Chapter William L to Windmills of W by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

William L to Windmills

William L King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany, was called by his detractors Kaiser Tartuffe.

Willie-Wastle (the child's game). Willie Wastle was governor of Hume Castle, Haddington. When Cromwell sent a summons to him to surrender, he replied-

“Here I, Willie Wastle,
Stand firm in my castle,
And all the dogs in the town
Shan't pull Willie Wastle down.”

Willow To handle the willow- i.e. the cricket bat.
   To wear the willow. To go into mourning, especially for a sweetheart or bride. Fuller says, “The willow is a sad tree, whereof such as have lost their love make their mourning garlands.” The psalmist tells us that the Jews in captivity “hanged their harps upon the willows” in sign of mourning. (cxxxvii.)

Willow Garland An emblem of being forsaken. “All round my hat I wear a green willow.” So Shakespeare: “I offered him my company to a willow-tree to make him a garland, as being forsaken.” (Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 1.) The very term weeping willow will suffice to account for its emblematical character.

Willow Pattern To the right is a lordly mandarin's country seat. It is two storeys high to show the rank and wealth of the possessor; in the foreground is a pavilion, in the background an orange-tree, and to the right of the pavilion a peach-tree in full bearing. The estate is enclosed by an elegant wooden fence. At one end of the bridge is the famous willow-tree, and at the other the gardener's cottage, one storey high, and so humble that the grounds are wholly uncultivated, the only green thing being a small fir- tree at the back. At the top of the pattern (left-hand side) is an island, with a cottage; the grounds are highly cultivated, and much has been reclaimed from the water. The two birds are turtle-doves. The three figures on the bridge are the mandarin's daughter with a distaff nearest the cottage, the lovers with a boat in the middle, and nearest the willow-tree the mandarin with a whip.
   The tradition. The mandarin had an only daughter named Li-chi, who fell in love with Chang, a young man who lived in the island home represented at the top of the pattern, and who had been her father's secretary. The father overheard them one day making vows of love under the orange-tree, and sternly forbade the unequal match; but the lovers contrived to elope, lay concealed for a while in the gardener's cottage, and thence made their escape in a boat to the island home of the young lover. The enraged mandarin pursued them with a whip, and would have beaten them to death had not the gods rewarded their fidelity by changing them both into turtle-doves. The picture is called the willow pattern not only because it is a tale of disastrous love, but because the elopement occurred “when the willow begins to shed its leaves.”

Willy-nilly Nolens volens; willing or not. Will-he, nill-he, where nill is n' negative, and will, just as nolens is n'-volens.

Wilmington invoked by Thomson in his Winter, is Sir Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, the first patron of our poet, and Speaker of the House of Commons.

Wil't or Welk, to wither. This is the Dutch and German welken (to fade). Spenser says, “When ruddy Phoebus 'gains to welk in west”- i.e. fade in the west.

“A wilted debauchee is not a fruit of the tree of life.”- J. Cook: The Orient, p. 149.

Wiltshire (2 syl.) is Wilton-shire, Wilton being a contraction of Wily-town (the town on the river Wily).

Winchester According to the authority given below, Winchester was the Camelot of Arthurian romance. Hanmer, referring to King Lear, ii. 2, says Camelot is Queen Camel, Somerset-shire, in the vicinity of which “are many large moors where are bred great quantities of geese, so that many other places are from hence supplied with quills and feathers.” Kent says to the Duke of Cornwall-

“Goose, if I had you upon Sarum Plain,
I'd drive ye cackling home to Camelot.”

   With all due respect to Hanmer, it seems far more probable that Kent refers to Camelford, in Cornwall, where the Duke of Cornwall resided, in his castle of Tintagel. He says, “If I had you on Salisbury Plain [where geese abound], I would drive you home to Tintagel, on the river Camel.” Though the Camelot of Shakespeare is Tintagel or Camelford, yet the Camelot of King Arthur may be Queen Camel; and indeed visitors are still pointed to