An Old English Home and Its Dependencies

"Shure, b'aint no meanin' in words if that ain't it," responded another.

"Us won't be pass'n-ridden," said a third.

"Us'll break open the door," said a fourth.

"And if he interferes, us'll scatt his little head open," said a fifth, "as us wrote he – you knaws."

Then came a bang against the tower door.

Now there happened to be a little window close to the door, just large enough for a man to put his head, but not his shoulders, through.

"I put on the lock, and I'll have it off," said the blacksmith. "I've brought a bar o' iron on purpose."

Then the rector put his head through the window, and said, "Will you? Here's my little head, scatt that first."

The men drew back disconcerted.

He had gained the day, and established his authority over the ringers, and control of the belfry door.

And now, in the same place, there is as well-conducted a set of ringers as may be found anywhere, and some of the old lot are still there. The first step in the reform of the belfry was that of obtaining mastery over the key.

A second step was taken when the west gallery was demolished and the tower-arch thrown open, so that the bell-ringers were visibly in the church, and so came to feel that they were in a sacred building in which there must be no profanity.

In several instances much good has been done by the rector or the curate becoming himself a ringer, or, if not that, taking a lively interest in the ringing, and being present in the belfry, or visiting it, on practising nights.

Some curious customs remain connected with bell-ringing. In Yorkshire it is customary when there occurs a death in the parish to toll the bell. Three strokes thrice repeated signify an adult male; three strokes twice repeated signify an adult female; two, two, three, a male infant; two, two, two, a female child. These strokes are then followed by as many as there were years in the age of the deceased. At Dewsbury and at Horbury, near Wakefield, on Christmas Eve, at midnight, the devils knell is rung. When I was curate at the latter place, at first I knew nothing of this singular knell. On my first Christmas Eve I had retired to bed, when at midnight I heard the bell toll.

Now, my window looked out into the churchyard, and was, in fact, opposite the tower door. I was greatly shocked and distressed, for I had not heard that anyone was ill in the parish, and I feared that the deceased must have passed away without the ministrations of religion.

I threw up my window and leaned out, awaiting the sexton. I counted the strokes – three, three, three: then I counted the ensuing strokes up to one hundred.

Still more astonished, I waited impatiently the appearance of the sexton.

When he issued from the tower, I called to him:

"Joe, who is dead?"

The man sniggered and answered, "T'owd un, they say."

"But who is dead?"

"T'owd chap."

"What old man? He must be very old indeed."

"Ay! he be owd; but for sure he'll give trouble yet."

It was not till next day that my vicar explained the matter to me.

At Dewsbury the devil's knell is thus accounted for. A certain bell there, called Black Tom of Sothill, is said to have been an expiatory gift for a murder, and the tolling is in commemoration of the execution of the murderer. One Thomas Nash, in 1813, bequeathed £50 a year to the ringers of the Abbey Church, Bath, "on condition of their ringing on the whole peal of bells, with clappers muffled, various solemn and doleful changes on the 14th of May in every year, being the anniversary of my wedding-day; and also on the anniversary of my decease, to ring a grand bob-major and merry peals unmuffled, in joyful commemoration of my happy release from domestic tyranny and wretchedness."

A singular and beautiful custom still subsists in the village of Horningsham, Wilts, where, at the burial of a young maiden, "wedding peals" are rung on muffled bells.

At the induction of a new vicar or rector it is customary for him to lock himself into the church, and then proceed to the belfry and "ring himself in." It is, I believe, universal in England for the parishioners to count the number of strokes he gives, as these are said to indicate the number of years during which he will hold the cure.

There still remain in some places certain forcible evidences that the ringers regaled themselves in the belfries, and these have taken the shape of ale-jugs. At Hadleigh, in Suffolk, is such a pitcher of brown glazed earthenware, that holds sixteen quarts, and bears this inscription:

"We, Thomas Windle, Isaac Bunn, John Mann, Adam Sage, George Bond, Thomas Goldsborough, Robert Smith, Harry West."

and below the names are these lines:

"If you love me doe not lend me,
Use me often and keep me cleanly,
Fill me full, or not at all,
If it be strong, and not with small."

