Hind

Emblematic of St. Giles, because “a heaven-directed hind went daily to give him milk in the desert, near the mouth of the Rhone.” (See Hart.)

The hind of Sertorius. Sertoʹrius was invited by the Lusitaʹnians to defend them against the Romans. He had a tame white hind, which he taught to follow him, and from which he pretended to receive the instructions of Dianʹa. By this artifice, says Plutarch, he imposed on the superstition of the people.

“He feigned a demon (in a hind concealed)

To him the counsels of the gods revealed.”

Camoens: Lusiad, i.

The milk-white hind, in Dryden’s poem, The Hind and the Panther, means the Roman Catholic Church, milk-white because “infallible.” The panther, full of the spots of error, is the Church of England.

“Without unspotted, innocent within,

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.”

Part i. lines 3, 4.

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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.

Hind

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