The essential feature of ringing in peal is that the bell shall perform an almost complete revolution each time the rope is pulled, starting from an inverted position. To prevent its falling over again at the conclusion of the stroke, a vertical bar of wood or iron, known as the “stay,” is fixed to the side of the stock, which is checked by a movable bar in the lower part of the frame, called the “slider.” It is clear that in the course of each revolution the clapper will strike the side twice. Before the invention of the wheel, the bell was merely sounded by means of a lever connecting the rope with the stock, as is still done in ringing small bells, either as “ting-tangs,” or when hung in an open turret.
Before the peal can be started, the bells must be rung up or “raised” to the inverted position, which the ringer achieves by a series of steady strokes, each pull increasing in length until it is balanced; at the end of the peal this process is reversed. When bells are merely chimed they are not “raised,” but the rope is pulled each time sufficiently to allow one stroke of the clapper. By means of an ingenious apparatus invented by the late Canon Ellacombe, this can now be done by one man if necessary, the muscular effort required being reduced to a minimum.
But change-ringing is a real science, and entails long and assiduous practice and considerable muscular exertion. It is, in fact, one of the best forms of physical exercise conceivable, and must have proved a godsend in that respect to many men whose opportunities would otherwise be limited.
Its elementary principle is, of course, that the bells should be rung in succession, but in a varying order. The method in which the succession varies is the foundation of the various forms known vaguely to most of us as Grandsire Triples, Treble Bob-Major, and so on. They are founded on a recognized arithmetical basis, that of permutations, or the number of arrangements possible of any given number of objects. We know that three letters or numbers can be arranged in six different ways:
Thus, on three bells, only six changes can be rung so as to vary the order each time, and we must then begin over again. With four bells we have a choice of twenty-four changes, which might run as follows: