Labouring Beasts

The New England Primer taught American Puritans how to read. Published in the late 17^th century (and used as a teaching manual into the early 1900’s), the Primer is composed of stark moral texts, prayers, rudimentary spelling aids, and simple, evocative, woodcuts. The Primer’s alphabet, where each letter is represented by a rhyming couplet or triplet, has received the most critical attention.

The alphabet exists in a number of different editions—my illustrations combine couplets from the 1727 and 1768 texts. While many rhymes remain unchanged (the entry for Z, “Zaccheus he / Did climb the tree / His Lord to see,” features in every known edition), early secular lines are abandoned in favour of Biblical lore. For example “The Cat doth play / And after slay” (for C) becomes, in 1768, “Christ crucified /For sinners died.” Similarly, “Nightingales sing / In time of spring” has been replaced with “Noah did view / The Old world and new.” My selection in these cases is guided by personal preference. Where more subtle differences exist, I have consistently used the later, more sinister or severe rhyme. For example, H’s “My book and Heart / Shall never part” becomes “My book and Heart / Must never part.” My favourite example of these small, but telling, alterations involves a tense change: “Peter denies / His Lord and cries” reads in the 1768 edition as “Peter denied / His Lord and cried.” There is a sense of finality in the later text—Peter’s act of betrayal is complete. In the earlier edition, he may deny, cry, and simultaneously hope for Divine intervention or forgiveness. He is still in the process of transgression, and may therefore alter his behaviour and redeem himself. By 1768, the reader is confronted with a man who has wholly committed himself to sin, a man who has been forced to look back on his actions and weep with despair.

The finality conveyed by the verb’s past tense is indicative of the Primer as a whole. One of the themes that remains unchanged over the text’s various incarnations is the seriousness of childhood sins. Children are reminded throughout of the imminence of death (“Youth’s forward slips / Death soonest nips”), that there is a point at which it will be too late to repent.