WAFERER: From the occupation of wafer-cake maker, ME, wafrere or wafrer. William Wafrarius, formerly the king's sergeant, was juror on an inquest held concerning the lands of Padevinan in 1259 (APS,, I, p. 88; Bain, I, 2175). William le wafrer and Steven le wafrer of the county of Lanark rendered homage in 1296. The seal of the former bears an eight-rayed figure and S' Will'i Vafrer (ibid., II p. 198,545). In 1422 Murdoch, duke of Albany, granted to John Ker, burgess of Lanark, the lands called Wafralandis in the territory of the burgh of Lanark, by the tenure of baking certain wafers of bread for the king when he happened to reside at Lanark: "Faciendo domino nostro regi, et heredibus suis dictus Johannes et heredes sui pro dictis terris cum pertinenciis pistarum wafrarum dicti domini nostri regis nuociens ipsium dominum regem apud Lanark contigerit residere" (HMC., 5. Rep., App., p. 633).

(Anglo-French-Teut.) Wafer - Cake Maker or Seller [Middle English wafrer(e, waferer; from (with agential suff. -er) Middle English Anglo-French wafre, Old French waufre (French gaufre), a wafer; of Teutonic orig.: cp. Dutch & Low Ger. wafel, a water] Waferers (male and female) apparently went from house to house with their wares and were evidently employed to deliver private messages, often making assignations, in the course of their calling, as appears from Chaucer’s “baudes, wafereres” ('Cant. Tales’ C 479) and the reference to wafer-women in Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘Woman-Hater’.