Legend of the Mistletoe Bough

The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough is a horror story which has been associated with many mansions and stately homes in England.

A new bride, playing a game of hide-and-seek during her wedding breakfast, hides in a chest in an attic and is unable to escape. She is not discovered by her family and friends, and suffocates or dies of thirst. The body is found many years later in the locked chest as a skeleton in a wedding dress.

Notable claimants for the story's location, some still displaying the chest, include Bramshill House and Marwell Hall in Hampshire, Castle Horneck in Cornwall, Basildon Grotto in Berkshire, Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, Exton Hall in Rutland, Brockdish Hall in Norfolk and Bawdrip Rectory in Somerset.

A variant of the children's song "On Top of Spaghetti" parodies the legend of the missing bride by describing how the narrator found his lost meatball under similar circumstsnces: "Then 40 years later, inside of a trunk, I found my lost meatball. Peee-eeew how it stunk!"

The tale first appeared in print in the form of a poem by Samuel Rogers entitled Ginevra, in his book 'Italy' published in 1822. In notes on this work, Rogers states ‘The story is, I believe, founded on fact; though the time and the place are uncertain. Many old houses lay claim to it.’ See also The Bride of Modena by John Heneage Jesse, in: Tales of the Dead, and Other Poems, London 1830, pp. 35-59 books.google.

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