CHAPTER IV.

GOING THE ROUNDS

Shortly after ten o’clock the singing-boys arrived at the tranter’s

house, which was invariably the place of meeting, and preparations were

made for the start. The older men and musicians wore thick coats, with

stiff perpendicular collars, and coloured handkerchiefs wound round and

round the neck till the end came to hand, over all which they just

showed their ears and noses, like people looking over a wall. The

remainder, stalwart ruddy men and boys, were dressed mainly in

snow-white smock-frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts, in

ornamental forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags. The cider-mug was

emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged, and the

pieces finally decided upon. The boys in the meantime put the old

horn-lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths to fit the

lanterns; and, a thin fleece of snow having fallen since the early part

of the evening, those who had no leggings went to the stable and wound

wisps of hay round their ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the

interior of their boots.

Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets composing

it lying at a much greater distance from each other than is ordinarily

the case. Hence several hours were consumed in playing and singing

within hearing of every family, even if but a single air were bestowed

on each. There was Lower Mellstock, the main village; half a mile from

this were the church and vicarage, and a few other houses, the spot

being rather lonely now, though in past centuries it had been the most

thickly-populated quarter of the parish. A mile north-east lay the

hamlet of Upper Mellstock, where the tranter lived; and at other points

knots of cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies.

Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his grandson

Dick the treble violin; and Reuben and Michael Mail the tenor and

second violins respectively. The singers consisted of four men and

seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of carrying and attending to

the lanterns, and holding the books open for the players. Directly

music was the theme, old William ever and instinctively came to the

front.

“Now mind, neighbours,” he said, as they all went out one by one at the

door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them with a critical

face as they passed, like a shepherd counting out his sheep. “You two

counter-boys, keep your ears open to Michael’s fingering, and don’t ye

go straying into the treble part along o’ Dick and his set, as ye did

last year; and mind this especially when we be in ‘Arise, and hail.’

Billy Chimlen, don’t you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would;

and, all o’ ye, whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the

ground when we go in at people’s gates; but go quietly, so as to strike

up all of a sudden, like spirits.”

“Farmer Ledlow’s first?”

“Farmer Ledlow’s first; the rest as usual.”

“And, Voss,” said the tranter terminatively, “you keep house here till

about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider in the warmer

you’ll find turned up upon the copper; and bring it wi’ the victuals to

church-hatch, as th’st know.”

Just before the clock struck twelve they lighted the lanterns and

started. The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the snowstorm;

but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened her power to a faint

twilight, which was rather pervasive of the landscape than traceable to

the sky. The breeze had gone down, and the rustle of their feet and

tones of their speech echoed with an alert rebound from every post,

boundary-stone, and ancient wall they passed, even where the distance

of the echo’s origin was less than a few yards. Beyond their own slight

noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional bark of foxes in

the direction of Yalbury Wood, or the brush of a rabbit among the grass

now and then, as it scampered out of their way.

Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited by about

two o’clock; they then passed across the outskirts of a wooded park

toward the main village, nobody being at home at the Manor. Pursuing no

recognized track, great care was necessary in walking lest their faces

should come in contact with the low-hanging boughs of the old

lime-trees, which in many spots formed dense over-growths of interlaced

branches.

“Times have changed from the times they used to be,” said Mail,

regarding nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas with an inward

eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the ground, because it was

as convenient a position as any. “People don’t care much about us now!

I’ve been thinking we must be almost the last left in the county of the

old string players? Barrel-organs, and the things next door to ’em that

you blow wi’ your foot, have come in terribly of late years.”

“Ay!” said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on seeing him,

did the same thing.

“More’s the pity,” replied another. “Time was—long and merry ago

now!—when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some

of the quires right. They should have stuck to strings as we did, and

kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents. If you’d thrive in

musical religion, stick to strings, says I.”

“Strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go,” said Mr. Spinks.

“Yet there’s worse things than serpents,” said Mr. Penny. “Old things

pass away, ’tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich

note was the serpent.”

