King Log and King Stork.—Characters in a celebrated fable of Æsop, which relates that the frogs, grown weary of living without a government, petitioned Jupiter for a king. Jupiter accordingly threw down a log among them, which made a satisfactory ruler till the frogs recovered from their fright and discovered his real nature. They, therefore, entreated Jupiter for another king, whereupon he sent them a stork, who immediately began to devour them.
Klaus, Peter.—The hero of an old popular tradition of Germany—the prototype of Rip Van Winkle—represented as a goatherd.
Knickerbocker, Diedrich.—The imaginary author of a humorous fictitious History of New York, written by Washington Irving.
Knight of the Swan.—Lohengrin, son of Parsival, because his boat was drawn by a swan.
Knights of the Round Table.—King Arthur’s knights were so called because they sat with him at a round table made by Merlin for King Leodogran. This king gave it to Arthur on his marriage with Guinevere, his daughter.
Koppenberg.—The mountain of Westphalia to which the pied piper (Bunting) led the children, when the people of Hamelin refused to pay him for killing their rats. Browning’s poem, The Pied Piper, tells the tale.
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Lady of Lyons, The.—A drama, by Lord Lytton, in which Pauline Deschappelles, daughter of a Lyonese merchant, rejects the suits of Beauseant, Glavis, and Claude Melnotte, who therefore combined. Claude, who was a gardener’s son, aided by the other two, passed himself off as Prince Como, married Pauline, and brought her home to his mother’s cottage. The proud beauty was very indignant, and Claude left her to join the French army. He became a colonel, and returned to Lyons. He found his father-in-law on the eve of bankruptcy, and that Beauseant had promised to satisfy the creditors if Pauline would consent to marry him. Pauline was heartbroken; Claude revealed himself, paid the money required, and carried home the bride.
Lady of Shalott, The.—A poem by Alfred Tennyson, founded on an incident in King Arthur. It is descriptive of “a being whose existence passes without emotion, without changes, without intelligible motive for living on, without hope or fear, here or hereafter.”
Lady of the Lake, The.—A poem in six cantos by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1810. “Measured even by the standard of the Minstrel and Marmion, the Lady of the Lake possessed,” says Palgrave, “merits of its own, which raised his reputation still higher. Jeffrey’s prediction has been perfectly fulfilled, that the Lady of the Lake would be ‘oftener read than either of the former,’ and it is generally acknowledged to be, in Lockhart’s words, ‘the most interesting, romantic, picturesque, and graceful of his great poems.’” The descriptions of scenery, which form one of the chief charms of the poem, render it, even now, one of the most minute and faithful handbooks to the region in which the drama of Ellen and the Knight of Snowdon is laid.