=Ferrau=, a Saracen, son of Landfu´sa. Having dropped his helmet in a river, he vowed never to wear another till he won that worn by Orlando. Orlando slew him by a wound in the navel, his only vulnerable part.—Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516).

=Ferraugh= (Sir), introduced in bk. iii. 8, but without a name, as carrying off the false Florimel from Braggadoccio. In bk. iv. 2, the name is given. He is there overthrown by Sir Blandamour, who takes away with him the false Florimel, the lady of snow and wax.—Spenser, Faëry Queen (1590, 1596).

=Ferret=, an avaricious, mean-spirited slanderer, who blasts by innuendoes, and blights by hints and cautions. He hates young Heartall, and misinterprets all his generous acts, attributing his benevolence to hush-money. The rascal is at last found out and foiled.—Cherry, The Soldier’s Daughter (1804).

=Ferrex=, eldest son of Gorboduc, a legendary king of Britain. Being driven by his brother Porrex from the kingdom, he returned with a large army, but was defeated and slain by Porrex.—Gorboduc, a tragedy by Thom. Norton and Thom. Sackville (1561).

=Ferris= (Henry). Artist and American consul at Venice. In love with Florida Vervain, but believes her infatuated by an Italian priest who longs to leave his vocation. He learns the truth at the priest’s death-bed. Finds Florida in New York, explains, receives absolution and is married.—W.D. Howells, A Foregone Conclusion (1874).

=Ferrol=. Northern man of letters who makes “a study” of Louisiana and Louisiana’s father. The honest planter surveys him with curiosity as “‘a littery man. I had an idee that thar was only one on ye now an’ ag’in—jest now an’ ag’in.’ Ferrol did not smile at all. His manner was perfect—so full of interest that Mr. Rogers quite warmed and expanded under it.”—Frances Hodgson Burnett, Louisiana (1880).

=Fetnab= (“a tormentor of hearts”), the favorite of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. While the caliph was absent in his wars, Zobeidê (3 syl.), the caliph’s wife, out of jealousy, ordered Fetnab to be buried alive. Ganem happened accidentally to see the interment, rescued her, and took her home to his own private lodgings in Bagdad. The caliph, on his return, mourned for Fetnab; but receiving from her a letter of explanation, he became jealous of Ganem, and ordered him to be put to death. Ganem, however, contrived to escape. When the fit of jealousy was over, the caliph heard the facts plainly stated, whereupon he released Fetnab, and gave her in marriage to Ganem, and appointed the young man to a very lucrative post about the court.—Arabian Nights, (“Ganem, the slave of Love”).

=Fe´zon,= daughter of Savary, duke of Aquitaine. The Green Knight, who was a pagan, demanded her in marriage, but Orson (brother of Valentine), called “The Wild Man of the Forest,” overthrew the pagan and married Fezon.—Valentine and Orson (fifteenth century).

=Fiammetta,= a lady beloved by Boccaccio, supposed to be Maria, daughter of Robert, king of Naples. (Italian, fiammetta, a little flame).

=Fib,= an attendant on Queen Mab.—Drayton, Nymphidia.

=Fiction.= Father of Modern Prose Fiction, Daniel Defoe (1663-1731).

=Fiddler= (Oliver’s). Sir Roger l’Estrange was so called, because at one time he was playing a fiddle or viole in the house of John Hingston, where Cromwell was one of the guests (1616-1704).

=Fiddler Joss,= Mr. Joseph Poole, a reformed drunkard, who subsequently turned preacher in London, but retained his former sobriquet.

=Fide´le= (3 syl.), the name assumed by Imogen, when, attired in boy’s clothes, she started for Milford Haven to meet her husband Posthŭmus.—Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1605).

⁂ Collins has a beautiful elegy on “Fidele.”

=Fidelia,= “the foundling.” She is in reality Harriet, the daughter of Sir Charles Raymond, but her mother dying in childbirth, she was committed to the charge of a governante. The governante sold the child, at the age of 12, to one Villiard, and then wrote to Sir Charles to say that she was dead. One night, Charles Belmont, passing by, heard cries of distress, and going to the rescue took the girl home as a companion to his sister. He fell in love with her: the governante, on her death-bed, told the story of her birth; and Charles married the foundling.—Ed. Moore, The Foundling (1748).

=Fide´lio,= Leono´ra, wife of Fernando Florestan. She assumed the name of Fidelio, and dressed in male attire when her husband was a state prisoner, that she might enter the service of Rocco the jailer, and hold intercourse with her husband.—Beethoven, Fidelio (1791).

