“In Chevy Chase befall.”
Muttering, “Hoots! I maun be turning blind,” he adjusted his spectacles, and held the book close to his nose. Finding the exact words there, he gazed round him for a second as if he had doubts of his own sanity, and said, “Weel, freends, I am clean bambaized. I’ve sung the Psalms o’ Dauvit for thretty year, but never saw ‘Chevy Chase’ mentioned in them before.”
The feeling against repeating tunes approached to something like horror in certain parts of the country, even in the second and third decades of the present century, and I have heard my father tell how, when he was a young man, he accompanied a friend to the kirk in Logiealmond. The friend’s father was an elder in the kirk in question, and he, the young man, was to occupy the precentor’s desk for the day. In the course of the service he introduced a repeating tune, and the scene in the kirkyard at the “skailin’ o’ the kirk” made the occasion memorable. The young man’s father had hurried out immediately after the benediction was pronounced, and placing himself at the cheek of the kirk door, as soon as the budding precentor appeared he seized him by the neck, threw him to the ground, and, belabouring him with hands and feet, he exclaimed—“You abominable scoundrel! if you dare again to profane the word of God in my hearing, I’ll slay you with my own hands in the presence of the whole congregation!”
A precentor of age and experience was once as effectively corrected for the same practice. Thinking to steal a march on the minister, whose mind on the subject was well known, he started a repeating tune one day. As soon as his drift was evident the minister’s hand was over the pulpit and his fingers among the “lettergae’s” hair, and, “Stop, Dauvit! stop!” he shouted, “when the Lord repeats we’ll repeat; but no till then.”
Of course, then, even as now, repeating tunes had to be chosen with neat discrimination, as much of our sacred verse does not yield itself gracefully to such treatment. Repeats generally occur in the last line of a stanza, and the praise of a congregation has not infrequently been rendered ludicrous from the want of good taste and common-sense in the selection of tunes suited to the words, as well as to the sentiment of a psalm or hymn. To the well-known Hundredth Psalm a repeating tune has sometimes been applied, which, from a peculiarity in its arrangement, has rendered the line—“And for His sheep He doth us take”—thus, “And for His sheep he’d—And for His sheep he’d—And for His sheep he’d—oth us take.” From the same indiscretion multitudes of people have been made to exclaim—“Oh! send down Sal—Oh! send down Sal—Oh! send down sal—va—tion to us,” and solicit the privilege to “Bow—wow—wow before the throne.” But surely the most ludicrous example of the kind ever produced was when the female voices in a choir had to repeat by themselves—“Oh! for a man—Oh! for a man—Oh! for a man—sion in the skies.”
Occasions have also been made memorable by precentors from ignorance or accident launching into a tune in a different measure from the psalm. In this way a “lettergae” in a rural parish in the North, far from perfect in his profession, astonished the congregation one Sabbath many years ago. In the psalm which was intimated, the second line to be sung ended with the word “Jacob,” said psalm being a common metre. The precentor, who sang “by the lug” and used no tune-book, went off on a peculiar metre tune, and not discovering the error until he had reached the word “Jacob,” and then finding he was short of verbal material, he improvised for the occasion, and sang it “J—a—jay—fal—de—riddle—cob,” and so on, as necessity demanded, until the verses were finished. On coming out of the church some of his neighbours approached him and said—
“O’d, yon was a new ane ye ga’e us the day, Geordie.”
“Ay,” replied Geordie; “yon’s ‘Kinnoull Hill,’” and away he went, avoiding further question as much as he could.
Geordie’s impromptu was not disingenuous by any means, and his after-fencing was admirable; but he would have shown better discretion had he, when he discovered the incompatibility of the metres, acted after the manner of a well-known precentor of the same shire, lately deceased. This latter functionary was guided also more by the “lug” than the music-book, and in raising the psalm one day, even although he had hummed the tune to himself while the minister was reading the verses, his memory played him false at the critical moment of entering into action, and off he went on a tune the measure of which did not suit the psalm. The instant he discovered his error—which was at the end of the first line—he stopped, looked round the congregation—not a blush—and in a firm voice said, “I am wrong.” Then he mused for a moment, caught up the tune he meant to sing, and away he went with it, and, as I have heard him tell, never sang with better “birr” in all his life. As he left the church his arm was touched by the factor’s lady, a woman of rare intelligence and vivacity of manner, who exclaimed, “Now, Joseph, I see that a well-corrected mistake looks first-rate.” So it does; and is often the making of a man. This Joseph was acknowledged to be the best “reader of the line”—that is, of reading each line on the key-note before singing it—within a radius of twenty miles. He only once “put his foot in it,” so far as I have heard. It was in connection with the word “snow,” to which he at first applied the wrong vowel sound, and in attempting to correct himself made it altogether “Snee-snaw-snow.”
In connection with the practice of reading the line, I have heard several good stories. One of them is that a young man who looked even younger than he was, had been granted “a day in the desk” by the regular precentor of a country congregation. The first psalm given out was the fifth part of 119th, beginning “Teach me, O Lord, the perfect way;” and this line he declaimed with quite exceptional and inspiring eloquence. But on returning to sing it he failed to catch on the tune somehow. He read the line again; but, no, it would not go. Once more he tackled the subject by the “heft end,” and exclaimed, “Teach me, O Lord, the perfect way.” Still being unable to raise the tune, an old farmer in the church blurted out, “Dod, laddie, I’m thinking He has muckle need;” and rising to his feet, in response to a nod from the minister, he went off with the line and the tune both, much to the relief of the unfledged precentor. The next time that young man essayed to lead the praise in the same edifice, the service curiously enough opened with the 48th Paraphrase, the first line of which runs, “Let Christian faith and hope dispel;” and it was with him even as the words requested, for he disported himself to the complete satisfaction of all present.