The infant son of Sir Mordant; so called because his hand was red with his mother’s blood. She had stabbed herself because her husband had been paralysed by a draught from an enchanted stream. (Spenser: Faërie Queene, bk. ii. 1, 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.