BERKE’LY (The lady Augusta), plighted to sir John de Walton, governor of Douglas Castle.  She first appears under the name of Augustine, disguised as the son of Bertram the minstrel, and the novel concludes with her marriage to De Walton, to whom Douglas Castle had been surrendered.—­Sir W. Scott, Castle Dangerous (time, Henry I.).

BERKSHIRE LADY (The), Miss Frances Kendrick, daughter of sir William Kendrick, second baronet; his father was created baronet by Charles II.  The line, “Faint heart never won fair lady,” was the advice of a friend to Mr. Child, the son of a brewer, who sought the hand of the lady.—­Quarterly Review, cvi. 205-245.

BERNARD.  Solomon Bernard, engraver of Lions (sixteenth century), called Le petit Bernard.  Claud Bernard of Dijon, the philanthropist (1588-1641), is called Poor Bernard. Pierre Joseph Bernard, the French poet (1710-1755), is called Le gentil Bernard.

Bernard, an ass; in Italian Bernardo.  In the beast-epic called Reynard the Fox, the sheep is called “Bernard,” and the ass is “Bernard l’archipetre” (1498).

BERNARD LANGDON, fine young fellow of the “Brahmin Caste,” who teaches school while preparing for a profession.—­Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elsie Venner (1861).

BERNAR’DO, an officer in Denmark, to whom the ghost of the murdured king appeared during the night-watch at the royal castle.—­Shakespeare, Hamlet (1596).

BERNARDO DEL CARPIO, one of the favorite subjects of the old Spanish minstrels.  The other two were The Cid and Lara’s Seven Infants.  Bernardo del Carpio was the person who assailed Orlando (or Rowland) at Roncesvalles, and finding him invulnerable, took him up in his arms and squeezed him to death, as Hercules did Antae’os.—­Cervantes, Don Quixote, II. ii. 13 (1615).

[Illustration] The only vulnerable part of Orlando was the sole of the foot.

BERSER’KER, grandson of the eight-handed Starka’der and the beautiful Alfhil’de.  He was so called because he wore “no shirt of mail,” but went to battle unharnessed.  He married the daughter of Swaf’urlam, and had twelve sons. (Baer-syrce, Anglo-Saxon, “bare of shirt;” Scotch, “bare-sark.”)

You say that I am a Berserker, and ... bare-sark I go to-morrow to the war, and bare-sark I win that war or die.—­Rev. C. Kingsley, Hereward the Wake, i. 247.

BERTHA, the supposed daughter of Vandunke (2 syl.), burgomaster of Bruges, and mistress of Goswin, a rich merchant of the same city.  In reality.  Bertha is the duke of Brabant’s daughter Gertrude, and Goswin is Florez, son of Gerrard king of the beggars.—­Beaumont and Fletcher, The Beggars’ Bush (1622).

Ber’tha, daughter of Burkhard duke of the Alemanni, and wife of Rudolf II. king of Burgundy beyond Jura.  She is represented on monuments of the time as sitting on her throne spinning.