Henry Glass wrote The Story of the Psalters in 1888 documenting the history of English language metrical Psalters. Scanned versions of the text can be found on the internet, but a book on this subject should be available with digitized text. This book tells an important but aspect of English history.
The language and culture of the English speaking peoples has been profoundly shaped by the Bible. Both Christians and their opponents acknowledge the King James Bible as the most influential book in the English language. However, songs in some ways are more important to culture because music affects us at a deeper level. Today the Psalter is unknown and unused, but this is an aberration in the post-Reformation Anglosphere.
In the past the Psalter had a central role. After the reformation most protestants practiced exclusive psalmody and man-made hymns were only added over time. In those days there were no phones, televisions or even radios. If you wanted music, you sang, so people sang more frequently and sung the songs that they knew. This meant the psalms were not just for Sunday morning but sung throughout the week.
The singing populace inspired metrical psalmody. The reformers translated psalms so they could be sung by the common man of their day. A song set in a meter can be sung to any tune written for that meter. For instance any common meter song can be sung to the tune of Amazing Grace. This means only a few tunes are required to sing a broad range of songs. The most frequently used meters were Common Meter (8.6.8.6.), Long Meter (8.8.8.8.) and Short Meter (6.6.8.6.)
Issac Watts transformed English Psalmody by writing a popular psalter. Before him the emphasis had been on accurate translation but he shifted it toward musical quality. He also popularized hymns (composed by man) in relation to psalms (composed by God). Many in favor of exclusive Psalmody credit Watts with striking the largest blow to Psalm singing. Psalmody has withered away in our society, but this book demonstrates how strong it once was.
The Story of the Psalters profiles 123 Psalters. Most are in English, but a few are in Gaelic or Latin. It is not an exhaustive list of English metrical psalms. Some Psalters were undoubtedly lost with time and not discovered by Glass. Some men undoubtedly composed complete Psalters which remained as a handwritten manuscript and were never published—there was no self publishing in those days. Further, almost every writer arranged some psalms as poetry or songs but didn’t attempt a full Psalter. The contents of this book are the large tip of an even greater iceberg.
The Psalters were composed by men or in some cases groups of men. Psalmody appears to have been a grass roots movement. Christians wanted to create their own arrangements for singing. Most of the Psalters were probably used within a small circle. Only a few such as the 1650 Scottish Psalter, Issac Watts’ Psalter, Tate and Brady (The New Version), and Sternhold and Hopkins (The Old Version) were broadly adopted. A slightly larger number were approved for use in the churches of England which must have meant they a wider reach.
It is clear that these composers wrote with purpose. Most versions tried to improve in some way (accurate translation, musical quality, smoothness of text…) upon some aspect of the available editions.
The primary contribution of this edition of The Story of the Psalters has been optical character recognition to convert the old scanned pages into text format. Errors in the scanning were cleaned up, but the antiquated English of the original Psalters was left unchanged as it had been by Glass. There is no index as in the original version. However, an electronic version of this book may be downloaded for free from 150songs.com for text searches. A scan of the original book with an index can be downloaded from the same site.
In this edition the large third chapter is subdivided into three sections. Chapters three through seven in this edition were all a single chapter in the original. Since the Psalters were listed in Chronological order, they were divided into an introductory section and a chapter for each century.
Benjamin Leonard
April 2025
150 Songs 