Death bell

“ The custom of lighting candles round a dead body and watching at its side all night was originally due to the belief that a corpse, like a person asleep, is specially liable to the assaults of demons. The practice of tolling a bell at death must have had a similar origin, for it was a common medieval belief that the sound of a consecrated bell drives off the demons which when a man dies gather near in the air to waylay his fleeting soul. ”

“ The heavy sound of the funeral bell may, in crowded cities, lose half its influence by falling upon ears which use has attuned to its sound; but in a small and remote village death comes at long intervals, and reads a more solemn lesson, lest he may be altogether forgotten. ”

“ On our way downstairs we went into Room Four to see the relics of the Great Plague. There is a bell used by the men in charge of the death carts, when they went round calling their awful summons, "Bring out your dead!" That old rusty bell with the long wooden handle could tell a tale of horror if its iron tongue could speak our language. What sights it has seen as the dead cart rumbled through the dark, narrow streets of ancient London, and the bell rang its accompaniment to the bell-man's fearful chant. ”

“ All that the funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own ruin and death can be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of majestic sorrow, wails in the musical ringing of this passing bell, mourns in the tolling of this solemn knell, as it accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the still city of the Dead. ”

“ Ringing in the ears is a sign of death.
General.
1214. Ringing in the ears means death before the week ends. Of this ringing the term “death-bell” is used. It may be said by a country woman: “Oh! I have heard a death-bell!” or, “What a death-bell in my ear! You will hear of a death before the week is out.” In case of a sudden death, such a person might say: “I am not surprised; I heard a death-bell on such a day.”
Northern Ohio.
1215. The term “death-bell” is also a popular one in
Prince Edward Island. ”

“ They couldn’t make out whether the person was dead or merely shamming death, and so they put a bell-rope in the man’s hand, and later, when the man awoke from his deathlike sleep and rang the bell, the watchers got so frightened they ran away, and, it being freezing cold, the man died a real death. ”

“ The sound of the death-bell is often supposed to be heard at sea before a wreck, and this idea may be either associated with the bell-buoy which marks many sunken, dangerous rocks, or with the religious ceremonies of the old days. ”

“ He is the Death Crier. In his hand he carries a bell, which he rings as he walks along the streets; at night he carries a lantern; he might walk through the streets at any time of the day or night, for he announces the death of some great man. ”

“ When ships go down at sea during a terrible tempest, it is said the "death-bell" is often distinctly heard amid the storm-wind. And in tales of what is called Gothic superstition, it assists in the terrors of the supernatural. ”

“ Bands of reckless young fellows went through the streets singing, and, dressing up in masks, performed the dance of death. The dead were too many to be carried away in carts at night to the great pits prepared for them, but the dismal tones of the bell, and the cries of "Bring out your dead!" ”

“ Curious Custom of ringing Bells for the Dead.—In Marshfield, Massachusets, it has been customary for a very long period to ring the bell of the parish church most violently for eight or ten minutes, whenever a death occurs in the village; then to strike it slowly three times three, which makes known to the inhabitants that a man or boy has expired, and finally to toll it the number of times that the deceased had numbered years of existence. ”

“ Only the original clapper, carved from the same block of rose crystal, will ring it. That is why my father separated them."
Again he hesitated.
"I have told you only half of what my father told me. He said that, though it defeats death, Death can not be defeated. Robbed of his chosen victim, he takes another in his place. Thus when the bell was used in the temple of its origin—let us say when a high priest or a chief had died—a slave or servant was placed handy for Death to take when he had been forced to relinquish his grasp upon the important one." ”

“ Edith Williams gasped. "It's just a bell. It hasn't any powers over life and death. It doesn't bring back and it doesn't take away. But let's get back up to your father. He may be thinking that the bell—that the bell really worked."
They climbed the rest of the steps. Dr. Mark Williams still lay where he had fallen headlong on the pavement. The cab driver was bending over him, but there was nothing to be done. The crystal bell had been beneath him when he fell, and it had broken. One long, fine splinter of crystal was embedded in his heart. ”

