Chapter Milesian Story to Mind your Eye of M by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Milesian Story to Mind your Eye

Milesian Story or Tale (A). One very wanton and lubricious. So called from the Milesiæ Fabulæ, the immoral tendency of which was notorious. (See above.)

Milesians (The). The ancient Irish. The legend is that Ireland was once peopled by the Firbolgs, who were subdued by the Milesians, called the “Gaels of Ireland.”

“My family, by my father's side, are all the true ould Milesians, and related to the O'Flahertys, and O'Shaughnesses, and the M'Lauchlins, the O'Donnaghans, O'Callaghans, O'Geogaghans, and all the thick blood of the nation; and I myself am an O'Brallaghan, which is the ouldest of them all.”- Maclin: Love à la Mode.

Milk To cry over spilt milk. (See under Cry .)

Milk and Honey A land of milk and honey. That is, abounding in all good things, or of extraordinary fertility. Joel iii. 18 speaks of “the mountains flowing with milk and honey.” Figuratively used to denote all the blessings of heaven.

“Jerusalem the golden,
With milk and honey blest.”

Milk and Water Insipid, without energy or character; baby- pap (literature, etc.).

Milk of Human Kindness (The). Sympathy, compassion.

Milksop (A). An effeminate person; one without energy, one under petticoat government. The allusion is to very young children, who are fed on bread and milk.

Milky Way (The). A great circle of stars entirely surrounding the heavens. They are so crowded together that they appear to the naked eye like a “way” or stream of faint “milky” light. The Galaxy or Via Lactea.

“A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear,
Seen in the galaxy- that Milky Way,
Thick, nightly, as a circling zone, thou seest
Powdered with stars.”
Milton: Paradise Lost, vii. 577, etc.

Mill To fight; not from the Latin miles, a soldier, but from the noun mill. Grinding was anciently performed by pulversing with a stone or pounding with the hand. To mill is to beat with the fist, as persons used to beat corn with a stone.
   The word is Gaelic, in which there are numerous derivatives, meaning to ravage, destroy, etc.

Mills of God grind slowly (The). “Dii pedes lanatos habent ” (Petronius). Vengeance may be delayed, but it will come when least expected.

“The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness He grinds all.”
Longfellow: Retribution.

Millennium means simply a thousand years. (Latin, mille annus.) In Rev. xx. 2 it is said that an angel bound Satan a thousand years, and in verse 4 we are told of certain martyrs who will come to life again, and “reign with Christ a thousand years.” “This,” says St. John, “is the first resurrection;” and this is what is meant by the millennium.

Miller To drown the miller. (See Drown , etc.)
   To give one the miller is to engage a person in conversation till a sufficient number of persons have gathered together to set upon the victim with stones, dirt, garbage, and all the arms which haste supplies a mob with. (See Mill.)
   More water glideth by the mill than wots the miller of (Titus Andronicus, ii. 1). Many things are done in a house which the master and mistress never dream of.

Miller A Joe Miller. A stale jest. John Mottley compiled a book of facetiæ in the reign of James II., which he entitled Joe Miller's Jests, from a witty actor of farce during the time that Congreve's plays were in vogue. A stale jest is called a “Joe Miller,” implying that it is stolen from Mottley's compilation. (Joe Miller, 1684-1738.)