1. Is the word "Prol" Saxon or British, and what is its probable etymology?
2. Where was "Cuicfal in Flandriam," from whence the voyage was made to Prol?
Richard John King.
CHIMING, TOLLING, AND PEAL-RINGING OF BELLS.
Some of your clerical readers, as well as myself, would probably be glad to have determined, what are the proper times and measures in which the bells of a church ought to be rung. There seems to be no uniformity of practice in this matter, nor any authoritative directions, by which the customs that obtain may be either improved or regulated. The terms chiming, tolling, and peal-ringing, though now generally understood, do not intelligibly apply to the few regulations about bells which occur in the canons.
I believe that chiming is the proper method of summoning the congregation to the services of the church: and tolling certainly appears to be the most appropriate use of the bell at funerals. But chiming the bells is an art that is not recognised in the older rules respecting their use. For instance, the Fifteenth Canon orders that on Wednesdays and Fridays weekly, warning shall be given to the people that litany will be said, by tolling of a bell. And, on the other hand, though we toll at a funeral, the Sixty-seventh Canon enjoins that—
"After the party's death, there shall be rung no more but one short peal, and one other before the burial, and one other after the burial.
The peal here alluded to does not of course mean what Mr. Ellacombe has so clearly described to be a modern peal, in Vol. i., p. 154., of "Notes and Queries;" but it would at least amount, I suppose, to consonantia campanarum, a ringing together of bells, as distinguished from the toll or single stroke on a bell. Horne Tooke says:
"The toll of a bell is its being lifted up (tollere, to raise), which causes that sound we call its toll."