Plain Bob and Plain Hunting

Bet you don't know what the title of this post means. I wouldn't either except that last Friday evening the three of us walked down to St. Comgall's after dinner, found the little side door at the bottom of the bell tower, and climbed up a narrow spiral stone staircase to the bell ringing room, where we were treated to a bell ringing lesson and got to listen to 5 of the regular ringers go through their paces. They let us put our names in the guest book which dates back to 1916, and kept offering us candy out of the Cadbury tin, which we couldn't refuse.

The bells themselves are on big wheels and the rope is attached to the wheel. You can't see them at all, all you can see from below is the bell ropes coming down through the holes in the ceiling that have a rounded and smooth painted wooden collar around them, presumably to made it easy for the rope to slip up and down. When they're ready to play they have to pull the rope a certain distance to get the bell balanced in its upside down position ready to go back and forth clanging against its clapper.

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to ring a bell correctly, to know how to ring them without hurting yourself or breaking the bell or knocking it off its stay so that the half-ton bell comes crashing through the ceiling onto the hapless ringer below. Set 5 or 6 of them going at once and it's difficult to keep the rhythm even, especially when the caller is calling out changes and each change requires you to hold your rope a little longer or little less as it goes up and back down, depending on what bell is supposed to ring in what order. Looking at the notation for various songs or ringing patterns is daunting as well. One of the ringers used to ring when she was young, took many years off when she was in college and into her thirties, and now she's been back for 8 years. But the guy in charge was still giving her practice in something called "dodging." Heck, the terminology alone probably takes years to figure out. Plain Bob and Plain Hunting have something to do with the ringing pattern, by the way. But it was a wonderful hour of watching and learning, and I'll never listen to church bells again without thinking of the people up in the tower working so hard.