=Fides= (2 syl.), mother of John of Leyden. Believing that the prophet-ruler of Westphalia had caused her son’s death, she went to Munster to curse him. Seeing the ruler pass, she recognized in him her own son; but the son pretended not to know his mother, and Fidês, to save him annoyance, professed to have made a mistake. She was put into a dungeon, where John visited her, and when he set fire to his palace, Fidês rushed into the flames, and both perished together.—Meyerbeer, Le Prophete (1849).

=Fidessa,= the companion of Sansfoy; but when the Red Cross Knight slew that “faithless Saracen,” Fidessa told him she was the only daughter of an emperor of Italy; that she was betrothed to a rich and wise king; and that her betrothed being slain, she had set forth to find the body, in order that she might decently inter it. She said that in her wanderings Sansfoy had met her and compelled her to be his companion: but she thanked the knight for having come to her rescue. The Red Cross Knight, wholly deluded by this plausible tale, assured Fidessa of his sympathy and protection: but she turned out to be Duessa, the daughter of Falsehood and Shame. The sequel must be sought under the word DUESSA.—Spenser, Faëry Queen, i. 2 (1590).

=Fido,= Faith personified, the foster-son of Acŏë (“hearing,” Rom. x. 17); his foster-sister is Meditation. Fully described in canto ix. of The Purple Island (1633), by Phineas Fletcher. (Latin, fidês, “faith.”)

=Field of the Forty Footsteps,= at the back of the British Museum, once called Southampton Fields. The tradition is that two brothers, in the Monmouth rebellion, took different sides, and engaged each other in fight. Both were killed, and forty impressions of their feet were traceable in the field for years afterwards.

⁂ The Misses Porter wrote a novel called _The Field of the Forty Footsteps_, and the Messrs. Mayhew took the same subject for a melodrama.

=Fielding= (Mrs.), a little querulous old lady with a peevish face, who, in consequence of having once been better off, or of laboring under the impression that she might have been, if something in the indigo trade had happened differently, was very genteel and patronizing indeed. When she dressed for a party, she wore gloves, and a cap of state “almost as tall, and quite as stiff as a mitre.”

May Fielding, her daughter, very pretty and innocent. She was engaged to Edward Plummer, but heard that he had died in South America, and consented to marry Tackleton the toy merchant. A few days before the day fixed for the wedding, Edward Plummer returned, and they were married. Tackleton gave them as a present the cake he had ordered for his own wedding feast.—C. Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth (1845).

=Fielding of the Drama,= George Farquhar, author of The Beaux’ Stratagem, etc. (1678-1707).

=Fielding’s Proverbs.= These were in reality compiled by W. Henry Ireland, the Shakespeare impostor, who published Miscellaneous Papers and Instruments, under the hand and seal of William Shakespeare, including the tragedy of King Lear and a small fragment of Hamlet, from the original, 1796, folio, £4 4_s_. The whole was a barefaced forgery.

=Fierabras= (Sir) [_Fe.ā´.ra.brah_], a Saracen of Spain, who made himself master of Rome, and carried away the crown of thorns and the balsam with which the Lord had been embalmed. His chief exploit was to slay the giant who guarded the bridge of Mantible, which had thirty arches, all of black marble. Bal´and of Spain assumed the name of Sir Fierabras.

Balsam of Fierabras, the balsam used in embalming the body of Christ, stolen by Sir Fierabras. It possessed such virtues that one single drop, taken internally, sufficed to heal the most malignant wound.

=Fierabras of Alexandria,= the greatest giant that ever walked the earth. He possessed all Babylon, even to the Red Sea, was seigneur of Russia, lord of Cologne, master of Jerusalem, and of the Holy Sepulchre. This huge giant ended his days in the odor of sanctity, “meek as a lamb, and humble as he was meek.”

=Fierce= (The), Alexander I. of Scotland, so called from the impetuosity of his temper (*, 1107-1124).

=Fiesco,= the chief character of Schiller’s tragedy so called. The poet makes Fiesco to be killed by the hand of Verri´na the republican; but history says his death was the result of a stumble from a plank (1783).

=Fig´aro=, a barber of extraordinary cunning, dexterity, and intrigue.—Beaumarchais, Barbier de Séville (1775).

Fig´aro, a valet, who outwits every one by his dexterity and cunning.—Beaumarchais, Mariage de Figaro (1784).