9.
'The passing bell,' says Harland, 'according to Grose, was anciently rung for two purposes, one to bespeak the prayers of all good Christians for a soul just departing, the other to drive away the evil spirits who stood at the bed's foot ready to seize their prey, or at least to molest and terrify the soul on its passage.'
Mr. Sikes says that in Wales, before the Reformation, 'there was kept in all Welsh churches, a handbell which was taken by the Sexton to the house where a funeral was to be held, and rung at the head of the procession,' and that 'the custom survived long after the Reformation in many places, as at Caerleon, the little Monmouthshire village, which was a bustling Roman city when London was a hamlet. The bell, called the bangu, was still preserved in the parish of Llanfair Duffryn Clwyd half a dozen years ago.'
The bell might now with greater propriety be called the passéd bell, as it is tolled only after a death, the ringing concluding with a number of distinct knells to announce the years and sex of the deceased, which the authority alluded to above considers 'a vestige of an ancient Roman Catholic injunction.' Until a comparatively recent period it was customary at Walton-le-Dale, Lancashire, to inter Protestants in the afternoon, a bell being tolled at intervals prior to the funeral; Catholics, however, were buried in the evening, a full peal being rung upon the bells immediately before the procession started.
Mr. Thornber, writing in 1844, says that at the beginning of this century, at Poulton, the more respectable portion of the inhabitants were buried by candle-light, and that it was considered a sacred duty to expose a lighted candle in the windows of every house as the corpse was carried through the streets. He speaks of the custom as a mark of respect to the dead, but possibly there was something more than this in it. In Ireland even to-day it is usual to leave lighted candles in the room where a corpse is laid out.
This belief in the power of bells over not only demons and evil spirits of every kind, but also over the elves and 'good people,' appears to have been held in all countries ever inhabited by fairies and hill folk. The Danish trolls are said to have been driven out of the country by the hanging of bells in the churches, the noise reminding them forcibly of the time when Thor used to fling his hammer after them. It is recorded in a bit of local doggrel from the pen of a dead and forgotten rhymester, that the fairies remained at Saddleworth, on the confines of Lancashire and Yorkshire, until
'The steeple rose,
And bells began to play;'
when the Queen wandered away to the wild district
'Where Todmore's kingdom lay;'
and the less important plebeians of fairy land 'disperséd, went.' Mr. Henderson says that 'at Horbury, near Wakefield, and at Dewsbury, on Christmas Eve, is rung the "devil's knell," a hundred strokes, then a pause, then three strokes, three strokes, and three strokes again.'