The smiths’ ode for St Clement

The secretary of the Benevolent Institution of Smiths, writing from Southwark in 1825, asked Hone not to forget St Clement, the smiths’ saint. He remembered from childhood an old man who went round the trade on the day reciting an ode on smithery, dated 1610, in praise of the smith who makes the anvil ring and lives as merry as a king. It ended by asking pardon of rich and poor. He said the ode was now quite forgotten, like the old hospitality of the trade.