Definition of "woesome"

'But it will make thee much bewail, / And it will make thy fair eye swell—' / She said, and told the woesome tale, / As sooth as shepherdess might tell.

c. 1765, John Langhorne, Owen of Carron

I could not help seeing a woesome picture. “Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from her heart and her brown hair spread over her dead father's breast!”

2008, Frances Hodgson Burnett, The White People

Nicole caught her breath at the muffled, woesome sighs: Douanier-Lieutenant Peder LaMotte, Acting Capitaine of Concarneau, her love and her father's nemesis, was weeping.

2011, Jan Tucker Mulligan, Smuggler's Legacy

To dissect my thoughts is a woesome tale [...]

2014, Glenda Paisley, My Life in Poetry

But here comes woesome old me and my maw down the yard with battered suitcases arriving almost like phantoms dripping from the sea.

2016, Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels