Gow (Old Niell), the fiddler.
Nathaniel Grow, son of the fiddler.—Sir W. Scott, St. Ronan’s Well (time, George III.).
Gow (Henry) or Henry Smith, also called “Gow Chrom” and “Hal of the Wynd,” the armorer. Suitor of Catharine Glover “the fair maid of Perth,” whom he marries.—Sir W. Scott, Fair Maid of Perth (time, Henry IV.).
Gowk-thrapple (Maister), a covenanting preacher.—Sir W. Scott, Waverley (time, George II.).
A man of coarse, mechanical, perhaps rather intrinsically feeble intellect, with the vehemence of some pulpit-drumming Gowk-thrapple.—Carlyle.
Graaf (Count), was a great speculator in corn. One year a sad famine prevailed, and he expected, like Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to make an enormous fortune by his speculation, but an army of rats, pressed by hunger, invaded his barns, and then swarming into the castle, fell on the old baron, worried him to death, and then devoured him. (See Hatto).
Graal (Saint) or St. Greal, is generally said to be the vessel or platter used by Christ at the last supper, in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood of the crucified Christ. In all descriptions of it in the Arthurian romances, it is simply the visible “presence” of Christ, or realization of the Catholic idea that the wafer, after consecration, is changed into the very body of the Saviour, and when Sir Galahad “achieved the quest of the Holy Graal,” all that is meant is that he saw with his bodily eyes the visible Saviour into which the holy wafer had been transmuted.
Then the bishop took a wafer, which was made in the likeness of bread, and at the lifting up [the elevation of the host] there came a figure in the likeness of a child, and the visage was as red and as bright as fire, and he smote himself into that bread: so they saw that the bread was formed of a fleshly man, and then he put it into the holy vessel again ... then [the bishop] took the holy vessel and came to Sir Galahad as he kneeled down, and there he received his Saviour.—Pt. iii. 101, 102.
King Pelles and Sir Launcelot caught a sight of the St. Graal; but did not “achieve it,” like Galahad.
When they went into the castle to take their repast ... there came a dove to the window, and in his bill was a little censer of gold, and there withall was such a savor as if all the spicery of the world had been there ... and a damsel, passing fair, bare a vessel of gold between her hands, and thereto the king kneeled devoutly and said his prayers ... “Oh mercy!” said Sir Launcelot, “what may this mean?”... “This,” said the king, “is the holy Sancgreall which ye have seen.”—Pt. iii. 2.