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

Miller's Eye (A). Lumps of unleavened flour in bread; so called because they are little round lumps like an eye.
   To put the miller's eye out. To make broth or pudding so thin that the miller's eye would be put out or puzzled to find the flour.

Miller's Thumb (A). A small fish, four or five inches long, so called from its resemblance to a miller's thumb. The fish is also called Bullhead, from its large head.

Milliner A corruption of Milaner; so called from Milan, in Italy, which at one time gave the law to Europe in all matters of taste, dress, and elegance.
    Milliner was originally applied to the male sex; hence Ben Jonson, in Every Man in his Humour, i. 3, speaks of a “milliner's wife.” The French have still une modiste and un modiste.

Millstone To look (or see) through a millstone. To be wonderfully sharp-sighted.

“Then ... since your eies are so sharp that you can not only looke through a milstone, but cleane through the minde ...”- Lilly: Euphues, etc.

Millstone used for a Ferry (A). The saint who crossed the Irish Sea on a millstone was St. Piran, patron saint of tanners.

Millstones To weep millstones. Not weep at all.

“Bid Glos'ter think on this, and he will weep-
Aye, millstones, as he lessoned us to weep.”
Shakespeare: Richard III., i. 6.

Millstones of Montisci (The). They produce flour of themselves, whence the proverb, “Grace comes from God, but millstones from Montisci” (Boccaccio: Decameron, day viii. novel 3.

Millwood (Sarah). The courtesan who enticed George Barnwell to robbery and murder. (See Barnwell .)

Milo An athlete of Crotona. It is said that he carried through the stadium at Olympia a heifer four years old, and ate the whole of it afterwards. When old he attempted to tear in two an oak-tree, but the parts closed upon his hands, and while held fast he was devoured by wolves. (See Polydamus .)

Milton borrowed from St. Avitus his description of Paradise (book i.), of Satan (book ii.), and many other parts of Paradise Lost. He also borrowed very largely from Du Bartas (1544-1591), who wrote an epic poem entitled The Week of Creation, which was translated into almost every European language. St. Avitus wrote in Latin hexameters The Creation, The Fall, and The Expulsion from Paradise. (460- 525.)
   Milton. “Milton,” says Dryden, in the preface to his Fables, “was the poetical son of Spenser. ... Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original.”
   Milton of Germany. Friedrich G. Klopstock, author of The Messiah. (1724-1803.) Coleridge says he is “a very German Milton indeed.”

Mimer The Scandinavian god of wisdom, and most celebrated of the giants. The Vanir, with whom he was left as a hostage, cut off his head. Odin embalmed it by his magic art, pronounced over it mystic runes, and ever after consulted it on critical occasions. (Scandinavian mythology.)

Mimer's Well A well in which all wisdom lay concealed. It was at the root of the celestial ash-tree. Mimer drank thereof from the horn Gjallar. Odin gave one of his eyes to be permitted to drink of its waters, and the draught made him the wisest of the gods. (Scandinavian mythology.)

Mimosa Niebuhr says the Mimosa “droops its branches whenever anyone approaches it, seeming to salute those who retire under its shade.”

Mince (French). A bank-note. The assignats of the first republic were so called, because the paper on which they were printed was exceedingly thin. (Dictionnaire du Bas-Langage, ii. 139.)

Mince Pies at Christmas time are emblematical of the manger in which our Saviour was laid. The paste over the “offering” was made in form of a cratch or hay-rack. (See Plum Pudding .)
   Mince pies. Slang for “the eyes.” (See Chivy.)