THE BELL'S VOICE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4733, 4 August 1924, Page 2

THE BELL'S VOICE.

A REMARKABLE HISTORY. PUT TO MANY USES. The use of bells is so ancient as to be lost in the glooin of remotest antiquity. Setting aside that bell which according to an Eastern writer, was manufactured by Tubal Cain, and used by Noah to summon his shipcarpenters to their daily labour, the earliest authentic mention of them is in Exrdus, where it is stated that the high priest was ordained to wear golden bells, alternating with golden pomegranates, on the blue vestments in which he was robed during the performance of religious ceremonies. The Romans had bells and knockers at their doors, and their night-watch each* carried a bell to give the alarm in case of accident or danger. They hung bells also on the necks of criminals on their way to execution, as a warning to others, and Phaedrus mentions that bells were commonly attached to the necks of animals, to remove which was, according to the civil law. theft • The earliest mention of bells, as applied to the purposes of religious worship, is by Polydore Virgil, who states thdt Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, a city of Campania, in Italy, first adapted them to his church in the year 400 ; hence the word campanile, belfry. They were not adopted in churches in Britain till near the endof the seventh century, but they were in use in Caledonia in the sixth century, and in the year 610 the French Army of Clothaire 11. was terrified from the siege of the city bf Sens by the ringing of the bells of St. Stephen’s. Church.

The pasping-bell took its origin in. a superstition that dates back to the earliest Egyptian periods—namely, to the belief that at the moment of death good and evil spirits lay in waif for the liberated soul, and fought together for it on its way to Heaven. These wicked demons were terrified even unto flight at the sound of bells, and the louder the ringing •the more complete the victory over the powers of evil. And not only to drive away evil spirits, but in later times to counteract the natural influences of Ktorm and pestilence, did it become customary to ring church bells. “Let the bells in cities and towns be rung often,” says a Dr. Hering in a treatise upon pestilential contagion, written in 1625, “and let the ordnance be discharged; therefore the air is pu?ified.” The Curfew Bell is generally supposed to have been introduced by the Conqueror, and imposd as a badge of * servitude upon the nation; but it was in. reality a protection against fire, and was prevalent throughout Europe then, and only a stricter observance of the old law was enforced during the reigns of th© first two Williams,