Brewer's: Crapaud

or Johnny Crapaud. A Frenchman; so called from the device of the ancient kings of France, “three toads erect, saltant.” (Guillim's Display of Heraldrie, 1611.) Nostradamus, in the sixteenth century, called the French “crapauds.”

Les anciens crapauds prenderont Sara
(Nostradamus). Sara is the word Aras reversed, and when the French under Louis XIV. took Aras from the Spaniards, this verse was quoted as a prophecy.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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