An old Holne Curate.
Touching for King's Evil.—The following passage bearing upon the custom of touching for the King's Evil, and its antiquity, is extracted from Laing's translation of Snorro Sturleson's Heimskringla. King Olaf the Rich, afterwards Saint, had fled to Russia on being driven out of his kingdom 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 consented:
"Then the king 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 ... connected with this royal saint's healing by the touch?"—The Heimskringla, vol. ii. p. 297., 8vo.: London, 1844.
De Camera.
GAFFER OR GAMMER, ETC.
These two venerable words were used by our ancestors. Every one has heard of Gammer Gurton; Gaffer Gingerbread was also famous in, as well as I can remember, a portion of the literature 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 Gaffer and Gammer? Lye said they were quasi good-father and good-mother; Somner, that they were the Anglo-Saxon Gefæder and Gemeder, i. e. godfather and godmother; Webster derives the former from the Hebrew geber, man, the latter from the Scandinavian gamel, old. Having a fondness for simplicity, I go less learnedly to work. I have observed little children, 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 became 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 gaffer, a word entirely of their own formation.