Chapter Pickwickian to Pig of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

and fortifies it with thorny sticks, leaving only a small aperture just large enough to admit her body. She generally sits with her head towards the hole, watching against intruders.

“Je m'en vay chercher un grand peut-estre. Il est au nid de la pie.”- Rabelais.

Pie Corner (London). So named from an eating-house- the [Mag]pie.

Pie Poudre A court formerly held at a fair on St. Giles's Hill, near Winchester. It was originally authorised by the Bishop of Winton from a grant of Edward IV. Similar courts were held elsewhere at wakes and fairs for the rough-and-ready treatment of pedlars and hawkers, to compel them and those with whom they dealt to fulfil their contracts. (French, pied poudreux, dusty foot. A vagabond is called in French pied poudreux.)

“Have its proceedings disallowed or
Allowed, at fancy of pie-powder.”
   Butler: Hudibras, pt. ii. 2.

Piebald Party-coloured. A corruption of pie-balled, speckled like a pie. The words Ball, Dun, and Favel are frequently given as names to cows. “Ball” means the cow with a mark on its face; “Dun” means the cow of a dun or brownish-yellow colour; and “Favel” means the bay cow. (Ball, in Gaelic, means a mark; ballach, speckled.)

Pied de la Lettre (Au). Quite literally.

“Of course, you will not take everything I have said quite au pied de la lettre.”- Fra. Ollæ: A Philosophical Trilogy.

Pied Piper of Hamelin The Pied Piper was promised a reward if he would drive the rats and mice out of Hameln (Westphalia). This he did, for he gathered them together by his pipe, and then drowned them in the Weser. As the people refused to pay him, he next led the children to Koppelberg Hill, where 130 of them perished (July 22nd, 1376). (See Hatto .)

“To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled ...
And ere three notes his pipe had uttered ...
Out of the houses rats came tumbling-
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
And step by step they followed him dancing,
Till they came to the river Weser.”
Robert Browning.

    Hameln, on the river Hamel, is where the Rattenfänger played this prank. It is said that the children did not perish in the mountain, but were led over it to Transylvania, where they formed a German colony.

Pierre A conspirator in Otway's Venice Preserved. He is described as a patriot of the bluntest manners, and a stoical heart.
   Uglier than Pierre du Coignet (French). Coignères was an advocate-general in the reign of Philippe de Valois, who stoutly opposed the encroachments of the Church. The monks, in revenge, called, by way of pun, those grotesque monkey-like figures carved in stone, used in church architecture, pierres du Coignet or pierres du Coignères. At Notre Dame de Paris they used to extinguish their torches in the mouths and nostrils of these figures, which thus acquired a superadded ugliness. (See Recherches de Pasquier, iii. chap. xxvii.)

“You may associate them with Master Peter du Coignet ... in the middle of the porch ... to perform the office of extinguishers, and with their noses put out the lighted candles, torches, tapers, and flambeaux.”- Rabelais.

Pierrot [peer-ro]. A character in French pantomime representing a man in growth and a child in mind and manners. He is generally the tallest and thinnest man that can be got, has his face and hair covered with white powder or flour, and wears a white gown with very long sleeves, and a row of big buttons down the front. The word means Little Peter.

Piers The shepherd who relates the fable of the Kid and her Dam, to show the danger of bad company. (Spenser: Shepherd's Calendar.)

Piers Plowman The hero of a satirical poem of the fourteenth century. He falls asleep, like John Bunyan, on the Malvern Hills, and has different visions, which he describes, and in which he exposes the corruptions