Part 12 (1/2)
So wasted is my flesh I'm left Nothing but skin and bone.
”Like th' Owl and Pelican that dwell In desarts out of sight, I sadly do bemoan myself, In solitude delight.
”The wakeful bird that on Housetops Sits without company And spends the night in mournful cries Leads such a life as I.
”The Ashes I rowl in when I eat Are tasted with my bread, And with my Drink are mixed the tears I plentifully shed.”
A version of the Psalms which seems to have demanded and deserved more attention than it received was written by Cotton Mather. He was doomed to disappointment in seeing his version adopted by the New England churches just as his ambitions and hopes were disappointed in many other ways. This book was published in 1718. It was called ”Psalterium Americanum. A Book of Psalms in a translation exactly conformed unto the Original; but all in blank verse. Fitted unto the tunes commonly used in the Church.” By a curious arrangement of brackets and the use of two kinds of print these psalms could be divided into two separate metres and could be sung to tunes of either long or short metre. After each psalm were introduced explanations written in Mather's characteristic manner,--a manner both scholarly and bombastic. I have read the ”Psalterium Americanum” with care, and am impressed with its elegance, finish, and dignity. It is so popular, however, even now-a-days, to jibe at poor Cotton Mather, that his Psalter does not escape the thrusts of laughing critics. Mr. Gla.s.s, the English critic, holds up these lines as ”one of the rich things:”--
”As the Hart makes a panting cry For cooling streams of water, So my soul makes a panting cry For thee--O Mighty G.o.d.”
I have read these lines over and over again, and fail to see anything very ludicrous in them, though they might be slightly altered to advantage.
Still they may be very absurd and laughable from an English point of view.
So superior was Cotton Mather's version to the miserable verses given in ”The Bay Psalm-Book” that one wonders it was not eagerly accepted by the New England churches. Doubtless they preferred rhyme--even the atrocious rhyme of ”The Bay Psalm Book.” And the fact that the ”Psalterium Americanum” contained no musical notes or directions also militated against its use.
Other American clergymen prepared metrical versions of the psalms that were much loved and loudly sung by the respective congregations of the writers.
The work of those worthy, painstaking saints we will neither quote nor criticise,--saying only of each reverend versifier, ”Truly, I would the G.o.ds had made thee poetical.” Rev. John Barnard, who preached for fifty-four years in Marblehead, published at the age of seventy years a psalm-book for his people. Though it appeared in 1752, a time when ”The Bay Psalm Book” was being shoved out of the New England churches, Barnard's Version of the Psalms was never used outside of Marblehead. Rev. Abijah Davis published another book of psalms in which he copied whole pages from Watts without a word of thanks or of due credit, which was apparently neither Christian, clerical nor manly behavior.
Watts's monosyllabic Hymns, which were not universally used in America until after the Revolution, are too well known and are still too frequently seen to need more than mention. Within the last century a flood of new books of psalms of varying merit and existence has poured out upon the New England churches, and filled the church libraries and church, pews, the second-hand book shops, the missionary boxes, and the paper-mills.
XV.
The Church Music.
Of all the dismal accompaniments of public wors.h.i.+p in the early days of New England, the music was the most hopelessly forlorn,--not alone from the confused versifications of the Psalms which were used, but from the mournful monotony of the few known tunes and the horrible manner in which those tunes were sung. It was not much better in old England. In 1676 Master Mace wrote of the singing in English churches, ”'T is sad to hear what whining, toling, yelling or shreaking there is in our country congregations.”
A few feeble efforts were made in America at the beginning of the eighteenth century to attempt to guide the singing. The edition of 1698 of ”The Bay Psalm-Book” had ”Some few Directions” regarding the singing added on the last pages of the book, and simple enough they were in matter if not in form. They commence, ”_First_, observe how many note-compa.s.s the tune is next the place of your first note, and how many notes above and below that so as you may begin the tune of your first note, as the rest may be sung in the compa.s.s of your and the peoples voices without Squeaking above or Grumbling below.”
