Adam Crandell and Dr. E. Harrison Powley, School of Music

The zealous Christian missionary Patrick arrived in Ireland in 432 A.D., laboring to introduce to the Celtic tribes there the gospel and monasticism. He used bells, among other clerical instruments, for this purpose. Bells were employed to sundry ends, from the mundane gathering of the missionaries to the more miraculous effecting of curses. His followers, both members of the church and fellow missionaries, revered the bells that Patrick used. Accordingly, his bells would become treated as relics, passed down from cleric to cleric as a divine investiture. Other later missionaries like Columba, Columbanus, and Ninian would also adopt the use of bells, theirs also being adopted into the reliquary fold. Churches and families would be given the charge to protect these treasures over the centuries, some still in their possession.

The accumulation of reliquary bells in the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh religious geography is unlike anywhere else in the Western world. Of the 75 extant religious bells in these domains, 49 are Irish, 19 are Scottish, and 7 are Welsh. Each owes their temporal persistence to their being piously reverenced. The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, Ulster Museum in Belfast, National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the British Museum are the current repositories for the majority of these religious treasures. Thus I used the funds allotted to me to not only view these hand-bells personally, but also to interview the curators of these collections and broaden my understanding of how they were constructed, from whence they were collected, and similar inquiries.

Drs. Andrew Heald, Jacqueline Moran, and Jim Wilson at the National Museum of Scotland were most helpful in explaining their cataloguing of Scottish hand-bells. Those catalogued with a KA number (as listed in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland) are religious, whereas those of ordinary use (like those attached to the harnesses of horses) are given other numbers. One such bell of iron construct, found in Burrian, Co. Orkney (catalogue number GB 306), is not currently listed as religious in use; however, the hoard (a collection of objects buried in a bog) in which it was found also contained a stone with a cross carved on it. This begs the question: could this bell have actually been used in conjunction with religious services? If so, why is it not listed with the others in this category? Dr. Heald invited me to return to the National Museum of Scotland during one of my vacation periods (as I will be working on my master’s degree at Oxford) to revise what should be considered in their catalogue as religious and secular by archeological items found nearby.

Visiting the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin afforded me the singular opportunity to see the oldest and most revered of hand-bells, the Clog-an-eadbacta Phatraic (Bell of St. Patrick’s Will), reportedly willed by Patrick to one of his followers. Additionally, I was able to investigate the idiophanous heritage of the Irish Celts before the arrival of Patrick. In other words, were the Celts predisposed to revere the sound, shape, construct, and/or function of bells? To my amazement, I saw a total of 39 crotales (hollow, pear-shaped instruments molded in iron with a rattle inside, a relative of the hand-bell) dating from 900–500 B.C. (I saw four similar crotales in the British Museum.) These were found in the Dowris hoard from Doorsheath, Co. Offaly. In this same hoard were found many side- and end-blown trumpets. This seems to suggest that the ancient Celts regarded these crotales as musical, given the association with trumpets. Does this mean that the natives of Ireland revered the sound of the bell rather than the object itself? Possibly. To convolute matters, both these items—along with the others in the hoard—were used in the religious rites of a fertility cult associated with the bull, alluded to in the Irish medieval tale “Táin Bó Cuailnge.” The duality of these crotales, both musical and religious, might shed further light on why the bells of the Christian missionaries were so embraced in Ireland during the fifth century onwards.

The final aspect worth discussing concerning my travels would be with Dr. Cormac Bourke, curator of antiquities at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. He is arguably the leading authority of Celtic Christian hand-bells. He discussed with me the process of dating, forging, and decorating hand-bells.

Typically speaking, earlier hand-bells (sixth to the ninth century) were made from one piece of metal (usually iron), folded into a quadrangular form. Three rivets of substantial size on each side would give it solidity. The folded metal of the bell’s shoulder would be rounded. The size and uniformity of the rivets and the shape of the folded metal on each shoulder helps to differentiate between a carefully crafted bell of the seventh century and a crude cowbell of the nineteenth century. For example, three large and uniform rivets on each side and rounded shoulder folds would be indicative of an early hand-bell, whereas three or more rivets of incongruous size and set and triangular shoulder folds would be characteristic of a recent animal bell. Later bells (eighth century onwards) were cast in a mold, similar to the process used today. Regardless of the method employed, religious bells—though simple by our standards—would take several months to complete, reflecting the greatest craftsmanship.

While at the Ulster Museum, Dr. Bourke afforded me the opportunity to ring a reproduction of a hand-bell in the museum’s collection. This was an invaluable experience, for all of my research on hand-bells was based on literary sources. The sound resembled that of an untuned Tibetan bell, each partial of the bell’s harmonic makeup emphasizing the tritone, major seventh, and other strident intervals not immediately found in the natural overtone series. Dr. Bourke informed me that more reproductions were in the process of being forged on the Isle of Skye by a metal-smith named John Pearse. This fact opened to me the possibility of conducting acoustical research previously impossible given the precarious or downright derelict condition of many bells. Pre-Christian Celts viewed the crotale both as a religious relic (as being connected with fertility rites) and a musical instrument (as being connected with trumpets in bog hoards). Christian Celts undoubtedly venerated the hand-bell as a religious relic; perhaps acoustical research (by using the reproductions) would show that these same Christians also valued the sound it made as a musical instrument, reflecting a parallel with their pagan ancestors.

Although traveling to these museums in the United Kingdom and Ireland helped to answer questions only possible by querying curators and viewing their respective collections, it seemed to raise even more questions and open more research possibilities. Given my background in music, I believe that investigating the acoustical properties of early hand-bells would be of the most benefit and, at present, is the most lacking in academic literature.