First Love, a comedy by Richard Cumberland (1796.) Frederick Mowbray’s first love, being dowerless, marries the wealthy Lord Ruby, who soon dies leaving all his fortune to his widow. In the meantime, Frederick goes abroad, and at Padua falls in with Sabina Rosny, who nurses him through a severe sickness, for which he thinks he is bound in honor to marry her. She comes with him to England, and is placed under the charge of Lady Ruby. Sabina tells Lady Ruby she cannot marry Frederick, because she is married already to Lord Sensitive, and even if it were not so, she could not marry him, for all his affections are with Lady Ruby; this she discovers in the delirium of the young man, when his whole talk was about her ladyship. In the end Lord Sensitive avows himself the husband of Sabina, and Frederick marries his first love.
Fish.
He eats no fish, that is “he is no papist,” “he is an honest man or one to be trusted.” In the reign of Queen Elizabeth papists were the enemies of the government, and hence one who did not eat fish, like a papist, on fast days was considered a Protestant and a friend of the government.
I do profess ... to serve him truly that will put me in trust ... and to eat no fish.—Shakespeare, King Lear, act i. sc. 4 (1605).
Fish and the Ring.
1. Polycrătês, being too fortunate, was advised to cast away something he most highly prized, and threw into the sea an engraved gem of great value. A few days afterwards a fish came to his table, and in it was this very gem.—Herodotus, iii. 40.
2. A certain queen, having formed an illicit attachment to a soldier, gave him a ring which had been the present of her husband. The king, being apprised thereof, got possession of the ring while the soldier was asleep, threw it into the sea, and then asked his queen to bring it him. In great alarm, she went to St. Kentigern and told him everything. The saint went to the Clyde, caught a salmon with the ring in its mouth, and gave it to the queen, who thus saved her character and her husband. This legend is told about the Glasgow arms.
3. The arms of dame Rebecca Berry, wife of Sir Thomas Elton, Stratford-le-Bow, to be seen at St. Dunstan’s Church, Stepney. The tale is that a knight, hearing the cries of a woman in labor, knew that the infant was destined to become his wife. He tried to elude his destiny, and, when the infant had grown to womanhood, threw a ring into the sea, commanding the damsel never to see his face again till she could produce the ring which he had cast away. In a few days a cod-fish was caught, and the ring was found in its mouth. The young woman producing the ring, the marriage was duly solemnized.—Romance of London.
Fisher (Ralph), assistant of Roland Græme, at Avenel Castle.—Sir W. Scott, The Abbot (time, Elizabeth).
Fishers (The). Grandpa and Grandma Fisher live with daughter-in-law and two grandchildren in “The Ark” at Cedar-swamp. Grandpa is a retired sea-captain with a talent for tedious stories and a temper that is occasionally frayed. Grandma’s face has, “besides large physical proportions, generosity, whole-heartedness and a world of sympathy.” Both sleep in church, but grandma wakes up first, and arouses her husband with an adroit pin. He starts and looks guilty. She “opens her eyes at regular intervals,” as though she had merely been closing them to engage in a few moments of silent prayer.—Sally Pratt McLean Green, Cape Cod Folks (1881).