"ORTONVILLE"; OR, THE UNIVERSAL POWER OF SACRED SONG.
I have a distinct recollection of the circumstances of my first
acquaintance with "Ortonville," a piece of sacred music by the late
Professor Thomas Hastings. It was more than forty years ago. The church
choir in my native place, a small country village in western New
York, had gone down to that sad pass, that for several Sabbaths the
alternative was either to have no singing at all, or a maiden lady, a
veteran member of the choir, must "pitch the tune." This, even in the
estimation of the most staid and least nervous of the congregation, was
quite too bad; and the matter was taken up and talked over in earnest
at the village store, where all matters public and private pertaining
to the neighborhood and town were discussed, and public sentiment on
all questions was regulated, like the price of stocks at a board of
brokers. The result of this discussion was, that a subscription-paper
was started, and a singing-master employed for one evening each week
during the winter, who, according to immemorial custom, was paid three
dollars an evening for his services, and the school was free to all who
were disposed to attend.
A country singing-school--who, that has ever attended one, is not
carried back to some of the most delightful scenes of his earlier
years by the mere mention of the name? What visions of early playmates
and schoolmates, of bright moonlight rides, with the merry chimes of
bells and shouts of joyous hearts, as group after group from different
families was gathered for the school, and crowded into the capacious
sleigh--mothers' warm, home-made mittens, stockings, and flannels,
and all the buffalo-robes in the neighborhood, bidding defiance
to an atmosphere at zero! And then the frank, unstudied greetings
and companionship at the village church; the lighting of candles
that each one had brought from home (no lamps or sextons in those
days); the first essays, of each pupil alone, at the ascending and
descending scale, with this one's failure and that one's success; the
coquettings and rivalries of the "intermission," and the successful
and unsuccessful offers of the youthful beaux to "go home with the
girls" at the close of the school--these and a thousand other pleasant
memories come thronging upon the mind at the remembrance of a country
singing-school!
We had spent several evenings upon the rudiments, singing from the
blackboard; the teacher had decided that the old books would not do
(what singing-school teacher since that day, in view of his commissions
on the new book, has failed to reach the same conclusion?); and we had
obtained the "Manhattan Collection," which was just then a candidate
for public favor. Several of the old members of the choir were standing
in a group, during an "intermission," expressing their opinions on the
merits of the new book, when Deacon Arnold said to the teacher:
"Here is a new tune I should like to have you look at--'Ortonville.' I
have hummed it over, and it seems a very good one."
The teacher glanced over it, said they would try it, and very soon the
school were singing--
"Majestic sweetness sits enthroned,"
as those words have been sung a thousand times to the sweet and simple
notes of--
[Illustration:
ORTONVILLE. C.M. Thomas Hastings, Mus. Doc.
Ma-jes-tic sweet-ness sits enthroned
Up-on the Sav-iour's brow:
His head with radiant glory crowned,
His lips with grace o'erflow,
His lips with grace o'erflow.]
Such was my first acquaintance with this piece of sacred music. Little
did I then think that it was an acquaintance I was to meet in such
different and distant parts of the world, in so many and such varied
circumstances, and that was to afford me such peculiar pleasure.
I need hardly say that "Ortonville" became at once a favorite with
our school. The new scholars were most apt to strike upon it, if they
happened to be in a mood for singing, as they were busy at their
winter's tasks--foddering the cattle and other stock at the barn,
watering the horses, carrying in the wood for the evening and morning
fires in the ample old-fashioned fireplaces, or doing any little chores
about the house.
The teacher was pretty sure to select it if the minister or influential
members of the congregation came in to see how the school was getting
along; as, somehow, they always seemed to be in better time and tune,
and do more for the credit of the school, and the satisfaction of those
who had raised the subscription, when they sang this, than in singing
any other tune. Very soon it was sung everywhere, and those who could
sing at all had learned it by rote, at least, as a necessity. The choir
were not only better satisfied with themselves, but the minister seemed
to preach with more animation, when "Ortonville" was sung upon the
Sabbath, and prayer-meetings that were dull and uninteresting would
take a new start when "Ortonville" was started. For not only all the
new singers could sing, but all the old men and women who had been
members of the choir when the country was first settled, and the hardy
Puritan pioneers, in the absence of a minister, had what were called
"deacon-meetings," the school-master, or whoever was regarded as the
best reader in the settlement, reading a sermon.
It was not long before it was found out that we were not alone in our
admiration of the new favorite. In the adjoining towns, wherever the
singing-schools were using the "Manhattan Collection," they had fallen
upon this tune and were singing it just as we were.
Before our singing-school closed I left home to pursue my academic,
collegiate, and theological studies, and for a few years following,
in connection with my residence at different places, and my travels
in different Northern States, I again and again had opportunities of
observing that in cities as well as in the country, in centers of
intelligence and refinement as well as at my rural home, there was
something in "Ortonville" calculated to interest nearly every class
of mind, and make it, as soon as it was known in any place, a popular
favorite.
With these elements, and our national habit of never sparing our
favorites, but pressing them into service for the time, _ad nauseam_,
those who heard it once in any place were sure to hear it, to say the
least, until they "had heard enough of it," and then it was consigned
to comparative neglect.
For a long time I had heard it but rarely; the feeling of dislike at
its frequent repetition had worn off, and it again possessed not only
its original interest, but was thick clustering with pleasant memories
of home, and many of the happiest scenes of my life. I was at length
in the interior of a distant Southern State, an invalid, alone, and
doubtful of the future. Sabbath came, and with kind, new-found friends,
I rode through the pines over a sandy road to a plain, unpainted
church, standing in the midst of a piny wood, and bearing the name
"Mount Zion." In the rear of this building, comfortably seated and
sheltered, a large congregation of slaves was assembled, who were
listening to the instructions of an earnest and faithful minister of
the gospel. He had just finished reading a hymn as I reached the place,
and an old negro slave rose to lead the singing. The lines were given
out one by one, and as every voice in that large company seemed to join
in the song, never did "Ortonville" sound more sweetly than as it then
broke unexpectedly upon my ear. With their rich, melodious voices, and
the enthusiasm peculiar to the African, they seemed to pour out all
their souls, and, as they sang through the hymn, and those familiar
sounds resounded through the grove, the effect upon my feelings can be
more easily imagined than described.
During my stay in this neighborhood, a slave died upon one of the
plantations, and I was told that I would have an opportunity of
witnessing one of their favorite funerals. In those portions of the
South where the plantations were largest, and the slaves the most
numerous, they were very fond of burying their dead at night, and as
near midnight as possible. In case of a funeral, they assembled in
large numbers from adjoining plantations, provided with pine-knots,
and pieces of fat pine called light-wood, which when ignited made a
blaze compared with which our city torchlight processions are most
sorry affairs. When all was in readiness, they lighted these torches,
formed into a procession, and marched slowly to the distant grave,
singing the most solemn music. Sometimes they sang hymns they had
committed to memory, but oftener those more tender and plaintive,
composed by themselves, that have since been introduced to the people
of the North, and of Europe, as plantation melodies. I have never yet
seen any statement of the manner in which these melodies, that have
moved and melted the hearts of millions on both sides of the Atlantic,
were composed. I have been familiar with the secret of their birth and
power since my first acquaintance with, and religious labors among, the
slaves in 1843. It is preëminently true of these plantation melodies
that they were "born, not made." I have been present at the birth of a
great many of them--many that I think more tender and pathetic than
those that have been given to the world by the various jubilee-singers.
[Illustration: An old-time midnight slave funeral.]
In their religious gatherings the best singer among them was always
the leader of the meeting. They usually commenced their services by
singing some hymn that they had committed to memory; but the leader
always gave out this hymn, one line at a time, in a sing-song tone,
much like a chant, and then the audience sang the line he had given
out, and so went through the hymn. As the meeting progressed, and their
feelings became deeper and deeper, and the excitement rose higher and
higher, they at length reached a state of tender or rapturous feeling
to which no hymn with which they were familiar gave expression. At
this point the leader sang from his heart, or, as musicians say,
improvised, both the words and music of a single line. The audience
then sang that line with him, as they had sung all the preceding hymns.
He then improvised another line, and another, and they sang each one
after him, until he had improvised one of those plantation melodies,
which, as they gave expression to the glowing hearts of those who first
sang them, so, when they have been repeated, they have touched the
universal heart. When thus "born," no such words or music were ever
forgotten by the leader. It was sung over and over again at succeeding
meetings, until some other melody was in like manner improvised, to
meet another and perhaps a higher state of religious enthusiasm. In my
visits to hundreds of different plantations and congregations, I have
heard a great variety of these plantation melodies. Many of them, that
were inexpressibly tender and beautiful, were never heard beyond the
immediate neighborhood in which they were first sung, and will never be
reproduced, unless it be among the songs of the redeemed in heaven.
