Ecclesiastical Curiosities Part 5

The same is also alluded to in a satirical poem, 1594, ent.i.tled, _Batt upon Batt_:--

Shew me a man can turn up Noddy still, And deal himself three fives, too, when he will; Conclude with one and thirty, and a pair, Never fail ten in Hock, and yet play fair; If Batt be not that night, I lose my aim.

Bells and their Messages.

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 Pa.s.sing 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 m.u.f.fled peal, the devout Angelus, or the silvery convent chimes that ring for prime and tierce, s.e.xt, 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 a.s.sociations 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 metal tongue rejoicings and sorrowings, jubilees and reverses; paeans 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 a.s.size. Before many days have pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.kens' 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 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 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,

Gaudemus gaudentibus, Dolemus dolentibus.

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

Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum: Defuncto ploro, pestum fugo, festa decoro.

"I praise the true G.o.d, 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 music of the village bells Falling at intervals upon the ear, In cadence sweet--now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on.

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

The sound of the church going bell These valleys and rocks never heard, Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell, Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.

Longfellow has several tender references to 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--

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour, But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high; And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times, With their strange unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes.

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.

Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain; They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again.

Who does not remember Father Prout's lyric on "The Bells of Shandon"? We venture to quote the four delicious verses _in extenso_--

With deep affection and recollection I often think of the Shandon bells, Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood, Fling round my cradle their magic spells-- On this I ponder where'er I wander, And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee; With thy bells of Shandon, That sound so grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

I have heard bells chiming, full many a chime in Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine; While at a glib rate bra.s.s tongues would vibrate, But all their music spoke naught to thine; For memory dwelling on each proud swelling Of thy belfry knelling its bold notes free, Made the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

I have heard bells tolling "old Adrian's mole" in Their thunder rolling from the Vatican, With cymbals glorious, swinging uproarious In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame; But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of Peter Flings o'er the Tiber, pealing solemnly.

Oh! the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

There's a bell in Moscow, while on tower and kiosko, In St. Sophia the Turkman gets, And loud in air, calls men to prayer, From the tapering summits of tall minarets, Such empty phantom I freely grant them, But there's an anthem more dear to me-- It's the bells of Shandon That sound so grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

"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"--

Out clanged the Ave Mary bells, And to my heart this message came; Each clamorous throat among them tells What strong-souled martyrs died in flame, To make it possible that thou Should'st here with brother sinners bow.

Henceforth, when rings the health to those Who live in story and in song, O, nameless dead, who now repose Safe in Oblivion's chambers strong, One cup of recognition true Shall silently be drained to you!

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

You gentlemen that here wish to ring, See that these laws you keep in everything; Or else be sure you must without delay The penalty thereof to the ringers pay.

First, when you do into the bellhouse come, Look if the ringers have convenient room, For if you do be an hindrance unto them, Fourpence you forfeit unto these gentlemen.

Next, if here you do intend to ring, With hat or spur do not touch a string; For if you do, your forfeit is for that Just fourpence down to pay, or lose your hat.

If you a bell turn over, without delay Fourpence unto the ringers you must pay; Or, if you strike, miscall, or do abuse, You must pay fourpence for the ringers' use.

For every oath here sworn, ere you go hence, Unto the poor then you must pay twelve pence; And if that you desire to be enrolled A ringer here these orders keep and hold.

But whoso doth these orders disobey, Unto the stocks we will take him straight way, There to remain until he be willing To pay his forfeit, and the clerk a s.h.i.+lling.

Churchwardens' accounts abound with bell charges. We have before us the accounts of the churchwardens of Youlgreave, in the Peak of Derbys.h.i.+re, for a period of a century and a half. Under the year 1604 we have "Item to the ringers on the Coronation Day (James I.), 2s. 6d.; for mending the Bels agaynst that day, 1s.; and for fatchinge the great bell yoke at Stanton hall, 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 G.o.d 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."

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--

My roaring sounde doth warning geve That men cannot heare always lyve.--1605.

The third bell at Allestree bears the words--

I to the church the living call, And to the grave do summons all.--1781.

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

Sweetly to sing men do call To feed on meats that feed the soul.

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

Rose of the world, I sound Mary, my name, around.

A similar inscription--similarly mis-spelt--occurs on the third bell at Ibstock, Leicesters.h.i.+re, the date of which is 1632. Mr. Sankey, of Marlborough College, gives it a graceful French rendering--

Ici je sonne et je m'appelle, Marie, du monde la rose plus belle.