Mrs. Browning, The Lost Bower.
Keha´ma, the almighty rajah of earth, and all-powerful in Swerga, or heaven. After a long tyranny, he went to Pan´dalon (hell) to claim domination there also. Kehama demanded why the throne of Yamen (or Pluto) was supported by only three persons, and was told that he himself must be the fourth. He paid no heed to this prophecy, but commanded the amreeta-cup or draught of immortality to be brought to him, that he might quaff it and reign forever. Now there are two immortalities: the immortality of life for the good, and the immortality of death for the wicked. When Kehama drank the amreeta, he drank immortal death, and was forced to bend his proud neck beneath the throne of Yamen, to become the fourth supporter.—Southey, Curse of Kehama (1809).
⁂ Ladurlad was the person subjected to the “curse of Kehama,” and under that name the story will be found.
Keltie (Old), innkeeper at Kinross.—Sir W. Scott, The Abbot (time, Elizabeth).
Kempfer-Hausen, Robert Pearce Gillies, one of the speakers in the “Noctês Ambrosianæ.”—Blackwood’s Magazine.
Kendah, an Arabian tribe, which used to bury alive their female children as soon as they were born. The Korân refers to them in ch. vi.
Kenge (1 syl.), of the firm of Kenge and Carboy, Lincoln’s Inn, generally called “Conversation Kenge,” loving above all things to hear “the dulcet tones of his own voice.” The firm is engaged on the side of Mr Jarndyce, in the great Chancery suit of “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.”—C. Dickens, Bleak House (1853).
Kenelm (St.) was murdered at Clente-in-Cowbage, near Winchelcumb, in Gloucestershire; but the murder “was miraculously notified at Rome by a white dove,” which alighted on the altar of St. Peter’s, bearing in his beak a scroll with these words:
In Clent cow-pasture under a thorn,
Of head bereft, lies Kenelm king-born.