That small infantry
  Warred on by cranes.

  Paradise Lost, i. 575 (1665).

CRANION, queen Mab’s charioteer.

  Four nimble gnats the horses were,
  Their harnesses of gossamere,
  Fly Cranion, her charioteer.

  M. Dayton, Nymphidia (1563-1631).

CRANK (Dame), the papist laundress at Marlborough.—­Sir W. Scott, Kenilworth (time, Elizabeth).

CRA’PAUD (Johnnie), a Frenchman, as John Bull is an Englishman, Cousin Michael a German, Colin Tampon a Swiss, Brother Jonathan a North American, etc.  Called Crapaud from the device of the ancient kings of France, “three toads erect saltant.”  Nostradamus, in the sixteenth century, called the French crapauds in the well-known line: 

  Les anciens crapauds prendront Sara.

("Sara” is Aras backwards, a city taken from the Spaniards under Louis XIV.) CRATCHIT (Bob or Robert), clerk of Ebenezer Scrooge, stock-broker.  Though Bob Cratchit has to maintain nine persons on 15s. a week, he has a happier home and spends a merrier Christmas than his master with all his wealth and selfishness.

Tiny Tim Cratchit, the little lame son of Bob Cratchit, the Benjamin of the family, the most helpless and most beloved of all.  Tim does not die, but Ebenezer Scrooge, after his change of character, makes him his special care.—­C.  Dickens, A Christmas Carol (in five staves, 1843).

CRAW’FORD (Lindsay, earl of), the young earl-marshal of Scotland.—­Sir W. Scott, Fair Maid of Perth (time, Henry IV.).

Craw’ford (Lord), captain of the Scottish guard at Plessis les Tours, in the pay of Louis XI.—­Sir W. Scott, Quentin Durward (time, Edward IV.).

CRAWLEY (Sir Pitt), of Great Gaunt Street, and of Queen’s Crawley, Hants.  A sharp, miserly, litigious, vulgar, ignorant baronet, very rich, desperately mean, “a philosopher with a taste for low life,” and intoxicated every night.  Becky Sharp was engaged by him to teach his two daughters.  On the death of his second wife, Sir Pitt asked her to become lady Crawley, but Becky had already married his son, Captain Rawdon Crawley.  This “aristocrat” spoke of “brass fardens,” and was unable to spell the simplest words, as the following specimen will show:—­“Sir Pitt Crawley begs Miss Sharp and baggidge may be hear on Tuseday, as I leaf ... to-morrow erly.”  The whole baronetage, peerage, and commonage of England did not contain a more cunning, mean, foolish, disreputable old rogue than Sir Pitt Crawley.  He died at the age of fourscore, “lamented and beloved, regretted and honored,” if we can believe his monumental tablet.