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Ring out the old, ring in the new
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R.V. Smith traces the history of church bells that could soon be heard ringing aloud to usher in the New Year
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As New Year’s Day approaches one looks up at the waning moon and recites Omar Khayyam’s rubai: Now the New Year reviving old desires/The thoughtful soul to solitude retires/where the white hand of Moses on the bough/puts out, and Jesus fr
om the ground suspires”. Moses had a white hand and Jesus rose again from the dead. But Tennyson took a more matter-of-fact view when he exclaimed: “Ring out the old, ring in the new”. The Victorian poet was inspired by the ringing of church bells on New Year’s Eve when a service is held to bid goodbye to the year and usher in the new one at midnight.
In many churches a mass is offered earlier in the evening to thank God for all His benefits in the departing year with the hope that He would continue to extend His blessings in the coming one. Ringing of church bells on special days, including Sundays, is an old practice which came to India with the advent of Christianity much before the British days. In 1857 during the year of Uprising the bells of St. James’s Church in Kashmere Gate were damaged and the help of a London firm of bell makers had to be taken for repairing them.
The oldest Catholic church in the Capital St. Mary’s, next to which is the Presentation Convent school, has a belfry which is the abode of pigeons, just like the belfries of St. James’s Church, the Cathedral Church of the Redemption, where the viceroys used to attend service, and the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, near Gole Dak Khana. This cathedral, like St Mary’s, was built by the Italian Capuchins.
The Capuchins had earlier built a cathedral at Agra with a high steeple which has huge bells – one each facing St. Peter’s College, St. Patrick’s School, the Archbishop’s House and the Central Jail (now demolished). The bells were named as such, but the fifth bell, which is the biggest, is known as the ‘Bara Ghanta’. These bells can be heard all over the town, particularly on Christmas Eve when they are rung for midnight mass.
Calling angels
Since the vibrations are too strong all five are not pulled together. The bells are also rung thrice a day – at dawn, noon and dusk – for the Angelus. A little boy once amazed his parents by announcing that it was a cheel (pariah kite) which rang the bell. Obviously the child couldn’t imagine a man climbing up the high steeple.
One is told that when Archbishop Raphael used to drive back to town in the beginning of the last century, the sacristan would climb up the steeple and as soon as he spotted his car started ringing the bells. At Tundla, near Agra, is an old church with a belfry where Anthony Samuel was the sacristan and rang the bells for several decades. He was once attacked by robbers but survived to ring the bells.
At Rewari too the Capuchins built a church whose bells were rung mainly to summon railwaymen to mass. Incidentally, in most churches it is the third bell which is the final call to prayer. In Jaipur, the sisters of St. Angela Sophia School ring the bells, though long ago they used to be helped by a girl who died in childbirth on December 10, 1935 at the age of 21.
Among the old sacristans one would like to remember Georgie and his grey-bearded father, who were helped in ringing the cathedral bells on Christmas Eve by half-a-dozen young men. It was a strenuous job and to keep their spirits up they drank frequent pegs of rum. The bells rang out whatever was vile in human nature.
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