Patter

a speech or discourse, a pompous street oration, a judge’s summing up, a trial. Ancient word for muttering. Probably from the Latin , PATERNOSTER , or Lord’s Prayer. This was said, before the Reformation, in a “low voice” by the priest, until he came to “and lead us not into temptation,” to which the choir responded, “but deliver us from evil.” In the reformed Prayer Book this was altered, and the Lord’s Prayer directed to be said “with a loud voice .” Dr. Pusey takes this view of the derivation in his Letter to the Bishop of London , p. 78, 1851. Scott uses the word twice, in Ivanhoe and the Bride of Lammer moor .