By Edward Bradbury.

Do not imagine that this is an essay on campanology, on change-ringing, grandsires, and triple bob-majors. Do not fancy that it will deal with carillons, the couvre-feu, or curfew bell, with the solemn Passing bell, the bell of the public crier, the jingling sleigh bell, the distant sheep bell, the noisy railway bell, the electric call bell, the frantic fire bell, the mellow, merry marriage peal, the sobbing muffled peal, the devout Angelus, or the silvery convent chimes that ring for prime and tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and compline. Do not conclude that it will describe bell-founding; and deal with the process of casting, with technical references to cope, and crook, and moulding, drawing the crucible, or tuning.

It is of bells and their associations and inscriptions that we would write, the bells that are linked with our lives, and record the history of towns, communities, and nations; announcing feasts and fasts and funerals, interpreting with [p 120] metal tongue rejoicings and sorrowings, jubilees and reverses; pÆans for victories by sea and land; knells for the death of kings and the leaders of men. As we write, the bells of our collegiate church are announcing with joyous clang the arrival of Her Majesty’s Judge of Assize. Before many days have passed another bell in the same town will tell with solemn toll of the short shrift given by him to a pinioned culprit, the only mourner in his own funeral procession.

Bells are sentient things. They are alike full of humour and pathos, of laughter and tears, of mirth and sadness, of gaiety and grief. One may pardon Toby Veck, in Charles Dickens’ goblin story, for investing the bells in the church near his station with a strange and solemn character, and peopling the tower with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the bells, of all aspects, shapes, characters, and occupations. “They were so mysterious, often heard and never seen, so high up, so far off, so full of such a deep, strong melody, that he regarded them with a species of awe; and sometimes, when he looked up at the dark, arched windows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by [p 121] something which was not a bell, and yet was what he had heard so often sounding in the chimes.” The bells! The word carries sound and suggestion with it. It fills the air with waves of cadence. “Those Evening Bells” of Thomas Moore’s song swing out undying echoes from Ashbourne Church steeple; Alfred Tennyson’s bells “ring out the false, ring in the true” across the old year’s snow, and his Christmas bells answer each other from hill to hill. There are the tragic bells that Sir Henry Irving hears as the haunted Mathias; “Les Cloches de Corneville” that agitate the morbid mind of the miser Gaspard; and the wild bells that Edgar Allen Poe has set ringing in Runic rhyme.

“Bell,” says the old German song, “thou soundest merrily when the bridal party to the church doth hie; thou soundest solemnly when, on Sabbath morn, the fields deserted lie; thou soundest merrily at evening, when bed-time draweth nigh; thou soundest mournfully, telling of the bitter parting that hath gone by! Say, how canst thou mourn or rejoice, that art but metal dull? And yet all our sorrowings and all our rejoicings thou art made to express!” In [p 122] the words of the motto affixed to many old bells, they “rejoice with the joyful, and grieve with the sorrowful”; or, in the original Latin,

An old monkish couplet makes the bell thus describe its uses—

“I praise the true God, call the people, convene the clergy; I mourn for the dead, drive away pestilence, and grace festivals.” Who that possesses—to quote from Cowper—a soul “in sympathy with sweet sounds,” can listen unmoved to

The same poet makes Alexander Selkirk lament on his solitary isle—

Longfellow has several tender references to [p 123] church bells. He sets the Bells of Lynn to ring a requiem of the dying day. He mounts the lofty tower of “the belfry old and brown” in the market place of Bruges—

Who does not remember Father Prout’s lyric on “The Bells of Shandon”? We venture to quote the four delicious verses in extenso—

[p 125]
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,” in Gray’s “Elegy,” the best known, and, in its own line, the best poem in the English language. More dramatic is Southey’s story of the warning bell that the Abbot of Aberbrothock placed on the Inchcape Rock. James Russell Lowell has a beautiful thought in his little poem “Masaccio”—

In the belfry of Tideswell and of Hathersage, in the Peak of Derbyshire, are a set of rhymed bell-ringing laws. Those at Hathersage we give below; the Tideswell ones are almost word for word similar.

