most real, the most brilliant.
[ Salvador Dali ]
geryon
- Geryon is an arch-devil sometimes called the Wild Beast,
- attacking with his claws and poison sting. His ranking in
- Hell is rumored to be quite low.
+ Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear'd,
+ His head and upper part expos'd on land,
+ But laid not on the shore his bestial train.
+ His face the semblance of a just man's wore,
+ So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;
+ The rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws
+ Reach'd to the armpits, and the back and breast,
+ And either side, were painted o'er with nodes
+ And orbits. Colours variegated more
+ Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state
+ With interchangeable embroidery wove,
+ Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom.
+ As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore,
+ Stands part in water, part upon the land;
+ Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
+ The beaver settles watching for his prey;
+ So on the rim, that fenc'd the sand with rock,
+ Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void
+ Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork,
+ With sting like scorpion's arm'd. Then thus my guide:
+ "Now need our way must turn few steps apart,
+ Far as to that ill beast, who couches there."
+ [ The Inferno, from The Divine Comedy of Dante
+ Alighieri, translated by H.F. Cary ]
*ghost
+valley of *dea*
And now the souls of the dead who had gone below came swarming
up from Erebus -- fresh brides, unmarried youths, old men
with life's long suffering behind them, tender young girls
time to see Jack running off with his harp.
[ Jack and the Beanstalk, from English Fairy Tales,
by Joseph Jacobs ]
+hawaiian*shirt
+ 'One of the things he can't do, he can't ride a horse,' he
+ said. Then he stiffened as if sandbagged by a sudden
+ recollection, gave a small yelp of terror and dashed into
+ the gloom. When he returned, the being called Twoflower was
+ hanging limply over his shoulder. It was small and skinny,
+ and dressed very oddly in a pair of knee-length britches and
+ a shirt in such a violent and vivid conflict of colours that
+ the Weasel's fastidious eye was offended even in the half-light.
+ [ The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett ]
healer
* healer
attendant
ready to crumble at a touch. We are fools ---"
[ Conan The Conqueror, by Robert E. Howard ]
hell hound*
- Hell hounds are fire-breathing canines from another plane of
- existence brought here in the service of evil beings. A hell
- hound resembles a large hound with rust-red or red-brown fur,
- and red, glowing eyes. The markings, teeth, and tongue are
- soot black. It stands two to three feet high at the shoulder
- and has a distinct odour of smoke and sulphur. The baying
- sounds it makes have an eerie, hollow tone that sends a shiver
- through any who hear them.
+ But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare,
+ and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade
+ gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the
+ ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol,
+ my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out
+ upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an
+ enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes
+ have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes
+ glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and
+ dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the
+ delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more
+ savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that
+ dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall
+ of fog.
+ [ The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ]
hermes
Messenger and herald of the Olympians. Being required to do
a great deal of travelling and speaking in public, he became
And Guenelun answered, contrarious:
"That were a lie, in any other mouth."
[ The Song of Roland ]
+horn of plenty
+cornucopia
+ The infant Zeus was fed with goat's milk by Amalthea,
+ daughter of Melisseus, King of Crete. Zeus, in gratitude,
+ broke off one of the goat's horns, and gave it to Amalthea,
+ promising that the possessor should always have in abundance
+ everything desired.
+ [ Brewer's Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable ]
+
+ When Amalthea's horn
+ O'er hill and dale the rose-crowned flora pours,
+ And scatters corn and wine, and fruits and flowers.
+ [ Os Lusiadas, by Luis Vaz de Camoes ]
horned devil
Horned devils lack any real special abilities, though they
are quite difficult to kill.
equally at home in the fires of Hell and the cold of Limbo,
and who can cause the traveller to feel the latter with just
a touch of their tail.
+idefix
+ Another clever translation [of the _Asterix_ character names]
+ is that of Idefix. An _idee fixe_ is a "fixed idea", i.e.
+ an obsession, a dogma. The translation, Dogmatix, manages to
+ conserve the "fixed idea" meaning and also include the syllable
+ dog -- perfect, given that the character is a dog who has very
+ strong views on the environment (he howls whenever he sees an
+ uprooted tree).
+ [ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]
# takes "imp or minor demon" when specifying 'i'
imp
imp or minor demon
projects / nethack / commitdiff