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Palace, where it lay exposed to the elements for months.
    The Bonny Earl’s death has given rise to a new word in the English language. It originated in a mishearing of a line from the ballad ‘Geordie’, which records his murder:
    Ye Hielands and ye Lowlands
O, whaur hae ye been?
They has slain the Earl o’ Moray,
And laid him on the green.
    In an article for Harper’s Magazine in 1954 the American writer Sylvia Wright admitted that she had misheard the last line as ‘And Lady Mondegreen’ and had gone on to tell friends that she thought it unfair that James’s innocent wife had also been killed. And thus the term ‘mondegreen’, referring to a misheard song lyric, was born.
      Albert the Braided see Albert the ASTROLOGER
    Brandy Nan
    Anne, queen of England, 1665–1714
    At the age of eighteen, Anne married Prince George EST-IL-POSSIBLE ? of Denmark. She bore him seventeen children. Eleven were stillborn, five died in infancy and the only other, little William, duke of Gloucester, died of hydrocephalus in 1700 at the tender age of twelve. Some have suggested that this series of misfortunes was what drove Anne to drink, bringing about her nickname ‘Brandy Nan’.
    Brandy Nan
    A common contemporary portrayal of Anne was that of a dull, massively overweight, heavy-drinking queen with a duller, fatter husband who, not to be outdone, possessed an almost unlimited capacity for hard liquor. It was a depiction that gained further currency when some humorist wrote the following graffiti on her statue in St Paul’s churchyard, which used to have a gin shop directly in front of it:
    Brandy Nan, Brandy Nan,
Left in the lurch
Her face to a gin-shop
Her back to the church.
    Some would counter, however, that this is an unfair character sketch, resting primarily on Jacobite malice. The duchess ofMarlborough, otherwise known as QUEEN SARAH , makes it clear that while Anne’s husband ate and drank heavily, Anne herself did not drink to excess, preferring hot chocolate last thing at night. For her gout, however, she did take laudanum on toast floating in brandy.
    The Battle of Bravalla
    The battle of Bravalla, as recorded by the medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus, took place around the beginning of the eighth century. The Danish king ‘Harald Wartooth’ fought his nephew Ring, whom he had made sub-king of Sweden. In the fighting, the aged and blind Harald was clubbed to death by his own charioteer, a man called Brun, who some suspected was the god Odin. Saxo Grammaticus lists a number of the most notable nobles who fought on each side. They include:
    On Harald’s Side
    Olvir the Broad
    Gnepia the Old
    Tummi the Sailmaker
    Brat the Jute
    Ari the One-Eyed
    Dal the Fat
    Hithin the Slender
    Hothbrodd the Furious
    On Ring’s Side
    Egil the One-Eyed
    Styr the Stout
    Gerd the Glad
    Saxo the Splitter
    Thord the Stumbler
    Throndar Big-Nose
    Hogni the Clever
    Rokar the Swarthy
    Rolf the Woman-Lover
    Sven of the Shorn Crown
    Thorulf the Thick
    Thengil the Tall
    Birvil the Pale
    Thorlevar the Unyielding
    Grettir the Wicked
    Hadd the Hard
    Roldar Toe-Joint
    Rafn the White
    Blihar Snub-Nosed
    Erik the Story-Teller
    Holfstein the White
    Vati the Doubter
    Erling the Snake
    Od the Englishman
    Alf the Far-Wanderer
    Enar Big-Belly
    Mar the Red
    Grombar the Aged
    Berg the Seer
    Krok the Peasant
    Alf the Proud
    Othrik the Young
    Frosti Bowl, also known as Frosty Melting-Pot
    The Swedes, under Ring, won, losing only 12,000 men to Harald’s 30,000.
    In an emphatically drunken age, Anne, some contest, was a comparatively sober individual with a sober outlook on life. Deeply religious, she loathed the Whig politician Lord Wharton on account of his lecherous immorality; rumour has it that, as well as chasing married women, he once defecated in a church pulpit. Rumour has similarly tarnished the reputation of Anne, a decidedly ordinary person with her fair share of weaknesses who became known as little more than a gargantuan old soak.
    British Kings