| Photo by] | [J. Valentine &. Sons. |
The Campanile or Bell-Tower of Chichester Cathedral. (See page [64].)
But it has also been suggested that the Curfew was in its origin a bell with a religious as well as a secular significance, namely the Ave bell, or Angelus, which was rung in the early morning and the evening, usually at 9 a.m. and 5.30 p.m., and also at midday, and at the sound of which every one was expected to repeat the memorial of the Incarnation or “Hail Mary.” Some have thought that bells dedicated to the angel Gabriel were specially devoted to such a purpose; but this is doubtful, though the old Curfew bell at S. Albans still bears such a dedication. At Mexborough, in Yorkshire, a bell is rung morning, noon, and evening, obviously a survival of the Angelus bell.
The Curfew bell seems to have appealed especially to poets, even to the American Longfellow, and the puritan Milton, who in Il Penseroso says:
“Oft on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off Curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore
Swinging slow with sullen roar.”
Compare the opening line of Gray’s Elegy:
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”
The morning bell, whether an Ave bell or not, is seldom now rung, but may be heard at 5 a.m. at Ludlow, and at Nuneaton and Coleshill in Warwickshire. One of the old bells of S. Michael’s, Coventry, now at S. John’s Church in that town, has the inscription:
“I ring at six to let men know
When to and from their work to go. 1675.”