Chapter Black Friars to Black Sheep of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Black Looks Looks of displeasure. To look black. To look displeased. The figure is from black clouds indicative of foul weather.

Black Mail Money given to free-booters by way of exempting property from depredation. (Anglo-Saxon, mal, “rent-tax;” French, maille, an old coin worth .083 farthing). Grass mail was rent paid for pasturage. Mails and duties (Scotch) are rents of an estate in money or otherwise. “Black” in this phrase does not mean wicked or wrongful, but is the Gaelic, to cherish or protect. Black mail was a rent paid to Free Companies for protecting the property paid
for, from the depredations of freebooters, etc.
   To levy black mail now means to exact exorbitant charges; thus the cabs and omnibuses during the Great Exhibition years “levied black mail” on the public.

Black Man (The ). The Evil One.

Black Maria The black van which conveys prisoners from the police courts to jail. The French call a mud-barge a “Marie-salope.” The tradition is that the van referred to was so called from Maria Lee, a negress, who kept a sailors' boarding house in Boston. She was a woman of such great size and strength that the unruly stood in dread of her, and when constables required help, it was a common thing to send for Black Maria, who soon collared the refractory and led them to the lock-up. So a prison-van was called a “Black Maria.”

Black Monday Easter Monday, April 14th, 1360, was so called. Edward III. was with his army lying before Paris, and the day was so dark, with mist and hail, so bitterly cold and so windy, that many of his horses and men died. Monday after Easter holidays is called “Black Monday,” in allusion to this fatal day. Launcelot says:

“It was not for nothing that my nose fell a- bleeding on Black Monday last, at six o'clock i' the morning.”- Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, ii. 5.

   February 27th, 1865, was so called in Melbourne from a terrible sirocco from the N.N.W., which produced dreadful havoc between Sandhurst and Castlemaine.
   Black Monday. In schoolboy phraseology is the first Monday after the holidays are over, when lessons begin again.

Black Money Base coin brought to England by foreigners, and prohibited by Edward III.

Black Ox The black ox has trod on his foot- i.e. misfortune has come to him. Black oxen were sacrificed to Pluto and other infernal deities.

Black Parliament The Parliament held by Henry VIII. in Bridewell.

Black Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Edward III. Froissart says he was “styled black by terror of his arms” (c. 169). Strutt confirms this saying: “for his martial deeds surnamed Black the Prince” (Antiquities ). Meyrick says there is not the slightest proof that Edward, Prince of Wales. ever wore black armour (vol. ii.); indeed, we have much indirect proof against the supposition. Thus Shaw (vol. i. plate 31) gives a facsimile from a picture on the wall of St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, in which the prince is clad in gilt armour. Stothard says “the effigy is of copper gilt.” In the British Museum is an illumination of Edward III. granting to his son the duchy of Aquitaine, in which both figures are represented in silver armour with gilt joints. The first mention of the term “Black Prince” occurs in a parliamentary paper of the second year of Richard II.; so that Shakespeare has good reason for the use of the word in his tragedy of that king:-

“Brave Gaunt, thy father and myself Rescued the Black Prince, that young Mars of men,
From forth the ranks of many thousand French.”
Richard II., ii. 3.

“That black name, Edward, black Prince of Wales.”- Henry V. ii. 4.