Wolfort Webber, Old Knickerbocker, searcher for treasure buried by buccaneers.--Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller.
Wolsey (Cardinal), introduced by Shakespeare in his historic play of Henry VIII. (1601).
Woman Changed to a Man. Iphis, daughter of Lygdus and Telethusa, of Crete. The story is that the father gave orders if the child about to be born proved to be a girl, it was to be put to death; and that the mother, unwilling to lose her infant, brought it up as a boy. In due time the father betrothed his child to Ianthê, and the mother, in terror, prayed for help, when Isis, on the day of marriage, changed Iphis to a man.--Ovid, Metaph. ix. 12; xiv, 699.
Cæneus [Se.nuce], was born of the female sex, but Neptune changed her into a man. Ænēas, however, found her in the infernal regions restored to her original sex.
Tire´sias, was converted into a woman for killing one of two serpents he met in a wood and was restored to his original sex by killing the other serpent met again after seven years.
D’Eon de Beaumont, the Chevalier, was believed to be a woman.
Hermaphroditos was of both sexes.
Woman killed with Kindness (A), a tragedy by Thos. Heywood (1600). The “woman” was Mrs. Frankford, who was unfaithful to her marriage vow. Her husband sent her to live on one of his estates, and made her a liberal allowance; she died, but on her death-bed her husband came to see her, and forgave her.
Woman made of Flowers. Gwydion, son of Don, “formed a woman out of flowers,” according to the Bard Taliesin. Arianrod had said that Llew Llaw Gyffes (i.e., “The Lion with the Steady Hand”), should never have a wife of the human race. So Math and Gwydion, two enchanters,
Took blossoms of oak, and blossoms of broom, and blossoms of meadow-sweet, and produced therefrom a maiden, the fairest and most graceful ever seen, and baptized her Blodeuwedd, and she became his bride.--The Mabinogion (“Math,” etc., twelfth century).