Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
_Priests' Surplices._--Will some of the readers of "N. & Q." favour me
with a decision or authority on the following point? Does a priest's
surplice differ from that worn by a lay vicar, or vicar choral? I have
been an old choir-boy; and some few years since, as a boy, used to
remark that the priests' surplices worn at St. Paul's, the Chapel Royal,
and Westminster Abbey, were, as a sempstress would term it, _gaged_, or
stitched down in rows over the shoulders some seven or eight times at
the distance of about half an inch from each other. In the cathedral
churches of Durham, York, Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester, and Oxford, I
have remarked their almost universal adoption; but, to the best of my
belief, I have never seen such a description of vestment in use among
parochial clergymen, above half-a-dozen times, and I am desirous of
knowing if the _gaged_ surplice is peculiar to cathedrals and collegiate
churches (I have even seen canons residentiary in them, habited in the
lay vicar's surplice), or is the surplice used by choristers,
undergraduates, and vicars choral, which, according to my early
experience, is one without needlework, the correct officiating garment;
the latter is almost universally used at funerals, where the officiating
priest seldom wears either his scarf or hood, and presents anything but
a dignified appearance when he crowns this _négligée_ with one of our
grotesque chimney-pot hats, to the exclusion of the more appropriate
college cap.