*** Gay has a ballad on this Fair Maid of the Inn. Mr. Standen, of Arborfield, the “enamoured swain,” died in 1730. Molly’s sister was quite as beautiful as “the fair maid” herself. A portrait of Gay still hangs in Oakingham Inn.
Molly Wilder, New England girl, who shelters and cares for a young French nobleman wrecked on the Cape Cod coast. A love affair and a clandestine marriage follow. The marriage is acknowledged when peace is established between the French and English.—Jane G. Austin, A Nameless Nobleman (1881).
Molmu´tius. (See [Mulmutius].)
Moloch (ch = k), the third in rank of the Satanic hierarchy, Satan being first, and Beëlzebub second. The word means “king.” The rabbins say the idol was of brass, with the head of a calf. Moloch was the god of the Am´monites (3 syl.), and was worshipped in Rabba, their chief city.
First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their children’s cries unheard, that passed thro’ fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipped in Rabba.
Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 392, etc. (1665).
Mo´ly (Greek, môlu), mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey. An herb with a black root and white blossom, given by Hermês to Ulysses, to counteract the spells of Circê, (See Hæmony.)
... that Mō´ly
That Hermês once to wise Ulysses gave.
Milton, Comus (1634).
The root was black,
Milk-white the blossom; Môly is its name
In heaven.
Homer, Odyssey, x. (Cowper’s trans.).
Momus’s Lattice. Momus, son of Nox, blamed Vulcan, because, in making the human form, he had not placed a window in the breast for the discerning of secret thoughts.