“ Works Death such change upon our dead,
Doth it such awe around them spread,
That should they suddenly appear,
At once we’d shrink from them with fear,
Though on their breast we laid our head?
Why should their light and ghostly tread
Thus thrill us with a nameless dread,
If still we hold them all so dear?
Works Death such change? ”

“ Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities which show
That Death is in the dwelling!
O very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But, smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The Corpse lies on the trestles! ”

“ An angel lifts a scepter and strikes four times upon a bell; another turns over an hour-glass which he holds in the hand. A story higher, an old man is seen to issue from a space decorated in Gothic style; he strikes four times with his crutch upon a bell, and disappears at the other side, while the figure of Death lets the bone in its hand fall slowly and solemnly, twelve times, upon the hour-bell. ”

“ Sepulchre's shall toll for you, in form and manner of a passing bell, as used to be tolled for those who are at the point of death, to the end that all godly people hearing that bell, and knowing it is for you going to your death, may be stirred up heartily to pray to God to bestow His grace and mercy upon you whilst you live. ”

“ And tears are thick with Peter Bell,
Yet still he sees one blessed tomb;
Tow’rd it he creeps with spectacles,
And bending on his leather knees,
He reads the Lakeist’s Poet’s doom.
XL.
The letters printed are by fate,
The death they say was suicide;
He reads—‘Here lieth W. W.
Who never more will trouble you, trouble you;’
The old man smokes who ’tis that died. ”

“ Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls,
Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls!
Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace. ”

“ Other old customs are naturally connected with the ecclesiastical uses of bells. The “Passing Bell,” rung for the dying, is now generally rung after death; the ancient mode of indicating the sex of the deceased, viz. two pulls for a woman and three for a man being still very common, with many varying customs as regards the interval after death or the bell to be used, e.g. smaller bells for children and females, and larger ones for aged men ”

“ This bell was supposedly stolen from the temple of a sect of Buddhists somewhere in the mountains of China's interior. Just as many Occidentals believe that the Christian Judgement Day will be heralded by a blast on St. Peter's trumpet, so this small sect is said to believe that when a bell like this one is rung, a bell carved from a single piece of rose crystal, and consecrated by ceremonies lasting ten years, any dead within sound of it will rise and live again."
"Heavenly!" Edith Williams cried. ”

“ But chiming the bells is an art that is not recognised in the older rules respecting their use. For instance, the Fifteenth Canon orders that on Wednesdays and Fridays weekly, warning shall be given to the people that litany will be said, by tolling of a bell. And, on the other hand, though we toll at a funeral, the Sixty-seventh Canon enjoins that—
"After the party's death, there shall be rung no {239}more but one short peal, and one other before the burial, and one other after the burial. ”

“ The Virgin Mary and a man are kneeling before and imploring Christ, who is about to strike a bell suspended to the branch of a tree, the root of which Death cuts with an axe, whilst the Devil assists in pulling at it with a rope. ”

“ And on this autumn afternoon, when the sun seemed to rejoice coldly over the havoc of yesterday's gale and the passing of things spared to die a natural death, the eye was fain to look beyond to the beauty of the eternal waters and the glory of the everlasting hills. ”

“ How long must a woman be married to a man before she understands him thoroughly—as thoroughly as she ought to have understood him before she ever dared to stand up at an altar and promise to love him and live with him until death did them part? ”

“ I always had a solemn affection, for the passing bell. It sounded not so pleasantly, to be sure, in the neighborhood of theatres and gay hotels; and its good, old, solemnizing tones are no longer permitted to be heard. I longed to hear it, once more; and, after they had laid me out, and left me alone, I clapped on my great coat, over my shroud, as you see, and ran up to the church, and tolled my own death peal. When, more than one hundred years ago, in 1747, Dr. Caner took possession, in the old way, by entering, and closing the doors, and tolling the bell, as the Rev. ”

