IX. OUR SINGING-SCHOOL. A CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF PIGWACKET.

My second cousin by the mother’s side, Benjamin Blackletter, A.M., who was born and lived all his lifetime in the ancient town of Pigwacket, has compiled, with scrupulous accuracy, the annals of that venerable town, in three volumes folio, which he proposes to publish as soon as he can find a Boston bookseller who will undertake the job. I hope this will be accomplished before long, for Pigwacket is a very interesting spot, though not very widely known. It is astonishing what important events are going on every day, in odd corners of this country, which the world knows nothing about. When I read over these trusty folios, which bear the title, “The General History of the Town of Pigwacket, from its first settlement until the present day, comprising an authentic relation of all its civil, military, ecclesiastical, financial and statistical concerns, compiled from original records, &c.” and see the great deeds that have been done in that respectable town, and the great men that have figured therein, and reflect that the fame thereof, so far from extending to the four corners of the earth, has hardly penetrated as far as Boston, I heave a sigh for mortal glory.

Knowing that my readers must be impatient for the appearance of the three folios of the History of Pigwacket, and as they cannot be put to press for some months, I avail myself of this chance to feed their curiosity by an extract, as the cook at Camancho’s wedding gave Sancho a couple of pullets to stay his stomach till dinner-time. Take then the portion contained in Chapter CLXXXVIII., which begins as follows:

It becomes my lot at this period of the narrative, to chronicle an event that formed quite an epoch in the history of the town, or rather of that part which constituted our parish. This occurrence may not be deemed by the world quite so momentous as the Declaration of Independence, or the French Revolution, but the reader may believe me, it was a great affair in our community. This was no less than a mighty feud in church matters about psalm-singing. The whole parish went by the ears about it, and the affair gave the community such a rouse, that many people feared we should never fairly recover the shock. The particulars were these:

From time immemorial we had continued to sing psalms at meeting, as became good Christians and lovers of harmony. But my readers, accustomed to the improvements of modern days, have need to be informed that up to this period, our congregation had practised this accomplishment according to that old method of psalmody, known by the designation of “read-a-line-and-sing-a-line.” This primitive practice, which had first come into use when hymn-books were scarce, was still persisted in, though the necessity for its continuance no longer existed. Our church music, therefore, exhibited the quaint and patriarchal alternation of recitation and melody, if melody it might be called, while some towns in the neighbourhood had adopted the new fashion, and surprised us by the superiority of their performances over the rude and homely chants of old.

But it was not long ere the wish to improve our style of singing began to show itself among us. At the first announcement of such a design, the piety of many of the old members took the alarm, and the new method was denounced as heathenish and profane.

The chief personage who figured in the troubles which arose upon this matter was Deacon Dogskin, a man of scrupulous orthodoxy, highly dogmatical on theological points, and a leader of powerful influence in the church. This dignitary, whose office it had been to give out the several lines of the psalm as they were sung, was one of the sturdiest opponents of the new-fangled psalmody, and set his face against the innovation with all the zeal and devotion of a primitive Christian. Unfortunately for him, Deacon Grizzle, his colleague, took the opposite side of the question, exemplifying the vulgar saying, “Two of a trade can never agree.”

The discordancy, to tell the whole truth, between these two worthies lay in more interests than one, and it is to be doubted whether they would have come to a rupture in church affairs, had not their mutual animosities been quickened by certain temporal janglings; for so it happened that the two deacons kept each a grocery store, and neither of them ever let a chance slip of getting away the other’s custom. Sorry I am to record the frailties of two such reputable personages, who looked upon themselves as burning and shining lights in our community; but I am afraid that the fact cannot be concealed, that the petty bickerings which arose between them on these little matters of filthy lucre were suffered to intrude within the walls of the sanctuary, and stir up the flame of discord in the great psalm-singing feud; whereby, as our neighbour Hopper Paul sagely remarked, the world may learn wisdom, and lay it down as a maxim, that church affairs can never thrive when the deacons are grocers.

