There is nothing here about the music of the services, such as it was, vocal only, rugged, but not without melody. We know, however, that the Pilgrims used that psalter, brought over by them to New England, with its tunes printed above each psalm in lozenge-shaped Elizabethan notes, which Longfellow so grandly describes in "The Courtship of Miles Standish" as
the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,
Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together,
Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the walls of a churchyard,
Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses.
The duty of "tuning the Psalm," as they designated the performance, in the young colonial days, before choirs or precentors were dreamt of, was delegated to some lusty-lunged brother present, and, judged by the testimony which has come down to us, it was an onerous one, trying to his patience and his vocal power when, as sometimes happened, the congregation carried another tune against him. They were called to Sabbath worship in the earlier times by sound of horn or beat of drum or the blowing of a large conch-shell. At Plymouth we have seen it was by drum beat, probably from the roof, that the people were assembled at the meeting-house.
When the Mayflower left them to return home in the spring, the settlers must have felt they were desolate indeed, for their nearest civilised neighbours were five hundred miles to the north and south of them, the French at Nova Scotia and the English in Virginia. Seven months later, in November, came the Fortune, bringing thirty-five new emigrants, including William Brewster's eldest son; John Winslow, a brother of Edward; and Robert Cushman, who had turned back the year before at Old Plymouth. In addition to her passengers, the Fortune brought out to the colonists, from the Council of New England, a patent[8] of their land, drawn up in the name of John Pierce and his associate Merchant Adventurers in the same way as the charter granted them by the Plymouth Company on February 21, 1620, authorising the planters to establish their colony near the mouth of the Hudson river.
Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth
From the Painting by A. W. Bayes
The Departure of the Mayflower
When the Fortune sailed back to England, she carried a cargo of merchandise valued at five hundred pounds. This was intended for the Adventurers, but they never received it, for when nearing port, the vessel was captured by the French and the cargo seized. The ship was allowed to proceed, and Cushman, who returned in her, secured the papers on board, among them Bradford and Winslow's Journal, known as Mourt's Relation, and a letter from Edward Winslow to his "loving and old friend" George Morton, who was about to come out, giving seasonable advice as to what he and his companions should bring with them—good store of clothes and bedding, and each man a musket and fowling-piece; paper and linseed oil for the making of their windows (glass being then too great a luxury for a New England home), and much store of powder and shot.
Soon arrived further parties from Leyden and stores from the Adventurers in London in the Anne and the Little James pinnace, the people including such welcome additions as Brewster's two daughters, Fear and Patience; George Morton and his household; Mrs. Samuel Fuller; Alice Carpenter, widow of Edward Southworth, afterwards the second wife of Governor Bradford; and Barbara, who married Miles Standish. Then from the Leyden pastor came letters for Bradford and Brewster. The writer was dead—had been dead a year—when those letters reached their destination, but this they only knew when Standish gave them the tidings on his return from a voyage to England. John Robinson passed away at the age of forty-nine on March 1, 1622, in the old meeting-house at Leyden, and they buried him under the pavement of St. Peter's Church. Brewster lost his wife about the time the sad news was known, and the messenger who brought it had further to tell of the death of Robert Cushman. Truly the tale of affliction was a sore one.