X. AMERICAN PSALMODY
The Pilgrims brought with them from Leyden Ainsworth’s version of the Psalms, published in Amsterdam—Genevan rather than English in character. Its use was largely confined to the Pilgrims and their descendants. Presently the copies of both versions became rare and the service of song depended on the “lining out” of the verses.
The first book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book, an independent version of the Psalms made by Thomas Welde, Richard Mather, and John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, a committee appointed in 1636. It was proposed to make it more scriptural than either of the previous versions used. It appeared in 1640. Its preface consisted of a discourse urging that psalm-singing was both lawful and necessary. During the next century and a half no less than seventy editions were printed. It was improved by Dunster and Lyon and reprinted in Great Britain, eighteen editions being called for in England and twenty-two in Scotland. This was America’s first contribution to the song service of the Mother Country, but by no means the last.
It may be interesting to see just what literary style this Bay Psalm Book could display, and a few specimens are herewith given. The one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, for instance, was given the following form:
1. “The rivers on of Babilon
There when wee did sit downe:
Yea, even then wee mourned when
wee remembred Sion.
2. Our Harp wee did hang it amid
Upon the willow tree,
Because there they that us away
led in captivitee,
3. Required of us a song and thus
ask mirth: us waste who laid,
sing us among a Sion’s song
unto us then they said.
4. The Lord’s song sing can wee? being
in stranger’s land. Then let
loose her skill my right hand, if I
Jerusalem forget.
5. Let cleave my tongue my pallate on
if minde thee doe not I
if chief joys or’e I prize not more
Jerusalem my joy.”
Cotton Mather’s rhymeless version was much more sensible in its form, for it eliminated the chief handicap in producing a literal version in metrical form.
As in the Psalm versions of England and Scotland, there was a vivid consciousness of literary and poetic shortcomings; but the sense of obligation to supply a literal translation of the Hebrew overrode all impulses toward a smoother rendering. The preface frankly states the position of the committee: “If therefore the verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that God’s altar needs not our polishing (Ex. 20), for we have respected rather a plaine translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the Hebrew words into English language and David’s poetry into English meetre.”
There were other American Psalm versions, but the only versions worth considering are the revisions of Isaac Watts’ Psalms, which will come up in introducing American hymnody later.