When the clerk gave out the hymn or Psalm, or on rare occasions the anthem, there was a strange sound of tuning up the instruments, and then the instruments wailed forth discordant melody.  The clerk conducted the choir, composed of village lads and maidens, with a few stalwart basses and tenors.  It was often a curious performance.  Everybody sang as loud as he could bawl; cheeks and elbows were at their utmost efforts, the bassoon vying with the clarionet, the goose-stop of the clarionet with the bassoon—­it was Babel with the addition of the beasts.  And they were all so proud of their performance.  It was the only part of the service during which no one could sleep, said one of them with pride—­and he was right.  No one could sleep through the terrible din.  They were the most important officials in the church, for did not the Psalms make it clear, “The singers go before, and the minstrels” (which they understood to mean ministers) “follow after”?  And then—­those anthems!  They were terrible inflictions.  Every bumpkin had his favourite solo, and oh! the murder, the profanation!  “Some put their trust in charrots and some in ’orses,” but they didn’t “quite pat off the stephany,” as one of the singers remarked, meaning symphony.  It was all very strange and curious.

Then followed the era of barrel-organs, the clerk’s duty being to turn the handle and start the singing.  He was the only person who understood its mechanism and how to change the barrels.  Sometimes accidents happened, as at Aston Church, Yorkshire, some time in the thirties.  One Sunday morning during the singing of a hymn the music came to a sudden stop.  There was a solemn pause, and then the clerk was seen to make his way to the front of the singing gallery, and was heard addressing the vicar in a loud tone, saying, “Please, sor, an-ell ’as coom off.”  The handle had come off the instrument.  At another church, in Huntingdonshire, the organ was hidden from view by drawn curtains, behind which the clerk used to retire when he had given out the Psalm.  On one occasion, however, no sound of music issued from behind the curtains; at last, after a solemn pause, the clerk’s quizzical face appeared, and his harsh voice shouted out, “Dang it, she ’on’t speak!” The “grinstun organ,” as David Diggs, the hero of Hewett’s Parish Clerk calls it, was not always to be depended on.  Every one knows the Lancashire dialect story of the “Barrel Organ” which refused to stop, and had to be carried out of church and sat upon, and yet still continued to pour forth its dirge-like melody.

David Diggs may not have been a strictly historical character, but the sketch of him was doubtless founded upon fact, and the account of the introduction of the barrel-organ into the church of “Seatown” on the coast of Sussex is evidently drawn from life.  A vestry meeting was held to consider about having a quire in church, and buying a barrel-organ with half a dozen simple Psalm tunes upon it, which Davy was to turn while the parson put his gown on, and the children taught to sing to.  The clerk was ordered to write to the squire and ask him for a liberal subscription.  This was his letter: