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

certain large entrenchments at South Cadbury (Cadbury Castle) called by the inhabitants “King Arthur's Palace.”

“Sir Balin's sword was put into marble stone, standing as upright as a great millstone, and it swam down the stream to the city of Camelot- that is, in English, Winchester.”- History of Prince Arthur, 44.

Wind Egg An egg without a shell. Dr. Johnson's notion that the wind egg does not contain the principle of life is no more correct than the supersition that the hen that lays it was impregnated, like the “Thracian mares,” by the wind. The usual cause of such eggs is that the hen is too fat.

Winds Poetical names of the winds. The North wind, Aquilo or Boreas; South, Notus or Auster; East, Eurus; West, Zephyr or Favonius, North-east, Arges'tës; North-west, Corus; South-east, Volturnus; South- west, After ventus, Africus, Africanus, or Libs. The Thrascias is a north wind, but not due north.

“Boreas and Cæctas, and Argestes loud,
And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn,
Notus and After, black with thunderous clouds,
From Serraliona. Thwart of these, as fierce,
Forth rush Eurus and zephyr
Sirocco and Libecchio [Libycus].”
Milton: Paradise Lost, x. 699-706.

   Special winds.
   (1) The ETESIAN WINDS are refreshing breezes which blow annually for forty days in the Mediterranean Sea. (Greek, etos, a year.)
   (2) The HARMATTAN. A wind which blows periodically from the interior parts of Africa towards the Atlantic. It prevails in December, January, and February, and is generally accompanied with fog, but is so dry as to wither vegetation and cause human skin to peel off.
   (3) The KHAMSIN. A fifty days' wind in Egypt, from the end of April to the inundation of the Nile. (Arabic for fifty.)
   (4) The MISTRAL. A violent north- west wind blowing down the Gulf of Lyons; felt particularly at Marseilles and the south-east of France.
   (5) The PAMPERO blows in the summer season, from the Andes across the pampas to the sea-coast. It is a dry north-west wind.
   (6) The PUNA WINDS prevail for four mouths in the Puna (table-lands of Peru). The most dry and parching winds of any. When they prevail it is necessary to protect the face with a mask, from the heat by day and the intense cold of the night.
   (7) SAM'IEL or SIMOOM'. A hot, suffocating wind that blows occasionally in Africa and Arabia. Its approach is indicated by a redness in the air. (Arabic, samoon, from samma, destructive.)
   (8) The SIROCCO. A wind from Northern Africa that blows over Italy, Sicily, etc., producing extreme languor and mental debility.
   (9) The SOLA'NO of Spain, a south-east wind, extremely hot, and loaded with fine dust. It produces great uneasiness, hence the proverb, “Ask no favour during the Solano.” (See Trade Winds.)
   To take or have the wind. To get or keep the upper hand. Lord Bacon uses the phrase. “To have the wind of a ship” is to be to the windward of it.

Windfall Unexpected legacy; money which has come de coelo. Some of the English nobility were forbidden by the tenure of their estates to fell timber, all the trees being reserved for the use of the Royal Navy. Those trees, however, which were blown down were excepted, and hence a good wind was often a great godsend.

Windmills Don Quixote de la Mancha, riding through the plains of Montiel, approached thirty or forty windmills, which he declared to Sancho Panza “were giants, two leagues in length or more.” Striking his spurs into Rosinante, with his lance in rest, he drove at one of the “monsters dreadful as Typhoeus.” The lance lodged in the sail, and the latter, striking both man and beast, lifted them into the air, shivering the lance to pieces. When the valiant knight and his steed fell to the ground they were both much injured, and Don Quixote declared that the enchanter Freston, “who carried off his library with all the books therein,” had changed the giants into windmills “out of malice.” (Cervantes. Don Quixote, bk. i. ch. viii.)
   To fight with windmills. To combat chimeras. The French have the same proverb, “Se battre contre des moulins á vent. ” The allusion is, of course, to the adventure of Don Quixote referred to above.
   To have windmills in your head. Fancies, chimeras. Similar to “bees in your bonnet” (q.v.). Sancho Panza says-

“Did I not tell your worship they were windmills? and who could have thought otherwise, except such as had windmills in their head?”- Cervantes: Don Quixote, bk. i. ch. viii.