It was, indeed, a usual custom for the clergyman publicly to rebuke offenders, as when it [p 226] happened that a young man, sitting in a prominent position in the church, pulled out his handkerchief and brought with it a bundle of playing cards, which flew in every direction. He had, so it turned out, been up late the previous night, and had stuffed the cards with which he had been gambling into his pocket, where they had remained forgotten. The people were amazed and horrified, but the clergyman simply looked at the offender and remarked with quiet, yet most withering sarcasm, “Sir, that prayer book of yours has been badly bound!” But some times the rebuke was deftly thrust back upon the preacher. “You’re sleepy, John,” said the clergyman, pausing in the middle of a drowsy discourse, and looking hard at the man he thus addressed. “Take some snuff, John.” “Put the snuff in the sermon,” ejaculated John; and the faces of the audience showed that the retort was fully appreciated.
In fact, such was the freedom tolerated, that this incident in Eskdale might be taken as an example. Someone walked noisily up the aisle during divine service. “Whaa’s tat?” asked the clergyman in a tone quite loud enough to rebuke the offender. “It’s aad Sharp o’ Laa [p 227] Birker,” responded the clerk. “Afooat or o’ horseback?” was the significant query. “Nay,” was the answer, “nobbet afooat, wi’ cokert shun” (calkered shoes). Frequently the clerk would interrupt the clergyman, and the interruption would not enhance the devotional character of the service. In a rural parish church a new pitch-pipe was provided, but the clerk had not tested it before entering his desk on the Sunday, and when he should have given the key-note the instrument could not be adjusted. The clerk tugged at it, thrust it in, gave it several thumps, made sundry grimaces, but the pipe was obdurate. “My friends,” announced the impatient parson, “the pitch-pipe will not work, so let us pray.” “Pray!” snorted the aggrieved official, “pray! no, no, we’ll pray none till I put this thing aright.” And members of the congregation would even stand up in their pews to contradict the parson or clerk when making the announcement. “There will be a service here as usual on Thursday evening next,” announced the clerk one Sunday morning. “No, there won’t,” declared the churchwarden as he rose from his seat. “We be going to carry hay all day Thursday.” “But the service will be held [p 228] as usual,” asserted the clerk. But the churchwarden was not to be thwarted. “Then there’ll be nobody here,” said he. “D’ye think we’re coming to church and leave the hay in the fields? No, no, p’r’aps it’ll rain Friday.”
But of all amusing instances of curious announcements in church those given by the Rev. Cuthbert Bede in All the Year Round, November 1880, may take the palm and fittingly conclude this chapter. “An old rector of a small country parish,” so runs the story, “had sent his set of false teeth to be repaired, on the understanding that they should be returned “by Saturday” as there was no Sunday post, and the village was nine miles from the post town. The old rector tried to brave out the difficulty, but after he had incoherently mumbled through the prayers, he decided not to address his congregation on that day. While the hymn was being sung, he summoned the clerk to the vestry, and then said to him: “It is quite useless for me to attempt to go on. The fact is, that my dentist has not sent me back my artificial teeth, and it is impossible for me to make myself understood. You must tell the congregation that the service is ended for this morning, [p 229] and that there will be no service this afternoon.” The old clerk went back to his desk; the singing of the hymn was brought to an end; and the rector, from the vestry, heard the clerk address the congregation thus: “This is to give notice! as there won’t be no sarmon nor no more sarvice this mornin’, so you’ better all go whum (home); and there won’t be no sarvice this aternoon, as the rector ain’t got his artful teeth back from the dentist!”
[p 230]
Big Bones Preserved in Churches.
By the Rev. R. Wilkins Rees.
In a lovely and secluded valley in Montgomeryshire is situated the interesting old church of Pennant Melangell, of whose foundation a charming legend is told. The romantic glen was in the first instance the retreat of a beautiful Irish maiden, Monacella (in Welsh, Melangell), who had fled from her father’s court rather than wed a noble to whom he had promised her hand, that here she might alone “serve God and the spotless virgin.” Brochwell Yscythrog, Prince of Powys, being one day hare-hunting in the locality, pursued his game till he came to a thicket, where to his amazement he found a lady of surpassing beauty, with the hare he was chasing safely sheltered beneath her robe. Notwithstanding all the efforts of the sportsman to make them seize their prey, the dogs had retired to a distance, howling as though in fear, and even when the huntsman essayed to blow his horn, it stuck to his lips. The Prince, learning the lady’s story, right royally assigned to her the [p 231] spot as a sanctuary for ever to all who fled there. It afterwards became a safe asylum for the oppressed, and an institution for the training of female devotees. But how long it so continued cannot be said. Monacella’s hard bed used to be shown in the cleft of a neighbouring rock, while her tomb was in a little oratory adjoining the church.
In the church is to be found carved woodwork, which doubtless once formed part of the rood-loft, representing the legend of Saint Melangell. The protection afforded by the saint to the hare gave such animals the name of Wyn Melangell—St. Monacella’s lambs—and the superstition was so fully credited that no person would kill a hare in the parish, while it was also believed that if anyone cried “God and St. Monacella be with thee” after a hunted hare, it would surely escape.
The church contains another interesting item in the shape of a large bone, more than four feet long, which has been described as the bone of the patron saint. Southey visited the church, and in an amusing rhyming letter addressed to his daughter, thus refers to it: “’Tis a church in a vale, whereby hangs a tale, how a hare being pressed by the dogs was much distressed, the [p 232] hunters coming nigh and the dogs in full cry, looked about for someone to defend her, and saw just in time, as it now comes pat in rhyme, a saint of the feminine gender. The saint was buried there, and a figure carved with care, in the churchyard is shown, as being her own; but ’tis used for a whetstone (like a stone at our back door), till the pity is the more (I should say the more’s the pity, if it suited with my ditty), it is whetted half away—lack-a-day, lack-a-day! They show a mammoth rib (was there ever such a fib?) as belonging to the saint Melangell. It was no use to wrangle, and tell the simple people that if this had been her bone, she must certainly have grown to be three times as tall as the steeple!”
In Lewis’s “Topographical Dictionary of Wales” (1843), we are told that on the mountain between Bala and Pennant Melangell was found a large bone named the Giant’s Rib, perhaps the bone of some fish, now kept in the church. But where the bone came from it is quite impossible to say. Old superstitions have clung to it, and beyond what tradition furnishes there is practically nothing for our guidance.
It is somewhat strange that in the same [p 233] county, in connection with the church at Mallwyd, other bones are exhibited. Of this church, surrounded by romantic scenery, the Dr. Davies, who rendered into Welsh the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and assisted Bishop Perry in the translation of the Bible, was for many years incumbent. The sacred edifice was far-famed for its magnificent yew trees, and for the position of the communion table in the centre. Archbishop Laud issued orders that it should be placed at the east end, but Dr. Davies defied the prelate, and restored it to its old position, where, according to Hemmingway’s “Panorama of North Wales,” in which the church was described as a “humble Gothic structure, the floor covered with rushes,” it remained till 1848. It is not, however, so placed now. Over the porch of this church some bones are suspended, but no palæontologist has yet decided as to their origin. It has been said that they are the rib and part of the spine of a whale caught in the Dovey in bygone days! Whatever may be the truth, however, it is not now to be ascertained, but must remain shrouded in mystery with that concerning the bones at Pennant Melangell. The bones were in their present [p 234] position in 1816, for they are then mentioned by Pugh in his Cambria Depicta.