e mistress of a dame-school, who was wont to say when a
small pupil paused at such a name as Nebuchadnezzar, "That's a bad word,
child! go on to the next verse."

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 piqu