Sabbath in Puritan New England | Page 3

churches are deserted, falling down, unopened from year to year, destitute alike of minister and congregation. Sometimes, too, on high hilltops, or on lonesome roads leading through a tall second growth of woods, deserted and neglected old graveyards--the most lonely and forlorn of all sad places--by their broken and fallen headstones, which surround a half-filled-in and uncovered cellar, show that once a meeting-house for New England Christians had stood there. Tall grass, and a tangle of blackberry brambles cover the forgotten graves, and perhaps a spire of orange tiger-lilies, a shrub of southernwood or of winter-killed and dying box, may struggle feebly for life under the shadow of the "plumed ranks of tall wild cherry," and prove that once these lonely graves were cared for and loved for the sake of those who lie buried in this now waste spot. No traces remain of the old meeting-house save the cellar and the narrow stone steps, sadly leading nowhere, which once were pressed by the feet of the children of the Pilgrims, but now are trodden only by the curious and infrequent passer-by, or the epitaph-seeking antiquary.
It is difficult often to understand the details in the descriptions of these early meeting-houses, the colonial spelling is so widely varied, and so cleverly ingenious. Uniformity of spelling is a strictly modern accomplishment, a hampering innovation. "A square roofe without Dormans, with two Lucoms on each side," means, I think, without dormer windows, and with luthern windows. Another church paid a bill for the meeting-house roof and the "Suppolidge." They had "turritts" and "turetts" and "turits" and "turyts" and "feriats" and "tyrryts" and "toryttes" and "turiotts" and "chyrits," which were one and the same thing; and one church had orders for "juyces and rayles and nayles and bymes and tymber and gaybels and a pulpyt, and three payr of stayrs," in its meeting-house,--a liberal supply of the now fashionable y's. 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. When the Medford people built their second meeting-house, they provided for the workmen and bystanders, five barrels of rum, one barrel of good brown sugar, a box of fine lemons, and two loaves of sugar. As a natural consequence, two thirds of the frame fell, and many were injured. In Northampton, in 1738, ten gallons of rum were bought for ��8 "to raise the meeting-house"--and the village doctor got "��3 for setting his bone Jonathan Strong, and ��3 10s. for setting Ebenezer Burt's thy" which had somehow through the rum or the raising, both gotten broken. Sometimes, as in Pittsfield in 1671, the sum of four shillings was raised on every acre of land in the town, and three shillings a day were paid to every man who came early to work, while one shilling a day was apportioned to each worker for his rum and sugar. At last no liquor was allowed to the workmen until after the day's work was over, and thus fatal accidents were prevented.
The earliest meeting-houses had oiled paper in the windows to admit the light. A Pilgrim colonist wrote to an English friend about to emigrate, "Bring oiled paper for your windows." Higginson, however, writing in 1629, asks for "glasse for windowes." When glass was used it was not set in the windows as now. We find frequent entries of "glasse and nayles for it," and in Newbury, in 1665, the church ordered that the "Glasse in