Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 725, November 17, 1877

The College and Cumberland Youths have long been worthy rivals in the different mysteries of change-ringing. While the former society dates its origin back to 1637, the latter claims its descent from an old society called the 'London Scholars,' whose origin, however, is lost in antiquity. The earliest known peal by the London Scholars is one of 5040 changes, rung in 1717 on the ten bells which were then in the tower of St Bride's, Fleet Street. This is said to have been the first five thousand ever rung on ten bells.

The rivalry between the societies of College and Cumberland Youths was at its greatest height in 1777. On January 20th, in that year, the Cumberlands rang 6240 changes on the bells of St Leonard's, Shoreditch. This was the longest which had been rung on ten bells by ten men only, and occupied four hours and thirty-four minutes. The tenor bell at St Leonard's weighs thirty-one hundredweight; and as in ringing these 6240 changes, the ringer would never be in a state of rest, as during nearly five hours he would cause a revolving plaything of over a ton and a half to make 6240 revolutions, it might be supposed that no set of men could easily be found who would be desirous of gaining the empty honour of merely exceeding such a performance by so many more hours or minutes. This, however, was not the opinion of the College Youths, who, on February 18th, in the same year, on the same bells, completed a peal of 10,000 changes in seven hours and twenty-eight minutes. After this the Cumberlands evidently took a little preliminary training on the bells of Shoreditch, as on March 12th they rang 5080 changes; on April 5th, 8120 changes; and then on May 10th capped the College Youths' performance by a peal of 10,200 changes in seven hours and forty minutes. The non-university College men were, however, equal to the occasion, and nine days afterwards rang 11,080 changes at the same place in eight hours and two minutes; a performance so extraordinary, that the Cumberland Youths were fain to let it stand as the longest on record until 1784, when, on March 27th, they actually accomplished, at Shoreditch, 12,000 changes in nine hours and five minutes; which peal until this day remains the longest ever rung on ten bells, when all the bells are rung in the changes.

It might be thought that such prolonged physical and mental exertion would have a bad effect upon the performers; but, whether it is from the fact that only men of the strongest constitutions take a fancy for such exertion, or that the splendid exercise of ringing is, even when carried to such great excess, really productive of benefit, it yet remains a fact that ringers are noted for the great ages to which some of them live to take part in their favourite exercise. As an instance of longevity, the case of Thomas Barham is especially noteworthy. This man, who was a gardener at Leeds, in Kent, was passionately fond of ringing, and during his lifetime rang in considerably over one hundred peals, each of five thousand changes and upwards. He was born in 1725, and died in 1818, aged ninety-three years. At that time, in ringing long peals it was not regarded as a strict rule that there should be no relief to the performers, or that, as now, each bell should be rung throughout the peal by the same man; consequently there does not seem to have been any ordinary limit to the aspirations of the ringers of those days.

About 1750, Barham and his companions were endeavouring to achieve the extent of the changes on eight bells (40,320 changes), any man who was fatigued being relieved by some other ringer. In one of these attempts, on Monday, March 31, 1755, they commenced ringing at two o'clock in the afternoon, and rang until six o'clock on the Tuesday morning, when the sixth bell-clapper broke, after they had rung 24,800 changes. In this attempt, Barham rang the seventh bell for fourteen hours and forty-four minutes before he required to be relieved. On March 23, 1761, they again attempted it, but had the misfortune to overturn a bell after ringing seventeen thousand changes; but on April 7th and 8th in the same year, they are said to have accomplished the 40,320 changes in twenty-seven hours, the eight bells being manned at different times by fourteen men.

