The peals

 This has got me thinking about the word 'to peal'. It sounds like a sound! And it turns out it comes from the French, like so many of our words. It is the shortened form of 'appeal' from the French 'appel', so 'a call'. So when bells peal out, we are being called. Not necessarily to church, but something in us is clearly, subtly, being called to, or being called out of us. 

Middle English pele also had the sense of "an accusation, an appeal" (15c.), and apele for "a ringing of bells" is attested from mid-15c.

Extended sense of "loud ringing of bells" is first recorded 1510s; subsequently it was transferred to other successions of loud sounds (thunder, cannon, mass shouts or laughter). Meaning "set of bells tuned to one another" is by 1789.

                                                                 (Online Etymological Dictionary)

So, you get the collocations 'a peal of thunder', 'peals of laughter'. And many others. 

In Macbeth, Shakespeare brings out the sinister connotations of the word:

Ere the bat hath flown
His cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.

(Act III, scene 2)

The metaphor 'rung night's yawning peal' is striking. It is not the peal of bells summoning to worship, or celebrating a wedding, or even marking somone's passing. It sounds like it is summoning to the end of time itself, night like a great abyss opening up, a gaping mouth.

Bell-ringing

 Following on from the New Year's post on Malcolm Guite and bell-ringing; this has brought back memories of childhood, when I used to live across from Saint Mary's Church in Leatherhead, south of London. The bells would give tempo to the week, of course Sunday being the great outburst of pealing. And the joyful bells of a wedding day. Living without it was unimaginable. It was as natural as the surrounding Surrey hills.

And memories of later life, of all my visits back to England to visit my mother and father. In their village in Northamptonshire, the peals can be heard from anywhere. 

This really is part of English life; our shared soundscape. Imagine how barren it would be without them, regardless of our religious faith, or lack of it. Apparently that is what it was like during the last War. Imposed silence. The sound of bells was reserved to warn the country of impending invasion. And in the end, they sounded victory. 

The particular form of 'change ringing' is a great, mathematical art, as Malcolm Guite says in his video. Here is an extract from the Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject:

Change ringing: traditional English art of ringing a set of tower bells in an intricate series of changes, or mathematical permutations (different orderings in the ringing sequence), by pulling ropes attached to bell wheels.(...) In ringing a peal, no bell moves more than one place forward or backward in the ringing order in each successive change, nor is it repeated or omitted, nor is any sequence (change) repeated. 

 

Malcolm Guite in the New Year - 'Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace' (Lord Tennyson)

 What better way to see in the New Year than with the scholar, poet, and musician Malcolm Guite, in his cosy study sipping his whisky and puffing away on his pipe. And all to the sound of the majestic 106th part of Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. The message is powerful, full of what we need in the world; ringing out all that is old and worn and destructive, and ringing in a life of renewal.

As Malcolm points out, there is a long tradition of Church bell-ringing in England, and the very intricate art of 'change-ringing', in which, as he says, 'the sequences of the bells alter on a sort of mathematical principle'. 

Here is the link to the short video, and below, the full text of the poem he recites. He then goes on to recite one of his own poems about the deep effect on him of the sound of church bells in contrast to the "electronic squawking" coming from our mobile devices:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

   The flying cloud, the frosty light:

   The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

   The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

   For those that here we see no more;

   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

   And ancient forms of party strife;

   Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

   The faithless coldness of the times;

   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

   The civic slander and the spite;

   Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

   Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

   Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.