ALFORD, LINCOLNSHIRE -- The not-quite-undisputed world's loudest town crier and his latest challenger bellowed like wounded water buffaloes in a high noon shout-out at the Corn Exchange in this old market town.
"Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" cried Alan "Mighty Mouth" Myatt, the doughty, round-bellied claimant to the title.
"Gawwwwd Saaave the Queen," responded Paul Gough, the bearded, dandyish contender.
"Oyez," the traditional call of the town crier, is an Old French word that came to Britain with William the Conqueror almost 1,000 years ago. It means: Listen up. "God Save the Queen" stands for the obvious.
In an age of the fax and the cellular phone, the town crier may seem a bit of an anachronism. But the art flourishes. The Myatt-Gough shouting match is only a preliminary to the main bout here last week: the Alford Town Criers Championship.
Resplendent in lace and velvet and gold braid, a dozen criers came from all over England to compete. Crying is so popular that aspirants are beginning to have a hard time finding a town to cry for. One doesn't just pop into the local pub and announce he's the town crier: Criers are appointed by the mayor or chosen by the lord of the manor.
"It's an ancient calling," says Pearl Capewell, town crier for the city of Peterborough and one of two female contenders in Alford. Nine women are town criers in the United Kingdom, including the oldest, Grace Hall, of Pathfinder village in Devon, who is 94 or a bit more.
There are about 120 criers in Britain, many in Canada and a half-dozen or so in the United States.
"It's supposedly one of the oldest professions," Mrs. Capewell muses.
Ted Davy, town crier of Alford and host for the championship, says, "There's been a town crier here in Alford since 1283."
Mr. Davy took over in 1987. He's a fine, rotund figure clad in red and black velvet reminiscent of a 1750s coachman's gear. A gray ponytail wags out from under his red-fur-trimmed headdress, and a whitish beard brushes his red-edged lace bib.
He had a Mohawk haircut when he was a wrestler called Chief Billy Whitecloud and a hard drinker. But he got religion and become a teetotaler, an evangelist and the town crier.
"It began as a fun thing, and it became very, very serious," he says.
People tend to think of the town crier as an amiable gent who ambled around town chanting "12 o'clock and all is well."
