BRAND, a term often applied to the sword in medaeval romances.

  Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
  Which was my pride—­
  Tennyson, The Morte d’Arthur.

BRANGTONS (The), vulgar, jealous, malicious gossips in Evelina, a novel by Miss Burney (1778).

BRANNO, an Irishman, father of Evirallin.  Evirallin was the wife of Ossian and mother of Oscar.—­Ossian.

BRASS, the roguish confederate of Dick Amlet, and acting as his servant.

“I am your valet, ’tis true; your footman sometimes ... but you have always had the ascendant, I confess.  When we were school-fellows, you made me carry your books, make your exercise, own your rogueries, and sometimes take a whipping for you.  When we were fellow-’prentices, though I was your senior, you made me open the shop, clean my master’s boots, cut last at dinner, and eat all the crusts.  In your sins, too, I must own you still kept me under; you soared up to the mistress, while I was content with the maid.”—­Sir John Yanbrugh, The Confederacy, iii. 1 (1695).

Brass (Sampson), a knavish, servile attorney, affecting great sympathy with his clients, but in reality fleecing them without mercy.

Sally Brass, Sampson’s sister, and an exaggerated edition of her brother.—­C.  Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop (1840).

BRAVE (The), Alfonzo IV. of Portugal (1290-1357).

The Brave Fleming, John Andrew van der Mersch (1734-1792).

The Bravest of the Brave, Marshal Ney, Le Brave des Braves (1769-1815).

BRAY (Mr.), a selfish, miserly old man, who dies suddenly of heart-disease, just in time to save his daughter from being sacrificed to Arthur Gride, a rich old miser.

Madeline Bray, daughter of Mr. Bray, a loving, domestic, beautiful girl, who marries Nicholas Nickleby.—­C.  Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838).

Bray (Vicar of), supposed by some to be Simon Aleyn, who lived (says Fuller) “in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth.  In the first two reigns he was a protestant, in Mary’s reign a catholic, and in Elizabeth’s a protestant again.”  No matter who was king, Simon Aleyn resolved to live and die “the vicar of Bray” (1540-1588).

Others think the vicar was Simon Symonds, who (according to Ray) was an independent in the protectorate, a high churchman in the reign of Charles II., a papist under James II., and a moderate churchman in the reign of William III.

Others again give the cap to one Pendleton.

[Illustration] The well-known song was written by an officer in colonel Fuller’s regiment, in the reign of George I., and seems to refer to some clergyman of no very distant date.

BRAYMORE (Lady Caroline), daughter of lord Fitz-Balaam.  She was to have married Frank Rochdale, but hearing that her “intended” loved Mary Thornberry, she married the Hon. Tom Shuffleton.—­G.  Colman, jun., John Bull (1805).