The art of ringers, campanoligists or just plain old bell-ringers has beenwith us for more than 1,000 years and it is still going strong, writesMelosina Lenox-Conyngham.
As if about to perform a bizarre mass hanging, eight silent people holding ropes, stand in a circle in a shadowy room with bare stone walls. The hands of the clock come together at midnight; the tower captain pulls down on his rope and the tenor bell in the loft above tolls the 12 strokes that see out the old year. The New Year is greeted by a peal of bells rung by the bell-ringers pulling down, releasing and then catching the ropes by their sallies (a padded hold on the rope).
Every year, I go to St Canice's Cathedral in Kilkenny to watch the bells ring in the New Year. The bell room is through an inconspicuous, Alice-in-Wonderland door in the south transept that leads up a narrow staircase winding within the wall to an open arcade. It is not for those who suffer from vertigo as one can look directly down onto the tombs below, before ascending another circular stone staircase from which opens the door to the bell room. Last year I climbed more steps to the belfry. In the gloom, the bells swinging on their wheels looked like instruments of torture. Nervously, I tried to recollect what happened to the victims in Dorothy Sayer's murder story The Nine Tailors.
Grandsire Doubles, Cambridge Surprise Minor, Oxford Bob Triples and Plain Hunting - what wonderful names are given to the different orders of ringing. Campanology or bell ringing is a skill that has been practised for the last 300 years and possibly before that when the monks leaned out of the round towers to call the brothers to prayer with the help of hand bells. Now there are many enthusiasts who keep the tradition alive. With the help of Fred Dukes' remarkable book, Campanology in Ireland, I have climbed up many dusty towers to peer at the inscriptions written on the bells.
In Ireland there are 33 towers of bells, as well as some that are not in any state to be rung. Christchurch in Dublin has 19 bells, making it one of the largest rings in the world. The most recently installed ring is St Nicholas's in Skibereen, which had hoped to re-hang the bells from a now-disused church in Cork, but they were found to be too big for the tower so the courageous congregation had new bells cast which were hung last year.
The six bells in Blessington have never been re-cast since Bishop Boyle, at his own expense, built the church in 1683 and added a handsome belfry with six tuneful bells, which still ring out every Sunday morning.
Bells have played their part in history, being used to warn people of impending disaster or to cry out the news of victory. There is a legend that Christopher Columbus stopped off in Galway before sailing on to find the New World. A Galway man went with him and on his return rang a triumphant peal of bells in St Nicholas of Myra to communicate to Galway and the world that America had been discovered.
At the siege of Athlone, the church bell was rung at 6 o'clock on June 30th as a signal for the storming party to cross the Shannon and make an assault on the castle.
During the Civil War, the bell of St Thomas's church on Marlborough Street was struck by a bullet and tolled wildly until the tower cracked and fell, bringing it down.
Two bells at Enniskillen were cast from the cannons captured at the battle of the Boyne, and were named William and Mary. In Drogheda, the citizens had taken refuge in St Peter's church when the Cromwellian, Colonel Hewson, started a fire under the tower and "men, bells and steeple came down together, a most hideous sight", wrote an eyewitness.
Church bells have also been used for more domestic purposes. At Drumbo, Co Down, where ringers had to be sober on entering the tower and took no intoxicating liquor with them, bells were rung after morning service to inform the housewives that it was time "to warm up the soup and put down the potatoes". And in Armagh, a curfew was rung everyday at 9 p.m. up until the middle of the last century.
It is said that on still evenings in Limerick one can hear the silvery chimes of the four bells that were hidden in the river, but never recovered, when the town was being besieged. They sound more tuneful than the old bells in St Mary, for on the tenor bell was inscribed, "Six shrill sounds are brought from inanimate objects and sounding together let them fill our city and neighbourhood with melody." There is an enchanting story of a bell that a king made a present of to St Bronach. It was placed in a young oak tree in the cemetery at Kilbroney, Co Down. The bell rang in the wind, and though eventually it could no longer be seen, it could still be heard chiming, faint but distinct. This was attributed to ghosts until in 1885, the oak tree blew down and there was the bell, completely enclosed by the trunk of the tree.
The bell in the church of St Michael's and St John's, which had replaced the Smock Alley theatre, was rung in 1815, the first bell to summon Catholics to Mass since the Reformation. Daniel O'Connell acted successfully on the church's behalf when a case was initiated by bigots intent on stopping the bell being rung.
One would have thought that Francis Johnson, the architect, would have been in trouble with a ring of 10 bells in the tower that he built in his garden in Eccles Street, especially as the sound of the bells reflected off the ground floor levels of the houses in the street. However, he managed to persuade his neighbours to assist him in the ringing, though it is not clear what their wives thought of the pastime. Francis Johnson designed the GPO and included a ring of five bells. They signalled the departure every evening of the 10 or 12 mail coaches to the different parts of the country, which was one of the sights of the city. One of these bells hangs in Mayo abbey, in Balla.
Another enthusiast was Major James Kearney in Kilkenny, whose house Blanchville is still sometimes referred to as The Ring o' Bells. He built a stone tower modelled on Sir Christopher Wren's St Mary's, Aldermanbury, which is still extant, to house his collection of clocks and the bells. The people in the vicinity complained that the bells ringing at all hours of the night kept them awake. Some years after his death, the Augustinian Church in Limerick acquired the bells.
In Kilkenny, the bells of St Canice's have had a chequered career, as the Franciscan friar, Brother Clyn, recorded: "On Friday, May 22nd, 1332, the belfry and a great part of the chancel fell, bringing down with them the side chapels and the bells so that it was a horrid and pitiful spectacle to the beholders." The roof of the lCathedral had recently been re- leaded as a penance by William Outlaw, the son of Alice Kytler. Alice, a wealthy lady, had been accused of witchcraft by her fourth husband, her stepchildren and the bishop. There was a sensational trial in which she was found guilty, but like all good witches, she vanished, leaving her maid to be burnt and William, for his part in the affair, to face stiff punishments.
When the tower was rebuilt, five bells were installed, with the ropes coming through the five holes in the vaulting above the transept. In the mid 16th century, with the accession to the throne of the Catholic Queen Mary, the first Protestant Bishop of Ossory was ousted by his clergy from the diocese. "They rang all the bells; they flung up their caps to the battlement of the great temple and they chattered and chaunted the Latin litany with great noise and devotion," he wrote indignantly.
In 1650, Cromwell's forces occupied the city, and stabled their horses in the cathedral, defaced the monuments and took away "the five great and goodly bells". These were replaced in 1674 with a ring of six, which have been recast twice since and augmented by two trebles, making a ring of eight that, to quote Tennyson, "Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in a thousand years of peace."