Churchwardens’ accounts abound with bell charges. We have before us the accounts of the churchwardens of Youlgreave, in the Peak of Derbyshire, for a period of a century and a half. Under the year 1604 we have “Item to the ringers on the Coronation Day (JamesI.), 2s. 6d.; for mending the Bels agaynst that day, 1s.; and for fatchinge the great bell yoke at Stanton hall, [p 127] 6d.” In 1605 there is “Item for a rope for a little bell, 5d.” In the following year is “Item to the Ringers the 5th day of August, when thanks was given to God for the delyvering of King James from the conspiracye of the Lord Gowyre, 5s.” In 1613 we find the sum of 6d. expended in purchasing “a stirropp for the fyrst bell wheele, 8d.” The year 1614 is prolific in charges connected with the belfry, as the following enumeration will show: “Item for the bellefonder, his dinner, and his sonnes, with other chargs at the same time, 10d.; at the second coming of the sayd bellfonder, 9d.; at the taking downe of the bell, 6d.; for castyng the fyrst bell, £4; for the surplus mettall which wee bought of the bellfounder because the new bell waeghed more than ye old, £3 15s. 10d.; to the bellfounder’s men, 4d.; for the carryage of our old bell to Chesterfield, 3s.; for carrying the great bell clapper to Chesterfield, 4d.; for carrying the new bell from Chesterfield, 2s. 8d.; to Nicholos Hibbert, for hanging the said bell, 1s. 1d.; to Nicholas Hibbert the younger, for amending the great bell yoke and wheele, 6d.; spent at Gybs house at the bellfounder’s last coming, 3d.; for amending the great bell clapper, 10d.”[p 128]
The inscriptions on church bells would make an interesting chapter. On the second bell at Aston-on-Trent appears in Lombardic capitals, the words, “Jhesus be our spede, 1590,” and on the fourth bell is inscribed, “All men that heare my mournful sound, repent before you lye in ground, 1661.” The fourth bell of S.Werburgh’s at Derby is inscribed—

The third bell at Allestree bears the words—

The second bell on the old peal at Ashbourne was inscribed—

The fifth bell at Dovebridge has the words: “Som rosa polsata monde Maria vocata, 1633.” This is—according to the Rev. Dr. John Charles Cox—a corrupt reading of “Sum Rosa pulsata mundi Maria vocata,” a legend occasionally found on pre-Reformation bells, and which may be thus Englished—

[p 129]
A similar inscription—similarly mis-spelt—occurs on the third bell at Ibstock, Leicestershire, the date of which is 1632. Mr. Sankey, of Marlborough College, gives it a graceful French rendering—

The fourth bell at Coton-in-the-Elms has the inscription—

The sixth bell is inscribed—

The seventh bell at Castleton has the following legend—

The second bell at Monyash is inscribed: “Sca Maria o.p.n.” (Sancta Maria ora pro nobis.)

The old curfew custom is still kept up in the [p 130] Peak district of Derbyshire, notably at Winster, where the bell is rung throughout November, December, January, and February at eight o’clock every work day evening, except on Saturdays, when the hour is seven. There are Sanctus bells at Tideswell, Hathersage, Beeley, Ashover, and other Derbyshire churches. All Saints’ Church, at Derby (“All Saints,” i.e., “the unknown good”), has a melodious set of chimes. They play the following tunes: Sunday, “Old One Hundred and Fourth” (Hanover); Monday, “The Lass of Patie’s Mill”; Tuesday, “The Highland Lassie”; Wednesday, “The Shady Bowers”; Thursday, “The National Anthem”; Friday, Handel’s “March in Scipio”; Saturday, “The Silken Garter.” They all date from the last century.

Church bells have the subtle charm of sentiment. When they swing in the hoary village tower, and send their mellifluous message across the country side and down the deep and devious valley, or when they make musical with mellow carillon the dreamy atmosphere of moss grown cathedral closes, they have a poetical influence. How pleasant it is to listen to the chimes which ring out from time to time from the towers of [p 131] Notre Dame, in the city of Rubens, and from the Campanile at Venice!

Church bells in large towns, where one section of the community are night workers and seek their rest in the day-time, are by no means invested with sentiment. We have in our mind a church which is set in a dense population of railwaymen, engine drivers, stokers, guards, porters,&c. It possesses a particularly noisy peal of bells. They begin their brazen tintinnabulations at breakfast time, and ring on, at intervals, until past the supper hour. Sometimes the sound is a dismal monotone, as if the bellman had no heart for his work. At other times a number of stark mad Quasimodos seem to be pulling at the ropes to frighten the gilded cock on the vane into flapping flight. Sunday only brings an increase of the din, distracting all thought, destroying all conversation, defying all study, turning the blessed sense of hearing into a [p 132] curse, and making you envy the deaf. It is well known that upon many persons in health the clangour of bells has a very depressing effect; but at night, when narcotics are given and the sick are wearied out, it is very easy to imagine how irritating these bells must be both to the invalids and their attendants. One is inclined to exclaim with the Frenchman—

How very wise those Spanish innkeepers were who, in the olden time, used to make “ruido” an item in their bills, charging their guests with the noise they made!