"
* * * * *
Some seventy or eighty years ago at Thame Church, Buckinghamshire, the
old-fashioned clerk had a much-worn Prayer Book, and the parson and he
made a duet of the responses, the congregation not considering it
necessary or even proper to interfere. When the clerk happened to come
to a verse of the Psalms with words missing he said "riven out"
(pronounced oot), and the parson finished the verse; this was taken
quite as a matter of course by the congregation.
* * * * *
In a Lancashire church, when the rector was about to publish the banns
of marriage, the book was not in its usual place. However, he began: "I
publish the banns of marriage ... I publish ... the banns"--when the
clerk looked up from the lowest box of the "three-decker," and said in a
tone not _sotto voce_, "'Twixt th' cushion and th' desk, sur."
* * * * *
Prayer Book words are sometimes a puzzle to illiterate clerks. At the
present time in a Berkshire church the clerk always speaks of
"Athanasian's Creed," and of "the Anthony-Communion hymn."
* * * * *
His views of art are occasionally curious. An odd specimen of his race
was showing to some strangers a stained-glass window recently erected in
memory of a gentleman and lady who had just died.
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