palfrey

plural palfreys

1. historicalA small horse with a smooth, ambling gait, popular in the Middle Ages with nobles and women for riding (contrasted with a warhorse).

   One of the lords of Argouges, when out hunting one day, met a bevy of twenty ladies of rare beauty, all mounted on palfreys white as the driven snow.

   1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 485

   2 more examples

   Five warriors seiz'd me yestermorn, / Me, even me, a maid forlorn: / They choked my cries with force and fright, / And tied me on a palfrey white. / The palfrey was as fleet as wind, / And they rode furiously behind.

   1797, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Christabel. Part I.”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […], published 1816, →OCLC, page 8

   The eye of father and sister alike forgot every other object while watching the evolutions of the young and graceful boy, who realised the descriptions of romance as, his golden curls dancing on the wind, his cheek flushed with exercise, and his large blue eyes dilated and flashing with triumph, he ruled the snow-white palfrey by a wave of the hand and an imperceptible pressure of the knee. It seemed as if the docile creature intuitively divined his will.

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 154–155

plural Palfreys · alternative Pelfrey · alternative Pelphrey

1. countableuncountableA surname from Middle English.
2. countableuncountableA suburb of Walsall, Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, West Midlands, England (OS grid ref SP0097).