[Coverdale, Miles]

3 (of 60) leaves, 4to, preserved as binder's waste, comprising leaves ix, x, and xii (C1, C2, C4), C1.4 forming a bifolium (6 x 9 7/8 in.; 152 x 250 mm) with fold and stab marks for a stub to sew it into a binding, C2 a single leaf (6 x 4 3/4 in.; 152 x 120 mm). Housed in a brown cloth portfolio.

acquisition: Bernard Quaritch, 2005

STC 5892; ESTC S121127; Bodleian/English Hymns & Hymn Books 8; Robin A. Leaver, "A Newly-Discovered Fragment of Coverdale's Goostly Psalmes," in Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 26 (1982): 130–50); cf. A. Hyatt King, "The Significance of John Rastell in Ealry Music Printing," in The Library 26 (1971): 197–214. nb. An offprint of Lever's article and a copy of the Bodleian catalogue accompany the lot.

3 (of 60) leaves, 4to, preserved as binder's waste, comprising leaves ix, x, and xii (C1, C2, C4), C1.4 forming a bifolium (6 x 9 7/8 in.; 152 x 250 mm) with fold and stab marks for a stub to sew it into a binding, C2 a single leaf (6 x 4 3/4 in.; 152 x 120 mm). Housed in a brown cloth portfolio.
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The present fragment, with text and music on all leaves, is a remarkable survival from England's earliest printed hymn book with music; ordered to be burned in 1546, Goostly Psalmes and Spirituall Songes is known in only one complete copy and one other fragment of two leaves (at Queens College, Oxford, and the Bodleian Library, respectively).

Coverdale's hymnal is indebted to German originals and in particular to Martin Luther, but although the texts had been printed previously, a number of the tunes had not, so that Goostly Psalmes is "the earliest printed source for a number of German and Scandinavian melodies" (Leaver, p. 136). The Ryrie leaves feature hymns by Luther, Paul Speratus, Ambrosius Moibanus, and Symphorianus Pollio.

Coverdale collected his hymns while travelling through Germany during his first exile (1528–35) and must have translated them at the same time he was making his translation of the Bible. John Rastell was the first printer in England who was able to print "text, staves, notes, clefs. bar-lines, time-signatures, and directs … at one and the same impression" (King, pp. 197–98).