At 11:36 AM 7/28/99 -0400, Carol Symes wrote:
>A friend of mine, organist and choirmaster at various Anglo-Catholic
>parishes, jobbed-in at a church in which the choir maintained curious
>ritual. Processing into the nave, each pair in turn would stoop down at a
>particular point and then straighten up, before continuing to the choir
>stalls. There was no altar or icon there, so Mark was puzzled enough to
>ask one of the older choristers about this practice. Apparently, it was a
>ritualized holdover from the days when there had been a banner hanging down
>into the aisle, and folks would stoop to avoid it. The banner had long
>since disappeared, but the practice was deeply ingrained and was now
>construed as an act of special piety.
>Since hearing this story, I have often found myself wondering how many
>liturgical gestures have a similar, practical origin.
Hmmm . . . I smell an urban legend here; when I heard the story from a
colleague it was a chandelier in a synagogue instead of a banner in a church.
TL
Thomas L. Long
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|