Chapter Weary-all Hill to Wellborn of W by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Wedding (The), a poem by sir John Suckling, noted for the lines—

Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light.
   —(1637.)

Wedding Day (The), a comedy by Mrs. Inchbald (1790). The plot is this: Sir Adam Contest lost his first wife by shipwreck, and “twelve or fourteen years” afterwards he led to the altar a young girl of 18, to whom he was always singing the praises of his first wife—a phœnix, a paragon, the ne plus ultra of wives and women. She did everything to make him happy. She loved him, obeyed him; ah! “he would never look upon her like again.” On the wedding day, this pink of wives and women made her appearance, told how she had been rescued, and sir Adam was dumbfounded. “He was happy to bewail her loss,” but to rejoice in her restoration was quite another matter. (Fielding had written a comedy so called in 1740.)

Weeping Philosopher (The), Heraclitos, who looked at the folly of man with grief (fl. B. C. 500). (See Jeddler, p. 542.)

Weir (Major), the favourite baboon of sir Robert Redgauntlet. In the tale of “Wandering Willie,” sir Robert’s piper went to the infernal regions to obtain the knight’s receipt of rent, which had been paid; but no receipt could be found, because the monkey had carried it to the castle turret.—Sir W. Scott: Redgauntlet (time, George III.).

Compare with this the Jackdaw of Rheims (see p. 911.)

Weissnichtwo, nowhere. The word is German for “I know not where,” and was coined by Carlyle (Sartor Resartus, 1833). Sir W. Scott has a similar Scotch compound, “Kennaquhair” (“I know not where”). Cervantes has the “island of Trapoban” (i.e. of “dish-clouts,” from trapos, the Spanish for a “dishclout”). Sir Thomas More has “Utopia” (Greek, ou topos, “no place”). We might add the “island of Medama” (Greek, “nowhere”), the “peninsula of Udamogês” (Greek, “nowhere on earth”), the country of “Kennahtwhar,” etc., and place them in the great “Nullibian” ocean (“nowhere”), in any degree beyond 180º long. and 90º lat.

Welford, one of the suitors of “the Scornful Lady” (no name is given to the lady).—Beaumont and Fletcher: The Scornful Lady (1616).

(Beaumont died 1616.)

Well. Three of the most prominent Bible characters met their wives for the first time by wells of water, viz. Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.

Eliezer met Rebekah by a well, and arranged with Bethuel for her to become Isaac’s wife.—Gen. xxiv.

Jacob met Rachel by the well of Haran.—Gen. xxix.

When Moses fled from Egypt into the land of Midian, he “sat down by a well,” and the seven daughters of Jethro came there to draw water, one of whom, named Zipporah, became his wife.—Exod. ii. 15-21.

The princess Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinoos king of the Phæacians, was with her maidens washing their dirty linen in a rivulet, when she first encountered Ulysses.—Homer: Odyssey, vi.

Well (A). “A well and a green vine running over it,” emblem of the patriarch Joseph. In the church at Totnes is a stone pulpit divided into compartments, containing shields decorated with the several emblems of the Jewish tribes. On one of the shields is “a well and a green vine running over it.”

Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by well; whose branches run over the wall.—Gen. xlix. 22.