=Mistletoe Bough= (_The_). The song so called is by Thomas Haynes Bayley, who died 1839. The tale is this: Lord Lovel married a young lady, a baron’s daughter, and on the wedding night the bride proposed that the guest should play “hide-and-seek.” The bride hid in an old oak chest, and the lid, falling down, shut her in, for it went with a spring-lock. Lord Lovel sought her that night and sought next day, and so on for a week, but nowhere could he find her. Some years later, the old chest was sold, and, on being opened, was found to contain the skeleton of the bride. Rogers, in his _Italy_, gives the same story, and calls the lady “Ginevra” of Modĕna. Collet, in his _Relics of Literature_, has a similar story. Another is inserted in the _Causes Célèbres_. Marwell Old Hall (near Winchester), once the residence of the Seymours, and afterwards of the Dacre family, has a similar tradition attached to it, and “the very chest is said to be now the property of the Rev. J. Haygarth, rector of Upham.” Bramshall, Hampshire, has a similar tale and chest. The great house at Malsanger, near Basingstoke, also in Hampshire, has a similar tradition connected with it. =Mi´ta=, sister of Aude. She married Sir Miton de Rennes, and became the mother of Mitaine. (See next art.)--_Croquemitaine_, xv. =Mitaine=, daughter of Mita and Miton, and godchild of Charlemagne. She went in search of Fear Fortress, and found that it existed only in the imagination, for as she boldly advanced towards it, the castle gradually faded into thin air. Charlemagne made Mitaine, for this achievement, Roland’s squire, and she fell with him in the memorable attack at Roncesvallês. (See previous art.)--_Croquemitaine_, iii. =Mite= (_Sir Matthew_), a returned East Indian merchant, dissolute, dogmatical, ashamed of his former acquaintances, hating the aristocracy, yet longing to be acknowledged by them. He squanders his wealth on toadies, dresses his livery servants most gorgeously, and gives his chairmen the most costly exotics to wear in their coats. Sir Matthew is forever astonishing weak minds with his talk about rupees, lacs, jaghires, and so on.--S. Foote, _The Nabob_. =Mithra= or =Mithras=, a supreme divinity of the ancient Persians, confounded by the Greeks and Romans with the _sun_. He is the personification of Ormuzd, representing fecundity and perpetual renovation. Mithra is represented as a young man with a Phrygian cap, a tunic, a mantle on his left shoulder, and plunging a sword into the neck of a bull. Scaliger says the word means “greatest” or “supreme.” Mithra is the middle of the triplasian deity: the Mediator, Eternal Intellect, and Architect of the world. Her towers, where Mithra once had burned, To Moslem shrines--oh shame!--were turned; Where slaves, converted by the sword, Their mean apostate worship poured, And cursed the faith their sires adored. Moore, _Lalla Rookh_ (“The Fire-Worshippers,” 1817).