Bell-ringing is conducted as follows:—Ropes hang through holes in the bell-chamber, and are usually fastened to a wheel for leverage, round which the rope passes. There is a great knack in handling the rope. The first half-pull “drops” the bell, the second “sets” it; it next swings up to the slur-bar, then it swings down and up to the other side, the clapper striking as it ascends. Eight bells make the most perfect peal, tuned in the diatonic scale.
Bells are struck in three ways,—(1) with a hammer on the outside, let off either by a tambour or revolving drum, similar in appearance to the prickly cylinder of a musical box, which drum can be fitted with tunes or chimes by musical nuts or spikes, and altered at will; (2) the bell can also be struck by hand, as in the common stand of small bells to be seen occasionally in the London streets, the player having a hammer in each hand; or (3) the clapper may strike the bell internally, either being pulled by a rope, the bell being stationary, or by the bell swinging to and fro. If the hammer or clapper be too light the tone of the bell is not properly drawn; if too heavy it will pulverize or crack the bell in time.
Great reforms are needed in the hanging of bells, a subject to which the Americans have given much attention. What Messrs Gillett and Bland are in England with reference to carillon machinery, the Meneelys of New York are to the ordinary mechanism and hanging of bells. There is hardly a cathedral tower in England where the hanging of one or more bells, or the oscillation of the tower, is not justly complained of. When a bell is hard to ring it is usually on account of its hanging. The leverage is wrongly applied; the wood-work is crowded against the masonry, and many of the finest towers have thus become unsafe.
There are a few bells of world-wide renown, and several others more or less celebrated. The great bell at Moscow, Tzar Kolokol, which, according to the inscription, was cast in 1733, was in the earth 103 years, and was raised by the Emperor Nicholas in 1836. The present bell seems never to have been actually hung or rung, having cracked in the furnace. Photographs of it are now common, as it stands on a raised platform in the middle of a square. It is used as a chapel. It weighs about 440,000 ℔; height, 19 feet 3 inches; circumference, 60 feet 9 inches; thickness, 2 feet; weight of broken piece, 11 tons. The second Moscow bell, the largest in the world in actual use, weighs 128 tons. The great bell at Peking weighs 53 tons; Nanking, 22 tons; Olmutz, 17 tons; Vienna (1711), 17 tons; Nôtre Dame (1680), 17 tons; Erfurt, one of the finest bell metal, 13 tons; Great Peter, York Minster, which cost £2000 in 1845, 10 tons; St Paul’s, 5 tons; Great Tom at Oxford, 7 tons; Great Tom at Lincoln, 5 tons. Big Ben of the Westminster clock tower (cracked) weighs between 13 and 14 tons; it was cast by George Mears under the direction of Edward Beckett Denison in 1858. Its four quarters were cast by Warner in 1856. The Kaiserglocke of Cologne cathedral, lately recast (1875), weighs 25 tons.
On the varied uses past and present of small bells a volume might be written. Octaves of little bells have been introduced into organs and utilized in the orchestra. Handringers are still common throughout the country—one man with a bell fitted with a clapper, in each hand, ringing but two notes of the tune in his turn. Upright stands of bells without clappers, struck with wands, may often be seen in the streets. Bells for horses, dogs, cows, sheep, &c., have already been alluded to. In Italy and elsewhere they are often made of baked earth; these have a very sweet sound, and cost about a penny. For sledges and harness they are of metal, and worn usually in bunches. A bunch of twelve costs about two francs. On the Italian lakes and elsewhere a bell fixed to a floating cork marks the spot where lines or nets are laid for fish. Hunting-hawks were formerly supplied with small bells to facilitate recovery.
Whilst some uses of bells have gone out, new ones have come in. A few instances will give the reader some idea of the indefinite number of services to which they have been applied. The expression to curse with book, bell, and candle, alludes to an old form of exorcism, in which the bell was used to scare the evil spirit—a function also attributed to larger bells. Bearing the bell alludes to the prize of a silver bell usually given at horse-races to the winner; hence comes what is, after all, only the bell reversed and used as a drinking vessel—the prize cup. The diving-bell no more comes within the scope of the present article than the dome of a mosque. Certain uses of small bells are fast disappearing. The dustman's bell is now seldom heard. The town-crier, with his “Oh, yes” (oyez, hear ye), has been banished to the provinces. The 5 o'clock postman, with his hand-bell to collect letters, went out when the present postal system came in. On the other hand the muffin-bell, the railway-bell, the dock-bell, the half-hour bells at sea, and the stage-bell survive; whilst new applications, unknown to our forefathers, have been introduced. Few people are aware that house-bells worked with wires are scarcely 100 years old. Long before them, no doubt, handbells had to a great extent superseded the use of the horn, whistle, rattle, clapping of hands, and hammering on the door with a stick, and fir-ebells were in frequent use. The old bell-pulls, which still linger in country inns and mansions, have been replaced by spring handles in the walls, and these are disappearing from hotels and clubs in favour of electric bells, now so common in railway stations in connection with the telegraph. A current of electricity sets a small hammer in motion, and, in the dark, the stream of sparks between the hammer and bell is clearly visible. In a word, then, it is plain that the whole of civilized life is set to bell music in one shape or another; and although the more important uses of bells have been enumerated, time would fail to mention all their lowly but not less useful functions, such as the familiar dinner-bell, yard-bell, school-bell, factory-bell, jail-bell, small portable cupola spring-bell (pressed with the hand), spring signal door-bell (used in shops), safety-bell on swinging coil (fastened to shutters or doors); and, not to forget the nursery, the coral and bells, bell-rattles—which call to mind, and are probably relics of, the old fool's cap and bells and fool's wand with its crown of jingling baubles, or it may be that the fool's baubles are copies of the child's play things.
The Rev. H. T. Ellacombe, author of various works on bells, gives in his Chiming a complete catalogue of bell literature.
(h. r. h.)
