Part 5 (2/2)

Many of the little chips called ”Presbyterian checks” are, however, still in existence. They are oblong discs of pewter, about an inch and a half long, bearing the initials ”P. P.,” which stand, it is said, for ”Pelham Presbyterian.” I could not but reflect, as I looked at the simple little stamped slips of metal, that in a community so successful in the difficult work of counterfeiting coin, it would have been very easy to form a mould and cast from it spurious checks with which to circ.u.mvent the deacons and preserve due dignity in the meeting.

The Presbyterian checks have never been attributed in Ma.s.sachusetts to other than the Pelham church, and are usually found in towns in the vicinity of Pelham; and there the story of their purpose and use is universally and implicitly believed. A clergyman of the Pelham church gave to many of his friends these Presbyterian checks, which he had found among the disused and valueless church-properties, and the little relics of the old-time deacons and services have been carefully preserved.

In New Hamps.h.i.+re, however, a similar custom prevailed in the churches of Londonderry and the neighboring towns.. The Londonderry settlers were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians (and the Pelham planters were an off-shoot of the Londonderry settlement), and they followed the custom of the Scotch Presbyterians in convening the churches twice a year to partake of the Lord's Supper. This a.s.sembly was always held in Londonderry, and ministers and congregations gathered from all the towns around. Preparatory services were held on Thursday, Friday, and Sat.u.r.day. Long tables were placed in the aisles of the church on the Sabbath; and after a protracted and solemn address upon the deep meaning of the celebration and the duties of the church-members, the oldest members of the congregation were seated at the table and partook of the sacrament. Thin cakes of unleavened bread were specially prepared for this sacred service. Again and again were the tables refilled with communicants, for often seven hundred church-members were present. Thus the services were prolonged from early morning until nightfall. When so many were to partake of the Lord's Supper, it seemed necessary to take means to prevent any unworthy or improper person from presenting himself. Hence the tables were fenced off, and each communicant was obliged to present a ”token.” These tokens were similar to the ”Presbyterian checks;” they were little strips of lead or pewter stamped with the initials ”L. D.,” which may have stood for ”Londonderry” or ”Lord's Day.” They were presented during the year by the deacons and elders to worthy and pious church-members. This bi-annual celebration of the Lord's Supper--this gathering of old friends and neighbors from the rocky wilds of New Hamps.h.i.+re to join, in holy communion--was followed on Monday by cheerful thanksgiving and social intercourse, in which, as in every feast, our old friend, New England rum, played no unimportant part. The three days previous to the communion Sabbath were, however, solemnly devoted to the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d; a Londonderry man was reproved and prosecuted for spreading grain upon a Thursday preceding a communion Sunday, just as he would have been for doing similar work upon the Sabbath.

The use of these ”tokens” in the Londonderry church continued until the year 1830.

In the coin collection of the American Antiquarian Society are little pewter communion-checks, or tokens, stamped with a heart. These were used in the Presbyterian church in Philadelphia, and were delivered to pious church-members at the Friday evening prayer-meeting preceding the communion Sabbath. Long tables were set in the aisles, as at Londonderry. In practice, belief, and origin, the New Hamps.h.i.+re and Pennsylvania churches were sisters.

The deacons had many minor duties to perform in the different parishes.

Some of these duties they shared with the t.i.thingman. They visited the homes of the church-members to hear the children say the catechism, they visited and prayed with the sick, and they also reported petty offences, though they were not accorded quite so powerful legal authority as the t.i.thingmen and constables.

It was much desired by several of the first-settled ministers that there should be deaconesses in the New England Puritan church, and many good reasons were given for making such appointments. It was believed that for the special duty of visiting the sick and afflicted in the community deaconesses would be more useful than deacons. There had been an aged deaconess in the Puritan church in Holland, who with a ”little birchen rod” had kept the children in awe and order in meeting, and who had also exercised ”her guifts” in speaking; but when she died no New England successor was appointed to fill her place.

XI.

The Psalm-Book of the Pilgrims.

We read in ”The Courts.h.i.+p of Miles Standish,” of the fair Priscilla, when John Alden came to woo her for his friend, the warlike little captain, that

”Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth, Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together; Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard, Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses. Such was the book from whose pages she sang the old Puritan anthem.”

One of these ”well-worn psalm-books of Ainsworth” lies now before me, perhaps the very one from which the lonely Priscilla sang as she sat a-spinning.