“ At the surface snorting, in the depths in deadly silence, with jaws interlocked, rolling over and over, spinning in the perpendicular, they wrestled in that desperate struggle which must end in lordship for the one, death or exile for the other. ”

“ In this, Love, a beautiful boy, striving vainly to bar the door to the mighty figure of Death, is thrust back with crushed wings powerless to stay the advance; but that the defeat is merely apparent and temporary is suggested rather than asserted by the third “Love Triumphant” (1895) , where Time, with broken scythe, and Death lie prostrate, while the same youth, with widespread wings and face and arms upraised to heaven, stands between them on tiptoe as if preparing to soar aloft. Though the purely symbolical is the most distinctive side of Watts's art, it is by no means the only one. ”

“ He is preceded by another Death as a bellman with bell and lanthorn. Above, emblems of mortality over a label, inscribed “A Vision.” 12mo.
Scene, a church-yard. Death holding an hour-glass in one hand levels his dart at a young man in the habit of an ecclesiastic, with a mask in his hand. “Worlidge inv. Boitard sculp.” The book unknown. 8vo.
Three figures of Death uncovering a circular mirror, with a group of persons dying, &c. At bottom, INGREDIMVR. CVNCTI. DIVES. CVM. PAUPERE. MIXTVS. J. Sturt sculp.
Death touching a globe, on which is inscribed VANITY, appears to a man in bed. ”

“ Sometimes, when the wind was particularly high, there were a great number of strokes on the bell in quick succession, which the pious said was an alarm to the wicked, sounded by the devil, a warning relating to the conflagration which could never be put out, else Fairview would never have been built.
When any one died it was the custom to toll the bell once for every year of the deceased’s age, and as deaths usually occur at night, we were frequently wakened from sleep by its deep and solemn tones. ”

“ The Blue rose on the starboard bow, sank, rose again nearer, sank, and finally rose so close under the Thorgrim that the gun when it was fired tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees.
The cable flashed over the bow wheel for thirty seconds; then its speed slackened and the brakes were gradually applied to the winches, until it stopped running. The cable between the winch and the bow-wheel was rigid as steel, but the Thorgrim moved not. Her nose was deep in water, and her propeller showed a dry blade. Death hung deep in the sea at the end of the cable; no wounded life struggled there. ”

“ Life is in them, and death. A word may send the crimson current hurrying to the cheek, hurrying with many meanings, or may turn it, cold and deadly, to the heart. And yet, a word is but a breath of passing air. This is pretty—I hope it is original, but I fear it is not—but here begins the diary, a full record of the doings and observations of Leo Bergin for two eventful years. ”

“ Watts's lesson on the theme of death. Stretched on a bier and reverently sheeted lies a corpse; strewn neglected on the ground lie the ermine robe of worldly rank, the weapons of the warrior, the lute of the musician, the book of human learning, the palmer's robe of late repentance and the roses of fleeting pleasures ”

“ To the same early masters Love was usually a mere distributor of sensual pleasures, a tricksy spirit instinct with malice and bringing more harm than happiness to humanity, though neither was of much moment. Watts has not altogether ignored this view, and in “Mischief” (1878) has portrayed Man, love-led, entangled among the thorns of he world; but, in the main, Love to him is the chief guide and helper of mankind along the barren, rock-strewn path of life, through whom alone he can attain the higher levels, and who triumphs in the end over Death itself. ”

“ Yet it is as a teacher that the artist is seen at his highest: he would sooner point out the true way to those who seek it than admonish those who have wandered. He never wearies of emphasizing the reality of the power of Love, the fallacy underlying the fear of Death. To the early masters Death was a bare and ghastly skeleton, above all things to be shunned; to Watts it is a grand, impressive figure, awful indeed but not horrible, irresistible but not ruthless, a bringer of rest and peace, not to be rashly sought but to be welcomed when the inevitable hour shall strike. ”