theBythams
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church : rectors letter : may 2003  (Added
03/05/03) Reproduced from Glenside News : May 2003 "Dear Friends I have always been thankful that in the twelve years I have had the pleasure of being Rector of our four villages, Eileen and I have received friendship and kindness in abundance. This doesn't mean everyone always agrees with me and that I'm never wrong of course. The villages may be beautiful but they don't embody the perfection of the Kingdom of God. This also applies to the four churches, whether many are present on some great occasion, or just a few of us gather together, people have been friendly and Church officers helpful and efficient. God is surely in his heaven and all is well in his world, at least as far as we are concerned. Now that surely, is tempting fate! Now you may well wonder where all this is leading, especially as in the last two magazines I've written about both Easter and Iraq, and you would be right to wonder because so do I! What I'm actually trying to do is lead into an incident I read about the other day, it amused me and made me give thanks for my Parish and its people. The book I was reading was a short history of London churches, well less a history than odd stories. One account concerned the situation faced by a city rector in 1749. It seems that Hayes Register for that year recorded the misfortune of a London Clerk, 'Clerk' being the 18th Century term for 'Rector', and the picture it painted was quite beyond my comprehension. The account went like this: " March 18th, 1749 : The Clerk gave out the 100th Psalm, and the singers immediately opposed him, and sang the 15th and bred a disturbance " I won't give it to you verbatim because, as with most old books, it tends to be 'wordy', but the parish would seem to have been a parson's worst nightmare. The Register also records that on another occasion 'the ringers and other inhabitants disturned the Service from the beginning of the prayers to the end of the sermon, by ringing the bells and going up into the gallery to spit below'. On yet another occasion we read that a 'fellow came into the church with a pot of beer and a pipe, drinking and smoking in his pew throughout the sermon'. If as many people try to tell us, it was the golden age when all churches were full, it makes one wonder why they went? So having 'waffled' my way through half my alloted page let me conclude with another amusing story. It concerns St Willibrod, a Yorkshire man, if you can believe it with such a name, who lived in the 7th Century and became a Benedictine Monk. He actually travelled to Luxembourg, no mean feat in those days, where he founded the Abbey of Echternach which still houses his remains in a white sarcophagus. Every year on the Tuesday of Whitsun week, a unique procession takes place to honour the memory of the Yorkshire man who brought Christianity to the area. From 8am a crocodile of people wends its way around the town performing a traditional dance, they move five paces forward and three back until they finally arrive at the shrine where the saint's remains lie. The origins of the tradition are lost in the midst of time. Some local historians believe it to be a thanksgiving for preservation from the plague, or perhaps an invocation for God's help at such times. Another suggestion connects it with a man called Vitus who was unjustly accused of killing his wife. The story goes that, granted a last request on the scaffold, he asked to play his fiddle. When he started the people started to dance and were unable to stop until St Willibrod appeared and broke the spell. Whether the Saint declared him innocent or he was hung we don't know, but the dance takes place each year in memory of something, so why not that? Next month I'll try and think of something sensible to say, or perhaps not!." The Rev Bryan Bennett Castle Bytham Rectory |
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