Chapter X

THE PASSING-BELL

The passing-bell was originally tolled in order that whoever heard the bell should pray for the soul that was departing; also, the bells were supposed to scare away the fiends who might molest departing spirits. This bell was also called the soul-bell and the death-bell. In modern times it has lost this meaning and the tolling of a bell is merely to give notice of a death or burial. When the passing-bell doth tole,

And the furies in a shole

Come to fight a parting soule,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

HERRICK, Litanie to the Holy Spirit.
All my spirits

As if they heard my passing-bell go for me,
Pull in their powers and give me up to destiny.

FLETCHER, Sea Voyage.

O lady, 'tis dark, an' I heard the dead-bell,

An' I darna gae yonder for gowd nor fee.

JAMES HOGG, Mountain Bard.

Is it not strange that as ye sung,
Seem'd in mine ear a deathpeal rung,
Such as in nunneries they toll

For some departing sister's soul?
Say what may this portend?

Then first the Palmer silence broke
(The livelong day he had not spoke),
"The death of a dear friend."

SIR WALTER SCOTT, Marmion.

Each Matin bell the Baron saith,

Knells us back to a world of death.

COLERIDGE, Christabel.

I have heard the earth on his coffin pour
To the muffled drums, deep rolling,
While the minute gun, with its solemn roar
Drowned the death bells' tolling.

HORACE SMITH, On the death of George the Third. Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark.

TENNYSON, Crossing the Bar.

When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,

When bedes-man had prayed, and the dead-bell JAMES HOGG, Kilmeny.

rung.

When the sullen death-bell tolls

For our own departed souls

When our final doom is near,

Gracious Son of Mary hear!

HENRY HART MILMAN, Hymn.

This portrait depicts Old Scarlett, the sexton of Peterborough Cathedral, after tolling the passing bell. He is now ready to dig the grave of the dying parishioner. He lived to be ninetyeight years old and his epitaph states:

"He had intered two queens within this place And the townes householders in his life's space Twice over

Bishop Bruno awoke in the dead midnight,
And he heard his heart beat loud with affright;
He dreamt he had rung the palace bell,

And the sound it gave was his passing knell.
Bishop Bruno smiled at his fears so vain;

He turned to sleep and he dreamt again;

He

rang at the palace gate once more,

And Death was the porter that opened the door. SOUTHEY, Bishop Bruno.

At midnight the sexton of St. Sepulchre's rang a hand bell at the window of the condemned cell, to warn the prisoners that their passing-bell would ring on the morrow:

"All you that in the condemned hole do lie,

Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;
Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear;
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent;
And when St. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your
souls."

The saddest use that has ever been made of the passing-bell was on St. Bartholomew's day, the 24th of August, 1572, when in the small hours of that Sunday morning the bells of St. Germain L'Auxerrois at 'Paris ushered in the

massacre of the Huguenots in France, to the number of one hundred thousand men, women, and children. The signal for the tolling of the bells backward was given by the firing of a pistol by King Charles IX, under the influence of his wicked mother Catherine de Medici.

From a poem at the death of Charles Dickens:
Toll not the Abbey Bell to-day

Above his cloistered bed,
For still as in the faded years,
In all our smiles, in all our tears
Of love, he lives, he lives for aye,
Whom we call dead.

There is a custom in Lincolnshire, England, of ringing a passing-bell just before midnight on New Year's Eve and immediately changing it to a merry peal when twelve has struck.

ST. MICHAEL'S CHAIR

ROBERT SOUTHEY

Merrily, merrily rung the bells,

The bells of St. Michael's tower,

When Richard Penlake and Rebecca his wife
Arrived at St. Michael's door.