Dixon was the last of the Catwick clerks to keep this custom. Much more recently, however, than the time he held office, members of the congregation, usually those seated in the loft, on the publication of the banns of some well-known people, have called out the time-honoured phrase. But it is now heard no more. The custom has gone into a like oblivion to that of the parish clerk himself, once so important a person, in his own estimation if in that of no other, both in church and parish. "The old order changeth."
Thomas Dixon died at Catwick when sixty-seven years of age. He was buried in the churchyard on January 2, 1833, and by the Rev. John Torre, the rector he served so faithfully.
When Sydney Smith went to see the out-of-the-way Yorkshire village of Foston-le-Clay, to which benefice he had been presented, his arrival occasioned great excitement. The parish clerk came forward to welcome him, a man eighty years of age, with long grey hair, thread-bare coat, deep wrinkles, stooping gait, and a crutch stick. He looked at the new parson for some time from under his grey shaggy eyebrows, and talked, and showed that age had not quenched the natural shrewdness of the Yorkshireman.
At last, after a pause, he said, striking his crutch stick on the ground:
"Master Smith, it often stroikes moy moind that folks as come frae London be such fools. But you," he added, giving Sydney Smith a nudge with his stick, "I see you be no fool." The new vicar was gratified.
Yorkshiremen are keen songsters, and fortissimo is their favourite note of expression. "Straack up a bit, Jock! straack up a bit," a Yorkshire parson used to shout to his clerk, when he wanted the Old Hundredth to be sung. Well do I remember a delightful old clerk in the Craven district, who used to give out the hymn in the accustomed form with charming manner. He liked not itinerant choirs, which were not uncommon forty or fifty years ago, and used to migrate from church to church, and sometimes to chapel, in the district where the members lived. One of these choirs visited the church where the Rev. ---- Morris was rector, and he was directed to give out the anthem which the itinerant strangers were prepared to sing. He neither knew nor cared what an anthem was; and he gave the following somewhat confused notice:
"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."