Chapter Swimmers to Sycorax of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

give her the sword, but he refused to do so, and she then told him it would bring death to himself and his dearest friend; and so it did; for when he and his brother Balan jousted together, unknown to each other, both were slain, and were buried in one tomb.—Sir T. Malory: History of Prince Arthur, i. 27–44 (1470).

Sword in the City Arms (London). Stow asserts that the sword or dagger in the City arms was not added in commemoration of Walworth’s attack on Wat Tyler, but that it represents the sword of St. Paul, the patron saint of London. This is not correct. Without doubt the cognizance of the City, previous to 1381, was St. Paul’s sword, but after the death of Tyler it was changed into Walworth’s dagger.

Brave Walworth, knight, lord mayor, that slew
Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes;
The king, therefore, did give him in lieu
The dagger to the city armes.
   —Fishmongers’ Hall (“Fourth Year of Richard II., 1381).

Sword-God. The Scythians worship a naked sword. Attila received his sword from heaven. (See Sir Edward Creasy, p. 153.)

Sword of God (The). Khaled, the conqueror of Syria (632–8), was so called by Mohammedans.

Sword of Rome (The), Marcellus. Fabius was called “The Shield of Rome” (time of Hannibal’s invasion).

Swordsman (The Handsome). Joachim Murat was called Le Beau Sabreur (1767–1815).

Sybaris, a river of Lucania, in Italy, whose waters had the virtue of restoring vigour to the feeble and exhausted.—Pliny: Natural History, XXXI. ii. 10.

Sybarite, an effeminate man, a man of pampered self-indulgence. Seneca tells us of a sybarite who could not endure the nubble of a folded rose leaf in his bed.

[Her bed] softer than the soft sybarite’s, who cried
Aloud because his feelings were too tender
To brook a rufiled rose leaf by his side.
   —Byron: Don Juan, vi. 89 (1824).

Sybil, or “The Two Nations,” a novel by Disraeli (lord Beaconsfield, 1845).

Sybil Warner, in lord Lytton’s novel The Last of the Barons (1843).

Sycorax, a foul witch, the mistress of Ariel the fairy spirit, by whom for some offence he was imprisoned in the rift of a cloven pine tree. After he had been kept there for twelve years, he was liberated by Prospero the rightful duke of Milan and father of Miranda. Sycorax was the mother of Caliban.—Shakespeare: The Tempest (1609).

If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was.—Thackeray.

Those foul and impure mists which their pens, like the raven wings of Sycorax, had brushed from fern and bog.—Sir W. Scott: The Drama.