[484]. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says, ‘Apollonius will have Jason’s golden hair to be the main cause of Medea’s dotage on him. Castor and Pollux were both yellow-haired. Homer so commends Helen, makes Patroclus and Achilles both yellow-haired; Pulchricoma Venus, and Cupid himself was yellow-haired.’
[485]. This sobriquet, as old as the Hundred Rolls, is found in the xviith cent., at Durham. ‘Peter Blackbeard’ was ‘brought up for not paying Easter reckonings, 1676.’ (Dean Granville’s Letters, p. 235.)
[486]. A contributor to Notes and Queries, Jan. 14, 1860, quotes an old Ipswich record in which is mentioned an ‘Alexander Redberd’ dwelling there in the early part of the sixteenth century.
[487]. ‘John Brounberd, son of William, a hostage from Galloway.’
(Letters from Northern Registers, p. 163.)
‘Janet Brounebeard’ was an inmate of St. Thomas’s Hospital, York, February 6, 1553. (W. 11, p. 304.)
[488]. I find this name still exists as ‘Pickavant.’ It may be seen over a boot and shoe warehouse by the Railway Station at Southport, Lancashire. Probably ‘Pickance’ is an abbreviated form. ‘Charles, son of Daniel and Eliza Pickance, bapt. March 26, 1754.’ (St. Ann’s, Manchester.)
[489]. Many of my readers will be familiar with the sobriquet ‘nottpated,’ which Shakespeare puts in Prince Henry’s mouth several times.
‘Calvus protests for foes he doth not care;