The
Bay Psalm Book
 
Being a Facsimile Reprint
 
Of the
 
First Edition, Printed by Stephen Daye
 
At Cambridge, in New England
 
In 1640
 
1,000 copies printed by
 
Dodd, Mead & Co., 1903
319 pages
　
 
- Bonus – 
Collection of
 
Psalms and Hymns
 
For the Sanctuary 
 
James Munroe and Co., 1845
658 pages, indexed, searchable
 
- Bonus #2 – 
 
Hymns of
 
The Christian Life
 
New and Standard Songs 
 
Published 1891
322 pages, indexed, searchable
 

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Autoboot for easy PC access; Manually load on MAC
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Bay Psalm Book. The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre (1640), familiarly called the Bay Psalm Book, 
was the first book
 published in Anglo-America, which underlines the importance that singing played in Puritan devotion.
 
 The Massachusetts clergy undertook the project because they judged the current most popular Psalter, Thomas Sternhold and 
John Hopkins's 
Whole Book of Psalms (1562), an insufficiently literal  translation of the Hebrew, and Henry Ainsworth's more accurate 
Book of Psalms (1612) problematic  because of the author's separation from the Church of England. 
 
Thomas Welde, John Eliot, and Richard Mather penned most of the verses, while John Cotton wrote the preface. A consensus that the text 
warranted artistic improvement led Henry Dunster, president of Harvard College, and Richard Lyon to publish a revision, differently titled, 
in 1651. The Bay Psalm Book played a central role in both public services and domestic devotions for over a century, since Puritans 
sang psalms to praise God,  comfort the afflicted, admonish the wicked, urge sinners to Christ, and vivify their sense of 
heaven's imminent glory. 
 
Some scholars derogated the poetry's quality, calling attention to its forced rhymes and the inverted order of phrases, but its 
“singsong” cadences aided memorization, a useful means for increasing worshipers' participation in an age when books were scarce 
and many individuals could not read. 
The volume lost favor in the mid-eighteenth century as congregations' musicianship improved and ministers accepted scriptural 
paraphrases as liturgically sound; still, the twenty-seventh (and last) New England  edition appeared as late as 1762.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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