Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-01-19
TIE CURFRW.
ITS ORIGIN AND USE IN EARLY
DAYS.
lite Revival and New Adoption in
Numerous Portions of England
and Elsewhere

on-Avon serves to remind us that one at
least, of those old-world customs which
have survived down to our time is not de-
Ginning in popular favor. Even Shake
speares birthplace gains an added charm
now that the bell which Shakespeare
heard, again "tolls the knell of parting
day" over his grave. Nor does there seem
to be any reason 10 question the tradition.
The custom, whatever Its origin, was,
probably, almost universal il Shakespeare's
day, and the age of the bell at STRAIT
ford can be ascertained to the satisfaction
of even the most ardent Shakespearean
skeptic. We doubt whether it is even
suspected how generally the Gus
tom is still kept up in this country.
Curfew is, however, as matter of fact,
still religiously tolled in many hundreds
of towns and villages, either all the year
round, or, which is still more usual, from
September to April. No part of the king
dom can claim it as a special proof OF its
adherence to primitive simplicity. Geo
graphically considered, its survivals are
by no means uninstructive. We can, for
instance, hear it tolling from the Isle of
Wight in the south, through Kent and
Surrey, Middlesex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lin
coin, York, Durham and Northumberland,
and even across the border, in the Scotch
lowlands. And we can trace it again
through Cumberland and Lancashire,
Cheshire, Derbyshire, Stafford, Shropshire,
Hertfordshire, Monmouthshire, down to
Devon and Dorset. It.is, in short, perpet-
uated all over the kingdom. Here and
there it has been identified with local
customs. At Newcastle, until it was
discontinued, it was the signal for shutting
the shops. At Durham, again-where it
is tolled at o'clock-it heralds the clos
| ing of the college gates; while in many
| Cheshire and Yorkshire villages it has for
! hundreds of years warned farmers to lock
| up their cattle for the night. The almost
| universal hour at which it is tolled is s
| O'Clock in the evening, although here and
there it is rung instead at and 9 o'clock.
In some places, too, there is morning cur
| few, curious variation. At Stow, for
instance, it is, or was lately, rung as early
as o'clock in the morning, and at Tam
worth at the more reasonable hour of 6
o'clock. At Waltham in the Wolds, again,
grateful farmer who was lost in the snow
and found his way home by its sound, left
| a field to endow o'clock curfew forever.
| The facts, indeed, plainly show that the
custom has kept its hold of the popular
sympathies through all the ages.
| 1t is almost heresy to question the ira
dition that curfew came in with William
the Conqueror Nursery historians with
out number have waxed sentimental over
the wrongs of the conquered Saxons, and
we have conjured up pictures which must
still be balmy to the downtrodden Celt: We
all know how the revengeful Norman Prince
is depicted as having had the brutality to
order the couyre feu bell to be rung, as
signal for the Saxons to put out their dips
and go to bed. Thompson even tells US
that THE shiv'ring wretches, at the cur
few sound, detected sunk into their sordid
beds" But although incidentally the
edict doubtless helped to put down
the Saxon beer clubs, which were
the resorts of political conspirators,
there is plenty of evidence that in Will
liams time it was, as it had long been
on the continent, if not in England, pri-
marily intended as precaution against
fire. The danger of fire in those prim-
tive times was SO constant and so ter
rible that the most extraordinary
safeguards were enjoined against it,
and not without reason, in the
days of wooden houses, into which CHM
neys were not generally introduced till
about the beginning of the fourteen CEN
fury. The prevailing fear lest the squalid
huts in which people, even the well-to-do
people lived should be burned down, was
very real. The old City of London ordi-
nances abound in still more stringent fire
regulations. Between Whitsuntide and
st. Bartholomew, for example, when it
was to be expected that water would
be scarce, every one was required, I'M
der heavy penalties to keep full a barrel
or large earthen vessel in front of his door
in readiness for emergencies. But none of
these rules had the sweet simplicity of the
curfew law, which rendered compulsory a
custom whose origin certainly dated back
long before the Conqueror. A "cover fire.
belf' was, for instance, ordered to be rung
at some places in Alfred's time, and we
| find plenty of early traces of the custom,
or its counterpart, as at Nippon, the
blowing of a horn at the market cross,
all over the continent. At Vienna the
people were required to put out their fires
and hang up lanterns outside their doors
when the bell rang. There is something
of pathos in the conclusion that supposed
tyrannical edict was only a reasonable reg
ulation, at that time of almost worldwide
application. But if further proof of this
were needed we know that the Ncrmans
certainly never penetrated Roxburgshire,
SO that the curfew at Kelso, unless a
modern innovation, must have been
rung in accordance with immemorial
usage, or under some other, and probably
earlier, enactment. As for the significance
of the curfew, we need go no further than
Gray's "Elegy" The bell, without a
doubt, was intended from the earliest time
to ''toll the knell of parting day. 1t
sounded, in Longfellow's beautiful figure,
''the requiem of the dying day." it was
the passing bell of the ebay that is dead"
In many New England town the Gus
| tom perpetuated by the early settlers to
remind them of the old country is still
piously preserved. We cannot picture a
more touching link between the new and
the old world. "Solemnly, mournfully,
dealing its dole, the curfew bell is begin
ming to TOLL" is a strange dirge, from the
pen of Western poet In the "Bells of
Lynn" too, Longfellow appeals, with true
sublimity, to the ''curfew of the setting sun"
as heard at Nahant. The idea, in truth,
appeals with irresistible pathos to man
kind of every age and every cline. 1t
might even date from the epoch of the
worship of the sun god. Nothing could
then be more natural than that night
should be ushered in with funereal
knell. But the practical people of the
West were not content to give it sem
timental significance. In Charleston, for
instance, we find that it was, and perhaps
still is tolled twice-at eight o'clock as a
signal for the children to go to bed, and at
/ -, 1.,olool DC the hour for servants To be