But the most singular measure adopted for circulating the reformed opinions in Scotland was the composition of “Gude and godly ballates, changed out of prophaine sanges, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie.” John and Robert Wedderburn were the chief authors of this work also. Cald. ut supra. Row’s Hist. of the Kirk, p. 4. The title sufficiently indicates their nature and design. The air, the measure, the initial line, or the chorus of the ballads most commonly sung by the people at that time, were transferred to hymns of devotion. Unnatural, indelicate, and gross as this association appears to us, these spiritual songs edified multitudes in that age. We must not think that this originated in any peculiar depravation of taste in our reforming countrymen. Spiritual songs constructed upon the same principle were common in Italy. Roscoe’s Lorenzo de Medici, i. 309. 4to. At the beginning of the Reformation, the very same practice was adopted in Holland as in Scotland. “The protestants first sung in their families, and private assemblies, the psalms of the noble lord of Nievelte, which he published in 1540, ut homines ab amatoriis, haud raro obscœnis, aliisque vanis canticis, quibus omnia in urbibus et vicis personabant, avocaret. Sed quia modulationes vanarum cantionum (alias enim homines non tenebant) adhibuerat,” &c. Gisberti Voetii Politica Ecclesiastica, tom. i. p. 534. Amstælod. 1663, 4to. Florimond de Remond objected to the psalms of Marot, that the airs of some of them were borrowed from vulgar ballads. A Roman Catholic version of the Psalms in Flemish verse, printed at Antwerp by Simon Cock, in 1540, has the first line of a ballad printed at the head of every psalm. Bayle, Dict. art. Marot. Note N. The spiritual songs of Colletet, although composed a century after our “Godly Ballates,” were constructed on still more exceptionable models. “Et moy, Monsieur,” says Mons. Jurieu, “je vous feray voir, quand il vous plaira, les cantiques spirituels de Colletet imprimés à Paris, chés Antoine de Raflé, avec privilege du Roy, {380} de l’an 1660. Livre curieux, où vous trouverés des Noëls sur le chant de ce vaudeville infame qui commence, _Il faut chanter une histoire de la femme d’un manant_, &c. le reste est un conte scandeleux autant qu’il y en ait dans le Satyricon de Petrone. Vous en trouverés un autre sur l’air de ces paroles libertines d’une chanson de l’opera: _A quoy bon tant de raison, dans un bel aage._ Un autre sur ce vaudeville impudent: _Allés vous . . . . . Un galant tout nouveau, &c._ Dés le temps de Henri II. parce que toute la Cour chantoit les Pseaumes de Marot, le Cardinal de Lorraine jugea que, pour arrester un si grand desordre, il seroit très edifiant de faire tourner des odes d’Horace en rime Françoise, pour nourrir la pieté de cette cour si devote.” Apologie pour les Reformateurs, &c. tom. i. 129, 4to. A Rotterdam, 1683. Note L, Footnote 60.