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The Ingoldsby Legends; or, Mirth and Marvels cover

The Ingoldsby Legends; or, Mirth and Marvels

Chapter 66: MARIE MIGNOT.
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About This Book

The work assembles comic and macabre tales and poems that blend folk legend, ecclesiastical hagiography, and satirical pastiche. Entries range from ghost stories and ballads to dramatic sketches and playful parodies, shifting fluidly between eerie atmosphere and buoyant humor. Recurring features include witty wordplay, mock-serious moralizing, and imaginative transformations of traditional material; the arrangement alternates narrative episodes and lyrical lays, producing varied pacing and tone. Illustrations traditionally accompany the pieces, reinforcing their comic grotesque and enhancing scenes of the supernatural and the absurd.

Miss Marie Mignot was a nice little Maid, Her Uncle a Cook, and a Laundress her trade, And she loved as dearly as any one can Mister Lagardie, a nice little man. But Oh!  But Oh!  Story of woe! A sad interloper, one Monsieur Modeau, Ugly and old,  With plenty of gold, Made his approach  In an elegant coach, Her fancy was charmed with the splendour and show And he bore off the false-hearted Molly Mignot.
Monsieur Modeau was crazy and old, And Monsieur Modeau caught a terrible cold, His nose was stuffed, and his throat was sore, He had physic by the quart and Doctors by the score. They sent squills  And pills,  And very long bills And all they could do did not make him get well, He sounded his M's and his N's like an L. A shocking bad cough  At last took him off, And Mister Lagardie her former young beau, Came a courting again to the Widow Modeau.
Mister Lagardie, to gain him éclat, Had cut the Cook's shop and followed the law; And when Monsieur Modeau set out on his journey, Was an Articled Clerk to a Special Attorney. He gave her a call  On the day of a ball, To which she'd invited the court, camp and all; But "poor dear Lagardie"  Again was too tardy, For a Marshal of France Had just asked her to dance; In a twinkling, the ci-devant Madame Modeau Was wife of the Marshal Lord Marquis Dinot. Mister Lagardie was shocked at the news, And went and enlisted at once in the Blues. The Marquis Dinot  Felt a little so so— Took physic, grew worse, and had notice to go He died, and was shelved, and his Lady so gay Smiled again on Lagardie now placed on full pay, A Swedish Field-Marshal with a guinea a day; When an old ex-King  Just showed her the ring: To be Queen, she conceived was a very fine thing; But the King turned a Monk, And Lagardie got drunk, And said to the Lady with a deal of ill-breeding, "You may go to the d—l and I'll go to Sweden." Thus between the two stools,  Like some other fools, Her Ladyship found  Herself plump on the ground; So she cried, and she stamped, and she sent for a hack, And she drove to a convent and never came back.
Moral.
Wives, Maidens, and Widows, attend to my lay If a fine moral lesson you'd draw from a play, To the Haymarket go  And see Marie Mignot, Miss Kelly plays Marie, and Williams Modeau; Mrs. Glover and Vining  Are really quite shining, And though Thompson for a Marquis Has almost too much carcass, Yet it's not fair to pass him or John Cooper's Cassimir, And the piece would be barren Without Mr. Farren; No matter, go there, and they'll teach you the guilt Of coquetting and ogling, and playing the jilt. Such folks gallop awhile, but at last they get spilt; Had Molly Mignot  Behaved comme il faut, Nor married the Lawyer nor Marquis Dinot, She had ne'er been a nun, whose fare very hard is, But the mother of half-a-score little Lagardies.