Chapter Mornay to Morte d'Arthur of M by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Mornay to Morte d'Arthur

Mornay, the old seneschal at earl Herbert’s tower at Peronne.—Sir W. Scott: Quentin Durward (time, Edward IV.).

Morning Hymn (The).

A wake, my soul, and with the sun,
Thy daily stage of duty run.
   —Bishop Ken (1674).

Morning Star of Song (The), Chaucer (1328–1400). Campbell and Tennyson both use the phrase.

Morning Star of the Reformation, John Wycliffe (1324–1384).

Wycliffe will ever be remembered as a good and great man. … May he not be justly styled, “The Morning Star of the Reformation”?—Eadie.

Morocco or Maroccus, the performing horse, generally called “Bankes’s Horse.” Among other exploits, we are told that “it went up to the top of St. Paul’s.” Both horse and man were burnt alive at Rome, by order of the pope, as magicians.—Don Zara del Fogo, 114 (1660).

Among the entries at Stationers’ Hall is the following:—Nov. 14, 1595: A Ballad showing the Strange Qualities of a Young Nagg called Morocco.

In 1595 was published the pamphlet Maroccus Extaticus or Bankes’s Horse in a Trance.

Morocco Men, agents of lottery assurances. In 1796 the great State lottery employed 7500 morocco men. Their business was to go from house to house among the customers of the assurances, or to attend in the back parlours of public-houses, where the customers came to meet them.

Morolt (Dennis), the old ’squire of sir Raymond Berenger.—Sir W. Scott: The Betrothed (time, Henry II.).

Morose, a miserly old hunks, who hates to hear any voice but his own. His nephew, sir Dauphine, wants to wring out of him a third of his property, and proceeds thus: He gets a lad to personate “a silent woman,” and the phenomenon so delights the old man, that he consents to a marriage. No sooner is the ceremony over, than the boy-wife assumes the character of a virago of loud and ceaseless tongue. Morose is half mad, and promises to give his nephew a third of his income if he will take this intolerable plague off his hands. The trick being revealed, Morose retires into private life, and leaves his nephew master of the situation.—Ben Jonson: Epicœne, or The Silent Woman (1609).

Benjamin Johnson [1665–1742] seemed to be proud to wear the poet’s double name, and was particularly great in all that author’s plays that were usually performed, viz. “Wasp,” “Corbaccio,” “Morose,” and “Ananias.”—Chetwood.

(“Wasp” in Bartholomew Fair, “Corbaccio” in The Fox, and “Ananias” in The Alchemist.)

Moroug, the monkey mistaken for the devil. A woman of Cambalu died, and Moroug, wishing to imitate her, slipped into her bed, and dressed himself in her night-clothes, while the body was carried to the cemetery. When the funeral party returned, and began the usual lamentations for the dead, pug stretched his night-capped head out of the bed and began moaning and grimacing most hideously. All the mourners thought it was the devil, and scampered out as fast as they could run. The priests assembled, and resolved to exorcise Satan; but pug, noting their terror, flew on the chief of the bonzes, and bit his nose and ears most viciously. All the others fled in disorder; and when pug had satisfied his humour, he escaped out of the window. After a while, the bonzes returned, with a goodly company well armed, when the chief bonze told them how he had fought with Satan, and prevailed against him. So he was canonized, and made a saint in the calendar for ever.—Gueulette: Chinese Tales (“The Ape Moroug,” 1723).

Morrel or Morell, a goat-herd who invites Thomalin, a shepherd, to come to the higher grounds, and leave the low-lying lands. He tells Thomalin that many hills have been canonized, as St. Michael’s Mount,