'orses," but they didn't "quite pat off the stephany," as one of the
singers remarked, meaning symphony. It was all very strange and curious.

Then followed the era of barrel-organs, the clerk's duty being to turn
the handle and start the singing. He was the only person who understood
its mechanism and how to change the barrels. Sometimes accidents
happened, as at Aston Church, Yorkshire, some time in the thirties. One
Sunday morning during the singing of a hymn the music came to a sudden
stop. There was a solemn pause, and then the clerk was seen to make his
way to the front of the singing gallery, and was heard addressing the
vicar in a loud tone, saying, "Please, sor, an-ell 'as coom off." The
handle had come off the instrument. At another church, in
Huntingdonshire, the organ was hidden from view by drawn curtains,
behind which the clerk used to retire when he had given out the Psalm.
On one occasion, however, no sound of music issued from behind the
curtains; at last, after a solemn pause, the clerk's quizzical face
appeared, and his harsh voice shouted out, "Dang it, she 'on't speak!"
The "grinstun organ," as David Diggs, the hero of Hewett's _Parish
Clerk_ calls it, was not always to be depended on. Every one knows the
Lancashire dialect story of the "Barrel Organ" which refused to stop,
and had to be carried out of church and sat upon, and yet still
continued to pour forth its dirge-like melody.

David Diggs may not have been a strictly historical character, but the
sketch of him was doubtless founded upon fact, and the account of the
introduction of the barrel-organ into the church of "Seatown" on the
coast of Sussex is evidently drawn from life. A vestry meeting was held
to consider about having a _quire_ in church, and buying a barrel-organ
with half a dozen simple Psalm tunes upon it, which Davy was to turn
while the parson put his gown on, and the children taught to sing to.