Deacon Grizzle, therefore, partly from conscience and partly from spite, placed himself at the head of the innovators, and took every occasion to annoy his associate with all sorts of ingenious reasons why the singing should be performed without any intermixture of recitation. The younger part of the congregation were chiefly ranged under his banner, but the older people mustered strong on the opposite side. To hear the disputes that were carried on upon this point, and the pertinacity with which each one maintained his opinion, an uninformed spectator would have imagined the interests of the whole Christian world were at stake. In truth, a great many of the good old souls really looked upon the act of altering the mode of singing as a departure from the faith given unto the saints. It was a very nice and difficult thing to come to a conclusion where all parties were so hotly interested, but an incident which fell out not long afterward, contributed to hasten the revolution.

Deacon Dogskin, as I have already remarked, was the individual on whom devolved, by prescriptive right, the duty of giving out the psalm. The Deacon was in all things a stickler for ancient usages; not only was he against giving up a hair’s breadth of the old custom, but his attachment to the antique forms went so far as to embrace all the circumstances of immaterial moment connected with them. His predilection for the old tone of voice was not to be overcome by any entreaty, and we continued to hear the same nasal, snuffling drawl, which, nobody knows how, he had contracted in the early part of his deaconship, although on common occasions he could speak well enough. But the tone was a part of his vocation; long use had consecrated it, and the Deacon would have his way. His psalm-book, too, by constant use had become to such a degree thumbed and blurred and torn and worn, that it was a puzzle how, with his old eyes, he could make anything of one half the pages. However, a new psalm-book was a thing he would never hear spoken of, for, although the thing could not be styled an innovation, inasmuch as it contained precisely the same collocation of words and syllables, yet it was the removal of an old familiar object from his sight, and his faith seemed to be bound up in the greasy covers and dingy leaves of the volume. So the Deacon stuck to his old psalm-book, and, by the help of his memory where the letter-press failed him, he made a shift to keep up with the singers, who, to tell the truth, were not remarkable for the briskness of their notes, and dealt more in semibreves than in demi-semi-quavers.

But, on a certain day, it happened that the Deacon, in the performance of his office, stumbled on a line which happened to be more than usually thumbed, and defied all his attempts to puzzle it out. In vain he wiped his spectacles, brought the book close to his nose, then held it as far off as possible, then brought his nose to the book, then took it away again, then held it up to the light, then turned it this way and that, winked and snuffled and hemmed and coughed—the page was too deeply grimed by the application of his own thumb, to be deciphered by any ocular power. The congregation were at a dead stand. They waited and waited, but the Deacon could not give out the line; every one stared, and the greatest impatience began to be manifested. At last Elder Darby, who commonly took the lead in singing, called out:

“What’s the matter, Deacon?”

“I can’t read it,” replied the Deacon in a dolorous and despairing tone.

“Then spell it,” exclaimed a voice from the gallery.

All eyes were turned that way, and it was found to proceed from Tim Crackbrain, a fellow known for his odd and whimsical habits, and respecting whom nobody could ever satisfy himself whether he was knave, fool, or madman. The Deacon was astounded, the congregation gaped and stared, but there was no more singing that day. The profane behaviour of Tim caused great scandal, and he was severely taken in hand by a regular kirk session.

This, however, was not the whole, for it was plainly to be perceived that the old system had received a severe blow in this occurrence, as no one could deny that such an awkward affair could never have happened in the improved method of psalmody. The affair was seized by the advocates of improvement, and turned against their opponents. Deacon Dogskin and his old psalm-book got into decidedly bad odour; the result could no longer be doubtful; a parish meeting was held, and a resolution passed to abolish the old system, and establish a singing school. In such a manner departed this life, that venerable relic of ecclesiastical antiquity, read-a-line-and-sing-a-line, and we despatched our old acquaintance to the tomb of oblivion, unwept, unhonoured, but not unsung.

