PARSON AND THE SPIDER
fpHE Archdeacon of Wrexham has been delivering a little lecturo to the churchwardens of certain Welsh churches in which ho finds too much dust and too many cobwebs. Such conditions have not always been peculiar to the area Archdeacon Williams seems to have in mind; according to Sir Archibald Geikje some of the remoter Scottish churches used to suffer from similar neglect, so that the buildings were rarely open to the air, and, undisturbed by cleaners, "halfstarved spiders preyed on half-starved flies. ,J To one such old parish church in Caithness went a visiting parson, a worthy veteran from a distant parish. At the Sunday morning service he found the building ill-ventilated and very far from clean. To crown all, when he entered the pulpit for his sermon a spider, suspended from the roof by its long thread, swung to and fro in front of his face, [t came, against his lips and was blown
vigorously away; but again it swung back, when with an indignant gesture the old man broke the web, exclaiming as he did so, "My friends, this is the dirtiest kirk I ever was to be poisoned by speeders!"
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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23405, 22 July 1939, Page 8 (Supplement)
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197PARSON AND THE SPIDER New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23405, 22 July 1939, Page 8 (Supplement)
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