Blog on the Learig

  1 March 2025 Prior to the Reformation, the Latin language of worship and the musical forms which were used inhibited the participation of ordinary people in the worship of the Church. The use of the vernacular, the simplicity of the rhyming patterns and the syllabic melodies made it much easier to sing the metrical psalms. When the first Psalter was published, the General Assembly declared ‘that every Minister, Exhorter and Reader, sall have one of the Psalme books latelie printed in Edinburgh’. The reading, learning and singing of these metrical psalms was quite an undertaking. Calvin had an original idea. He thought   the best way to teach the congregation was by ‘selecting children and teaching them to sing in a clear and distinct fashion, so that the people, listening with attention, and following with the heart what was sung by   the mouth, might little by little, become accustomed to sing together’. And a little child shall lead them … Psalm 148 makes it c...

28 February 2025 One of the lasting principles evident in the favour exercised by the Reformers towards the metrical psalms  is reverence for the Word which was central to their life and worship. The Reformers thought that only the words of Scripture should be used in praising God. The book of Psalms was the obvious choice. It was the hymn book of the Temple. Jesus recited and quoted from the Psalms. The daily offices of the Church were built upon the foundation of the Psalms.  The prose psalms were sung to plain-song in the pre-Reformation Church. Not only were the metrical Psalms authorised by the General Assembly, they were also supported by an Act of the Scots Parliament. In 1579, gentlemen with a sizeable income not only had to purchase a Bible and a Psalm book but had to register the purchase publickly. The reverence afforded the Scottish Psalter is evident in the way it didn’t change for over three centuries. When choirs were established, the words of the Metrical Psalm...

  27 February 2025 When the Scottish Psalter was printed in 1650, chaos followed and the music was not printed. The Scots had sworn allegiance to King Charles II after his father was beheaded in 1649 but Oliver Cromwell was not pleased and marched on Scotland defeating the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar. It makes me wonder what is happening with the patterns of worship in war torn Ukraine. Attempting to establish new initiatives in peacetime is difficult enough but as the Church of Scotland found out it was very difficult when the country and   its kirks became a battleground. Within a decade or two, the Scottish Psalter was stained with the blood of the martyrs during what became known as the Killing Times. When the eighteen year old Margaret Wilson was chained   to a stake in the Solway Firth for her Presbyterian beliefs, she drowned singing the metrical Psalm 25: To thee I lift my soul, O Lord: My God, I trust in thee: Let me not be asham’d; let not my foes ...