He was a genuine old Dalesman of a type passed away. His spirits really never survived the abolition of the stringed instruments in the western gallery with its galaxy of village musicians. "I hugged bass fiddle for many a year," he once told me. Peace be to his memory. * * * * * Canon Atkinson tells of his good and harmless but "feckless" parish clerk and schoolmaster at Danby, whom, when about to take a funeral, he discovered sitting in the sunny embrasure of the west window, with his hat on, of course, and comfortably smoking his pipe. The clerk was a brother of the old vicar of Danby, and they seem to have been a curious and irreverent pair. The historian of Danby, in his _Forty Years in a Moorland Parish_, fully describes his first visit to the clerk's school, and the strange custom of weird singing at funerals to which Mr. Jenkins alludes. * * * * * Another north-country clerk-schoolmaster was obliged to relinquish his scholastic duties and make way for a certified teacher. One day he heard the new master tell his pupils: "'A' is an indefinite article. 'A' is one, and can only be applied to one thing. You cannot say a cats or a dogs; but only a cat, a dog." The clerk at once reported the matter to his rector. "Here's a pretty fellow you've got to keep school! He says that you can only apply the article 'a' to nouns of the singular number; and here have I been singing 'A--men' all my life, and your reverence has never once corrected me." * * * * * Communicated by Mrs. Williamson, Lydgate Vicarage: The old parish clerk of Radcliffe was secretary of the races committee, and would hurry out of church to attend these meetings. Mr. Foxley, the rector, was told of this weakness of his clerk, so one Wednesday evening, when the rector knew there was a meeting, he got into the pulpit (a three-decker was then in the church), and began his sermon. Half an hour went by, then the clerk began to be restless. Another half-hour passed; the clerk looked up from his seat under the pulpit, but still the rector went on preaching. It was too late then for the race-course meeting. So when the sermon was at length finished, the clerk got up and gave out "the 'undred and nineteenth Psalm from yend to yend. He's preached all day, and we'll sing all neet" (night). * * * * * At Westhoughton Church, Lancashire, there was a clerk of the old school, one Platt, who just before the sermon would stretch his long arm and offer his snuff-box to his old friend Betty, and to other cronies who happened to be in his immediate neighbourhood. * * * * *