PETER QUINCE
This fondness for the bells is partly because there is, to my mind, something satisfactory in the corporate voice of the village faithful declaring itself, at fixed points in the calen- dar, much as it has done for many hundreds of years. But there is also an agreeable hint of mystery about bells and their ringers, a touch of the esoteric which we who merely listen do not fully comprehend, however much, in a general way, we may approve. 1361I-ringers are not quite like other men. They belong to a cult of freemasonry, and an ancient one, from which the rest of us are excluded.
Every Thursday evening I see the ringers arriving at the church for their weekly practice. They wear a serious air and they are always punctual. Most of them • are familiar at other times in other guises, as Dick the tractor-driver or Tom the brick- layer, but when they 'put aside their ordinary selves to become ringers they acquire a sort of dignified reserve which marks them out. The Master of the Belfry, a small and affable fellow in the ordinary way, bears himself
with assurance and authority. The others defer to him courteously, and any stranger who happens into the church when they are about their business is imperiously directed to keep out of the way.
Our ringers are not, to be painfully frank, very good. Or rather, some of the older ones are said to be excellent, but the newer mem- bers of the band still have much to learn. Occasionally we hear alarming aberrations in the smooth patterns of sound which are meant to emanate from the church tower. At such times one is acutely aware of the pre- dicament of the novice ringer, obliged to learn his craft in the hearing of all his neigh- bours; there ought to be, perhaps, dummy bells on which beginners could practise silently. I believe there used to be such things; it may be that such a dodge was frowned upon as a breach of the stern discip- line of the mystery.
This sense of dedication to private rites accounts, no doubt, for the aloofness which the ringers, when in their official capacity, seem to cultivate. They arrive, ring and depart; there is no hobnobbing with the un- initiated, however different their attitude may be at the Fox and Hounds a short time later. On only one occasion that I can recall have the ringers, collectively acknow- ledged the existence of their audience; that was when they pushed a polite note through the letter-box of each house within sound of the bells, announcing that 'we wish to notify you of an attempt to ring a peal of 5.040 changes of Grandsire Triples from 9.15 to 12.30 in the morning, and we hope you will not be unduly disturbed by this attempt.'
Thus disarmingly forewarned, we listened hopefully on the appointed day. Alas, the attempt was a failure. The ringers 'broke down' after following the complicated pat- terns of the peal for only an hour. Shortly afterwards they left, silent and dignified as ever. When the junior members of the band have advanced their skill, no doubt they will try again.
It is hard, knowing the worthy men (and women, too, in recent years) who peal our bells, to believe all the stories that are still told about ringers in the old days, before Victorian morality reached into the ringing chambers of the village churches. But it seems that not much more than a hundred years ago, bell-ringers were a notoriously sottish lot. Our own ringers now do their work at service times standing at the foot of the church tower, in full view of the parson and, if they turn their heads, the congregation. This is a fairly recent arrange- ment. Formerly they worked unseen, in a ringing chamber up aloft; and it was the scandalous drinking, and I dare say other affronts to virtuous villagers, which went on up in those places which caused the ringers to be brought down to ground level and public scrutiny. The bell-ropes had to be lengthened in order, so to speak, to bring the bell-ringers on to a tighter rein.
Even in those degenerate days, however, the ringers were by all accounts no less devoted to their mystery than their respect- able present-day successors. They practised those masterpieces of the change-ringers' art, the marvellously named peals like the Morning Star, Merry Andrew, A Cure for Melancholy, The Faulcon and The Evening Delight, which Still enthral the serious- minded ringer to this day.
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