Chapter Sagan of Jerusalem to St. Monday of S by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

St. Bees' College (Cumberland), situated on the bay formed by St. Bees' Head, founded by Dr. Law, Bishop of Chester, in 1816. St. Bees' was so called from a nunnery founded here in 650, and dedicated to the Irish saint named Bega. A “man of wax” is a “Bees' man.”

St. Cecilia, born of noble Roman parents, and fostered from her cradle in the Christian faith, married Valirian. One day she told him that an angel, “whether she was awake or asleep, was ever beside her.” Valirian requested to see this angel, and she said he must be baptised first. Valirian was baptised and suffered martyrdom. When Cecilia was brought before the Prefect Almachius, and refused to worship the Roman deities, she was “shut fast in a bath kept hot both night and day with great fires,” but “felt of it no woe.” Almachius then sent an executioner to cut off her head, “but for no manner of chance could he smite her fair neck in two.” Three days she lingered with her neck bleeding, preaching Christ and Him crucified all the while; then she died, and Pope Urban buried the body. “Her house the church of St. Cecily is hight” unto this day. (Chaucer: Secounde Nonnes Tale.) (See Cecilia .)
    Towards the close of the seventeenth century an annual musical festival was held in Stationers' Hall in honour of St. Cecilia.

St. Cuthbert's Duck The eider duck.

St. Distaff (See Distaff .)

St. Elmo called by the French St. Elme. The electric light seen playing about the masts of ships in stormy weather. (See Castor And Pollux .)

“And sudden breaking on their raptured sight,
Appeared the splendour of St. Elmo's light.”
Hoole's Furioso, book ix.

St. Francis (See Francis .)

St. George's Cross, in heraldry, is a Greek cross gules upon a field argent. The field is represented in the Union Jack by a narrow fimbriation. It is the distinguishing badge of the British navy.
   St. George's flag is a smaller flag, without the Union Jack.

St. John Long An illiterate quack, who professed to have discovered a liniment which had the power of distinguishing between disease and health. The body was rubbed with it, and if irritation appeared it announced secret disease, which the quack undertook to cure. He was twice tried for manslaughter: once in 1830, when he was fined for his treatment of Miss Cashan, who died; and next in 1831, for the death of Mrs. Lloyd. Being acquitted, he was driven in triumph from the Old Bailey in a nobleman's carriage, amid the congratulations of the aristocracy.
    St. John is pronounced Sinjin, as in that verse of Pope's-

“Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.”
Essay on Man.

St. John's Eve, St. Mark's Eve and Allhallow Even, are times when poets say the forms of all such persons as are about to die in the ensuing twelve months make their solemn entry into the churches of their respective parishes. On these eves all sorts of goblins are about. Brand says, “On the Eve of John the Baptist's nativity bonfires are made to purify the air (vol. i. p. 305).

St. Johnstone's Tippet A halter; so called from Johnstone the hangman.

“Sent to heaven wi' a St. Johnstone's tippit about my hause.”- Sir Walter Scott: Old Mortality. chap. viii

St. Leger Sweepstakes The St. Leger race was instituted in 1776, by Colonel St. Leger, of Park Hill, near Doncaster, but was not called the “St. Leger” till two years afterwards, when the Marquis of Rockingham's horse Allabaculia won the race. (See Derby, Leger .)

St. Leon became possessed of the elixir of life, and the power of transmuting the baser metals into gold, but these acquisitions only brought him increased misery. (William Goodwin: St Leon.)