Lane (Jane), daughter of Thomas, and sister of Colonel John Lane. To save King Charles II. after the battle of Worcester, she rode behind him from Bentley, in Staffordshire, to the house of her cousin, Mrs. Norton, near Bristol. For this act of loyalty, the king granted the family the following armorial device: A strawberry horse saliant (couped at the flank), bridled, bitted, and garnished, supporting between its feet a royal crown proper. Motto: Garde le roy.
Laneham (Master Robert), clerk of the council-chamber door.
Sybil Laneham, his wife, one of the revellers at Kenilworth Castle.—Sir W. Scott, Kenilworth (time, Elizabeth).
Langcale (The laird of), a leader in the covenanters’ army.—Sir W. Scott, Old Mortality (time, Charles II.).
Langley (Sir Frederick), a suitor to Miss Vere, and one of the Jacobite conspirators with the laird of Ellieslaw.—Sir W. Scott, The Black Dwarf (time, Anne).
Langosta (Duke of), the Spanish nickname of Aosta, the elected king of Spain. The word means “a locust” or “plunderer.”
Language: (The Primeval).
Psammetichus, king of Egypt, desiring to learn what was the original language, shut up two infants with a goat to suckle them, in a place where they could hear no human voice, and gave orders to report to him the first word they should utter. At the end of two years they cried “Bekos,” and as this resembled the Phrygian word for “bread,” Psammetichus decided that the Phrygians were older than the Egyptians. The word was really the echo of the cry of the goat.
Languish (Lydia), a romantic young lady, who is for ever reading sensational novels, and molding her behavior on the characters which she reads of in these books of fiction. Hence she is a very female Quixote in romantic notions of a sentimental type (see act i. 2).—Sheridan, The Rivals (1775).
Lantern-Land, the land of authors, whose works are their lanterns. The inhabitants, called “Lanterners” (Lanternois), are bachelors and masters of arts, doctors, and professors, prelates and divines of the council of Trent, and all other wise ones of the earth. Here are the lanterns of Aristotle, Epicūros, and Aristophănês; the dark earthen lantern of Epictētos, the duplex lantern of Martial, and many others. The sovereign was a queen when Pantag´ruel visited the realm to make inquiry about the “Oracle of the Holy Bottle.”—Rabelais, Pantagruel, v. 32, 33 (1545).