FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS (The), a pastoral drama by John Fletcher (1610).  The “faithful shepherdess” is Clorin, whose lover was dead.  Faithful to his memory, Clorin retired from the busy world, employing her time in works of humanity, such as healing the sick, exorcising the bewitched, and comforting the afflicted.

(A part of Milton’s Comus is almost a verbal transcript of the pastoral.)

FAKAR (Dhu’l), Mahomet’s scimitar.

FAKENHAM GHOST (The). An old woman, walking to Fakenham, had to cross the churchyard after nightfall.  She heard a short, quick step behind, and looking round saw what she fancied to be a four-footed monster.  On she ran, faster and faster, and on came the pattering footfalls behind.  She gained the churchyard gate and pushed it open, but, ah! “the monster” also passed through.  Every moment she expected it would leap upon her back.  She reached her cottage door and fainted.  Out came her husband with a lantern, saw the “sprite,” which was no other than the foal of a donkey, that had strayed into the park and followed the ancient dame to her cottage door.

  And many a laugh went through the vale. 
  And some conviction, too;
  Each thought some other goblin tale
  Perhaps was just as true.

R. Bloomfield, The Fakenham Ghost (a fact).

FALCON.  Wm. Morris tells us that whoso watched a certain falcon for seven days and seven nights without sleeping, should have his first wish granted by a fay.  A certain king accomplished the watching, and wished to have the fay’s love.  His wish was granted, but it proved his ruin.—­The Earthly Paradise ("July”)

FALCONER (Mr.), laird of Balmawhapple, friend of the old baron of Bradwardine.—­Sir W. Scott, Waverley time, George Falconer (Major), brother of Lady Bothwell.—­Sir W. Scott, Aunt Margaret’s Mirror (time, William III.).

Falconer (Edmund), the nom de plume of Edmund O’Rourke, author of Extremes or Men of the day (a comedy, 1859).

FALIE’RO (Marino), the doge of Venice, an old man who married a young wife named Angioli’na (3 syl.).  At a banquet, Michel Steno, a young patrician, grossly insulted some of the ladies, and was, by the order of the doge, turned out of the house.  In revenge, Steno placarded the doge’s chair with some scurrilous verses upon the young dogaressa, and Faliero referred the matter to “the Forty.”  The council sentenced Steno to two months’ imprisonment, and the doge deemed this punishment so inadequate to the offence, that he looked upon it as a personal insult, and headed a conspiracy to cut off, root and branch, the whole Venetian nobility.  The project being discovered, Faliero was put to death (1355), at the age of 76, and his picture removed from the gallery of his brother doges.—­Byron, Marino Faliero.