The edition of 1562 was printed with the notes of melodies that were then called Church Tunes. They formed the basis of all future collections of psalm-music for over a century. They soon were published in harmony in four parts, "which may be sung to all musical instrumentes set forth for the encrease of vertue and abolyshing of other vayne and tryfling ballads." In 1592 a very important collection of psalm-tunes was published to use with Sternhold and Hopkins' words. It is called "The Whole Booke of Psalmes: with their wonted tunes as they are sung in Churches composed into four parts." This book is noteworthy because in it the tunes are for the first time named after places, as is still the custom. The music contained square or oblong notes and also lozenge-shaped notes. The square note was a "semy-brave," the lozenge-shaped note was a "prycke" or a "mynymme," and "when there is a prycke by the square note, that prycke is half as much as the note that goeth before."
Music at that time was said to be pricked, not printed,--the word being derived from the prick or dot which formed the head of the note. Any song which was printed in various parts was called a prick-song, to distinguish it from one sung extemporaneously or by ear. The word prick-song occurs not only in all the musical books, but in the literature of the time, and in Shakespeare. "Tom Sternhold's" songs were entitled to be called prick-songs because they had notes of music printed with them. Many of the tunes in this collection were taken from the Genevan Psalter and Luther's Psalm-Book, or from Marot and Beza's French Book of Psalms. Hence they were irreverently called "Genevan Jiggs," and "Beza's Ballets."
There is much difference shown in the wording of these various editions of Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalms. The earlier ones were printed as Sternhold wrote them; but with the Genevan editions began great and astonishing alterations. Warton, who was no lover of Sternhold and Hopkins' verses, calling them "the disgrace of sacred poetry," said of these attempted improvements, with vehemence, that "many stanzas already too naked and weak like a plain old Gothic edifice stripped of its signatures of antiquity, have lost that little and almost only strength and support which they derived from ancient phrases." Other old critics thought that Sternhold, could he return to life, would hardly know his own verses.
This is Sternhold's rendering of the Psalm in the edition of 1549:--
1. The heavens & the fyrmamente
do wondersly declare
The glory of God omnipotent
his workes and what they are.
2. Ech daye declareth by his course
an other daye to come
And By the night we know lykwise
a nightly course to run.
3. There is no laguage tong or speche
where theyr sound is not heard,
In al the earth and coastes thereof
theyr knowledge is conferd.
4. In them the lord made royally
a settle for the sunne
Where lyke a Gyant joyfully
he myght his iourney runne.
5. And all the skye from ende to ende
he compast round about
No man can hyde hym from his heate
but he wll fynd hym out
In order to show the liberties taken with the text we can compare with it the Genevan edition printed in 1556. The second verse of that presumptuous rendering reads,--