Some of your clerical readers, as well as myself, would probably be glad to
have determined, what are the proper times and measures in which the bells
of a church ought to be rung. There seems to be no uniformity of practice
in this matter, nor any authoritative directions, by which the customs that
obtain may be either improved or regulated. The terms chiming, tolling, and
peal-ringing, though now generally understood, do not intelligibly apply to
the few regulations about bells which occur in the canons.
I believe that _chiming_ is the proper method of summoning the congregation
to the services of the church: and _tolling_ certainly appears to be the
most appropriate use of the bell at funerals. But chiming the bells is an
art that is not recognised in the older rules respecting their use. For
instance, the Fifteenth Canon orders that on Wednesdays and Fridays weekly,
warning shall be given to the people that litany will be said, by _tolling
of a bell_. And, on the other hand, though we toll at a funeral, the
Sixty-seventh Canon enjoins that--
"After the party's death, there shall be rung no {239} more but one
short peal, and one other before the burial, and one other after the
burial.
The peal here alluded to does not of course mean what MR. ELLACOMBE has so
clearly described to be a modern peal, in Vol. i., p. 154., of "NOTES AND
QUERIES;" but it would at least amount, I suppose, to _consonantia
campanarum_, a ringing together of bells, as distinguished from the _toll_
or single stroke on a bell. Horne Tooke says:
"The toll of a bell is its being _lifted up_ (_tollere_, to raise),
which causes that sound we call its toll."
The poet does not clear the ambiguity and confusion of terms, when he
sings--
"Faintly as _tolls_ the evening _chime_!"
Peals are not heard in London on Sunday mornings, I believe; but in the
country, at least hereabouts, they are commonly rung as the summons to
church, ending with a few strokes on one bell; and then a smaller bell than
any in the peal (the _sanctus_ bell of old, perhaps, and now sometimes
vulgarly called "Tom Tinkler") announces that divine service is about to
begin.
The object of these remarks is to elicit clearly what is the right way of
ringing the bells of a church on the several occasions of their being used.