Pip, the hero of Dickens’s novel called Great Expectations. His family name was Pirrip, and his Christian name Philip. He was enriched by a convict named Abel Magwitch; and was brought up by Joe Gargery, a smith, whose wife was a woman of thunder and lightning, storm and tempest. Magwitch, having made his escape to Australia, became a sheep farmer, grew very rich, and deposited £500 a year with Mr. Jaggers, a lawyer, for the education of Pip, and to make a gentleman of him. Ultimately, Pip married Estella, the daughter of Magwitch, but adopted from infancy by Miss Havisham, a rich banker’s daughter. His friend, Herbert Pocket, used to call him “Handel.”—C. Dickens, Great Expectations (1860).
Pipchin (Mrs.), an exceedingly “well-connected lady,” living at Brighton, where she kept an establishment for the training of enfants. Her “respectability” chiefly consisted in the circumstance of her husband having broken his heart in pumping water out of some Peruvian mines (that is, in having invested in these mines and been let in). Mrs. Pipchin was an ill-favored old woman, with mottled cheeks and grey eyes. She was given to buttered toast and sweetbreads, but kept her enfants on the plainest possible fare.—C. Dickens, Dombey and Son (1846).
Piper (Tom), one of the characters in a morris-dance.
So have I seen
Tom Piper stand upon our village green,
Backed with the May-pole.
William Browne, Shepherd’s Pipe (1614).
Piper (Paddy, the), an Irish piper, supposed to have been eaten by a cow. Going along one night during the “troubles,” he knocked his head against the body of a dead man dangling from a tree. The sight of the “iligant” boots was too great a temptation: and as they refused to come off without the legs, Paddy took them too, and sought shelter for the night in a cowshed. The moon rose, and Paddy, mistaking the moon-light for the dawn, started for the fair, having drawn on the boots and left the “legs” behind. At daybreak, some of the piper’s friends went in search of him, and found, to their horror, that the cow, as they supposed, had devoured him with the exception of his legs—clothes, bags, and all. They were horror-struck, and of course the cow was condemned to be sold; but while driving her to the fair, they were attracted by the strains of a piper coming towards them. The cow startled, made a bolt, with a view, as it was supposed, of making a meal on another piper. “Help, help!” they shouted; when Paddy himself ran to their aid. The mystery was soon explained over a drop of the “cratur,” and the cow was taken home again.—S. Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland (1834).
Piper of Hamelin (The Pied), Bunting, who first charmed the rats of Hamelin into the Weser, and then allured the children (to the number of 130) to Koppenberg Hill, which opened upon them. (See [Pied Piper of Hamelin].)
Piperman, the factotum of Chalomel, chemist and druggist. He was “so handy” that he was never at his post; and being “so handy,” he took ten times the trouble of doing anything that another would need to bestow. For the self-same reason, he stumbled and blundered about, muddled and marred everything he touched, and being a Jack-of-all-trades was master of none.
There has been an accident because I am so handy. I went to the dairy at a bound, came back at other, and fell down in the open street, where I spilt the milk. I tried to bale it up—no go. Then I ran back or ran home, I forget which, and left the money somewhere; and then, in fact, I have been four times to and fro, because I am so handy.—J. R. Ware, Piperman’s Predicament.
Pipes (Tom), a retired boatswain’s mate, living with Commodore Trunnion to keep the servants in order. Tom Pipes is noted for his taciturnity.—Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751).
(The incident of Tom Pipes concealing in his shoe his master’s letter to Emilia was suggested by Ovid.