Spenser, Faëry Queen, ii. 10, 33 (1590).
This is not quite in accordance with Geoffrey’s account:
Some restless spirits ... inspired Margan with vain conceits, ... who marched with an army through Cunedagius’s country, and began to burn all before him; but he was met by Cunedagius, with all his forces, who attacked Margan ... and, putting him to flight, ... killed him in a town of Kambria, which since his death has been called Margan to this day.—British History, ii. 15 (1142).
Glasgow (The Bishop of).—Sir W. Scott, Castle Dangerous, xix. (time, Henry I.).
Glasgow Arms, an oak tree with a bird above it, and a bell hanging from one of the branches; at the foot of the tree a salmon with a ring in its mouth. The legend is that St. Kentigern built the city and hung a bell in an oak tree to summon the men to work. This accounts for the “oak and bell.” Now for the rest: A Scottish queen, having formed an illicit attachment to a soldier, presented her paramour with a ring, the gift of her royal husband. This coming to the knowledge of the king, he contrived to abstract it from the soldier while he was asleep, threw it into the Clyde, and then asked his queen to show it him. The queen, in great alarm, ran to St. Kentigern, and confessed her crime. The father confessor went to the Clyde, drew out a salmon with the ring in its mouth, handed it to the queen, and by this means both prevented a scandal and reformed the repentant lady.
A similar legend is told of Dame Rebecca Berry, wife of Thomas Elton of Stratford Bow, and relict of Sir John Berry, 1696. She is the heroine of the ballad called The Cruel Knight. The story runs thus: A knight, passing by a cottage, heard the cries of a woman in labor. By his knowledge of the occult sciences, he knew that the infant was doomed to be his future wife; but he determined to elude his destiny. When the child was of a marriageable age, he took her to the seaside, intending to drown her, but relented, and, throwing a ring into the sea, commanded her never to see his face again, upon pain of death, till she brought back that ring with her. The damsel now went as cook to a noble family, and one day, as she was preparing a cod-fish for dinner, she found the ring in the fish, took it to the knight, and thus became the bride of Sir John Berry. The Berry arms show a fish, and in the dexter chief a ring.
Glass (Mrs.), a tobacconist, in London, who befriended Jeanie Deans while she sojourned in town, whither she had come to crave pardon from the queen for Effie Deans, her half-sister, lying under sentence of death for the murder of her infant born before wedlock.—Sir W. Scott, Heart of Midlothian (time, George II.).
Glass Armor. When Cherry went to encounter the dragon that guarded the singing apple, he arrayed himself in glass armor, which reflected objects like a mirror. Consequently, when the monster came against him, seeing its reflection in every part of the armor, it fancied hundreds of dragons were coming against it, and ran away in alarm into a cave, which Cherry instantly closed up, and thus became master of the situation.—Comtesse D’Aunoy, Fairy Tales (“Princess Fairstar,” 1682).
Glasse (Mrs.), author of a cookery-book immortalized by the saying, “First catch [skin] your hair, then cook it.” Mrs. Glasse is the nom de plume of Dr. John Hill (1716-1775).
Glas´tonbury, in Arthurian romance, was the burial place of King Arthur. Selden, in his Illustrations of Drayton, gives an account of Arthur’s tomb “betwixt two pillars,” and says that “Henry II. gave command to Henry de Bois (then abbot of Glastonbury) to make great search for the body of the British king, which was found in a wooden coffin some 16 foote deepe, and afterwards they found a stone on whose lower side was fixed a leaden cross with the name inscribed.”