feyther

   A spelling of ‘father’ which indicates dialectal pronunciation. ‘Feyther, the me-a-at’s come, an what’s me mother to do-o-o w’it?’ is in Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise, set in Oxford-shire. Henry Williamson, in The Dream of Fair Women, uses this spelling to represent Devon-shire pronunciation when a girl says it to her father. There is a similar ‘Fayther’ in Evan Har-rington, by George Meredith, where the speaker is a ‘toddling small rustic’.