*** In Donizetti’s opera of Lucia di Lammermoor, Bucklaw dies of the wound inflicted by the bride, and Edgar, heart-broken, comes on the stage and kills himself.
The catastrophe in the Bride of Lammermoor, where [Edgar] Ravenswood is swallowed up by a quicksand, is singularly grand in romance, but would be inadmissible in a drama.—Encyc. Brit., Art. “Romance.”
Rawhead and Bloody-Bones, two bogies or bugbears, generally coupled together. In some cases the phrase is employed to designate one and the same “shadowy sprite.”
Servants awe children ... by telling them of Rawhead and Bloody-bones.—Locke.
Ray. One of two brothers, divided by the civil war. Beltran is in the Southern army, Ray in the Northern. Both love the same woman whose heart is Beltran’s. The brothers met in battle and Beltran falls. Ray is wounded and left for dead; recovers and makes his way homeward. There he lives—undergoing volcanic changes, now passionless lulls, and now rages and spasms of grief; “gradually out of them all he gathers his strength about him,” and wins Vivia’s hand.—Harriet Prescott Spofford, Ray.
Ray (Will), popular officer in a frontier brigade who steals through the deadly line of Cheyennes drawn about a handful of U. S. soldiers, and, followed by shots and yells, rides for his life and his comrades’ lives to the nearest encampment of troops and brings succor to the devoted little band with the dawn of the day that, but for him, would have been the last on earth for those left behind.—Charles King, Marion’s Faith (1886).
Rayland (Mrs.), the domineering lady of the Old Manor-House, by Charlotte Smith (1749-1806).
Mrs. Rayland is a sort of Queen Elizabeth in private life.—Sir W. Scott.
Raymond, count of Toulouse, the Nestor of the crusaders. He slays Aladine, king of Jerusalem, and plants the Christian standard on the tower of David.—Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, xx. (1516).
*** Introduced by Sir W. Scott in Count Robert of Paris, a novel of the period of Rufus.