Sabbath in Puritan New England Part 10

6. The just when they behold thy fall with feare will praise the Lord: And in reproach of thee withall cry out with one accord.

When the unhappy King Charles fled from Oxford to a camp of troops he also was insulted by having the same psalm given out in his presence by the boorish chaplain of the troops. After the cruel words were ended the heartsick king rose and asked the soldiers to sing the fifty-sixth psalm.

Whenever I read the beautiful and pathetic words, as peculiarly appropriate as if they had been written for that occasion only, I can see it all before me,--the great camp, the angry minister, the wretched but truly royal king; and I can hear the simple and n.o.ble song as it pours from the lips of hundreds of rude soldiers:

1. Have mercy Lord on mee I pray for man would mee devour.

He fighteth with me day by day and troubleth me each hour.

2. Mine enemies daily enterprise to swallow mee outright To fight against me many rise O thou most high of might

5. What things I either did or spake they wrest them at thier wil: And all the councel that they take is how to work me il.

6. They all consent themselves to hide close watch for me to lay: They spie my pathes, and snares have layd to take my life away.

7. Shall they thus scape on mischief set, thou G.o.d on them wilt frowne: For in his wrath he will not let to throw whole kingdomes downe.

It would perhaps be neither just nor conducive to proper judgment to gather only a florilege of n.o.ble verses from Sternhold and Hopkins' Version and point out none of the "weedy-trophies," the quaint and even uncouth lines which disfigure the work. We must, however, in considering and judging them, remember that many words and even phrases which at present seem rather ludicrous or undignified had, in the sixteenth century, significations which have now become obsolete, and which were then neither vulgar nor unpoetical. I also have been forced to take my selections from a copy of Sternhold and Hopkins printed in 1599, and bound up with a "Breeches Bible;" for I have access to no earlier edition. Sternhold and Hopkins themselves may not be in truth responsible for many of the crudities. Hopkins, in his rendition of the 12th verse of the seventy-fourth Psalm, thus addresses the Deity:--

"Why doost withdraw thy hand abacke and hide it in thy lappe?

O pluck it out and bee not slacke to give thy foes a rap."

"Rap" may have meant a heavier, a mightier blow then than it does now-a-days.

Here is another curious verse from the seventieth psalm,--

"Confounde them that apply and seeke to make my shame And at my harme doe laugh & crye So So there goeth the game."

The sixth verse of the fifty-eighth psalm is rendered thus:--

"O G.o.d breake thou thier teeth at once within thier mouthes throughout; The tuskes that in thier great jawbones like Lions whelpes hang out."

Another verse reads thus:--

"The earth did quake, the raine pourde down Heard men great claps of thunder And Mount Sinai shooke in such state As it would cleeve in sunder."

One verse of the thirty-fifth psalm reads thus:--

"The belly-G.o.ds and flattering traine that all good things deride At me doe grin with greate disdaine and pluck thier mouths aside.

Lord when wilt thou amend this geare why dost thou stay & pause?

O rid my soul, my onely deare, out of these Lions clawes."

The word tush occurs frequently and quaintly: "Tush I an sure to fail;"

"Tush G.o.d forgetteth this."

"And with a blast doth puff against such as would him correct Tush Tush saith he I have no dread."

Here are some of the curious expressions used:--

"Though gripes of grief and pangs full sore shall lodge with us all night."

"For why their hearts were nothing lent to Him nor to His trade."

"Our soul in G.o.d hath joy and game."

"They are so fed that even for fat thier eyes oft-times out start."

"They grin they mow they nod thier heads."

"While they have war within thier hearts."

as b.u.t.ter are thier words."

"Divide them Lord & from them pul thier devilish double-tongue."

"My silly soul uptake."

"And rained down Manna for them to eat a food of mickle-wonder."

"For joy I have both gaped & breathed."

But it is useless to multiply these selections, which, viewed individually, are certainly absurd and inelegant. They often indicate, however, the exact thought of the Psalmist, and are as well expressed as the desire to be literal as well as poetic will permit them to be. Sternhold's verses compare quite favorably, when looked at either as a whole or with regard to individual lines, with those of other poets of his day, for Chaucer was the only great poet who preceded him.

