There is a series of “Fairy Tales” called Mother Bunch’s Fairy Tales.

Bunch (Mother), the supposed possessor of a “cabinet broken open” and revealing “rare secrets of Art and Nature,” such as love-spells (1760).

BUN’CLE, messenger to the earl of Douglas.—­Sir W. Scott, Fair Maid of Perth (time, Henry IV.).

Bun’cle (John), a prodigious hand at matrimony, divinity, a song, and a glass.  He married seven wives, and lost all in the flower of their age.  For two or three days after the death of a wife he was inconsolable, but soon became resigned to his loss, which he repaired by marrying again.—­Thos.  Amory, The Life, etc., of John Buncle, Esq.

BUNDLE, the gardener, father of Wilelmi’na and friend of Tom Tug the waterman.  He is a plain, honest man, but greatly in awe of his wife, who nags him from morning till night.

Mrs. Bundle, a vulgar Mrs. Malaprop, and a termagant.  “Everything must be her way or there’s no getting any peace.”  She greatly frequents the minor theatres, and acquires notions of sentimental romance.

BUN’GAY (Friar), one of the friars in a comedy by Robert Green, entitled Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.  Both the friars are conjurors, and the piece concludes with one of their pupils being carried off to the infernal regions on the back of one of friar Bacon’s demons (1591).

Bungay, publisher in History of Pendennis, by W.M.  Thackeray.

BUNGEY (Friar), personification of the charlatan of science in the fifteenth century.

[Illustration] In The Last of the Barons, by lord Lytton, friar Bungey is an historical character, and is said to have “raised mists and vapors,” which befriended Edward IV, at the battle of Barnet.

BUNS’BY (Captain John or Jade), owner of the Cautious Clara.  Captain Cuttle considered him “a philosopher, and quite an oracle.”  Captain Bunsby had one “stationary and one revolving eye,” a very red face, and was extremely taciturn.  The captain was entrapped by Mrs. MacStinger (the termagant landlady of his friend captain Cuttle) into marrying her.—­C.  Dickens, Dombey and Son (1846).

BUNTING, the pied piper of Ham’elin.  He was so called from his dress.

BUR (John), the servant of Job Thornberry, the brazier of Penzance.  Brusque in his manners, but most devotedly attached to his master, by whom he was taken from the workhouse.  John Bur kept his master’s “books” for twenty-two years with the utmost fidelity.—­G.R.  Colman, Jun., John Bull (1805).