It was formerly the custom to sing a psalm at the gallows before a criminal was "turned off." And there is a good story, in Zachary Gray's notes to _Hudibras_, told of one of the chaplains of the famous Montrose; how, being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his expeditions, and being upon the ladder and ordered to select a psalm to be sung, expecting a reprieve, he named the 119th Psalm, with which the officer attending the execution complied (the Scottish Presbyterians were great psalm-singers in those days), and it was well for him he did so, for they had sung it half through before the reprieve came. Any other psalm would certainly have hanged him! Cotton, in his _Virgil Travestie_, thus alludes to the custom of psalm-singing at the foot of the gallows: Ready, when Dido gave the word, To be advanced into the halter, Without the benefit on's Psalter. * * * * * Then 'cause she would, to part the sweeter, A portion have of Hopkins' metre, As people use at execution, For the decorum of conclusion, Being too sad to sing, she says.[157] [157] _Scarronides; or, Virgil Travestie_, etc., by Charles Cotton, Book iv. _Poetical Works_, 5th edition, London, 1765, pp. 122, 140. If the clergy in medieval times had, as they are said to have had, all the learning among themselves, what a blessed state of ignorance must the laity have been in! And so, indeed, it appears, for there is extant an old Act of Parliament which provides that a nobleman shall be entitled to the "benefit of clergy," even though he could not read. And another law sets forth that "the command of the sheriff to his officer by word of mouth, and without writing is good; for it may be that neither the sheriff nor his officer can write or read!" Many charters are preserved to which persons of great dignity, even kings, have affixed the sign of the cross, because they were not able to write their names, and hence the term of _signing_, instead of subscribing. In this respect a ten-year-old Board School boy in these "double-distilled" days is vastly superior to the most renowned of the "barons bold." THE BEARDS OF OUR FATHERS. 'Tis merry in the hall when beards wag all.--_Old Song_.