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Lining out or hymn lining, called precenting the line in Scotland, is a form of a cappella hymn-singing or hymnody in which a leader, often called the clerk or precentor, gives each line of a hymn tune as it is to be sung, usually in a chanted form giving or suggesting the tune. It can be considered a form of call and response. First referred to as "the old way of singing" in 18th-century Britain, it has influenced 20th-century popular-music singing styles.
In 1644, the Westminster Assembly outlined its usage in English churches "for the present, where many in the congregation cannot read". Lining out spread rapidly to the Scottish churches where it has persisted longest in Britain. It has survived to the present day among some communities and contexts, including the Gaelic psalmody on Lewis in Scotland, the Old Regular Baptists of the southern Appalachians in the United States, and for informal worship in many African American congregations.
The tide turned against lining out in England and New England in the first quarter of the 18th century, with greater literacy, improved availability of texts such as New Version of the Psalms of David (1696) by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, and more widely available and better-printed tune collections. Influential clerics in England and America disliked the ragged nature of the singing that resulted as the congregation struggled to remember both the tune and the words from the lining out, but it continued to be practiced in most rural churches and still survives today in a form that likely would have been familiar to the original English and Ulster-Scots colonists in isolated communities in the Appalachian Mountains.
Lining out was in most places replaced by "regular singing", in which either the congregation knew a small number of tunes like Old 100th that could be fitted to many different texts in standard meters such as long meter, or a tunebook was used along with a word book. There began to be "singing societies" of young men who met one evening a week to rehearse. As time went on, a section of the church was allocated for these trained voices to sit together as a choir, and churches voted to end the lining out system (although there was often a transitional phase that had the entire congregation singing from tunebooks like the still-popular The Sacred Harp and others, before this was taken over by using trained choirs; this gave birth to the still vibrant tradition of "Sacred harp singing"). A vivid picture of the transition comes from Worcester, Massachusetts:
Some Presbyterian churches in Scotland also still do lining out, though often now in a restricted context, with other hymns being accompanied and not lined out. The practice is now more common in Gaelic psalm singing than in English, and indeed is often considered a characteristic of Gaelic culture, especially on the Isle of Lewis. Unlike other denominations that carry on the tradition of lining out, Gaelic churches practice Exclusive Psalmody. It is suggested that the last English-speaking congregation in the south of Scotland to give up weekly use of “reading the line” was the South Clerk Street branch of the Original Secession Church in Edinburgh, who only discontinued the tradition in 1912. Thus, they may have been the last indigenous Lowland congregation to give out the line in public worship.
On the Isle of Skye, the use of the "line" in English at funerals in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland possibly lasted until the 1960s. And, sporadic instances elsewhere in the years since across the Highlands. This includes Flashadder and Staffin Free Presbyterian Churches, and Strathay APC.
Lining of hymns is still widely practiced by the three traditional branches of the (Lehrerleut, Dariusleut, Schmiedeleut). It may also be heard among some conservative Anabaptist churches, such as German Baptist Brethren, Old Order Mennonites, and the Old Order River Brethren.
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