Chapter Kirke's Lambs to Kit-cat Club of K by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

ugly man, and, of course, was asleep at the time.
   The tale is sometimes erroneously told of Ronsard the poet.

Kiss the Gunner's Daughter (To) To be flogged on board ship, being tied to the breech of a cannon.

“I was made to kiss the wench that never speaks but when she scolds, and that's the gunner's daughter ... Yes, the minister's son ... has the cat's scratch on his back.”- Sir W. Scott: Redgauntlet, chap. xiv

Kiss the Place to make it Well A relic of a very common custom all over the world of sucking poison from wounds. St. Martin of Tours, when he was at Paris, observed at the city gates a leper full of sores; and, going up to him, he kissed the sores, whereupon the leper was instantly made whole (Sulpicius Severus: Dialogues. Again, when St. Mayeul had committed some grave offence, he was sent, by way of penance, to kiss a leper who was begging alms at the monastery. St. Mayeul went up to the man, kissed his wounds, and the leprosy left him. Half a score similar examples may be found in the Bollandistes, without much searching.

“Who ran to help me when I fell,
And kissed the place to make it well?”

Kissing-comfit The candied root of the Sea-eryngium maritimum prepared as a lozenge, to perfume the breath.

Kissing-crust The crust where the lower lump of bread kisses the upper. In French, baisure de pain.

Kissing the Hand Either kissing the sovereign's hand at a public introduction, or kissing one's own hand to bid farewell to a friend, and kissing the tips of our fingers and then moving the hand in a sort of salutation to imply great satisfaction at some beautiful object, thought, or other charm are remnants of pagan worship. If the idol was conveniently low enough, the devotee kissed its hand; if not, the devotees kissed their own hands and waved them to the image. God said He had in Israel seven thousand persons who had not bowed unto Baal, “every mouth which hath not kissed him.” (See Kiss .)

“Many ... whom the fame of this excellent vision had gathered thither, confounded by that matchless beauty, could but kiss the finger-tips of their right hands at sight of her, as in adoration to the goddess Venus herself.”- Pater: Marius the Epicurean, chap. v.

Kissing the Pope's Toe Matthew of Westminister says, it was customary formerly to kiss the hand of his Holiness; but that a certain woman, in the eighth century, not only kissed the Pope's hand, but “squeezed it.” The Church magnate, seeing the danger to which he was exposed, cut off his hand, and was compelled in future to offer his foot, a custom which has continued to the present hour.

Kissing under the Mistletoe Balder, the Apollo of Scandinavian mythology, was killed by a mistletoe arrow given to the blind Höder, by Loki, the god of mischief and potentate of our earth. Balder was restored to life, but the mistletoe was placed in future under the care of Friga, and was never again to be an instrument of evil till it touched the earth, the empire of Loki. It is always suspended from ceilings, and when persons of opposite sexes pass under it, they give each other the kiss of peace and love in the full assurance that the epiphyte is no longer an instrument of mischief
   A correspondent in Notes and Queries suggests that the Romans dedicated the holly to Saturn, whose festival was in December, and that the early Christians decked their houses with the Saturnian emblems to deceive the Romans and escape persecution.

Kist-vaen (The). A rude stone sepulchre or mausoleum, like a chest with a flat stone for a cover

“At length they reached a grassy mound, on the top of which was placed one of those receptacles for the dead of the ancient British chiefs of distinction, called Kist-vaen, which are composed of upright fragments of granite, so placed as to form a stone coffin. ”- Sir Walter Scott: The Betrothed, chap. xxix

Kist of Whistles (A). A church-organ (Scotch). Cist, a box or chest.

Kistnerappan The Indian watergod. Persons at the point of death are sometimes carried into the Ganges, and sometimes to its banks, that Kistnerappan may purify them from all defilement before they die. Others have a little water poured into the palms of their hands with the same object.