“Clar’nets, however, be bad at all times,” said Michael Mail. “One

Christmas—years agone now, years—I went the rounds wi’ the Weatherbury

quire. ’Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all the clar’nets

froze—ah, they did freeze!—so that ’twas like drawing a cork every time

a key was opened; and the players o’ ’em had to go into a

hedger-and-ditcher’s chimley-corner, and thaw their clar’nets every now

and then. An icicle o’ spet hung down from the end of every man’s

clar’net a span long; and as to fingers—well, there, if ye’ll believe

me, we had no fingers at all, to our knowing.”

“I can well bring back to my mind,” said Mr. Penny, “what I said to

poor Joseph Ryme (who took the treble part in Chalk-Newton Church for

two-and-forty year) when they thought of having clar’nets there.

‘Joseph,’ I said, says I, ‘depend upon’t, if so be you have them

tooting clar’nets you’ll spoil the whole set-out. Clar’nets were not

made for the service of the Lard; you can see it by looking at ’em,’ I

said. And what came o’t? Why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ

on his own account within two years o’ the time I spoke, and the old

quire went to nothing.”

“As far as look is concerned,” said the tranter, “I don’t for my part

see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar’net. ’Tis further

off. There’s always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle’s looks

that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in making o’en; while

angels be supposed to play clar’nets in heaven, or som’at like ’em, if

ye may believe picters.”

“Robert Penny, you was in the right,” broke in the eldest Dewy. “They

should ha’ stuck to strings. Your brass-man is a rafting dog—well and

good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye—well and good; your

drum-man is a rare bowel-shaker—good again. But I don’t care who hears

me say it, nothing will spak to your heart wi’ the sweetness o’ the man

of strings!”

“Strings for ever!” said little Jimmy.

“Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers

in creation.” (“True, true!” said Bowman.) “But clarinets was death.”

(“Death they was!” said Mr. Penny.) “And harmonions,” William continued

in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval,

“harmonions and barrel-organs” (“Ah!” and groans from Spinks) “be

miserable—what shall I call ’em?—miserable—”

“Sinners,” suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and

did not lag behind like the other little boys.

“Miserable dumbledores!”

“Right, William, and so they be—miserable dumbledores!” said the choir

with unanimity.

By this time they were crossing to a gate in the direction of the

school, which, standing on a slight eminence at the junction of three

ways, now rose in unvarying and dark flatness against the sky. The

instruments were retuned, and all the band entered the school

enclosure, enjoined by old William to keep upon the grass.

“Number seventy-eight,” he softly gave out as they formed round in a

semicircle, the boys opening the lanterns to get a clearer light, and

directing their rays on the books.

Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time-worn hymn,

embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father

to son through several generations down to the present characters, who

sang them out right earnestly:

“Remember Adam’s fall,

O thou Man:

Remember Adam’s fall

From Heaven to Hell.

Remember Adam’s fall;

How he hath condemn’d all

In Hell perpetual

There for to dwell.

Remember God’s goodnesse,

O thou Man:

Remember God’s goodnesse,

His promise made.

Remember God’s goodnesse;

He sent His Son sinlesse

Our ails for to redress;

Be not afraid!

In Bethlehem He was born,

O thou Man:

In Bethlehem He was born,

For mankind’s sake.

In Bethlehem He was born,

Christmas-day i’ the morn:

Our Saviour thought no scorn

Our faults to take.

Give thanks to God alway,

O thou Man:

Give thanks to God alway

With heart-most joy.

Give thanks to God alway

On this our joyful day:

Let all men sing and say,

Holy, Holy!”

Having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two, but

found that no sound issued from the schoolhouse.

“Four breaths, and then, ‘O, what unbounded goodness!’ number

fifty-nine,” said William.

This was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken

of the performance.

“Good guide us, surely ’tisn’t a’ empty house, as befell us in the year

thirty-nine and forty-three!” said old Dewy.

“Perhaps she’s jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our

doings?” the tranter whispered.

“’Od rabbit her!” said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner

of the school chimney, “I don’t quite stomach her, if this is it. Your

plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a’

b’lieve, souls; so say I.”

“Four breaths, and then the last,” said the leader authoritatively.

“‘Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,’ number sixty-four.”

At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud

voice, as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the

previous forty years—“A merry Christmas to ye!”