The family name of Aureolus Paracelsus (1493–1541). He is said to have kept a small devil prisoner in the pommel of his sword.
“Bombastus kept a devil’s bird
Shut in the pommel of his sword,
That taught him all the cunning pranks
Of past and future mountebanks.”
S. Butler: Hudibras, part ii. 3.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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