midnight
I SAW THREE SHIPS . In those west-country parishes where but a few years back the feast of Christmas Eve was usually prolonged with cake and cider , `` crowding , '' and `` geese dancing , '' till the ancient carols ushered in the day , a certain languor not seldom pervaded the services of the Church a few hours later . Red eyes and heavy , young limbs hardly rested from the _ Dashing White Sergeant _ and _ Sir Roger _ , throats husky from a plurality of causes -- all these were recognised as proper to the season , and , in fact , of a piece with the holly on the communion rails . On a dark and stormy Christmas morning as far back as the first decade of the century , this languor was neither more nor less apparent than usual inside the small parish church of Ruan Lanihale , although Christmas fell that year on a Sunday , and dancing should , by rights , have ceased at midnight . The building stands high above a bleak peninsula on the South Coast , and the congregation had struggled up with heads slanted sou ' - west against the weather that drove up the Channel in a black fog . Now , having gained shelter , they quickly lost the glow of endeavour , and mixed in pleasing stupor the humming of the storm in the tower above , its intermittent onslaughts on the leadwork of the southern windows , and the voice of Parson Babbage lifted now and again from the chancel as if to correct the shambling pace of the choir in the west gallery . `` Mark me , '' whispered Old Zeb Minards , crowder and leader of the musicians , sitting back at the end of the Psalms , and eyeing his fiddle dubiously ; `` If Sternhold be sober this morning , Hopkins be drunk as a fly , or 't is t ` other way round . '' ''