81(5) a. 1100: Ðider com in gangan hwilon an meretrix ... (c1175 History of the holy
rood- tree 408– 09 [HC])
‘formerly a prostitute came going in thither’
b. 1200: & he answerede þus;/ Whilen hit wes iseid; inne soð spelle./ þat moni
mon deð muchel vuel (a1225 Layamon, Brut 4129– 31 [CMEP&V])
‘and he answered thus: formerly it was said, in a true story, that many men did
much evil’
c. 1300: He seyde, “O fool, now artow in the snare,/ That whilom japedest at
loves peyne” (1380– 86 Chaucer, TC I 507– 08)
‘He said, “Oh fool, now you are in the snare who formerly joked about love’s
pain” ’
d. 1400: On her that whilom he callyd his lady dere (1495 Lydgate, Here begyn-
neth the Temple of glas [EEBO])
‘On her that formerly he called his dear lady’
e. 1500: the Riuer, that whylome was hight/ The auncient Abus (1590– 96
Spenser, Fairie queene II.x.16.2– 3)^11
‘the river that formerly was called the ancient Abus’
f. 1600: see here a president,/ Who whilom did command, now must intreate
(1607 Anon., The tragedie of Caesar and Pompey [EEBO])
Late Modern English examples of adverbial whilom are fairly rare (6a– d), and
twentieth- century examples are very sporadic (6f), a usage now considered
obsolete. Of the thirty- one twentieth- century examples in COHA, only two are
adverbial (dating from 1910 and 1924):^12
(6) a. Here whilom ligg’d th’Aesopus of the age (1753 Cibber, The lives of the
poets of Great Britain and Ireland [CLMET3.0])
b. nor did he wander where I have whilom wandered, on Cam’s all verdant
banks (1760– 67 Sterne, Letters [CLMET3.0])
c. solely every fourth year, whilom called Leap- year (1837 Carlyle, The French
revolution [CLMET3.0])
d. who whilom wore a long coat, in the pockets whereof he jingled two bushels
of sixpenny pieces (1866 Warner, Washington Irving [COHA])
e. and referred to it as “Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.”
(1901 Wiggin, Penelope’s Irish experience [CEN])
f. So has Longfellow at Cambridge, who lives in. a noble old house whilom
occupied by Washington (1924 Harper’s [COHA])
11 Quotations from Spenser follow Greenlaw et al. (1832– 49).
12 Whilomville is the name of a fi ctional town in a series of stories by the American writer Stephen
Crane published in Harper’s Magazine beginning in August 1899. The fact that Levenson
( 1969 ), in introducing the “Tales of Whilomville” for the University of Virginia collected
works, feels no need to explain the term suggests continued familiarity with its meaning.
Interestingly, he describes Crane’s fi ctional creation as a “Once- upon- a- time” small American
town (xii).
3.3 Evolution of Whilom