Chapter Lady of the Haystack to Lambert's Day of L by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Cold lamb. A schoolboy's joke. Setting a boy on a cold marble or stone hearth. Horace (Sat. i. 5, 22) has “Dotare lumbos,” which may have suggested the pun.

Lamb-pie A flogging. Lamb is a pun on the Latin verb lambo (to lick), and the word “lick” has been perverted to mean flog (see Lick); or it may be the old Norse lam (the hand), meaning hand-or slap-pie. (See Lamming .)

Lamb's Conduit Street (London). Stow says, “One William Lamb, citizen and clothworker, born at Sutton Valence, Kent, did found near unto Oldbourne a faire conduit and standard; from this conduit, water clear as crystal was conveyed in pipes to a conduit on Snow Hill” (26th March, 1577). The conduit was taken down in 1746.

Lamb's Wool A beverage consisting of the juice of apples roasted over spiced ale. A great day for this drink was the feast of the apple-gathering, called in Irish la mas ubhal, pronounced “lammas ool,” and corrupted into “lamb's wool.”

“The pulpe of the rosted apples, in number foure or five ... mixed in a wine quart of faire water, laboured together until it come to be as apples and ale, which we call lambes wool.”- Johnson's Gerard, p. 1460.

Lambert's Day (St.), September 17th. St. Landebert or Lambert, a native of Maestricht, lived in the seventh century.

“Be ready, as your lives shall answer it,
At Coventry, upon St. Lambert's day.”
Shakespeare: Richard II., i. 1.