This event, like all great revolutions, did not fail to give sad umbrage to many in the church; and as to Deacon Dogskin, who had fought as the great champion of the primitive system, he took it in such dudgeon that he fell into a fit of the sullens, which resulted in a determination to leave a community where his opinion and authority had been so flagrantly set at nought. Within two years, therefore, he sold off his farm, settled all his concerns both temporal and spiritual in the town, and removed to a village about fifteen miles distant. His ostensible motive for the removal was his declining age, which he declared to be unequal to the cultivation of so large a farm as he possessed in our neighbourhood; but the true reason was guessed at by every one, as the Deacon could never speak of the singing-school without evident marks of chagrin.

Be this as it may, we proceeded to organise the singing-school forthwith, for it was determined to do things in style. First of all, it was necessary to find a singing-master who was competent to instruct us theoretically in the principles of the art, and put us to the full discipline of our powers. No one, of course, thought of going out of the town for this, and our directors shortly pitched upon a personage known to every body by the name of Hopper Paul. This man knew more tunes than any person within twenty miles, and, for aught we knew, more than any other man in the world. He could sing Old Hundred, and Little Marlborough, and Saint Andrews, and Bray, and Mear, and Tanzar, and Quercy, and at least half a dozen others whose names I have forgotten, so that he was looked upon as a musical prodigy.

I shall never forget Hopper Paul, for both the sounds and sights he exhibited were such as could hardly be called earthly. He was about six feet and a half high, exceedingly lank and long, with a countenance which at the first sight would suggest to you the idea that he had suffered a face-quake, for the different parts of his visage appeared to have been shaken out of their places and never to have settled properly together. His mouth was capable of such a degree of dilation and collapse and twisting, that it looked like a half a dozen pair of lips sewed into one. The voice to which this comely pair of jaws gave utterance might have been compared to the lowing of a cow, or the deepest bass of an overgrown bull-frog, but hardly to any sound made by human organs.

Hopper Paul, possessing all these accomplishments, was therefore chosen head singer, and teacher of the school, which was immediately set on foot. This was a great affair in the eyes of all the young persons of both sexes, the thing being the first of that sort which had ever been heard of in our parts; for though the natives of the town were a psalm-singing race, like all genuine New Englanders, yet they had hitherto learned to sing much in the same way as they learned to talk, not by theory, but in the plainest way of practice, each individual joining in with the strains that were chanted at meeting according to the best of his judgment. In this method, as the reader may suppose, they made but a blundering sort of melody, yet as the tunes were few, and each note drawled out to an unconscionable length, all were more or less familiar with their parts, or if they got into the wrong key, had time to change it ere the line was ended. But things were now to be set on a different footing; great deeds were to be done, and each one was anxious to make a figure in the grand choir. All the young people of the parish were assembled, and we began operations.

How we got through our first essays, I need not say, except that we made awkward work enough of it. There were a great many voices that seemed made for nothing but to spoil all our melody: but what could we do? All were determined to learn to sing, and Hopper Paul was of opinion that the bad voices would grow mellow by practice, though how he could think so whenever he heard his own, passes my comprehension. However, we could all raise and fall the notes, and that was something. We met two evenings in each week during the winter, and by the beginning of spring we had got so well drilled in the gamut that we began to practise regular tunes. Now we breathed forth such melodies as I think have seldom been heard elsewhere; but as we had no standard of excellence to show us the true character of our performances, we could never be aware that our music was not equal to the harmony of the spheres.

It was thought a peculiar excellence to sing through the nose, and take a good reasonable time to swell out every note. Many of us were apt to get into too high a key, but that was never regarded, provided we made noise enough. In short, after a great deal more practice we were pronounced to be thoroughly skilled in the science, for our lungs had been put to such a course of discipline that every one of us could roar with a most stentorian grace; and as to our commander-in-chief, no man on earth ever deserved better than he, the name of Boanerges, or Son of Thunder.

It was decided, therefore, that on Fast day next we should take the field; so we were all warned to prepare ourselves to enter the singing seats at the meeting on that eventful day. Should I live a thousand years, I shall never forget it; this was to be the first public exhibition of our prowess, and we were exhorted to do our best. The exhortation was unnecessary, for we were as ambitious as the most zealous of our friends could desire, and we were especially careful in rehearsing the tunes before hand.

