THE REV. CANON ÆTHELSTAN BABBIT

The following is a selection from Cautionary Tales for Careful Clerics, an original volume of humorous poetry recently released by St. Lazarus Press, the publishing arm of the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Montreal, QC.

THE REV. CANON ÆTHELSTAN BABBIT

who omitted his morning office and was killed by a bus.


All Priests and Deacons are to say daily the Morning and Evening Prayer either privately or openly.

The Preface Concerning the Service of the Church, 1662 Book of Common Prayer



THE REVEREND Canon Æthelstan Babbit

Was, I am persuaded, a creature of habit.

He rose every morning at six and a quarter;

He scraped off his whiskers; he boiled the water

For coffee and put on his moth-eaten cassock.

He marked out the readings and set out his hassock

And sat himself down in his favourite chair

And opened his Prayer Book to say Morning Prayer.

The psalmody, lessons, and collects complete,

At eight o’clock sharp he’d descend to the street

And set off for his church at a rather brisk pace

To begin his day’s work of dispensing God’s grace.


O miserable canon! One day it transpired

That the battery in his alarm-clock expired

In media nocte; and so nothing chimed

When the canon his moment of rising had timed.

He awoke with a start at three quarters past seven;

He sat bolt upright and cried “O saints in heaven!”

His whiskers he scraped more with haste than with care;

He threw on his cassock, dragged comb through his hair,

And cast a sad eye on his worn Common Prayer.

He thought to himself: “It would be no great sin

But once—just this once, and then never again—

To skip this one office; for God knows I’m bound

To start at eight sharp on my pastoral round!”

Image by Roland Hui

O unhappy cleric! If he had reflected

On how much more fully a priest is protected

By grace when his office he says with due care,

He would never have thought to omit Morning Prayer!

He burst forth from his dwelling and, all in a fuss,

He ran into the street and was hit by a bus.

When summoned, the doctor, pronouncing him dead,

Gave the cause of his passing as

MATTINS UNSAID.



The Parish’s Ladies all murmured that might he

Have lingered at home to recite his Venite

And begun grace-dispensing but twelve minutes late,

He might have avoided his tear-worthy fate,

So sparing the Parish the trouble of finding

A Sensible Rector who needed less minding.

If you would fare better, say your Common Prayer,

Set forth by authority, with utmost care,

And be not as the parson who prayerlessly goes

And is sprayed off the street with a high-pressure hose. ❧

Inspired by Hilaire Belloc’s classic Cautionary Tales for Children, this new collection of poetry offers up a comical compendium of priestly peccadilloes and their often lethal, always hilarious
consequences. In this collection of poems, the reader will meet the likes of the Rev. Canon Æthelstan Babbit, who omitted morning prayer and was killed by a bus, and the Rev. Dr Sigismund Drone, who
preached for too long and came to grief by a parrot, along with a host of other clerical miscreants, all brought to life with 36 original illustrations. Written from an Anglican perspective, these tales of
fallible humanity are sure to strike terror into the hearts of erring clerics—and tickle the funny bones of everyone else—across denominational lines.

Kieran Wilson

Kieran Wilson is a writer, editor, and public servant who lives with his wife and daughter in a moat-girt fastness on the sceptred isle of Gabriola, off Canada’s west coast. When the cleric-chastising Muse deserts him, he spends his idle hours tramping local trails, quaffing local ale, and breathing maledictions against local potholes.

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