Chapter Make-wage to Malt of M by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Mall or Pall Mall (London). From the Latin pellere malleo (to strike with a mallet or bat); so called because it was where the ancient game of pell-mall used to be played. Cotgrave says:-

“Pale malle is a game wherein a round boxball is struck with a mallet through a high arch of iron. He that can do this most frequently wins.”

   It was a fashionable game in the reign of Charles II., and the walk called the Mall was appropriated to it for the king and his court.

Mall Supper (A). A harvest feast (North of England). A mal is a feast, our word meal (Anglo-Saxon, mæl).

Mallows Abstain from mallows. This is the thirty-eighth symbol in the Protreptics. Pythagoras tells us that mallow was the first messenger sent by the gods to earth to indicate to man that they sympathised with them and had pity on them. To make food of mallows would be to dishonour the gods. Mallows are cathartic.

Malmesbury (William of). Eleventh century; author of numerous chronicles. His Gesta Regum Anglorum is a resumé of English history from the arrival of the English in 440 to the year 1120. His Historia Novella gives a retrospect of the reign of Henry I., and terminates abruptly with the year 1143. His third work is called Gesta Pontificum. All the three are included in the Scriptores post Bedam.

Malmesbury Monastery Founded by Maildulf, Meildulf, or Meldun, an Irishman.

Malmsey Wine is the wine of Malvasia, in Candia.

“Thane spyces unsparyly thay spendyde thereaftyre,
Malvesye and muskadelle, thase mervelyous drynkes.” Morte d'Arthure. ,

(See Drowned In A Butt Of ...).

Malt The Sermon on Malt was by John Dod, rector of Fawsley, Northants, called the decalogist, from his famous exposition of the Ten Commandments. A Puritan divine. (1547-1645.)
   This was not Dr. William Dodd, who was executed for forgery (1729-1777).