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Webster 1913 Edition

Adj.

Sorrowful; mournful.

“ Like wailful widows.”

Spenser.

“Wailful sonnets.”

Shak.

Adj.

Sorrowful; mournful.

wailful ‎(comparative more wailful, superlative most wailful)

(chiefly poetic) Sorrowful; mournful.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.4:
  Farre better I it deeme to die with speed / Then waste in woe and waylfull miserye [...].
- c. 1591, William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, First Folio 1623:
  You must lay Lime, to tangle her desires / By walefull Sonnets, whose composed Rimes / Should be full fraught with seruiceable vowes.