There is something especially dear to the lover and dreamer of the olden time, to the book-lover and antiquary as well, in an old, worn psalm or hymn book. It speaks quite as eloquently as does an old Bible of loving daily use, and adds the charm of interest in the quaint verse to reverence for the sacred word. A world of tender fancies springs into life as I turn over the pages of any old psalm-book ”reading between the lines,” and as I decipher the faded script on the t.i.tlepage. But this ”psalm-book of Ainsworth,” this book loved and used by the Pilgrims, brought over in one of those early s.h.i.+ps, perhaps in the ”Mayflower” itself, this book so symbolic of those early struggling days in New England, has a romance, a charm, an interest which thrills every drop of Puritan blood in my veins.

It is pleasing, too, this ”Ainsworth's Version,” aside from any thought of its historic a.s.sociations; its square pages of diversified type are well printed, and have a quaint unfamiliar look which is intensely attractive, and to which the odd, irregular notes of music, the curiously ornamented head and tail pieces, and the occasional Hebrew or Greek letters add their undefinable charm.

It is a square quarto of three hundred and forty-eight closely printed pages, bound in time-stained but well-preserved parchment, and even the parchment itself is interesting, and lovely to the touch. The t.i.tlepage is missing, but I know that this is the edition printed, as was Priscilla's, in Amsterdam in 1612 (not ”in England in 1600” as a note written in the last blank page states). The full t.i.tle was ”The Book of Psalms. Englished both in Prose and Metre. With annotations opening the words and sentences by conference with other Scriptures. Eph. v: 18,19. Bee yee filled with the Spirit speaking to yourselves in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual-Songs singing and making melodie in your hearts to the Lord.” The book contains besides the Psalms and Annotations, on its first pages, a ”Preface declaring the reason and use of the Book;” and at the last pages a ”Table directing to some princ.i.p.al things observed in the Annotations of the Psalms,” a list of ”Hebrew phrases observed which are somewhat hard and figurative,” and also some ”General Observations touching the Psalms.”

I can well imagine what a pious delight this book was to our Pilgrim Fathers; and what a still greater delight it was to our Pilgrim Mothers, in that day and country of few books. They possessed in it, not only a wonderful new metrical version of the Psalms for singing, but a prose version for comparison as well; and the deeply learned and profoundly worded annotations placed at the end of each Psalm were doubtless of special interest to such ”scripturists with all their hearts” as they were.

There were also, ”for the use and edification of the saints,” printed above each psalm the airs of appropriate tunes. The ”rough-hewn, angular notes”

are irregularly lozenge-shaped, like the notes or ”p.r.i.c.ks” in Queen Elizabeth's ”Virginal-Book,” and are placed on the staff without bars.

Ainsworth, in his preface, says, ”Tunes for the Psalms I find none set of G.o.d: so that ech people is to use the most grave decent and comfortable manner that they know how, according to the general rule. The singing notes I have most taken from our Englished psalms when they will fit the mesure of the verse: and for the other long verses I have also taken (for the most part) the gravest and easiest tunes of the French and Dutch psalmes.” Easy the tunes certainly are, to the utmost degree of simplicity.

Great diversity too of type did the Pilgrims find in their Psalm-book: Roman type, Italics, black-letter, all were used; the verse was printed in Italics, the prose in Roman type, and the annotation in black-letter and small Roman text with close-s.p.a.ced lines. This variety though picturesque makes the text rather difficult to read; for while one can decipher black-letter readily enough when reading whole pages of it, when it is interspersed with other type it makes the print somewhat confusing to the unaccustomed eye.

One curious characteristic of the typography is the frequent use of the hyphen, compound words or rather compound phrases being formed apparently without English rule or reason. Such combinations as these are given as instances: ”highly-him-preferre,” ”renowned-name,” ”repose-me-quietlie,”

”in-mind-uplay,” ”turn-to-ashes,” ”my-alonely-soul,” ”beat-them-final,”

”pouring-out-them-hard,” ”inveyers-mak-streight,” and ”condemn-thou-them- as-guilty,”--which certainly would make fit verses to be sung to the accompaniment of Master Mace's ”excellent-large-plump-l.u.s.ty-fullspeaking- organ.”

Ainsworth's Version when read proves to be a scholarly book, exhibiting far better grammar and punctuation and more uniformity of spelling than ”The New England Psalm-book,” which at a later date displaced Ainsworth in the affections and religious services of the New England Puritans and Pilgrims.

Both versions are somewhat confused in sense, and of uncouth and grotesque versification; though the metre of Ainsworth is better than the rhyme. It is all written in ”common metre,” nearly all in lines of eight and six syllables alternately.

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