But to return to this midnight funeral. The appearance of such a
procession, winding through the fields and woods, as revealed by their
flaming torches, marching slowly to the sound of their wild music, was
weird and imposing in the highest degree. This procession was to pass
immediately by our door, but, in order to get a fuller view, a small
company of us went out a short distance to meet them. We saw them and
heard their music in the distance, as they came down a gentle descent,
crossed over a small stream, and then marched on some time in silence.
As they came near where we stood, we heard their leader announce in the
sing-song, chanting style I have already described, the words--
"When I can read my title clear;"
and that long procession, with their flaming fat-pine torches, marched
by us with slow and solemn tread, singing that beautiful hymn to the
tune of "Ortonville." We followed to the place of burial, listened
to their songs and addresses at the grave, and witnessed all the
ceremonies to the close. From first to last the scene was impressive
beyond description.
A few days after this, as I was taking a lonely horseback-ride to an
adjoining parish, I heard the negroes singing in a field that I could
not see, lying behind a wood that skirted the road. I stopped my horse
for a moment to listen to their music. I could hear no words, but at
once distinguished "Ortonville." Soon after I inquired of my host
how long these people had been singing this tune, and where they had
learned it; and was told that the minister I had seen upon the Sabbath,
while on a visit to his relatives in the State of Georgia the fall
before, had heard it sung at the meeting of the Synod, and was so much
pleased with it that he procured a copy, and in that manner it had
been introduced to this place and the places adjacent. At one of those
places I was told that they were so much pleased with it that they had
sung it over and over one Sabbath-day during the entire intermission.
Time passed on, and in my invalid wanderings I was within the tropics,
sailing in the track of Columbus, along the north shore of Hayti.
Entering those waters, so often tinged with human blood, that divide
this island from the famed Tortugas, as if in harmony with the dark
memories that crowded upon the mind, black clouds began to darken the
heavens, the thunders rolled, the lightnings gleamed with terrific
fury, and amid the most sublime tumult of the elements we were carried
along until our little craft dropped anchor in the bay of Port de
Paix. The storm and darkness were such that I could not go ashore, and
I was that night rocked to sleep on waters where many a pirate-ship,
with bloody deck, had ridden securely at anchor, and prepared to set
forth again on new missions of pillage and death. This harbor was the
chief rendez-vous, the refuge from danger, and retreat from toil, of
the buccaneers that for years infested these seas, and whose piratical
plunderings for so long a time made their names a terror to all within
their reach. However, not being particularly superstitious, I slept
soundly for the night.
In the morning I left our little vessel and received--what is ever so
grateful to a wanderer on a foreign shore, and especially to one who
has any sympathy with the command, "Go teach all nations"--a welcome to
the residence of a countryman, to a missionary's humble home. Ay, noble
men and women are they, who, forgetful of themselves, and alone for the
honor of the Master that they serve, leaving the comforts and amenities
of a Christian civilization, toil on through life amid manifold
discouragements, endeavoring to instruct and elevate the degraded, and,
above all else, anxious to
"Allure to brighter worlds and lead the way."
And yet, like those whose own minds are so degraded and debauched
that they can not conceive of purity and virtue in any character,
there are those who are so utterly ignorant and unconscious of the
lofty sentiments that animate these self-sacrificing missionaries,
that they are ever finding, in base, unworthy, and ignoble objects,
the grand motive of their life-work. Such may well ponder the life of
unparalleled Christian heroism of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, of
which the undoubted and sufficient motive was a constraining LOVE!
Evening darkened around the dwelling of the missionary, and a little
group of natives assembled for religious worship. I sat in that little
room and listened to the words of instruction, praise, and prayer,
with indescribably strange emotions, for all was in a language that I
did not understand. As the services proceeded, a hymn was read by the
missionary with peculiar interest and emotion, and the dark group sang
in the familiar strains of "Ortonville":
"Beni soit bien qui chaque jour
Nous comble de ses biens,
Et dont s'inconvenable amour
A romptu nos liens."
What a change--what a change! The haunts of bloody pirates giving place
to the home of the missionary of the cross; the wild, agonized shrieks
of their murdered victims succeeded by the sweet and peaceful notes
of "Ortonville!" And so this tune has often been sung where sounds of
direst woe and wretchedness had long been heard, and so it doubtless
will be, and onward to the millennium.
