Hawker tells a story of the parish clerk at Morwenstow whose wife used to wash the parson’s surplices.  He came home one night from a prolonged visit at the village inn, the “Bush,” and finding his wife’s scolding not to his mind and depressing, he said, “Look yere, my dear, if you doan’t stop, I’ll go straight back again.”  She did not stop, so he left the house; but the wife donned one of the surplices and, making a short cut, stood in front of her approaching husband.  He was terrified; but at last he remembered his official position, and the thought gave him courage.

“Avide, Satan!” he said in a thick, slow voice.

The figure made no answer.

“Avide, Satan!” he shouted again.  “Doan’t ’e knaw I be clerk of the parish, bass-viol player, and taicher of the singers?”

When the apparition failed to be impressed the clerk turned tail and fled.  The ghost returned by a short cut, and the clerk found his wife calmly ironing the parson’s surplice.  He did not return to the “Bush” that night.

* * * * *

The old parish clerk of Dagenham had a habit when stating the names to be entered into the register of saying, Plain Robert or John, etc., meaning that Robert, etc., was the only Christian name.  On one occasion a strange clergyman baptized a child there, and being unable to hear the name as given by the parents, looked inquiringly at the clerk.  “Plain Jane, sir,” he called out in a stentorian voice.  “What a pity to label the child thus,” the clergyman rejoined; “she might grow up to be a beautiful girl.”  “Jane only, I mean,” explained the clerk.

All clergymen know the difficulty of changing the names of the sovereign and the Royal Family at the commencement of the reign of a new monarch.

In a certain parish in the south of England (the name of which I do not know, or have forgotten), at the time of the accession of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, the rector charged his clerk to make the necessary alterations in the Book of Common Prayer required by the sex of the new sovereign.  The clerk made all the needed alterations with the greatest care as regards both titles and pronouns; but not only this, he carried on the changes throughout the Psalter.  Consequently, on the morning of the fourth day of the month, for instance, the rector found Psalm xxi. rendered thus:  “The Queen shall rejoice in Thy strength, O Lord:  exceeding glad shall She be of Thy salvation,” and so on throughout the course of the Psalms and the whole of the Psalter.  Also in the prayer for the Church Militant, when prayer is made for all Christian kings, princes, etc., the distracted vicar found the words changed into “Queen, Princesses, etc.”  After all, the clerk showed his thoroughness, but nothing short of a new Prayer Book could satisfy the needs of the vicar[94].

[Footnote 94:  From the information of Miss Marion Stirling, who heard the story from Prebendary Thornton.]