3. From the custom of the rich bestowing on this day all the milk of
their kine, then called _white meat_, on the poor. (Wheatley, from
Gerard Langbain.)

II. _Huict Sunday_: from the French, _huit_, eight; i.e. the eighth
Sunday from Easter. (L'Estrange, _Alliance Div. Off._)

III. There are others who see that neither of these explanations can
stand; because the ancient mode of spelling the word was not
_Whit_-sunday, but _Wit_-sonday (as in Wickliff), or _Wite_-sonday
(which is as old as _Robert of Gloucester_, c. A.D. 1270). Hence,--

1. Versteran's explanation:--That it is _Wied_ Sunday, _i.e. Sacred_
Sunday (from Saxon, _wied_, or _wihed_, a word I do not find in
Bosworth's _A.-S. Dict._; but so written in Brady's _Clovis Calendaria_,
as below). But why should this day be distinguished as sacred beyond all
other Sundays in the year?

2. In _Clavis Calendaria_, by John Brady (2 vols. 8vo. 1815), I find,
vol. i. p. 378., "Other authorities contend," he does not say who those
authorities are, "that the original name of this season of the year was
_Wittentide_; or the time of choosing the _wits_, or wise men, to the
_Wittenagemote_."

Now this last, though evidently an etymology inadequate to the
importance of the festival, appears to me to furnish the right clue. The
day of Pentecost was the day of the outpouring of the Divine Wisdom and
Knowledge on the Apostles; the day on which was given to them that HOLY
SPIRIT, by which was "revealed" to them "_The wisdom of God_ ... even
the _hidden wisdom_, which GOD ordained before the world." 1 Cor. ii.