At Hinderclay, a ringer's pitcher is still preserved in the church tower, with the inscription on it:

"From London I was sent,
As plainly doth appear:
It was with this intent,
To be filled with strong beer.
Pray remember the pitchers when empty."

In a closet of the steeple of St. Peters, Mancroft, Norwich, is another, that holds thirty-five pints. At Clare is a similar jug that holds over seventeen quarts, and one at Beccles that will contain six gallons less one pint.

As already said, the church bells, which the ringers regarded as their own, or as parish property, they chose to ring on the most unsuitable occasions, as when a "long main" at cock-fighting had been won. Church bells were occasionally rung for successful racehorses. In the accounts of St. Edmund's, Salisbury, is this entry:

"1646. Ringing the race-day, that the Earl of Pembroke his horse winne the cuppe – vsh."

At Derby, when the London coach drove through the town in olden times it was usual to announce its arrival by ringing the church bells, that all such as had fish coming might hasten to the coach and secure the fish whilst fairly fresh.

It used to be said that St. Peter's six bells, which first sounded the approach of the London coach, called "Here's fresh fish come to town. Here's fresh fish come to town." Next came All Saints', further up the street, with its peal of ten, "Here's fine fresh fish just come into the town. Here's fine fresh fish just come into the town." Close by All Saints' stood St. Michael's, with but three bells, and one of them cracked, and the strain of this peal was, "They're stinking; they're stinking!" But St. Alkmund replied with his six, a little further on in the street, "Put more salt on 'em, then. Put more salt on 'em, then."

The earliest bells we have are the Celtic bells of hammered bronze, in shape like sheep bells, and riveted on one side. When these bells were first introduced they caused great astonishment, and many stories grew up about them. Thus, in the church of Kelly, in Devon, is an old stained-glass window that represents St. Oudoc, Bishop of Llandaff, with a golden yellow bell at his side. The story is told of him that he was one day thirsty, and passing some women who were washing clothes, he asked of them a draught of water. They answered laughingly that they had no vessel from which he could drink. Then he took a pat of butter, and moulded it into the shape of a cup or bell, and filled it with water, and drank out of it. And this golden bell remained in the church of Llandaff till it was melted up by the commissioners of Henry VIII.

A still more wonderful story was related of St. Keneth, of Gower, who, as a babe, was exposed in an osier coracle to the waves. The seagulls fluttered over him, and bore him to a ledge of rock, where they made a bed for him of the feathers from their breasts. Then they brought him a brazen bell to serve as baby's bottle, and every day the bell was filled with milk by a forest doe.

It is with bells as with all the faculties of man. They are all "very good" when used harmoniously; but the "sweet bells" can be "jangled out of tune" not only by the failure of mental power – as in the case of Hamlet – but by lack of balance and order in the moral sense.

CHAPTER VII.

The Village Inn

"I will take mine ease at mine inn!"

What an element of coziness, hospitality, picturesqueness is introduced into the village by the inn! There is another side – but that we will not consider.

I know some villages from which the squire has banished the hostelry, and poor, forlorn, half-hearted places they seem to me. If there be a side to the village inn that is undesirable, I venture to think that the advantage of having one surpasses the disadvantages. What the squire has done in closing the inn he hardly realizes. He has broken a tradition that is very ancient. He has snapped a tie with the past. In relation to quite another matter, Professor G. T. Stokes says: "History is all continuous. Just as the skilful geologist or palæontologist can reconstruct from an inspection of the strata of a quarry the animal and vegetable life of past ages, so can the historian reconstruct out of modern forms, rites, and ceremonies, often now but very shadowy and unreal, the essential and vigorous life of society as it existed ten centuries ago. History, I repeat, is continuous. The life of societies, of nations, and of churches is continuous, so that the life of the present, if rightly handled, must reveal to us much of the life of the past."[5 - Ireland and the Celtic Church, London, 1892, p. 276.] So is it with the parish; and so the dear old village inn has its story of connection with the manor, and its reason for being, in remote antiquity.