BULBUL, an Oriental name for a nightingale.  When, in The Princess (by Tennyson), the prince, disguised as a woman, enters with his two friends (similarly disguised) into the college to which no man was admitted, he sings; and the princess, suspecting the fraud, says to him, “Not for thee, O bulbul, any rose of Gulistan shall burst her veil,” i.e., “O singer, do not suppose that any woman will be taken in by such a flimsy deceit.”  The bulbul loved the rose, and Gulistan means the “garden of roses.”  The prince was the bulbul, the college was Gulistan, and the princess the rose sought.—­Tennyson, The Princess, iv.

BULBUL-HE’ZAR, the talking bird, which was joined in singing by all the song-birds in the neighborhood. (See TALKING BIRD.)—­Arabian Nights ("The Two Sisters,” the last story).

BULIS, mother of Egyp’ius of Thessaly.  Egypius entertained a criminal love for Timandra, the mother of Neoph’ron, and Neophron was guilty of a similar passion for Bulis.  Jupiter changed Egypius and Neophron into vultures, Bulis into a duck, and Timandra into a sparrow-hawk.—­Classic Mythology.

BULL (John), the English nation personified, and hence any typical Englishman.

Mrs. Bull, queen Anne, “very apt to be choleric.”  On hearing that Philip Baboon (Philippe duc d’Anjou) was to succeed to lord Strutt’s estates (i.e. the Spanish throne), she said to John Bull: 

“You sot, you loiter about ale-houses and taverns, spend your time at billiards, ninepins, or puppet-shows, never minding me nor my numerous family.  Don’t you hear how lord Strutt [the king of Spain] has bespoke his liveries at Lewis Baboon’s shop [France]?...  Fie upon it!  Up, man!...  I’ll sell my shift before I’ll be so used.”—­Chap. iv.

John Bull’s Mother, the Church of England.

John Bull’s Sister Peg, the Scotch, in love with Jack (Calvin).

John had a sister, a poor girl that had been reared ... on oatmeal and water ... and lodged in a garret exposed to the north wind....  However, this usage ... gave her a hardy constitution....  Peg had, indeed, some odd humors and comical antipathies,... she would faint at the sound of an organ, and yet dance and frisk at the noise of a bagpipe.—­Dr. Arbuthnot, History of John Bull, ii. 2 (1712).

BULLAMY, porter of the “Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Insurance Company.”  An imposing personage, whose dignity resided chiefly in the great expanse of his red waistcoat.  Respectability and well-to-doedness were expressed in that garment.—­C.  Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844).

BULLCALF (Peter), of the Green, who was pricked for a recruit in the army of sir John Falstaff.  He promised Bardolph “four Harry ten-shillings in French crowns” if he would stand his friend, and when sir John was informed thereof, he said to Bullcalf, “I will have none of you.”  Justice Shallow remonstrated, but Falstaff exclaimed, “Will you tell me, master Shallow, how to choose a man?  Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature?...  Give me the spirit, master Shallow.”—­Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. act iii. sc. 2 (1598).