Profane and Foolish Singing, Probably Being Drunk...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau

A tall man with a long salt and pepper beard takes a slug of ale, throws back his head, and belts out one low note, holding it until the other two dozen people around the table find the same note. Once the magical musical consensus is reached, the original singer stomps his boot, and begins to sing

“Oh, the smartest clipper you can find…”

The semi-circle of men and women answer his line with a teasing rejoinder.

“Ho-way, ho, are you 'most done?”
“Is the Margaret Evans of the Blue Star Line…”
Response: “Clear away the track and let the bullgine run.”

The Portermen, Newburyport’s purveyors of “Sea Shanties & Traditional Songs,” lead the gathering on Wednesday night at the Port Tavern for the first time in well over a year.

Before the pandemic, the nine members of the group gathered on the fourth Wednesday of every month to lead an open singing session, a traditional, loose gathering where patrons lead songs likely to be known by heart amongst the assembly. If all goes well, the singer gets a beer. If it goes badly, the singer likely gets a couple of beers. It is an encouragement to be brave.

Since the first European settlers arrived on the banks of the Parker River, Newbury men and women have been singing together. The idea of the kill-joy Puritans moseying about in silence is largely a nineteenth century notion bolstered by occasional references to singing in court cases.

The people here built a tavern within the first four months of settlement and sang their hearts out there and in the meeting house.

Certainly, the singing of the psalms in a 17th century meetinghouse was not the rowdy, tipsy experience of singing in a tavern, but they are strikingly similar. The Bay Psalm Book, first published in 1640, translated the traditional Bible verses into metered rhyme, easy to sing.

For example, Psalm 23, verse 6 in the King James Bible, “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” becomes this:

Goodness and mercy surely shall
All my days follow me
And in the Lord’s house I shall dwell
For long as days shall be.

The psalm books that were passed down from generation to generation had no music. They relied on a leader, sometimes the minister but more often a talented layman, to "set" the psalm, choosing a tune from a selection of traditional melodies that the congregation would know by heart, and then leading the singing, using a chopping motion of the arm to keep the unruly crowd on task. The leader was, essentially, a spiritual shantyman.

It all went horribly wrong more often than not.

Newbury’s own Samuel Sewell, a diarist and judge living in Boston, led the singing in the South Church, and recorded some of his difficulties in his diary. The tunes which are named here often went awry, or the crowd misunderstood his efforts, or simply over-rode his choice of tune by singing him down. It was, as historian Laura L. Becker put it, “an individualistic, improvised and ever-changing oral tradition.”

"Dec. 28, 1705 – (The minister) spake to me to set the Tune; I intended Windsor, and fell into High-Dutch, and then essaying to set another Tune, went into a Key much too high.”

"July 5, 1713 - I try'd to set Low-Dutch Tune and fail'd. Try'd again and fell into the tune of 119th Psalm."

"Feb. 2, 1718 - In the Morning I set York Tune, and in the 2d going over, the Gallery carried it irresistibly to St. David's, which discouraged me very much.”

By 1718, Sewell, who was a great lover of music, resigned his post in frustration, and when he was forbidden to step down, simply refused to lead the psalm.

"Feb. 23, 1718 - I set York Tune, and the Congregation went out of it into St. David's in the very 2d going over. They did the same 3 weeks before. This is the 2d Sign. I think they began in the last line of the first going over. This seems to me an intimation and call for me to resign the Praecentor's Place to a better voice…Mr. Prince said, Do it Six years longer. I persisted and said that Mr. White or Franklin might do it very well."

"Mar. 2, 1718 - I told Mr. White the elders desired him, he must Set the Tune; he disabled himself, as if he had a Cold. But when the Psalm was appointed, I forbore to do it…”

Outside of the meeting house, the presence of singing in the court record reveals not that it was forbidden but that it was exceedingly common in homes and in taverns as well.

The few times it appears in a criminal complaint, it is almost always cited as addition proof of drunkenness, as in the case of Thomas Wheeler, then of Lynn, who was fined in June 1653, for “profane and foolish dancing, singing and wanton speeches, probably being drunk.” To be clear, the crime here not the singing, or even the dancing, but the drunkenness.

I joined the Portermen late last night after returning from another meeting, and after a pint of Ipswich Ale’s finest, and with the help of my friend Jay, I did a turn as shantyman with an embarrassingly rusty version of “Northwest Passage.”

And there, surrounded by my friends, lifting our voices together, I felt the power of this primal experience, shared in this town for four centuries.

I am sure Samuel Sewell would have upended the table and stormed out, but I earned my free beer.