*** Queen Elizabeth is called “the peerless Oriana,” especially in the madrigals entitled The Triumphs of Oriana (1601). Ben Jonson applies the name to the queen of James I. (Oriens Anna).
Oriana, the nursling of a lioness, with whom Esplandian fell in love, and for whom he underwent all his perils and exploits. She was the gentlest, fairest, and most faithful of her sex.—Lobeira, Amadis de Gaul (fourteenth century).
Orian´a, the fair, brilliant, and witty “chaser” of the “wild goose” Mirabel, to whom she is betrothed, and whose wife she ultimately becomes.—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Wild-Goose Chase (1652).
Oriana, the ward of old Mirabel, and bound by contract to her guardian’s son whom she loves; but young Mirabel shilly-shallies, till he gets into trouble with Lamorce (3 syl.), and is in danger of being murdered, when Oriana, dressed as a page, rescues him. He then declared that his “inconstancy has had a lesson,” and he marries the lady.—G. Farquhar, The Inconstant (1702).
Oriana, in Tennyson’s ballad so called, “stood on the castle wall,” to see her spouse, a Norland chief, fight. A foeman went between “the chief, and the wall,” and discharged an arrow, which, glancing aside, pierced the lady’s heart and killed her. The ballad is the lamentation of the spouse on the death of his bride (1830).
O´riande (3 syl.), a fay who lived at Rosefleur, and was brought up by Maugis d’Aygremont. When her protégé grew up, she loved him, “d’un si grand amour, qu’elle doute fort qu’il ne se departe d’avecques elle.”—Romance de Maujis d’Aygremont et de Vivian son Frère.
O´riel, a fairy, whose empire lay along the banks of the Thames, when King Oberon held his court in Kensington Gardens.—Tickell, Kensington Gardens (1686-1740).
Orient (The). In The New Priest of Conception Bay, Fanny Dare sings to little Mary Barré how the good ship Orient was wrecked.
“Woe for the brave ship Orient!
Woe for the old ship Orient!
For in the broad, broad light
With the land in sight,—
Where the waters bubbled white,—
One great, sharp shriek!—one shudder of affright!
And——
down went the brave old ship, the Orient!”
Robert Lowell, The New Priest of Conception Bay (1858).
Oriflamme, the banner of St. Denis. When the counts of Vexin became possessed of the abbey, the banner passed into their hands, and when, in 1082, Philippe I. united Vexin to the crown, the oriflamme or sacred banner belonged to the king. In 1119 it was first used as a national banner. It consists of a crimson silk flag, mounted on a gilt staff (un glaive tout doré où est attaché une banière vermeille). The loose end is cut into three wavy vandykes, to represent tongues of flame, and a silk tassel is hung at each cleft. In war the display of this standard indicates that no quarter will be given. The English standard of no quarter was the “burning dragon.”