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 gods 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 worship 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-compass 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 compass 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 worship of God."
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: