Buffoon (The Pulpit). Hugh Peters is so called by Dugdale (1599-1660).
Bug Jargal, a negro, passionately in love with a white woman, but tempering the wildest passion with the deepest respect.—Victor Hugo, Bug Jargal (a novel).
Bulbul, an Oriental name for a nightingale. When, in The Princess (by Tennyson), the prince, disguised as a woman, enters with his two friends (similarly disguised) into the college to which no man was admitted, he sings; and the princess, suspecting the fraud, says to him, "Not for thee, O bulbul, any rose of Gulistan shall burst her veil," i.e., "O singer, do not suppose that any woman will be taken in by such a flimsy deceit." The bulbul loved the rose, and Gulistan means the "garden of roses." The prince was the bulbul, the college was Gulistan, and the princess the rose sought.—Tennyson, The Princess, iv.
Bulbul-He'zar, the talking bird, which was joined in singing by all the song-birds in the neighborhood. (See TALKING BIRD.)—Arabian Nights ("The Two Sisters," the last story).
Bulis, mother of Egyp'ius of Thessaly. Egypius entertained a criminal love for Timandra, the mother of Neoph'ron, and Neophron was guilty of a similar passion for Bulis. Jupiter changed Egypius and Neophron into vultures, Bulis into a duck, and Timandra into a sparrow-hawk.—Classic Mythology.
Bull (John), the English nation personified, and hence any typical Englishman.
Mrs. Bull, queen Anne, "very apt to be choleric." On hearing that Philip Baboon (Philippe duc d'Anjou) was to succeed to lord Strutt's estates (i.e. the Spanish throne), she said to John Bull:
"You sot, you loiter about ale-houses and taverns,
spend your time at billiards, ninepins, or
puppet-shows, never minding me nor my numerous