Rubbish - the bears are obviously Scottish given their predilection for porridge :).
In Shrek when Puss in Boots first comes on the scene, the ogre says “look at 'im in his wee little boots”, so I think that is your definitive answer.
If its a bucket or bottle, it had better be a wee little bucket…a little wee bucket means something else.
Besides the loan word (from gaelic) is probably less significant, and “little boy” is part of English idiom, and “wee little” is part of english idiom, and all that combines with permanency question to make wee come first
You’d prefer him to “wee more”?
This point has come up here recently in another thread, and I think there’s something to it. Wee little, though, is not technically a binomial such as spic and span (there’s no and or or). In this particular collocation, the wee has a adverbial function, similar to wee bit, so it makes sense for wee to come before the adjective little. But the OED has something to say about little wee:
[QUOTE=OED]
orig. Sc.
A. n.1 In early use almost always a little wee , later also a wee: = ‘a little’, ‘a (little) bit’; in various applications (chiefly as adverbial accusative).
A little or young thing; a child. Obs.
[/quote]
So the author is probably just deliberately using antiquated language.
yellowjacketcoder, what’s the complete context of the phrase?
My reference is the wee little piggies rhyme you do while grabbing a kid’s toes.
All of the youngest bear’s items in the stories are described with the adjective pair, in addition to the little bear himself.
This is truth.
