Brewer's: Lane

No evil thing that walks by night, blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost, no goblin, or smart fairy of the mine, has power to cross a lane; once in a lane, the spirit of evil is in a fix. The reason is obvious: a lane is a spur from a main road, and therefore forms with it a sort of T, quite near enough to the shape of a cross to arrest such simple folk of the unseen world as care to trouble the peaceful inmates of the world we live in.

Lane

`Tis a long lane that has no turning. Every calamity has an ending. The darkest day, stop till to-morrow, will have passed away:

Hope peeps from a cloud on our squad, Whose beams have been long in deep mourning: `Tis a lane, let me tell you, my lad, Very long that has never a turning.

Peter Pindar Great Cry and Little Wool, epist. 1.

Lane

(The) and The Garden. A short way of saying “Drury Lane” and “Covent Garden,” which are two theatres in London.

Lane

of King's Bromley Manor, Staffordshire, bears in a canton “the Arms of England.” This honour was granted to Colonel John Lane, for conducting Charles II. to his father's seat after the battle of Worcester. (See next paragraph.)

Jane Lane,
daughter of Thomas and sister of Colonel John. To save the King after the battle of Worcester, she rode behind him from Bentley, in Staffordshire, the ancient seat of the Lanes, to the house of her cousin, Mrs. Norton, near Bristol. For this act of loyalty the king granted the family to have the following crest: A strawberry-roan horse saliant (couped at the flank), bridled, bitted, and garnished, supporting between its feet a royal crown proper; motto, Garde le Roy.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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