“Let us sing to the praise and glory of God the fiftieth Psalm, while you folks sing th’ anthem,” casting a scornful glance at the wandering musicians in the opposite gallery.

Missionary meetings and sermons were somewhat rare in those days, but the special preacher for missions, commonly called the deputation, who performs for lazy clerics the task of instructing the people about work in the mission field—­a duty which could well be performed by the vicar himself—­had already begun his itinerant course.  The congregation were waiting in the churchyard for his arrival, when the old Yorkshire vicar, mentioned above, said to his clerk, “Jock, ye maunt let ’em into th’ church; the dippitation a’n’t coom.”  Presently two clergymen arrived, when the clerk called out, “Ye maunt gang hoame; t’ deppitation’s coom.”  The old vicar made an excellent chairman, his introductory remarks being models of brevity:  “T’ furst deppitation will speak!” “T’ second deppitation will speak!” after which the clerk lighted some candles in the singing gallery, and gave out for an appropriate hymn, “Vital spark of heavenly flame.”

A writer in Chambers’s Journal tells of a curious class of clergymen who existed forty years ago, and were known as “Northern Lights,” the light from a spiritual point of view being somewhat dim and flickering.  The writer, who was the vicar for twenty-five years of a moorland parish, tells of several clerks who were associated with these clerics, and who were as quaint and curious in their ways as their masters[83].  The village was a hamlet on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, near the confines of Derbyshire.  Beside the church was a public-house kept by the parish clerk, Jerry, a dapper little man, who on Sundays and funeral days always wore a wig, an old-fashioned tailed coat, black stockings, and shoes with buckles.  His house was known as “Heaven’s Gate,” where the farmers from the neighbouring farms used to drink and stay a week at a time.  Jerry used to direct the funerals, make the clerkly responses, and then provide the funeral party with good cheer at his inn.  His invitation was always given at the graveside in a high-pitched falsetto voice, and the formula ran in these words, and was never varied: 

“Friends of the corpse is respectfully requested to call at my house, and partake then and there of such refreshments as is provided for them.”

[Footnote 83:  By the kindness of the editor of Chambers’s Journal I am permitted to retell some of the stories of the manners of these clerks and parsons.]