Navy cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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A well kept, original lovely edition which presents many fascinating reads of a time when the pace of life was slower. A good book.

When the writer was a parson in Yorkshire, he had in his parish a blacksmith blessed, or afflicted—which shall we say?—with seven daughters and not a son. Now the parish was a newly constituted one, and it had a temporary licensed service room; but during the week before the newly erected church was to be consecrated, the blacksmith’s wife presented her husband with a boy—his first boy. Then the blacksmith came to the parson, and the following conversation ensued:— Blacksmith: “Please, sir, I’ve gotten a little lad at last, and I want to have him baptized on Sunday.” Parson: “Why, Joseph, put it off till Thursday, when the new church will be consecrated; then your little man will be the first child christened in the new font in the new church.” Blacksmith (shuffling with his feet, hitching his shoulders, looking down): “Please, sir, folks say that t’ fust child as is baptized i’ a new church is bound to dee (die). T’ old un (the devil) claims it. Now, sir, I’ve seven little lasses, and but one lad. If this were a lass again ’t wouldn’t ’a’ mattered; but as it’s a lad—well, sir, I won’t risk it.”

Sabine Baring-Gould (28 January 1834 – 2 January 1924) of Lew Trenchard in Devon, England, was an Anglican priest, hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist, folk song collector and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1,240 publications, though this list continues to grow.

He is remembered particularly as a writer of hymns, the best-known being “Onward, Christian Soldiers”, and “Now the Day Is Over”. He also translated the carols “Gabriel’s Message”, and “Sing Lullaby” from Basque to English.

His family home, the manor house of Lew Trenchard, near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it rebuilt and was a hotel.