“Sancti + ficetur, et conse + cretur, Domine, signumistud: in nomine Pa + tris, et Fi + lii, et Spiritûs + sancti in honorem Sancti N. pax tibi.”[8]
It is interesting to notice that in many places the practice still remains of ringing the bells at particular hours when no service is to be held. This is clearly a survival of the times when the bells were rung to call people to the mediæval services. We are reminded in “The Bells of Kincardineshire,”[9] that at the present day various reasons, more or less utilitarian, have been given in Scotland for these old service bells. The country people say that the eight o’clock bell is to “let you ken it’s the Sabbath,” or to “gar the hill folk mak’ theirsel ready or the kirk win in.” This is very often called the “rousing bell,” and the later bell the “dressing bell,” or the “get ready.”
The Perth Session Records, July 10, 1560, provide that “The Session, after the appointment of the order of communication, ordains that the first bell should be rung at four in the morning; the second at half five o’clock; the third at five. The second ministration, the first bell to be rung at half nine o’clock; the second at nine; the third at half ten.” July 6, 1703, “The Session appoints that the church doors be opened at seven of the clock in the morning, and not till then; as also that the first bell be rung at eight of the clock; the second at half nine; and the third at nine.”
The ringing of bells at funerals is a custom of ancient origin. It was a popular belief that the sound of the bell had power to drive away evil spirits. In England, Bishop Grandison of Exeter in 1339 found it necessary to check the long ringings at burials, on the grounds that “they do no good to the departed, are an annoyance to the living, and injurious to the fabrick and the bells.”[10]
Before the Reformation there were five bells at Dundee on which “six score and nine straiks” were given three times a day, to call to “matins, mess, and even-sang.”
Presbyterianism has naturally had a great influence on the bells in Scotland. Mr Eeles, who is an authority on the subject, tells us that the passing bell is no longer rung, nor is there any ringing at burials beyond tolling the bell for a few minutes as the procession approaches the churchyard. In some parishes even this is said to be fast dying out. In the Burgh Records of Dundee “it is statute that an ony person cause the gret bells to be rung for either saul, mass or dirige, he sall pay forty pence to the Kirk werk.”
The ringing of the death-knell was universal after the Reformation, when it seemed to have acquired a new meaning in the minds of the people, having become degenerated, so to speak, into a mere notice to the public that a death had taken place. Shakespeare refers to this ringing of the death-knell in his seventy-first sonnet:—
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than ye shall hear the surly, sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.
The Reformation and the decline of Gothic architecture both combined to put their impress upon bells. The Reformation naturally caused a great change in the inscriptions, and the decline of Gothic led to a poverty of design and an abandonment of the fine lettering, crosses, and other ornaments. Figures of angels and saints no longer appeared, and soon the artistic black letter gave place to the commonplace Roman capitals. With these drastic changes much of the romance of the bell has been swept away.