Thresher (Captain), the feigned leader of a body of lawless Irishmen, who attacked, in 1806, the collectors of tithes and their subordinates.
Captain Right was a leader of the rebellious peasantry in the south of Ireland in the eighteenth century.
Captain Rock was the assumed name of a leader of Irish insurgents in 1822.
Thrummy-Cap, a sprite which figures in the fairy tales of Northumberland. He was a “queer-looking little auld man,” whose scene of exploits generally lay in the vaults and cellars of old castles. John Skelton, in his Colyn Clout, calls him Tom-a-Thrum, and says that the clergy could neither write nor read, and were no wiser than this cellar sprite.
Thrush (Song of the). Marvellous, rippling music, like the sweet babble of a brook over stones; like the gentle sighing of the wind in pine trees ... a rhapsody impossible to describe, but constantly reminding one of running streams and gentle waterfalls, and coming nearer to “put my woods in song” than any other bird-notes whatever.--Olive Thorne Miller, In Nesting Time (1888).
Thrush (Golden-crowned). Commencing in a very low key ... he grows louder and louder, till his body quakes, and his chant runs into a shriek, ringing in my ear with a peculiar sharpness. This lay may be represented thus: “Teacher! teacher! Teacher! Teacher! TEACHER!” the accent on the first syllable, and each word uttered with increasing force and shrillness.--John Burroughs, Wake Robin (1871).
Thu´le (2 syl.), the most remote northern portion of the world known to the ancient Greeks and Romans; but whether an island or part of a continent nobody knows. It is first mentioned by Pythĕas, the Greek navigator, who says it is “six days’ sail from Britain,” and that its climate is a “mixture of earth, air and sea.” Ptolemy, with more exactitude, tells us that the 63° of north latitude runs through the middle of Thulê, and adds that “the days there are at the equinoxes [sic] twenty-four hours long.” This, of course, is a blunder, but the latitude would do roughly for Iceland.
(No place has a day of twenty-four hours long at either equinox; but anywhere beyond either polar circle the day is twenty-four hours long at one of the solstices.)
Thule (2 syl.). Antonius Diogenês, a Greek, wrote a romance on “The Incredible Things beyond Thulê” (Ta huper Thoulen Apista), which has furnished the basis of many subsequent tales. The work is not extant, but Photius gives an outline of its contents in his Bibliotheca.
Thumb (Tom), a dwarf no bigger than a man’s thumb. He lived in the reign of King Arthur, by whom he was knighted. He was the son of a common ploughman, and was killed by the poisonous breath of a spider in the reign of Thunstone, the successor of King Arthur.