Our clerks were mostly the leaders of the choir, if such a term may be
applied to the four or five old men who droned out the psalms from the
singing-loft, where every Sunday one or two psalms from the old version
were sung in parts, much after the manner of the old three-man’s-songs.
One might often hear the old clerk in Sennen give out the lines
beginning with, “My saule is like a timmersone bur-r-d-e, &c.” Then,
after he had made the pitch-pipe produce a shrieking squeak, the three
or four old souls, accompanied by their bass-viol, would quaver on,
making such shrill and startling sounds as would set your hair on end
and shake your teeth loose. Down in St. Levan, Uncle Josey, the clerk,
would always have his own way about the singing, in spite of the parson
and everybody else. His favourite psalm was all about “the precious
ointment running from Aaron’s beard down unto the skirts of his
raiment.” From the old man’s admiration of this odorous and unctuous
song of praise, one seldom had any other than what were known as the
Aaron psalm and “t’other.” In the carol singing, on Christmas eve at
night, the old men sang, and their brass buttons shone in all their
glory, when, with heart and soul, they were ringing out such joyous
strains as “Now let us be merry, and set sorrow aside,” &c.
Another favourite was an older carol, with the chorus of “Noel, noel,
noel, born is the king of Israel.” There were often sung still older
ones, which contain many such old catholic traditions as are found in
the apocryphal gospel of St. Nichodemus and Lives of the Saints, such
as one about the blessed Mary walking through the orchard, when she
longed for a red ripe apple far above her reach, “Then up spoke the
babe in blessed Mary’s womb; bow down, apple tree, bow down, apple
tree, that mother may have some.”
These simple ditties were then regarded with much reverence for their
high antiquity. Some of the old manuscript carol-books, formerly used
in churches at Christmas-tide, are still preserved with religious care
by old folks of the West.