In the sixteenth century, the early Presbyterians continued this usage, as is evidenced by Wedderburn’s hymnal published in Edinburgh in 1560, quaintly entitled: Ane Compendius Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs, Collected out of Sundrie Parts of the Scriptures, with Sundrie of Other Ballates Changed out of Prophaine Songs, for Avoiding of Sin and Harlotrey. Among these latter was a parody of ‘John, Come Kiss Me,’ the wide and enduring popularity of which is attested by its inclusion in Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, Playford’s Introduction, Apollo’s Banquet for the Treble Violin, Walsh’s Division Violin, Playford’s Division Violin and Pills to Purge Melancholy. There are also references to it in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Westminster Drollery, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, The Scourge of Folly, Braithwaite’s Shepherd’s Tales, Tom Tiler and his Wife, and Henry Bold’s Songs and Poems. Allan Cunningham quotes the parody in The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern, as follows:

A similar book appeared in 1642, called: Psalms, or Songs of Zion, turned into the language and set to the tunes of a strange land, by William Slatyer, intended for Christmas Carols and fitted to divers of the most noted and common but solemn tunes, everywhere in this land familiarly used and known. That the Puritans of that century did not invariably confine themselves to “solemn tunes” is indicated by Shakespeare when the Clown in The Winter’s Tale, in praising the vocal prowess of the shearers, assembled for the sheep-shearing feast, says: “Three-man song-men, all, and very good ones...; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings Psalms to hornepipes.” In the New Variorium Shakespeare, H. H. Furness, in commenting on the passage, says: “He sings Psalms to the lively tunes to which horn-pipes were danced,—a practice which, we know was extremely popular in France, and from allusions like the present we can infer that it was not unknown in England.”

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Puritan congregations of New England are said to have had music committees one of the chief duties of which was to go among the folk and gather attractive melodies to be used as hymns. And this was also the custom of the Primitive Methodists, both in Great Britain and in America. In writing of this usage at a later date, Chappell says: “The Primitive Methodists ... acting upon the principle of ‘Why should the devil have all the pretty tunes?’ collect the airs which are sung at pot and public houses, and write their hymns to them ... in this sect we have living examples of the ‘puritans who sing psalms to horn-pipes,’ They do not mince the matter by turning them into slow tunes, ... but sing them in their original lively time.”

This brings us to the nineteenth century, in which appeared the “shape-note hymnals” from which the material in this volume is chiefly drawn. The existence of these books was scarcely known to musicians and music-lovers until recently, when they were vividly brought to the attention of the musical world by Dr. George Pullen Jackson in his book, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. Music lovers were astonished to learn of the existence of these old books, containing a wealth of uniquely beautiful hymn-tunes, largely folk-tunes and others composed in the same idiom. A majority of these are in the old modes and among them are the tunes of folk-songs, ballads, country-dances and even morris-dances. But musicians were even more surprised to learn that there are literally hundreds of thousands of devotees, in homes, in little gatherings and big singing conventions covering a broad region which stretches from the Valley of Virginia to the plains of Texas, who enthusiastically preserve and practise this tradition. That this usage should have lived on from pioneer times into our present day, when not only what we buy but what we are, is stereotyped by the processes of mass production, seems little short of miraculous. But it is explained by the innate vigour of the tradition itself, by the great love of the tradition-bearers for the old tunes and, not least, by the fact that the books embodying the material used shape notes.

Shape notes, as is explained in White Spirituals, indicate their pitch by their shapes, independently of the lines and spaces of the staff. They were invented to simplify the reading of music. There are two principal systems, the Four Shape and the Seven Shape. In the Four Shape, the first and fourth degrees of the scale are called fa and are represented by a right triangle; the second and fifth are called sol, represented by a round shape; the third and sixth, la, by a square head and the seventh, mi, by a diamond. The Seven Shape system has a different form of note for each degree of the scale and the nomenclature accords with our general practice. The nomenclature of the Four Shape system is of especial interest because it was known and practised by Shakespeare. Numerous references to it occur in his plays. In King Lear this system is employed in an almost Wagnerian manner to characterize the archvillain, Edmund, who in soliloquy says: “My cue is villanous melancholy” and then sings: “Fa, sol, la, mi.” These four tones measure the extent of a tritone, the forbidden interval called the diabolus or the devil and supposed to be filled with sinister, ominous and evil potency.

As shape notes increased in popularity, bitter controversy arose between their supporters and those of the ordinary staff notes. This was most fortunate, for it gave the fa-sol-la folk a coherence and a sturdier determination to abide by their principles and practices, which enabled them to resist the erosion of modern life and so preserve their beautiful heritage.

Many folk-tunes associated with sacred words have been passed down also solely by the process of oral tradition. Mr. Ernest La Prade, author of Alice in Orchestralia, recently learned of two groups of Primitive Baptists, one in New Jersey and the other in Philadelphia, which still use in their worship only tunes preserved by this process. He was fortunate enough to record several of the hymns from a member of the New Jersey congregation, some of which were modal and all of which were of the type contained in the shape-note books.

The value of these books to students and lovers of our folk-music is incalculable. For although many of the tunes are still extant in the oral tradition, a large portion of them, of indubitable folk origin, have vanished from the oral tradition and, but for these books, would be entirely lost. All who are familiar with the folk-dance revival in England realize the importance of Playford’s English Dancing Master in preserving a large number of tunes and dances that were no longer traditionally extant. The folk material embodied in the shape-note books is no less important and far more varied; it is, in fact, indispensible to all who desire a comprehensive knowledge of British and American folk-music.

Gratitude is due Dr. Jackson for making this material accessible to the public, and admiration, for the painstaking and scholarly way in which he presents his fascinating subject. The tunes are historically important in showing approximately the state of the oral tradition at the time they were written down in the past century. It would be difficult to overestimate their esthetic value. In metrical and rhythmic structure, especially in balance and contrast in phrase lengths; in beauty and eloquence of melodic line, many are unsurpassed by even the best of our traditional tunes. It is not too much to hope that a revival of interest in this music may result in a general use of it in our churches, where its native vigour, unaffected straightforwardness and lyric beauty could go far in freeing us from the insipid banalities of much present-day church music.

John Powell