Chapter Misnar to Moath of M by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Misnar to Moath

Misnar, sul tan of India, transformed by Ulin into a toad. “He was disenchanted by the dervise Shemshelnar, the most “pious worshipper of Alla amongst all the sons of Asia.” By prudence and piety, Misnar and his vizier Horam destroyed all the enchanters which filled India with rebellion, and, having secured peace, married Hemjunah, daughter of Zebenezer sultan of Cassimir, to whom he had been betrothed when he was known only as the prince of Georgia.—Sir C. Morell [J. Ridley]: Tales of the Genii, vi., vii. (1751).

Misogonus, by Thomas Rychardes, the third English comedy (1560). It is written in rhyming quatrains, and not in couplets like Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton’s Needle.

Miss in Her Teens, a farce by David Garrick (1753). Miss Biddy Bellair is in love with captain Loveit, who is known to her only by the name of Rhodophil; but she coquets with captain Flash and Mr. Fribble, while her aunt wants her to marry an elderly man by the name of Stephen Loveit, whom she detests. When the captain returns from the wars, she sets captain Flash and Mr. Fribble together by the ears; and while they stand fronting each other but afraid to fight, captain Loveit enters, recognizes Flash as a deserter, takes away his sword, and dismisses Fribble as beneath contempt.

Mississippi Bubble, the “South Sea scheme” of France, projected by John Law, a Scotchman. So called because the projector was to have the exclusive trade of Lousiana, on the banks of the Mississippi, on condition of his taking on himself the National Debt (incorporated 1717, failed 1720).

The debt was 208 millions sterling. Law made himself sole creditor of this debt, and was allowed to issue ten times the amount in paper money, and to open “the Royal Bank of France” empowered to issue this paper currency. So long as a 20-franc note was worth 20 francs, the scheme was a prodigious success, but immediately the paper money was at a discount, a run on the bank set in, and the whole scheme burst.

Mistaken Identity. (See Comedy of Errors and Warbeck, where several examples are referred to.)

Mistletoe Bough (The). The song so called is by Thomas Haynes Bayley, who died 1839. The tale is this: Lord Lovel married a young lady, a baron’s daughter, and on the wedding night the bride proposed that the guests should play “hide-and-seek.” The bride hid in an old oak chest, and the lid, falling down, shut her in, for it went with a spring-lock. Lord Lovel sought her that night and sought her next day, and so on for a week, but nowhere could he find her. Some years after, the old oak chest was sold, which, on being opened, was found to contain the skeleton of the bride.

Samuel Rogers has introduced this story in his Italy (pt. i. 18, 1822). He says the bride was Ginevra, only child of Orsini “an indulgent father;” and that the bridegroom was Francesco Doria, “her playmate from birth, and her first love.” The chest, he says, was an heirloom, “richly carved by Antony of Trent, with Scripture stories from the life of Christ.” It came from Venice, and had “held the ducal robes of some old ancestor.” After the accident, Francesco, weary of life, flew to Venice, and “flung his life away in battle with the Turk;” Orsini went deranged, and spent the lifelong day “wandering in quest of something he could not find.” It was fifty years afterwards that the skeleton was discovered in the chest.

Collet, in his Relics of Literature, has a similar story.

Another is inserted in the Causes Célèbres.

Marwell Old Hall (near Winchester), once the residence of the Seymours, and afterwards of the Dacre family, has a similar tradition attached to it, and (according to the Post-Office Directory for the district) “the very chest is now the property of the Rev. J. Haygarth, who was rector of Upham” (which joins Marwell).

Bramshall, Hampshire, has a similar tale and chest.