Since I heard from their lips the story which I am about to relate, I
have heard it told, _mutatis mutandis_, as happening in sundry other
parishes, until one rather doubts the genuineness of the record at all.
But as they recounted it it ran as follows, and I am sure they believed
what they told me.
Some malicious person or persons unknown entered the church, and having
seized the rather large typed Prayer Book used by the clerk, who was
somewhat advanced in years, they observed that the words "the righteous
shall flourish like" were the last words at the bottom of the page,
whereupon they altered the next words on the top of the following page,
and which were "the palm tree," into "a green bay horse"; and, the
change being carefully made, the result on the Sunday following was that
the well-meaning clerk, studiously uttering each word of his Prayer
Book, found himself declaring very erroneous doctrine. "Hulloa," cried
he; "I must hearken back. This'll never do." Now I cannot call to mind
the name of the parish. It was not Chapel-in-the-Frith. Was it
Mottram-in-Longdendale? I really cannot remember. But these two old men
asserted that thenceforward it became a saying, "I must hearken back,
like the clerk of--."
I recollect preaching one weekday night (and people would crowd the
churches on weekday evenings fifty years ago far more readily than they
do now) at some wild place in Lancashire or Yorkshire, I think
Lancashire.
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