Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1909-05-14

iron plates which have been hammered
and riveted together. At the monas-
terry of st. Gall in Switzerland the four
sided bell Of the Irish missionary st.
Gall, who lived in the seventh century,
is still preserved; but more ancient still
is the bell of st. Patrick in Belfast,
which Is ornamented with gold and
gems and silver filigree work. The cur
few is that about which most has been
written and said. 1t has been thought
that 1t was only used In England, but
1t was quite common on the Continent
in the Middle Ages.
The ringing of bells by rope Is still
very popular in England, especially In
the country, where almost every hamlet
however small, has its church with its
peal of bells, which are often remark
ably we'll rung. To the town dwellei
church bells do not strike the same
personal note which the countryman
hears in them where for miles around
each village every man, woman and
child is known the one to the other.
The ploughman in the fields hearing
the tolling Of the passing bell, or the
Joyous wedding peal, knows at once for
whom they ring. What the bell means
to him Is we'll expressed in the lines:
Say! how canst thou mourn?
How canst thou rejoice?
Thou art but metal dull!
And vet all our borrowings
And all our rejoicings-
Thou dost feel them all.
The first real peal Of bells In this
country was sent by Pope Calixtus ILL.,
| to Kings College, Cambridge, and was
for three hundred years the largest peal
in England. About the beginning OF
the year 1900 sets Of eight bells were
hung in a few of the large churches.
In the middle Of the seventeenth CEN
tury a man named White wrote the ia
nous work on bells in which he intro
duced the system Of numbering them
| 1, 2, 8, 4, etc., on slips Of paper In diff
ferent orders, according to the changes
intended to be rung. 1t is calculated
that to ring all the changes upon TWEEN
ty-four bells, at two strokes a second,
would take over 117,0O0,00O years.
One Of the most famous bells in the
world is the first great bell Of Moscow,
which now stands in the middle Of
square in that city and Is used as a
chapel. This bell was cast in 1873,
but was in the earth for over hundred
years, being raised in 1886 by the En-
peror Nicholas 1t is nearly twenty feet
high, has a circumference Of sixty feet,
is two feet thick, and weighs almost
two hundrd tons. The second Mos
cow bell, which is the largest bell In
the world that is actually in use,
weighs 128 tons. These are several
bells extant which weigh ten tons and
over, of which Big Ben, the largest bell
in England, weighing between thirteen
and fourteen tons, is one. Big Ben Is,
unfortunately, cracked.
Small bells are used for such a varie-
ty of things that it Is almost impossi-
BILE to enumerate them. There are bells
for almost everything from electric
bells down to ferret bells, to which, by
the way, the bells used in olden time
for hawking were very similar. Per-
haps the prettiest in sound Of all small
bells is the cow bell, so often heard in
Switzerland and Italy. Although fire.
quently made of baked earth (this is
especially so in Italy), the tone Is Won
derfully sweet and clear and nothing
is prettier or more fairylike than the
tinkle Of the bell in the distance. AS
the cattle come slowly down from the
upland pastures after a heavy fall Of
snow they look at first mere dots on the
mountain side, but even then the faint
tinkle of their bells can be heard. In