I must acknowledge quite frankly in the face of critics of both this and the past century that I always read Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalms with a delight, a satisfaction that I can hardly give reasons for. Many of the renderings, though unmelodious and uneven, have a rough vigor and a sweeping swing that is to me wonderfully impressive, far more so than many of the elegant and polished methods of modern versifiers. And they are so thoroughly antique, so devoid of any resemblance to modern poems, that I love them for their penetrating savor of the olden times; and they seem no more to be compared and contrasted with modern verses than should an old castle tower be compared with a fine new city house. We prefer the latter for a habitation, it is infinitely better in every way, but we can admire also the rough grandeur of the old ruin.

XIV.

Other Old Psalm-Books.

There are occasionally found in New England on the shelves of old libraries, in the collections of antiquaries, or in the attics of old farm-houses, hidden in ancient hair-trunks or painted sea-chests or among a pile of dusty books in a barrel,--there are found dingy, mouldy, tattered psalm-books of other versions than the ones which we know were commonly used in the New England churches. Perhaps these books were never employed in public wors.h.i.+p in the new land; they may have been brought over by some colonist, in affectionate remembrance of the church of his youth, and sung from only with tender reminiscent longing in his own home. But when groups of settlers who were neighbors and friends in their old homes came to America and formed little segregated communities by themselves, there is no doubt that they sung for a time from the psalm-books that they brought with them.

A rare copy is sometimes seen of Marot and Beza's French Psalm-book, brought to America doubtless by French Huguenot settlers, and used by them until (and perhaps after) the owners had learned the new tongue. Some of the Huguenots became members of the Puritan churches in America, others were Episcopalians. In Boston the Fancuils, Baudoins, Boutineaus, Sigourneys, and Johannots were all Huguenots, and attended the little brick church built on School Street in 1704, which was afterwards occupied by the Twelfth Congregational Society of Boston, and in 1788 became a Roman Catholic church.

The pocket psalm-book of Gabriel Bernon, the builder of the old French Fort at Oxford, is one of Marot and Beza's Version, and is still preserved and owned by one of his descendants; other New England families of French lineage cherish as precious relics the French psalm-books of their Huguenot ancestors. There has been in France no such incessant production of new metrical versions of the psalms as in England. From the time of the publication of the first versified psalms in 1540, through nearly three centuries the psalm-book of all French Protestants has been that of Marot and Beza. This French version of the psalms is of special interest to all thoughtful students of the history of Protestantism, because it was the first metrical translation of the psalms ever sung and used by the people; and it was without doubt one of the most powerful influences that a.s.sisted in the religious awakening of the Reformation.

Clement Marot was the "Valet of the Bed-chamber to King Francis I.," and was one of the greatest French poets of his time; in fact, he gave his name to a new school of poetry,--"Marotique." He had tried his hand at an immense variety of profane verse, he had written ballades, chansons, pastourelles, vers equivoques, eclogues, laments, complaints, epitaphs, chants-royals, blasons, contreblasons, dizains, huitains, envois; he had been, Warton says, "the inventor of the rondeau and the restorer of the madrigal;" and yet, in spite of his well-known ingenuity and versatility, it occasioned much surprise and even amus.e.m.e.nt when it was known that the gay poet had written psalm-songs and proposed to subst.i.tute them for the love-songs of the French court. I doubt if Marot thought very deeply of the religious influence of his new songs, in spite of Mr. Morley's belief in the versifier's serious intent. He was doubtless interested and perhaps somewhat infected by "Lutheranisme," though perhaps he was more of a free-thinker than a Protestant. He himself said of his faith:--

"I am not a Lutherist Nor Zuinglian and less Anabaptist, I am of G.o.d through his son Jesus Christ.

I am one who has many works devised From which none could extract a single line Opposing itself to the law divine."

And again:--

"Luther did not come down from heaven for me Luther was not nailed to the cross to be My Saviour; for my sins to suffer shame, And I was not baptized in Luther's name.

The name I was baptized in sounds so sweet That at the sound of it, what we entreat The Eternal Father gives."