A shirt made of rough animal hair worn next to the skin as a penance; something that irritates like a hair shirt. It is similar to the idea of sackcloth and ashes, sackcloth being coarse and irritating; ashes sprinkled on the head are an extra. The Biblical sackcloth was a darkcloth of goat or camel hair.
Real hair shirts are not much in vogue now, but metaphorically they show up everywhere. As for modern penitential wear, go no furthur (bunions permitting), than stilletto high heels.
halcyon days:
Calm, peaceful days, a happy golden period; prosperous, affluent times.
Halcyon is the Greek name for the bird we know as the kingfisher. The ancient Greeks believed the bird nested at sea at the winter solstice and calmed the waves while it incubated its eggs. This halcyon period lasted 14 days.
There is an explanation in Greek mythology, ofcourse. Halcyon was the daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. She was married to a mortal who died at sea, and threw herself into the ocean to be near him. The gods changed them both into kingfishers--it's unclear whether this was an act of compassion or anger!
handwriting on the wall, the:
An omen of one's unpleasant fate. A portent of disaster..
It is from the book of Daniel (4:9) in the Old Testament. Belshazzar, king of Babylon was holding a great feast in his paalce for his noble guests, when they saw a vision of a man's hand writing these Aramaic words on the wall" "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin". Daniel, a Jewish prophet who was a captive in babylon was summoned to translate. He said that the words foretold the fall of the king.
Herculian:
Of, relating to, or characteristic of Hercules; or of extraordinary power, extent, intensity or difficulty. From the name of the mythic Greek strongman Hercules. The meaning comes from the tales of his adventures and his 12 labors, which were very difficult indeed. Hercules is the Latin form of his name.
Hercules was the son of Zeus and a mortal lady, Alcmena. Among the most famous of the labors of Hercules was the killing of Hydra, (refer hydra-headed) a many-headed monster; when one head was cut off, another grew in its place.
hydra-headed:
(refer to above story of Hercules). The expression is applied figuratively to situations in which problems repeat themselves, or appear at many points.
Holy Grail:
The cup or platter used according to medieval legend by Christ at the Last Supper and thereafter the object of knightly quests. Also, the object of an extended or difficult quest.
Joseph of Arimathea (who offered his own tomb for Jesus' burial) took the cup, called the Holy Grail, to what is now England, where he founded the Glastonbury Abbey and worked to convert Britons to Christianity. The Grail disappeared, and the search for it became part of the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Hooverville:
A shantytown put together out of crates and cardboard by the poor and dispossessed during the Great Depression of the United States, when Herbert Hoover was president (1929-1933)
The term has come to stand for any haphazard, temporary shelters.
~Merriam Webster's Dictionary of Cultural Allusions