The day arrived, and we marched in a body to take possession. No stalwart knights, at a tournament, ever spurred their chargers into the lists with more pompous and important feelings than we entered the singing seats. The audience, of course, were all expectation, and when the hymn was given out, we heard it with beating hearts.

It was amusing, however, in the midst of our trepidation, to witness the countenance of Deacon Dogskin, who was obliged to sit facing us during the whole service. His looks were as sour and cynical as if he could have driven us out of the house, and he never vouchsafed to cast a glance at us from beginning to end of the performance. There was another person who had been a great stickler for the ancient usage. This was Elder Darby, who had been head singer under the Deacon’s administration, and looked upon himself as dividing the honours of that system with the Deacon himself. He accordingly fought hard against the innovation, and was frequently heard to declare that the whole platform of christian doctrine would be undermined, if more than one line was suffered to be sung at a time. In fact, this personage, being what is emphatically called a “weak brother,” but full of zeal and obstinacy, gave us a great deal more trouble than the Deacon, who was not deficient in common shrewdness, notwithstanding his oddities. This was a bitter day, therefore, to Elder Darby, who felt very awkward at finding his occupation gone, and his enemies triumphant all in the same moment.

But we were now called upon to sing, and every eye, except those of the Deacon and a few others, was turned upward: the hymn was given out, Hopper Paul brandished his pitch-pipe and set the tune, and we began with stout hearts and strong lungs. Such sounds had never been heard within those walls before. The windows rattled, and the ceiling shook with the echo, in such a manner that some people thought the great chandelier would have a down-come. Think of the united voices of all the sturdy, able-bodied lads and lassies of the parish pouring forth the most uproarious symphony of linked sweetness long drawn out, that their lungs could furnish, and you will have some faint idea of our melodious intonations. At length we came to a verse in the hymn where the words chimed in with the melody in such a striking and effective manner that the result was overpowering. The verse ran thus:

“So pilgrims on the scorching sand,

Beneath a burning sky,

Long for a cooling stream at hand,

And they must drink, or die.”

When we struck one after another into the third line, and trolled forth the reiterations,

“Long for a cooling—

Long for a cooling—

Long for a cooling—coo—oo—ooling,”

we verily thought, one and all, that we were soaring up—up—upwards on the combined euphony of the tune and syllables, into the seventh heaven of harmony. The congregation were rapt into ecstasies, and thought they had never heard music till then. It was a most brilliant triumph for us; every voice, as we thought, though of course the malcontents must be excepted, struck in with us, and swelled the loud peal till the walls rung again. But I must not omit to mention the strange conduct of Elder Darby, who, in the midst of this burst of enthusiastic approbation, never relaxed the stern and sour severity of his looks, but took occasion of the first momentary pause in the melody, to utter a very audible and disdainful expression of “Chaff! chaff! chaff! chaff! chaff!”

Deacon Grizzle was by no means slow in perceiving these manifestations of the Elder’s mortified feelings, and did not fail to join him on his way home from meeting, for the express purpose of annoying him further by commendations of the performances. All he could get in reply was a further exclamation of “Chaff! chaff! chaff! chaff! chaff!” In fact, the Elder’s obstinacy was incurable; he was seized during the following week with a strange deafness in one of his ears, and as it happened very strangely too, to be that ear which was turned towards the singing seats when he sat in his pew, he declared it would be impossible to hear sufficiently well on that side of his head, to accompany the singers: as to altering his position, it was not to be thought of: he had occupied the same spot for forty years, and could no more be expected to change his seat than to change his creed. The consequence was, that on the day we began singing, the Elder left off. From that time forth, he never heard the subject of church psalmody alluded to, without a chop-fallen look, a rueful shake of the head, a sad lamentation over the decline of sound christian doctrine, and a peevish and indignant exclamation of “Chaff! chaff! chaff! chaff! chaff!”