Hymnbooks of The Church of Scotland - Scots Metrical Psalter (1650)

Scots Metrical Psalter (1650)

The last edition of the 1564 psalter with music was issued in 1635. The lack of musical culture contributed to a significant decline in singing and contributed to the movement to produce a new psalter. A complete psalter by Francis Rous, an English member of Parliament, was revised by the Westminster Assembly but did not satisfy the Scots. Over a period of 2 years and 4 months it was revised by direction of the General Assembly, and it has been calculated that about 40% of the lines are original to the Scottish revisors with only 10% from Rous and 30% from the Westminster Version. Accuracy of translation was in the forefront. This psalter continues in use until the present day in parts of the Highlands, and around the world in some of the smaller Presbyterian denominations.

W.P. Rorison carried out a detailed comparison of the 1650 version with ten earlier psalters to trace every line. He was able to trace 4,846 lines to these 10 sources.

In 1929, the music of the psalter was revised by the Church of Scotland to bring its harmonies into line with those in the revision of the hymnal. The psalter was usually printed at the front of the first two editions of the hymnal (1898, 1927), and throughout much of the 20th century there was a widespread tradition of beginning worship with a psalm before continuing in the hymn books. However, the most widely used version of the third edition did not have the psalter in the same volume, with the result that the full psalter has disappeared from the majority of Church of Scotland congregations.

The psalter contained all 150 psalms in their entirety, though obviously many of them were too long to be sung whole. In 1781 a selection of 67 paraphrases of Scripture was given permissive use for a year. Although never officially adopted, the paraphrases had significant use in succeeding years, mainly in the lowlands. Five hymns were inserted at this time without church authority. Reflecting a move from the simplicity and plainness of earlier Scottish worship in some later editions there was also a set of seven trinitarian doxologies ("To Father, Son and Holy Ghost..."), each for a different metrical pattern, which could be sung at the close of a psalm. These were printed together at the end of the psalms, and were intended to allow the Old Testament text to be sung in the light of the New.

All the metrical psalms were in common meter (CM) with 13 having an alternative in another metre. A few were in long meter (LM) or short meter (SM), and the rest had other metrical patterns. This meant that, within the limits of good taste, almost any psalm could be sung to any psalm tune. Musical editions of the psalter were published with the pages sliced horizontally, the tunes in the top half and the texts in the bottom, allowing the two parts of the volume to be opened independently. The music section was arranged alphabetically by the traditional names of the melodies. Psalm 23, "The Lord's my shepherd", would typically be sung to tune 144 "Wiltshire" (tune "Crimond", written in 1872, becoming overwhelmingly popular from the 1930s), but could theoretically be sung to almost any other, the only restriction being the conventions of familiarity. At the end of some 19th-century music editions of the psalter, however, in whole rather than split pages, there were several special settings for particular psalms or sections of psalms, like Psalm 24.7-10, "Ye gates lift up your heads", to the tune "St. George's Edinburgh", a rousing piece traditionally sung after Communion.