342 The Ancient Styles and Designations of Persons. 
GAFFER. 
Dr. Bosworth, in his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, gives the word 
“ Gefera” as meaning “a companion,” and Todd, in his edition of 
Johnson’s Dictionary, Tit. “Gaffer,” says that Dr. Johnson, from 
Junius, gives this as the derivation, and adds “ others consider it a 
contraction of good father, the sense of which word came to be 
extended to every man of some age.”’ Todd refers to Elstob, in the 
Saxon Homily of St. Gregory (p. 20), and he explains the term 
Gaffer as “a word of respect now obsolete, or applied only to a mean 
person,” and gives the following quotation :— 
‘“A few honest gaffers with their elect pastor’—Bp. Gauden Ecc. Angl. 
Susp. (1659), p. 585; and, 
“For Gaffer Treadwell told us by the bye 
Excessive sorrow is exceeding dry.” 
Gay’s PasTORALS. 
I am informed by a lady who has passed a life of between 70 and 
80 years in the county of Wilts, that about 65 or 70 years ago the 
cottagers about Liddiard Tregoz and Liddiard Millicent were many 
of them called Gaffer and Gammer, as “‘ Gaffer Jones,” ‘“‘ Gammer 
Smith,” &c. 
GRANDFER AND GRANDFATHER. 
This is a style still used to old men in North Wilts. A very 
old man at Ogbourne St. George, named Doling, is called “ Granfer 
Doling ;” and Iam told by Mrs. Charlotte Mills of that place, who 
is between 80 and 90 years old, that her mother often talked of 
an eccentric old farmer there whose real name was Creech, but who 
was always called “ Grandfather Screech.” She also told me that 
in the year 1745, “ Grandfather Screech” and three others passed 
the night in Barbury Camp to be on the look-out for the army of 
Prince Charles Edward, and that in the course of the night one of 
the party took away and hid the shoes of “ Grandfather Screech.” 
It would seem that Grandfather Screech was so called merely from 
being an old man, as he never had any children. 
Dame. 
In the chancel at Broad-Hinton, Wilts, is this inscription :— 
‘“‘Here lyethe Syr William Wroughton Knight whoe dyed in the 50 yere of 
his age in Anno Domini 1559 and lefte yssve of his bodie by dame Elinor his 