As I once returned from a small church on the banks of the Savannah
River, where it had been sung, the friend whose hospitality I was
enjoying remarked:
"My brother-in-law, a missionary, told me he first heard that tune, and
since had often sung it, on Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, and it sounded
most sweetly there."
And thus it has been sung in many a land and clime by that heroic
missionary band which now encircles the globe with celestial light.
But this narrative would swell to a volume were I to relate in
detail all the sweet, sacred, and delightful memories associated
with "Ortonville." In all my long invalid wanderings, and in all
the years in which I have been permitted to labor actively in the
Master's service, both "in the Brush" and elsewhere, it has often been
my happy lot to recognize and greet in the most varied and striking
circumstances the favorite I first learned to love in that country
singing-school. Its gentle, soothing notes have broken sweetly upon my
ear in crowded city churches; in quiet meetings for prayer; in large,
unpainted, barn-like edifices erected for Christian sanctuaries; in
rude log churches crowded with devout worshipers; in basket-meetings,
camp-meetings, and in all varieties of gatherings for the worship of
Almighty God. Often, very often, it has inspired my devotions as I
have mingled, for the first time, with households gathered for family
worship. With adoring recognition of the Fatherhood of God, and with
loving recognition of the brotherhood of man, it has been my happy,
happy lot thus to worship with uncounted hundreds of families--among
them the most cultivated and refined, and the most ignorant, neglected,
and lowly of God's poor. In very long horseback-journeys, for days,
weeks, and months together, as I have ridden over bleak, desolate
"barrens," through dense, dark forests, along deep, narrow ravines and
valleys, and up and over rough and rugged mountains, nearly every night
has found me under a different roof, enjoying the rough or refined
hospitality of a new-found family. As they have invited me to "take the
books" (the Bible and hymn-book) and lead the devotions of the family,
often in the most remote and lowly cabins, I have been surprised
and delighted, as I was in the tropics, with the familiar notes of
"Ortonville."
As I write these lines my memory is far more busy than my pen. I think
of my wanderings in many different States, and of the cabins in which
I have briefly rehearsed the old, old story, and by kind words of
entreaty, and in reverent words of prayer, attempted to "allure to
brighter worlds, and lead the way." I have knelt in prayer in many a
home along the banks of the Rappahannock, the James, the Cape Fear,
the Santee, the Savannah, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Ohio, the
Mississippi, the Missouri, the San Joaquin, the Sacramento, and many
other rivers. So I have knelt and prayed in homes along the shores of
the stormy Atlantic and the peaceful Pacific. Very often the inmates,
at first startled, and then delighted, by the strangeness of my
visit, have told me that my voice was the first ever lifted in prayer
beneath their roofs. Though in multitudes of such homes no member of
the family had ever learned a single letter of the alphabet of their
mother-tongue, and all were barefooted, and more destitute and ignorant
than the most of my readers will be able to conceive, they have
received me in their homes with a hospitality so hearty and cordial,
and have thanked me, and bidden me come again, with such warm words and
such abounding tears, that my own have welled and flowed responsive to
theirs; and as I have spoken my farewell words, so often final, and
ridden away with new impressions of the power of the Saviour's name and
love to touch and melt the rudest minds, my happy heart has found full
expression in the tender notes and sweet words of my favorite tune and
hymn:
"Majestic sweetness sits enthroned
Upon the Saviour's brow;
His head with radiant glories crowned,
His lips with grace o'erflow.
"No mortal can with him compare,
Among the sons of men;
Fairer is he than all the fair
Who fill the heavenly train.
"He saw me plunged in deep distress,
And flew to my relief;
For me he bore the shameful cross,
And carried all my grief.
"Since from his bounty I receive
Such proofs of love divine,
Had I a thousand hearts to give,
Lord, they should all be thine."
Note.--Returning from one of my visits to Hayti, more than twenty-five
years ago, I communicated to Professor Hastings, at his old home in
Amity Street, New York, several of the facts related in this chapter.
He then gave me the history of the tune as follows:
"I was anxious to write just as simple a tune as possible, to be sung
by children. I sat at my instrument, and played, until this tune was
completely formed in my mind.
"Not long after, a boy came from the printer with a note, saying he
needed another tune to fill out a page or form. I sat down at my
instrument, played it again, thought it would do, wrote it out, and
sent it to the office, little dreaming that I should hear from it, as
I have, from almost every part of the world."