Chapter Pin Money to Piraeus of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Pin Money to Piraeus

Pin Money A lady's allowance of money for her own personal expenditure. Long after the invention of pins, in the fourteenth century, the maker was allowed to sell them in open shop only on January 1st and 2nd. It was then that the court ladies and city dames flocked to the depôts to buy them, having been first provided with money by their husbands. When pins became cheap and common, the ladies spent their allowances on other fancies, but the term pin money remained in vogue.
   It is quite an error to suppose that pins were invented in the reign of Francois I., and introduced into England by Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII. In 1347, just 200 years before the death of Francois, 12,000 pins were delivered from the royal wardrobe for the use of the Princess Joan, and in 1400 (more than a century before Francois ascended the throne) the Duchess of Orleans purchased of Jehan le Breconnier, espirglier, of Paris, several thousand long and short pins, besides 500 de la facon d' Angleterre. So that pins were not only manufactured in England, but were of high repute even in the reign of Henry IV. of England (1399-1413).

Pinabello or Pinabel (in Orlando Furioso). Son of Anselmo, King of Maganza. Marphisa, having over- thrown him, and taken the steed of his dame, Pinabello, at her instigation, decreed that nothing would wipe out the disgrace except a thousand dames and a thousand warriors unhorsed, and spoiled of their arms, steed, and vest. He was slain by Bradamant.

Pinchbeck So called from Christopher Pinchbeck, a musical-clock maker, of Fleet Street. (Died 1732.) The word is used for Brummagem gold; and the metal is a compound of copper, zinc, and tin.

“Where, in these pinchbeck days, can we hope to find the old agricultural virtue in all its purity?”- Anthony Trollope: Framley Personage.

Pindar The French Pindar. Jean Dorat (1507-1588). Also Ponce Denis Lebrun (1729-1807).
   The Italian Pindar. Gabriello Chiabrera; whence Chiabreresco is in Italian tantamount to “Pindaric.” (1552-1637.)
   Peter Pindar. Dr. John Wolcott (1738-1812).
   Pindar of England. George, Duke of Buckingham, most extravagantly declared Cowley to be the Pindar, Horacé and Virgil of England.
   In Westminster Abbey, the last line of Gray's tablet claims the honour of British Pindar for the author of The Bard.

“She [Britain] felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.”

Pindar and the Bees (See Plato .)

Pindar of Wakefield (George-a-Green) has given his name to a celebrated house on the west side of the Gray's Inn Road; and a house with that name still exists in St. Chad's Row, on the other side of the street. (The Times.) (See Pinder .)

Pindaric Verse Irregular verse; a poem of various metres, but of lofty style, in imitation of the odes of Pindar. Alexander's Feast, by Dryden, is the best specimen in English.

Pinder One who impounds cattle, or takes care of the cattle impounded; thus George-a-Green was the “Pinder of Wakefield,” and his encounter with Robin Hood, Scarlet, and Little John forms the subject of one of the Robin Hood ballads. (Anglo-Saxon pund, a fold.)

Pindorus (in Jerusalem Delivered). One of the two heralds; the other is Arideus.

Pine-bender (The). Sinis, the Corinthian robber; so called because he used to fasten his victims to two pinetrees bent towards the earth, and then leave them to be rent asunder by the rebound.

Pink (A). The flower is so called because the edges of the petals are pinked or notched. (See below.)

Pink of Perfection (The). The acme; the beau-ideal. Shakespeare has “the pink of courtsey” (Rome and Juliet, ii. 4); the pink of politeness. (Welsh, pwnc, a point, an acme; our pink, to stab; pinking, cutting into points.)

Piony or Peony A flower; so called from the chieftain Paion, who discovered it. (Saxon Leechdoms, i.)