Citations:welkin

English citations of welkin

1. (also Lancashire) The sky which appears to an observer on the Earth as a dome in which celestial bodies are visible; the firmament.
   • 1930, The Week-end Review, volume 1, page 102:

     Nobody can say the word is dead, for every day our journalists make many welkins ring.

   • 1974, James Abell Wright, I See the Wind, page 125:

     Historians make no mention / Of items as welkins ringing / And shepherds, and kings a-riding / Yet verily it was written / That welkins still on the drawing board / Were scheduled for high-decibel performance

   • 2009, Vivek Iyer, The Mirror's Messiah, page 44:

     He gave the welkin quarter, who was welkin in my eves / O! Say the welkins water, say not that Ravan cries!

2. The upper atmosphere occupied by clouds, flying birds, etc.
   • 1784, Joseph Budworth, chapter XL, in A Fortnight’s Ramble to the Lakes in Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cumberland, 3rd edition, London: […] John Nichols and Son, […]; [a]nd sold by T[homas] Cadell and W[illiam] Davies, […]; and John Upham, […], published 1810, →OCLC, page 354:

     For trifles only suit an idle hour, / When school is emptied or the welkins pour.

3. (religion) The place above the Earth where God or other deities live; heaven.
   • 1868 March, Max Müller, “Art. VIII.—The Sixth Hymn of the First Book of the Rig Veda.”, in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, volume III (New Series), London: Trübner and Co., […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 239:

     Here we have the sky thrice, three welkins, three lights, three heavens, three earths.

   • 1899, Trans-communicator, volume 16, page 938:

     The peddlers that come along this road has offered a terrible lot o' new-fangled notions, but they never mentioned welkins.