"Doctor Nicholas gave five pounds,
To help cast this peal tuneable and sound."
An alarm-bell in the church of Sherborne, cast in the year 1652, bears
the inscription:--
"Lord, quench this furious flame!
Arise, run, help, put out the same!"
On the bell which emits the highest sound in the peal of St. Mary's, at
Devizes, are the words:--
"I am the first, altho' but small,
I will be heard above you all."
St. Helen's Church, at Worcester, possesses a set of eight bells, cast
in the time of Queen Anne, with inscriptions recording the victories
gained in her reign.
A recent traveller in Iceland saw in a village of that country a
church-bell which had the inscription in the German language:--
"Aus dem Feuer bin ich gegossen,
Hans Meyer in Kopenhagen hat mich geflossen, Anno 1663."[36]
recording that it had been cast, more than two hundred years ago, by a
German founder residing in Denmark. The great bell in the cathedral at
Glasgow contains a statement of its having been cast in the year 1583,
in Holland, and recast in the year 1790 in London; and a bell in the
cathedral of St. Magnus, at Kirkwall, Orkney, records that it was sent
to Amsterdam to be recast in the year 1682. Still more frequent than
historical statements are scriptural sentences and religious
admonitions.
The Burmese, in order to protect a newly-cast bell from being defiled by
their European aggressors, have hit upon the expedient of supplying it
with a threatening sentence. The bell is in a Buddhist temple at
Moulmein. Besides an inscription in Burmese characters it has a sentence
in bad English running thus:--
"This bell is made by Koonalinnguhjah the priest, and the weight 600
viss. No one body design to destroy this bell. Moulmein, March 30, 1855.
He who destroyed this bell, they must be in the great heell and unable
to coming out."