Brewer's: Norna of the Fitful Head

A character in Sir Walter Scott's Pirate, to illustrate that singular kind of insanity which is ingenious in self-imposition, as those who fancy a lunatic asylum their own palace, the employés thereof their retinue, and the porridge provided a banquet fit for the gods. Norna's real name was Ulla Troil, but after her amour with Basil Mertoun (Vaughan), and the birth of a son, named Clement Cleveland, she changed her name out of shame. Towards the end of the novel she gradually recovered her right mind.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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