Steeds. Brontê (“thunder”) and Amethea, (“no loiterer”), Æthon (“fiery red”) and Pyroïs (“fire”); Lampos (“shining like a lamp”), used only at noon; Philogea (“effulgence”), used only in the westering course.

(Phaeton (“the shining one”) and Abraxas (the Greek numeral for 365) were the horses of Aurora or the morning sun.)

Sun on Easter Day. It was at one time maintained that the sun danced on Easter Day.

But oh! she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter Day
Is half so fine a sight.
   —Suckling: The Wedding (died 1641).

Whose beauty makes the sprightly sun
To dance, as upon Easter Day.
   —Cleveland: The General Eclipse (died 1659).

Sunday is the day when witches do penance.

Till on a day (that day is every prime [first day]),
When witches wont do penance for their crime.
   —Spenser: Faërie Queene, I. ii. 40 (1590).

Sunflower (The) is so called simply because the flower resembles a picture-sun, with its yellow petals like rays round its darker disc. Thomas Moore is in error when he says it turns towards the sun. I have had sunflowers turning to every point of the compass, and, after narrowly watching them, have seen in them no tendency to turn towards the sun, or to shift their direction.

The sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.
   —Moore: Irish Melodies, ii. (“Believe Me, if all those Endearing Young Charms,” 1814).

Sunith, one of the six Wise Men of the East led by the guiding star to Jesus. He had three holy daughters.—Klopstock: The Messiah, v. (1771).

Sunium’s Marbled Steep, cape Colonna, once crowned with a temple of Minerva.

Here marble columns, long by time defaced,
Moss-covered, on the lofty cape are placed,
There reared by fair devotion to sustain
In older times Tritonia’s sacred fane [temple of Minerva].
   —Falconer: The Shipwreck, iii. 5 (1762).

Sunshine of St. Eulalie, Evangeline.

Sunshine of St. Eulalie was she called, for that was the sunshine
Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples.
   —Longfellow: Evangeline, i. 1 (1849).

Super Grammaticam, Sigismund emperor of Germany (1366, 1411–1437).