Men's deaths I tell By doleful knell; Lightning and thunder I break asunder; On Sabbath all To church I call; The sleepy head I raise from bed; The winds so fierce I do disperse; Men's cruel rage I do assuage.
The following verses (the spelling modernized) further illustrate the subject:[28]--
"If that the thunder chance to roar, and stormy tempest shake, A wonder is it for to see the wretches how they quake; How that no faith at all they have, nor trust in any thing, The clerk doth all the bells forthwith at once in steeple ring; With wondrous sound and deeper far than he was wont before, Till in the lofty heavens dark the thunders bray no more. For in these christen'd bells they think doth lie much pow'r and might As able is the tempest great and storm to vanquish quite.
I saw myself at Nurnberg once, a town in Toring coast, A bell that with this title bold herself did proudly boast: By name I 'Mary' called am, with sound I put to flight The thunder-cracks and hurtful storms, and every wicked sprite. Such things when as these bells can do, no wonder certainly It is, if that the papists to their tolling always fly, When hail, or any raging storm, or tempest comes in sight, Or thunderbolts, or lightning fierce, that every place doth smite."
Wynkin de Worde[29] tells us that bells are rung during thunder-storms, to the end that the fiends and wicked spirits should be abashed, and flee, and cease the moving of the tempest.[30] Bells appear to have had an inherent power against evil spirits, but this power was held to be greatly increased by the bells being christened. There is a custom in some Lancashire parishes, in ringing the passing-bell, to conclude its tolling with nine knells or strokes of the clapper, for a man, six for a woman, and three for a child; the vestiges of an ancient Roman Catholic injunction.[31] In an Old English Homily for Trinity Sunday,[32] it is stated that "the form of the Trinity was found in man; that was, Adam our forefather, on earth, one person, and Eve of Adam, the second person; and of them both was the third person. At the death of a man three bells should be rung, as his knell, in worship of the Trinity, and for a woman, who was the second person of the Trinity, two bells should be rung." Two couplets on the passing-bell may be inserted here:--