Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1860-07-03
TUESDAY. July 8, 1890.
BELLS.
'Those evening bells! those evening bells

How many tale their music tells,
OF vonth, and home. and that sweet time.
When last heard their soothing chime"
1t is understood that the ancient and inter
esting custom of ringing the church bell, in
this city, at noon and nine O'Clock in the eve
ming, is to be discontinued during the present
month. The noon bell, coming in the midst
of the days hustle and care, might be silenced
without serious misgiving. But the evening
bell is both public benefit and venerable
custom which ought not to be hastily laid
aside 1t is the only practice which connects
us with the fathers Of the town-the only Gus
tom, indeed, now existing among US, the anti
uuity of which cannot be definitely fathomed
For nearly sixty years the modest bell
hung in 1889, "near small tree, little north
of Capt Daniel Heywood's, about midway be-
tween the meeting house and the court house"
lifted its solitary tongue to tell when labor and
pleasure ought to cease, and TO indicate ma
lures hour for repose. The more ambitious
BELL hung in the Old South steeple, in 1902,
and bearing as the inscription of its duties,
"The living to the church call,
And to the grave summon all
continued the excellent CUSTOM till the multi
plication of bells rendered its faithful service
no longer imperative. But by one bell or an
other the good old custom has been preserved
uninterrupted till now. The nameless and
shadowy bell ringers have one after another
fulfilled their MISSIONS and passed away under
the "melancholy menace" of their own bells.
But the familiar and immemoral tones have
been the same to every generation.
How this custom of bell-ringing came to be
establi shed would be an interesting, but not
very profitable subject of speculation. 1t is
certain that it was honored centuries before
the Pilgrims turned their weary feet toward
the setting sun, centuries, even, before Will
liam led his victorious Norman armies into
Great Britain. 1t was part of the jurispru-
dence, of the faith, and of the life of the ear
lest English civilization. 1t is no discredit to
the bells, that in the periods when superstition
was fashionable they were sometimes recog-
nized as conscious agencies against thunder
crackes and hurtful storms" and evil things
generelly. We find the following illustration
of the dignity attached to them, in an old book
of lhymes =
ST that the thunder chaunce to rore, and storme
tempest shake
A wonder is it for to see the wretches how they
Howe that no fayth at all they have nor trust in
The clarke doth all the bellies forthwith at once in
With wondrous sound and deeper fare than he was
wont before,
Till in the oftie heavens darke the thunder bray
more.
For in these christned bellies they thinke doth lie
much powre and might,
As able is the tempest great and storme to vanquish
save my self at Numburg once, towne in Toring
bell that with this title bolde hirself did proudly
boast:
BY name Mary called am, with sound 1 put to
The thunder crackes and hurtful stormes and every
wicked spright.'
Such things whenas these bellies can do no wonder |
certainlie
1t is if that the Papstes to their tolling alwayes
file,
When halle, or any raging storme, or tempest comes
in sight,
Or thunderboltes, lightning fierce, that every |
place doth smght.n
Our evening bell is undoubtedly the same
as the curtew, or cover-fre bell, which is as
ancient as King Alfred. The ringing of that
bell was the signal for covering fires and going
TO bed. The curfew law of William l. made
it obligatory on all people to put out their fires
and go to bed at the sound of the eight O'Clock
bella law which some birds of the night
thought was oppressive, and which was subse-
quently repealed but the bell kept on ring
ing Macaulay, in his history of Claybrook,
1871, says 1.-THE custom of ringing curiew,
which is still kept up at Claybrook, has proba
bly, obtoined, without intermission, since the
days of the Norman conqueror" The old
C,l1 ,la&, ntprr
"those evening bells" In the 22d of Henry
Eighth, there appears :-"Imprimis, the sex
ton, or his sufficient deputy, shall I've in
the church steeple, and at eight O'Clock shall
ring the curfewe, by the space Of quarter OF an
hour, with such bell as OF old time hath been
accustomed" The legends of the old time as
well as the laws show how faithfully the Gus
to m was observed. The stories of the lady who
lost heuMway on the moor, and was guided
hom Rund of the curfcw bell, and who
euhS fit an estate to maintain matin
and1 ringing; of the London mercer
who devised two tenements for the ringing of
the bell of St Mary LIE. Bow morning and eve
ming and many others like them are too fa-
miliar and too long to be told.
The custom is ours also by adoption. The
early settlers introduced it both for the public
safety, and the cause of good morals. 1t is
easy to see how well it served their purpose.
II it means less in our generation, it is because
it meant so much with theirs. The discipline
of one generation is never lost upon those
which come after it. If there were no other
motive for perpetuating the custom than
consisted in an afectiouate regard for what
has been worthy in the past, its music should