This ”Squeaking above and Grumbling below” had become far too frequent in the churches; Judge Sewall writes often with much self-reproach of his failure in ”setting the tune,” and also records with pride when he ”set the psalm well.” Here is his pathetic record of one of his mistakes: ”He spake to me to set the tune. I intended Windsor and fell into High Dutch, and then essaying to set another tune went into a Key much to high. So I pray'd to Mr. White to set it which he did well. Litchfield Tune. The Lord Humble me and Instruct me that I should be the occasion of any interruption in the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d.”
The singing at the time must have been bad beyond belief; how much of its atrocity was attributable to the use of ”The Bay Psalm-Book,” cannot now be known. The great length of many of the psalms in that book was a fatal barrier to any successful effort to have good singing. Some of them were one hundred and thirty lines long, and occupied, when lined and sung, a full half-hour, during which the patient congregation stood. It is told of Dr. West, who preached in Dartmouth in 1726, that he forgot one Sabbath Day to bring his sermon to meeting. He gave out a psalm, walked a quarter of a mile to his house, got his sermon, and was back in his pulpit long before the psalm was finished. The irregularity of the rhythm in ”The Bay Psalm Book” must also have been a serious difficulty to overcome. Here is the rendering given of the 133d Psalm:--
1. How good and sweet to see i'ts for bretheren to dwell together in unitee:
2. Its like choice oyle that fell the head upon that down did flow the beard unto beard of Aron: The skirts of his garment that unto them went down:
3. Like Hermons dews descent Sions mountains upon for there to bee the Lords blessing life aye lasting commandeth hee.
How this contorted song could have been sung even to the simplest tune by unskilled singers who possessed no guiding notes of music is difficult to comprehend. Small wonder that Judge Sewall was forced to enter in his diary, ”In the morning I set York tune and in the second going over, the gallery carried it irresistibly to St. Davids which discouraged me very much.” We can fancy him stamping his foot, beating time, and roaring York at the top of his old lungs, and being overcome by the strong-voiced gallery, and at last sadly succ.u.mbing to St. David's. Again he writes: ”I set York tune and the Congregation went out of it into St. Davids in the very 2nd going over. They did the same 3 weeks before. This is the 2nd Sign. It seems to me an intimation for me to resign the Praecentor's Place to a better Voice. I have through the Divine Long suffering and Favour done it for 24 years and now G.o.d in his Providence seems to call me off, my voice being enfeebled.” Still a third time he ”set Windsor tune;” they ”ran over into Oxford do what I would.” These unseemly ”running overs” became so common that ere long each singer ”set the tune” at his own will and the loudest-voiced carried the day. A writer of the time, Rev. Thomas Walter, says of this reign of _concordia discors_: ”The tunes are now miserably tortured and twisted and quavered, in some Churches, into a horrid Medly of confused and disorderly Voices. Our tunes are left to the Mercy of every unskilful Throat to chop and alter, to twist and change, according to their infinitely divers and no less Odd Humours and Fancies.
I have myself paused twice in one note to take breath. No two Men in the Congregation quaver alike or together, it sounds in the Ears of a Good Judge like five hundred different Tunes roared out at the same Time, with perpetual Interfearings with one another.”
Still, confused and poor as was the singing, it was a source of pure and unceasing delight to the Puritan colonists,--one of the rare pleasures they possessed,--a foretaste of heaven;
”for all we know Of what the blessed do above Is that they sing and that they love.”
And to even that remnant of music--their few jumbled cacophonous melodies--they clung with a devotion almost phenomenal.
Nor should we underrate the cohesive power that psalm-singing proved in the early communities; it was one of the most potent influences in gathering and holding the colonists together in love. And they reverenced their poor halting tunes in a way quite beyond our modern power of fathoming. Whenever a Puritan, even in road or field, heard at a distance the sound of a psalm-tune, though the sacred words might be quite undistinguishable, he doffed his hat and bowed his head in the true presence of G.o.d. We fain must believe, as Arthur Hugh Clough says,--
”There is some great truth, partial, very likely, but needful, Lodged, I am strangely sure, in the tones of an English psalm-tune.”