“Pray for the soul of Sir John le Spring,
When the black monks sing and the chantry bells ring.
Pray for the sprite of the murdered knight,
Pray for the rest of Sir John le Spring.
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And aye the mass-priest sings his song,
And patters many a prayer,
And the chantry bell tolls loud and long,
And aye the lamp burns there.”
There are numerous ways of indicating the age and sex of the departed by the manner in which the passing-bell is tolled; we have been informed that in Lincolnshire alone there are between seventy and eighty different methods by which this is done.
Some few bells have upon them inscriptions showing they were meant to be rung as passing-bells. The third bell at Brant Broughton has on it:—
“Beg ye of God your soul to save
Before we call you to the grave.”
It is possible that some of the customs here spoken of as now existing may recently have fallen into oblivion, but the term “existing” must only be taken to mean that it was in use at the place named when the note concerning it was made.
Inscriptions on Bells.
By William Andrews.
High up in the dusty belfry, whose grey shadows rarely see the face of man, the bells swing to and fro with unwearying zeal. But in addition to the lessons which pour from their eloquent mouths, should we scale the tall ladders of the bell tower and invade the regions of the owl and the bat, we shall find other teaching—that graven on the sides of the bells themselves—the inscriptions. Let us therefore glance over the wide field of interesting information thus presented to us. Allusions to the pitch of the bell are often the subject. A bell of Churchill, Somerset, has the following:—