We read of "pinakles" and "pyks" and
"shuthers" and "scaffills" and "bimes" and "lynters" and "bathyns" and
"chymbers" and "bellfers;" and often in one entry the same word will be
spelt in three or four different ways. Here is a portion of a contract in
the records of the Roxbury church: "Sayd John is to fence in the Buring
Plas with a Fesy ston wall, sefighiattly don for Strenk and workmanship
as also to mark a Doball gatt 6 or 8 fote wid and to hing it."
_Sefighiattly_ is "sufficiently;" but who can translate "Fesy"? can it
mean "facy" or faced smoothly?
The church-raising was always a great event in the town. Each citizen was
forced by law to take part in or contribute to "raring the Meeting hows."
In early days nails were scarce,--so scarce that unprincipled persons set
fire to any buildings which chanced to be temporarily empty, for the sake
of obtaining the nails from the ruins; so each male inhabitant supplied
to the new church a certain "amount of nayles." Not only were logs, and
lumber, and the use of horses' and men's labor given, but a contribution
was also levied for the inevitable barrel of rum and its unintoxicating
accompaniments. "Rhum and Cacks" are frequent entries in the account books
of early churches. No wonder that accidents were frequent, and that men
fell from the scaffolding and were killed, as at the raising of the
Dunstable meeting-house.
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