354 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 180, 



dom by Knut the Great. Ingigerd, Queen of 

 Russia, desired a widow to take her son, who " had 

 a sore boil upon his neck," to King Olaf, " the 

 best physician here, and beg him to lay his hands 

 on thy lad." The king was unwilling to do so, 

 saying that he was not a physician; but at last 

 conseated : 



" Then the khig took the lad, laid his hands upon 

 his neck, and felt the boil for a long time, until the 

 boy made a very wry face. Then the king took a piece 

 of bread, laid it in the figure of the cross upon the 

 palm of his hand, and put it into the boy's mouth. 

 He swallowed it down, and from that time all the 

 soreness left his neck, and in a few days he was quite 

 well . . . Then first came Olaf into the repute of 

 having as much healing power in his hands as is 

 ascribed to men who have been gifted by nature with 

 healing by the touch." 



Laing asks in a note : 



*' Is the touching for the King's Evil . . . con- 

 nected with this royal saint's healing by the touch ?" — 

 The Heimskrinffla,\o], ii. p. 297., 8vo. : London, 1844. 



De Camera. 



GAITER OR GAMMER, ETC. 



These two venerable Avords were used by our 

 ancestors. Every one has heard of Gammer Gur- 

 ton ; GafFer Gingerbread was also famovis in, as 

 well as I can remember, a portion of the lite- 

 rature which amused my childhood. In Joseph 

 Andrews, Fielding styles the father of Pamela 

 "GafFer Andrews:" and, for aught I know, the 

 word may be still in use in Wilts and Somerset. 



Unde derivantur Gaffe?- and Gammer? Lye 

 said they were quasi good-father and good-mother ; 

 Somner, that they were the Anglo-Saxon Gefceder 

 and Gemeder, i. e. godfather and godmother ; 

 Webster derives the former from the Hebrew 

 geber, man, the latter from the Scandinavian g^aTweZ, 

 old. Having a fondness for simplicity, I go less 

 learnedly to work. I have observed little chil- 

 dren,*when commencing to speak, to say "ganpa" 

 and "gamma" for grandpapa and grandmamma: 

 ■whence I conjecture that, in the olden time, ere 

 we had Pa's and Ma's, the little aspirants used to 

 say "ganfa'er" and "gamma'er," which easily be- 

 came Gaffer and Gammer. I am confirmed in 

 this view by a friend to whom I mentioned it, and 

 who told me that his own children always called 

 his father gaffe?; a word entirely of their own 

 formation. 



There is a term now coming a little into use, 

 which 13 I believe of pure Irish origin, namely, 

 old fogie. Indeed, I have heard it used rather 

 disrespectfully of those mature old warriors, whom 

 it pleases the wisdom of our government to send 

 out in the command of our fleets and armies. The 

 word, as I said, is of Irish, or rather of Dublin 



birth. The old fogies are the inmates of the Royal 

 or Old Men's Hospital, the Irish Chelsea. I think,, 

 then, that it must be plain to every one that the 

 term is nothing more than a good-humoured cor- 

 ruption or diminutive oi old folks. 



This leads me to the simple origin of a word 

 which seems to have posed all our etymologists — 

 it has done so to Richardson at least — namely^ 

 " Pettifogger, a low, tricky attorney." Accord- 

 ing to my \iew, pettifogger is neither more nor less 

 tha,n pettifolker, i. e. one whose practice lies among 

 the petty folk, small tradesmen, day-labourers, and 

 such like. This derivation, too, has simplicity in 

 its favour. Txios. Keightlet.. 



Minav 0aUS. 



Search for MSS. — A proposal was made sora& 

 time ago in " N. & Q." by Mr. Mackenzie, that: 

 some systematic effort should be made for the 

 recovery of ancient MSS. I have heard nothing 

 more of it, but am sure that, if a beginning were 

 made, it would receive warm support from the 

 friends of literature. There is, however, a kindred 

 seai'ch which can be prosecuted nearer home, with 

 more certain success and more important results. 

 I mean a continued search among the numerous 

 MSS. in which so much of our unknown history 

 is buried. Might not a systematic examination of- 

 these be instituted, with the help of the " division 

 of labour" principle, so that important portions of 

 the great mass should be accurately described and 

 indexed, valuable papers abridged for publication, 

 and thus given to the world entire? Much is 

 being done, no doubt, here and there ; but surely 

 much more would be accomplished by united and 

 systematised labour. How much light might be 

 thrown on a given period of our history by such 

 a study of all the records, correspondence, &c^ 

 relating to it. Is there none of our existing so- 

 cieties within whose scope such an undertaking 

 would fall, or might not different societies unite 

 for the purpose ? The books, of course, should 

 be sold to the public. I leave the hint to the 

 judgment of your readers. Eesno. 



Clifton of Normanton, — Following the excel- 

 lent example of Dr. Todd, of Trin. Coll. Dublin,, 

 I send you from the fly-leaves of an old English 

 Bible (C. Barker, London, 1599, small 4to.), for 

 the information of any one connected, some of the 

 particulars inscribed on the leaves, relating to — 



" Thomas Clifton of Normanton, in the county of 

 Darby, who had issue by his first wife three sonnes, 

 and four daughters ; and by his second wife, two 

 sonnes and one daughter." 



The names of his wives are not mentioned. The 

 details of births, marriages, and deaths extend 

 from 1586 to 1671, and some of the branches of 



