Thursday, August 20, 2009

Pocket Psalters

The first metrical psalter to identify tunes by name (and one of the first to include four-part singing) was Thomas Este's (East's) 1592 The Whole Book of Psalmes, a 300-page octavo edition. In 1599, William Barley published a pocket-size edition of this psalter.

Today, pocket psalters are still in use. Pocket psalters (of the 1650 Scottish Metrical Psalter version) from the Trinitarian Bible Society have been available for some time. Currently, the best price and source to obtain them seems to Reformation Heritage Books. We use them in our family, and my children, in particular, enjoy them very much. They provide a handy format for singing the psalms wherever one may be and that is a very good thing.

Scottish Metrical Psalter - Psalm 147.1:
1    Praise ye the Lord; for it is good
        praise to our God to sing:
   For it is pleasant, and to praise
        it is a comely thing.
Posted by VirginiaHuguenot at 8/20/2009 06:57:00 AM
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3 comments:

  1. Josh HicksAugust 21, 2009 at 1:58 PM

    Andrew, I couldn't find the dimensions. Do you know what they are, off hand?

    ReplyDelete
  2. VirginiaHuguenotAugust 21, 2009 at 2:04 PM

    Josh -- The link to the copies sold by RHB says: Page size: 4¼"x 3". Measuring the cover, the whole thing is 5" x 3". Kid-sized, but lots of adults like them too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousAugust 21, 2009 at 4:12 PM

    Thanks! I must have totally missed that. I looked all over the page for the dimensions. :)

    ReplyDelete

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