CURTA’NA or COURTAIN, the sword of Ogier the Dane.

  He [Ogier] drew Courtain his sword out of its
  sheath. 
  W. Morris, Earthly Paradise, (634).

CURT-HOSE (2 syl.).  Robert II. duc de Normandie (1087-1134).

CURT-MANTLE, Henry II. of England

(1133, 1154-1189).  So called because he wore the Anjou mantle, which was shorter than the robe worn by his predecessors.

CURTIS, one of Petruchio’s servants.—­Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew (1594).

PARSON CUSHING, pastor of the Orthodox Church in Poganuc.  In fits of learned abstraction, he fed the dog surreptitiously under the table, thereby encouraging his boys to trust his heart rather than his tongue.  He justifies the expulsion of the Indian tribes by Scripture texts, and gathers eggs in the hay-mow with Dolly; upholds the doctrines of his denomination and would seal his faith with his blood, but admits that “the Thirty-nine articles (with some few exceptions) are a very excellent statement of truth.”  He is Catholic without suspecting it.—­Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poganuc People, (1878).

CUSTANCE, daughter of the Emperor of Rome, affianced to the Sultan of Syria, who abjured his faith and consented to be baptized in order to marry her.  His mother hated this apostasy, and at the wedding breakfast slew all the apostates except the bride.  Her she embarked in a ship, which was set adrift and in due time reached the British shores, where Custance was rescued by the Lord-constable of Northumberland, who took her home, and placed her under the care of his wife Hermegild.  Custance converted both the constable and his wife.  A young knight wished to marry her, but she declined his suit, whereupon he murdered Hermegild, and then laid the bloody knife beside Custance, to make her suspected of the crime.  King Alia examined the case, and soon discovered the real facts, whereupon the knight was executed, and the king married Custance.

The queen-mother highly disapproved of the match, and during the absence of her son in Scotland embarked Custance and her infant boy in a ship, which was turned adrift.  After floating about for five years, it was taken in tow by a Roman fleet on its return from Syria, and Custance with her son Maurice became the guests of a Eoman Senator.  It so happened that Alla at this same time was at Rome on a pilgrimage, and encountered his wife, who returned with him to Northumberland and lived in peace and happiness the rest of her life.—­Chaucer, Canterbury Tales ("The Man of Law’s Tale,” 1388).

Custance, a gay and rich widow, whom Ralph Roister Doister wishes to marry, but he is wholly baffled in his scheme.—­Nicholas TJdall, Ralph Roister Doister (first English comedy, 1534).

CUTE (Alderman), a “practical philosopher,” resolved to put down everything.  In his opinion “everything must be put down.”  Starvation must be put down, and so must suicide, sick mothers, babies, and poverty.—­C.  Dickens, The Chimes (1844).