Of the mistakes in the clerk’s reading of the Psalms there are many instances.  David Diggs, the hero of J. Hewett’s Parish Clerk, was remonstrated with for reading the proper names in Psalm lxxxiii. 6, “Odommities, Osmallities, and Mobbities,” and replied:  “Yes, no doubt, but that’s noigh enow.  Seatown folk understand oi very well.”

He is also reported to have said, “Jeball, Amon, and Almanac, three Philistines with them that are tired.”  The vicar endeavoured to teach him the correct mode of pronunciation of difficult words, and for some weeks he read well, and then returned to his former method of making a shot at the proper names.

On being expostulated with he coolly replied: 

“One on us must read better than t’other, or there wouldn’t be no difference ’twixt parson and clerk; so I gives in to you.  Besides, this sort of reading as you taught me would not do here.  The p’rishioners told oi, if oi didn’t gi’ in and read in th’ old style loike, as they wouldn’t come to hear oi, so oi dropped it!”

An old clerk at Hartlepool, who had been a sailor, used to render Psalm civ. 26, as “There go the ships and there is that lieutenant whom Thou hast made to take his pastime therein.”

“Leviathan” has been responsible for many errors.  A shoemaker clerk used to call it “that great leather-thing.”  From various sources comes to me the story, to which I have already referred, of the transformation of “an alien to my mother’s children” into “a lion to my mother’s children.”

A clerk at Bletchley always called caterpillars saterpillars, and in Psalm lxviii. never read JAH, but spelt it J-A-H.  He used to summon the children from their places to stand in single file along the pews during three Sundays in Lent, and say, “Children, say your catechayse.”

Catechising during the service seems to have been not uncommon.  The clerk at Milverton used to summon the children, calling out, “Children, catechise, pray draw near.”

The clerk at Sidbury used to read, “Better than a bullock that has horns enough”; his name was Timothy Karslake, commonly called “Tim,” and when he made a mistake in the responses some one in the church would call out, “You be wrong, Tim.”

Sometimes a little emphasis on the wrong word was used to express the feelings engendered by private piques and quarrels.  There were in one parish some differences between the parson and the clerk, who showed his independence and proud spirit when he read the verse of the Psalm, “If I be hungry, I will not tell thee,” casting a rather scornful glance at the parson.

Another specimen of his class used to read “Ananias, Azarias, and Mizzle,” and one who was reading a lesson in church (Isaiah liv. 12), “And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles,” rendered the verse, “Thy window of a gate, and thy gates of crab ancles.”