CHAMPAGNE (Henry earl of), a crusader.—­Sir W. Scott, The Talisman (time, Richard I.).

CHAM’PERNEL’, a lame old gentleman, the husband of Lami’ra, and son-in-law of judge Vertaigne (2 sy).—­Beaumont and Fletcher, The Little French Lawyer (1647).

CHAMPION OF THE VIRGIN.  St. Cyril of Alexandria is so called from his defence of the “Incarnation” or doctrine of the “hypostatic union,” in the long and stormy dispute with Nesto’rius bishop of Constantinople.

CHAMPNEYS (Sir Geoffry), a fossilized old country gentleman, who believes in “blue blood” and the “British peerage.”  Father of Talbot, and neighbor of Perkyn Middlewick, a retired butterman.  The sons of these two magnates are fast friends, but are turned adrift by their fathers for marrying in opposition to their wishes.  When reduced to abject poverty, the old men go to visit their sons, relent, and all ends happily.

Miss Champneys, sir Geoffry’s sister, proud and aristocratic, but quite willing to sacrifice both on the altar of Mr. Perkyn Middlewick, the butterman, if the wealthy plebeian would make her his wife and allow her to spend his money.—­H.  J. Byron, Our Boys (1875).

Talbot Champneys, a swell with few brains and no energy.  His name, which is his passport into society, will not find him salt in the battle of life.  He marries Mary Melrose, a girl without a penny, but his father wants him to marry Violet the heiress.

CHAN’TICLEER (3 syl.), the cock, in the beast-epic of Reynard the Fox (1498), and also in “The Nonne Preste’s Tale,” told in The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer (1388).

CHAON’IAN BIRD (The), the dove; so called because doves delivered the oracles of Dodona or Chaon’ia.

  But the mild swallow none with, toils infest,
  And none the soft Chaonian bird molest. 
  Ovid, Art of Love, ii.

CHAONIAN FOOD, acorns, so called from the oak trees of Dodona, which gave out the oracles by means of bells hung among the branches.  Beech mast is so called also, because beech trees abounded in the forest of Dodona.

CHARALOIS, son of the marshal of Burgundy.  When he was twenty-eight years old his father died in prison at Dijon, for debts contracted by him for the service of the State in the wars.  According to the law which then prevailed in France, the body of the marshal was seized by his creditors, and refused burial.  The son of Charalois redeemed his father’s body by his own, which was shut up in prison in lieu of the marshal’s.—­Philip Massinger, The Fatal Dowry (1632).

(It will be remembered that Milti’ades, the Athenian general, died in prison for debt, and the creditors claimed the body, which they would not suffer to be buried till his son Cimon gave up himself as a hostage.)

CHAR’EGITE (3 syl.).  The Charegite assassin, in the disguise of a Turkish marabout or enthusiast, comes and dances before the tent of Richard Coeur de Lion, and suddenly darting forward, is about to stab the king, when a Nubian seizes his arm, and the king kills the assassin on the spot.—­Sir W. Scott, The Talisman (time, Richard I.).