There were also, "for the use and edification of the saints," printed above
each psalm the airs of appropriate tunes. The "rough-hewn, angular notes"
are irregularly lozenge-shaped, like the notes or "pricks" in Queen
Elizabeth's "Virginal-Book," and are placed on the staff without bars.
Ainsworth, in his preface, says, "Tunes for the Psalms I find none set of
God: so that ech people is to use the most grave decent and comfortable
manner that they know how, according to the general rule. The singing notes
I have most taken from our Englished psalms when they will fit the mesure
of the verse: and for the other long verses I have also taken (for the most
part) the gravest and easiest tunes of the French and Dutch psalmes." Easy
the tunes certainly are, to the utmost degree of simplicity.
Great diversity too of type did the Pilgrims find in their Psalm-book:
Roman type, Italics, black-letter, all were used; the verse was printed in
Italics, the prose in Roman type, and the annotation in black-letter and
small Roman text with close-spaced lines. This variety though picturesque
makes the text rather difficult to read; for while one can decipher
black-letter readily enough when reading whole pages of it, when it is
interspersed with other type it makes the print somewhat confusing to the
unaccustomed eye.
One curious characteristic of the typography is the frequent use of the
hyphen, compound words or rather compound phrases being formed apparently
without English rule or reason.
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