Author: Nelson
Date: 2020-08-03 11:09
This is from one of Thomas Hardy's novels written around 1878 so there's a bit of work to unravel it from the country dialect of 19th Wessex, an section of old England long since known by other county names. From "Under the Greenwood Tree" (telling the adventures of the Church musicians and choir at a time when the locals would supply the music from the Western Gallery of the local church} but here carolling the villagers on a freezing Christmas night......
"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.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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