August 3. Story of the Day: The Number Dial.

This story comes from the article The Carol of the Twelve Numbers by William Wells Newell, and I've included his notes on this particular song below. I haven't done a number-based chain in a while; this one is built around religion and the hours of the day, the idea being that you would remember at each hour of the clock some aspect of Christianity based on those numbers. Notice also that not all the numbers are strictly religious, as the authors includes the Five Senses, the Seven Liberal Arts (i.e. the trivium and then the quadrivium) and the Nine Muses along with the more strictly Biblical material.

As a religious number song, this is classified with the Hebrew Passover song: ATU 2010 Ehod mi yodea (One: Who Knows?). For more information about this type of composition, see Lina Eckenstein's Chants of the Creed.

Looking for more stories? Click here for previous Stories-of-the-Day.

THE NUMBER DIAL

One God, one Baptism, and one Faith,
One Truth there is, the Scripture saith.

Two Testaments (the Old and New)
We do acknowledge to be true.

Three persons are in Trinity,
Which make one God in Unity.

Four sweet Evangelists there are,
Christ's birth, life, death, which do declare.

Five senses (like Five Kings) maintain
In every man a several reign.

Six days to labor, is not wrong,
For God himself did work so long.

Seven Liberal Arts hath God sent down,
With Divine skill man's soul to crown.

Eight in Noah's Ark alive were found,
When (in a word) the World lay drowned.

Nine Muses (like the heaven's nine spheres)
With sacred Tunes entice our ears.

Ten Statutes God to Moses gave,
Which, kept or broke, do spill or save.

Eleven with Christ in heaven do dwell,
The Twelfth forever burns in hell.

Twelve are attending on God's Son,
Twelve make our Creed. The Dial's done.

Count one, the first hour of thy Birth,
The hours that follow, lead to Earth;
Count Twelve, thy doleful striking knell.
And then thy Dial shall go well.

(photo by Romina Campos)

NOTES

This quaint Puritan alteration of the older number-song is worth attention. Sylvester prints also a modern form of the same hymn, apparently still used as a carol (also given by Sandys, p. 138), entitled "Man's Duty; or, Meditation for the Twelve Hours of the Day." It will be seen that the author of the " Dial" had before him in his mind the nine choirs of angels, which he has changed to nine muses.