Instrumental music certainly was taboo to them. As far as we know there was not a musical instrument in New England before the year 1700. If there was, it has shown remarkable ingenuity in escaping detection. Before leaving this world for a better one, the New England colonist was meticulously careful in making out a full and exact inventory of his material possessions. He told in painful detail just how many pots and pans, bolsters, pillows, tables and chairs he had been blessed with and in just what condition he bequeathed them to posterity. Nothing detachable in the house was too small nor of too little value to escape his conscientious enumeration. But of musical instruments the testamentary literature of New England contains no mention. The first suggestion we find of the existence of such a thing is a laconic reference in the diary of the Rev. Joseph Green under date of May 29, 1711: 'I was at Mr. Thomas Brattle's, heard ye organs and saw strange things in a microscope.' We have no means of knowing, unfortunately, what were the musical qualities of Mr. Thomas Brattle's 'organs'; perhaps they were as strange as the things the reverend diarist saw in the microscope. Anyhow, as far as we can discover, they were unique in New England. Perhaps they were the same that Mr. Brattle bequeathed to the Brattle Square Church of Boston in 1713. The congregation of the church did not 'think it proper to use the same in the public worship of God,' and the instrument was consequently given to King's Chapel, where it was introduced in the services, to the consternation, anger and disgust of Dr. Cotton Mather and the greater part of the population of New England. This organ is still preserved for the benefit of the curious, and, though its musical possibilities apparently were limited, it at least marked a precedent which, as we shall see in a later chapter, was followed by good results. It has been mentioned that most of the New England congregations, at the end of the seventeenth century, knew not more than five psalm-tunes. Those, it is assumed, were the psalms called 'Old Hundred,' 'York,' 'Hackney,' 'Windsor,' and 'Martyrs.' The early Pilgrims, presumably, were more eclectic. They used the volume of tunes compiled by the Rev. Henry Ainsworth, of Amsterdam. The version of Sternhold and Hopkins was used in Ipswich and perhaps elsewhere. In 1640 both the Ainsworth and the Sternhold and Hopkins versions were generally superseded by the 'Bay Psalm Book,' though Ainsworth's psalter was retained by the churches of Salem and Plymouth for some time longer. The 'Bay Psalm Book' was compiled by a number of Colonial clergymen, including Rev. Thomas Weld, Rev. John Eliot, of Roxbury, and Rev. Richard Mather, of Dorchester. It is interesting chiefly as containing some of the quaintest verses ever written. Thus: