"He wadn't pit it on," said the old clerk Christopher (commonly called
"Kitty") Hill. "I reckon he was afeard o' t' smittle" (infection).
The same clergyman, when he went up to the altar for the Communion
Service, knelt down, as his habit was, at the north end for private
prayer whilst the congregation were singing a metrical Psalm (Old or New
Version). On looking up he saw that Kitty Hill had followed him within
the rails and was kneeling at the opposite end of the Holy Table staring
at him with round eyes full of amazement at this unusual act of
devotion. Both the curate and the clerk spoke the broadest Yorkshire.
Psalm xxxii. 4 was thus rendered by Kitty: "Ma-maasture is like t' doong
i' summer." He was an old man and quite bald, and used to sit in his
desk with a blue-spotted pocket-handkerchief spread over his head,
occasionally drawing down a corner of it for use, and then pulling it
straight again. If the squire happened to come late to church--a thing
which did not often happen--the curate would pause in his reading and
apologise: "Good morning, Mr. ----. I am sorry, sir, that I began the
service. I thought you were not coming this morning." One sentence of
the sermon preached on the death of King William IV long remained in the
memory of some of his young hearers: "Behold the King in all his pomp
and glory, soodenly toombled from his high elevation, and mingled wi'
the doost!"
In 1845 a new church was built on the old site, a new curate came, Kitty
Hill died, and was succeeded in his office by his widow, who did all
that she could do of the clerk's work, and showed remarkable taste in
decorating the church at Christmas.
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