[CHAPTER IV]
Change-Ringing
One of the chief uses made of church bells in modern times is not strictly a religious use, though it is more or less associated with the Church’s seasons, particularly with Sundays and Christmas Day. But it has always been recognized that the secular use of bells, within certain limits, is permissible, as will be further seen in the next chapter.
Change-ringing is, as we have already noted, an entirely modern introduction, and is, moreover, confined to England. In pre-Reformation days we hear of guilds of ringers, as, for instance, at Westminster Abbey, in the reign of Henry III, where the brethren of the guild appear to have enjoyed their privileges since the time of Edward the Confessor. In smaller monastic or collegiate establishments clerics in minor orders were often entrusted with the duty of ringing the bells, as at Tong, in Shropshire (cf. Plate [30]). But this kind of ringing was in no way scientific, nor were the fittings of the bells adapted for ringing in the strict modern sense.
The accompanying diagram (Plate [27]; compare also Plate [28]), showing the way in which a modern bell is hung, will serve to explain the method now adopted for ringing proper, as opposed to chiming. The headstock, or wooden block to which the top of the bell is firmly fixed (so that the bell cannot move independently of it), revolves by means of brass pivots, known as the “gudgeons,” in a socket made in the top of the framework. One of these pivots forms the axle of a large wooden wheel, half the circumference of which has a groove for the rope, one end of which is fixed in it, the other passing through a pulley down into the ringing-chamber. In mediaeval times half-wheels only were used, but the complete wheel seems to have been introduced by the fifteenth century, and single bells were “rung” in the sixteenth. Peal-ringing, as we know it, cannot be traced before the seventeenth.
The essential feature of ringing in peal is that the bell shall perform an almost complete revolution each time the rope is pulled, starting from an inverted position. To prevent its falling over again at the conclusion of the stroke, a vertical bar of wood or iron, known as the “stay,” is fixed to the side of the stock, which is checked by a movable bar in the lower part of the frame, called the “slider.” It is clear that in the course of each revolution the clapper will strike the side twice. Before the invention of the wheel, the bell was merely sounded by means of a lever connecting the rope with the stock, as is still done in ringing small bells, either as “ting-tangs,” or when hung in an open turret.
Before the peal can be started, the bells must be rung up or “raised” to the inverted position, which the ringer achieves by a series of steady strokes, each pull increasing in length until it is balanced; at the end of the peal this process is reversed. When bells are merely chimed they are not “raised,” but the rope is pulled each time sufficiently to allow one stroke of the clapper. By means of an ingenious apparatus invented by the late Canon Ellacombe, this can now be done by one man if necessary, the muscular effort required being reduced to a minimum.
But change-ringing is a real science, and entails long and assiduous practice and considerable muscular exertion. It is, in fact, one of the best forms of physical exercise conceivable, and must have proved a godsend in that respect to many men whose opportunities would otherwise be limited.
Its elementary principle is, of course, that the bells should be rung in succession, but in a varying order. The method in which the succession varies is the foundation of the various forms known vaguely to most of us as Grandsire Triples, Treble Bob-Major, and so on. They are founded on a recognized arithmetical basis, that of permutations, or the number of arrangements possible of any given number of objects. We know that three letters or numbers can be arranged in six different ways:
123 132
231 213
312 321
Thus, on three bells, only six changes can be rung so as to vary the order each time, and we must then begin over again. With four bells we have a choice of twenty-four changes, which might run as follows: