lethargic_man goes bellringing!

[lethargic_man]

Some time last year I was talking with my work colleague Anthony about his hobby of bellringing. I'd never done it before, and thought it sounded interesting, and he invited me to go along and see what it was like, so last Thursday I joined him for practice evening in St Anne's, a cohen-friendly church in Highgate.

I came with a bit of a preconception about bellringing; I thought it might be a bit like punting, in that after pulling downwards, you'd let the bell rope go and it would slip upwards through your hands like the way the punt pole does (only Z-reversed) when punting. This turned out to be completely wrong, as in fact you leave go of the rope completely—though keeping hold of the end, so there's no chance it can snag your foot and pull you over.

I also thought it would take a lot of effort to ring the bell, but this was also wrong: during a ringing session, the bells are normally left "standing", which is to say upside down—there's an ingenious little sliding stop to keep the bell stable in that position*—so it only takes a little effort to get the bell falling under its own weight.

* Though getting a bell to stand takes some practice—if, at the end of a peal, you hear a single bell tolling several times, it means (if my experience the other evening is anything to go by) the person ringing it isn't very experienced, and is having difficulty getting it to stand!

Finally, I also thought it would be very loud directly underneath the belfry, but it wasn't; the ropes (eight of them, here) vanished through small holes in the ceiling, and you couldn't see the bells directly at all. What I was completely not expecting, though, was to feel the entire steeple moving, as the metal weights swung back and forth above, totalling significant fractions of a ton each. This actually felt quite alarming, being in an unreinforced brick and stonework tower; but I reminded myself the English have centuries of experience building churches not to fall down when bells are rung.

About a dozen people turned up, and people took turns to ring. There was a variety of competence levels, and I wasn't the only beginner there: someone else there was there for only about the fourth time. She'd come after hearing the bells from her house and seeing the notice on the church welcoming people for practice night. There was one person there wearing a Mogein Dovid, with the unexpected name of Christa; I was going to speak to her until I noticed the smaller cross above it, at which point I decided discretion was the better part of avoiding being proselytised. There was also a (Christian?) Arabic lady who was about to go to visit her ancestral home of Iraq for the first time; I hope she is able to pass her visit safely.

I didn't get to do much ringing myself; but I did get trained, separately, in both handstroke and backstroke. Observing the others, ringing the bells one after the other appears to be quite tricky: when you pull the rope, there's a pause as the bell falls down from the standing position before it sounds; consequently each ringing session would be announced by the person manning the first bell with "Look to it... Treble's going... she's gone!" Even so, the different-sized bells had different natural periodicities, so keeping them in sync involved some skill.

After establishing the basic pattern of descending notes, the ringers would start permuting (or possibly combining—my schoolboy maths escapes me) the order of bells, according to schemes with names like Plain Bob or Grandsire. Once it got beyond simple switches of two bells, however, it got too complicated for me to follow, and I would end up tuning out. Evidently following the changes in the *ahem* changes is a learned skill too.

At the end of the session, the bells were lowered; getting them to ring down in order and then all stop at the same time is also rather tricky, and the ringers were all very pleased when they managed it. And then, finally, the mechanism connecting the clock to strike the quarter hours was hooked back up into place: it had to be unhooked whilst the bellringing was going on or the bells would have smashed the clock's hammer completely up.

Now I've been and seen, I think I'd like to go again, if nothing else, I'd like to experience what it's like to ring a bell with handstroke and backstroke together, and also to try and do so in sync with other people (though I don't know how long I'd have to practise before they'd let me do that!); the problem, though, is distance: it took me forty minutes to get there (though, given a lift back up to Highgate High Street, only twenty-six to get back). They suggested I could try local churches instead, but the problem that that is ascertaining whether they're cohen-friendly; and in any case, I wouldn't know anyone there. Given that I'm really only interested in trying this a few times rather than taking it up as a regular hobby (unless, of course, I get hooked when I get to do it with other people), I think I may continue putting up with the shlep to St Anne's—though it may be a few weeks before I get a Thursday free to try it again.

Comments

[miss-whiplash.livejournal.com]

I had to Google 'cohen-friendly' just because it was a new term and whilst the meaning is easy to guess at I'd hate to make a false assumption and then live with it.

As a matter of interest (maybe) you have already made it to the bottom of page 1 on that search with your entry above. No definition though and somewhat befuddlingly there seems to be a lot about graphs.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

The plotting technique appears to have been devised by two people called Cohen and Friendly. This amuses me greatly, as it has absolutely nothing to do with what I was referring to, which is this:

Cohanim (Jewish priests) may not become tāmei (ritually impure) by being under the same roof as a dead body. Since Christians have the (to my eyes) repellent and very strange practice of burying their dead in their places of worship, this means most churches (and all cathedrals) are barred, permanently, to my entry. So what I meant was that the church did not have anyone buried in it.

Burial practices.

[miss-whiplash.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I asked now.

It's funny the things you don't notice (or forget you once found them strange). Are you aware if it a UK thing for Christianity or if it goes by religions across the countries they are practices in. Does that mean that your dead must be interred with an outside ceremony? Also, what happens when the ground is too frozen to open up, and are cremations allowable?

Now the one that really strikes me as odd is burials below the water table as in New Orleans, and then you start to wonder about all the flooded villages when reservoirs were created to supply Birmingham and Manchester in the last century.

When my dad died, my Thai friend came to the funeral out of curiosity. She asked if she could take photos, whilst I wouldn't have minded I said I preferred not in case someone was offended. It would never have occurred to me someone would wonder if they could, but it brings home how many mores one might be treading on out of ignorance in other people's countries.

Re: Burial practices.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Are you aware if it a UK thing for Christianity or if it goes by religions across the countries they are practices in.

I have no idea; it's not my religion!

Does that mean that your dead must be interred with an outside ceremony?

In my experience, the coffin is taken through the tehārā-house at the cemetery whilst the cohanim wait outside; once the coffin is outside on the other side (one must pass through the tehārā-house to enter the cemetery, or at least this is the case in Hazlerigg cemetery in Newcastle), the cohanim can enter for the burial service and eulogy.

Also, what happens when the ground is too frozen to open up,

I don't know; I've only been to a handful of funerals (and the ground being that cold is rare in the UK). Anyone else?

and are cremations allowable?

No.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. What about museums with mummies and the like then? Or universities with human skeletons?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Technically the restriction only applies to Jewish bodies; however, in many cases, one can never be certain the deceased was not Jewish under Jewish law.

Where there is no chance this may be the case (e.g. ancient Egyptian mummies, bog bodies, or skeletons from parts of the world predating the arrival of Jews in those parts), it's not a problem. I still feel uncomfortable in the presence of such bodies, though.

Re: Burial practices.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Cohanim can attend the cemetery for the funerals of close relatives (parents, children, siblings, spouses), right?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

How ancient do mummies have to be?

Re: Burial practices.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Wrong. Cohanim can become טָמֵא for close relatives; however venturing into a cemetery will ordinarily mean approaching closer than six feet to non-relatives' bodies, so that's a no-go.

If you've got a cohen in the family, you should try and get yourself buried at the edge of the cemetery, or close to a path (preferably one with a fence alongside, which reduces the minimum distance to one foot, and with no trees overhanging both the grave and the path).

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

That's a bit of a judgement call. Anything before the eighteenth century BCE (the time of Abraham) is fine, as there were no Jews; even assuming the slavery in Egypt did happen, the number of Israelites would have been tiny, and as slaves they would not have merited mummification. Thereafter, I get the impression there was not much of a diaspora during the First Temple period. This begins to change at the end of the First Temple period (seventh century BCE) with the Jewish military colony at Elephantine (http://lethargic-man.livejournal.com/50092.html); however, the number of Jews outside Israel remained small until the start of the Babylonian exile in the early sixth century, when a number of Jews fled to Egypt.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Fascinating - thanks, I had no idea.