the weary hour

[pinard]

Hello,

"If someone in a group of merry talkers, assembled to wile away the weary hour, inadvertently mentions the name of a dead person, another in a hoarse whisper cries out 'It is a dead person'..."

The Ohlon Way - Malcolm Magolin

"To wile away the weary hour" means spend time to avoid boredom or it is like they get together talking jollily to rest a bit after their weary activity?

Thank you in advance

 

[Barque]

To while (not wile) away the hours is to pass time.

"Weary" here doesn't refer to physical tiredness but to the tediousness of boredom.

A related thread: To kill the time vs to while away the time

 

[Cenzontle]

As you probably know, "the weary hour" is not ordinary language,
but instead an example of the rhetorical device called hypallage, also called a "transferred epithet".
In literal terms, only a person or an animal can be "weary".
So "the weary hour" is a poetic way of referring to an hour a time when people are weary.
To me it is unclear whether they are physically or mentally weary.