The most remarkable of the records which Barham left behind him were perhaps the 'Veteran' peals in which he took part. When fifty-five years of age, he rang in a peal of 5040 changes of Bob Major, occupying three hours and thirteen minutes, when the average age of the eight performers was sixty-one years. In another peal – which occupied three hours and twelve minutes, the ages of the performers were 82, 70, 77, 65, 70, 65, 67, and 86; making an average of nearly seventy-three years. Barham also rang in peals occupying over three hours, when eighty-four and eighty-eight years of age. In Barham's case, it is thus fully shewn that the extraordinary performances he took part in did not in any way tend to disable him in his old age. Southey, in his Doctor, mentions a peal of Bob Major rung at Aston Church, near Birmingham, in the year 1796 – but really in 1789 – when eight men, some of whom he mentions were under twenty years of age, rang 14,224 changes in eight hours and forty-five minutes. This, Southey remarks, 'was the longest peal ever rung in that part of the country or anywhere else.' Certainly it was a very clever performance, considering that the tenor of the ring weighs twenty-one hundredweight; but it was really surpassed by a rival band of ringers, who rang at the same church on October 1, 1793, a peal of 15,360 changes of Bob Major in nine hours and thirty-one minutes. This continued the greatest number of changes rung single-handed until 1868, when the College Youths rang 15,840 changes in nine hours and twelve minutes at St Matthew's, Bethnal Green. The tenor, however, at Bethnal Green is very much lighter than that of the Aston peal, and the latter still remains the longest length rung with such a heavy tenor, and in point of time exceeds the Bethnal Green performance by nineteen minutes.

So little is known about bell-ringing, that erroneous illustrations are prepared by even the best of our illustrated papers, at Christmas-time, and not a little faulty information regarding the modus operandi is added. Very few persons seem to be aware that many matters of practical and scientific interest are to be found in the almost unknown art of change-ringing.

CHRISTMAS IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS

Christmas is essentially a family festival: our very earliest recollections of it are of a day spent by the whole family together; a day on which the social distinctions of nursery, school-room, and drawing-room were as far as possible abolished, and on which all the little ones who could behave with anything like discretion were taken to church and dined with the elders. As the children grew up and dispersed to school and college, Christmas was still the day on which all reassembled to make one family once more.

But at length there comes a time when this reassembling is no longer possible, when the girls belong to new homes and new circles, and the boys are scattered abroad in distant lands, whence only loving thoughts can reach the 'old folks at home.' Then the good old Christmas toast, 'To all absent friends,' becomes full of meaning to the few who still assemble round the dear parental hearth, and is followed by a quiet pause, while imagination travels to all quarters of the globe, and the Christmas greeting infolds the whole world in its embrace. And the good wishes as they emanate from the home are met by returning thoughts from the sons, the brothers, it may be the husbands, in the distant lands where they too are keeping Christmas, though among circumstances very different to ours, and still striving as much as possible to keep up the customs they loved when they were young.

To us dwellers in Northern Europe, Christmas, with its apparently unseasonable heat, strikes us by its strange incongruity; but how strange must be a Christmas in the far north, where no sun rises to gladden the day on which the Sun of Righteousness rose upon the earth.

A year ago we had the happiness of welcoming back to their homes the latest heroes of the Polar Seas. We do not need to be reminded how, in May 1875, the Alert and the Discovery sailed from our shores, having for their destination the Pole itself. The Pole was not reached; that was beyond human power; but we felt that all that men could do was done, and we were thankful to see them home again. It is surely enough to have spent one Christmas in such desolation; in a higher latitude than ever man has reached before, and beyond the farthest point to which even the Esquimaux, the hardy natives of the lands of perpetual snow, have penetrated in their most distant wanderings; beyond the boundary of all animal life on land or sea, there British sailors and British ships have wintered, and the British flag has floated upon a sea of eternal ice. All honour be to them.

It seems to us wonderful that even with every attainable comfort, men should be able to live through an arctic winter, as any disaster to the ships must be certain death to the crews. That this has been the case before now, we know. That it is not invariably the case we know also; and the following account gives us a good picture of the different ways in which two companion vessels spent their Christmas in the frozen sea in 1870, and shews what diverse vicissitudes may be encountered by ships in the same season.

In the spring of 1870, before the war with France had broken out and taken up almost all the thoughts of the nation, Germany sent out two ships, the Germania and the Hansa, with the hope of reaching the North Pole. As is usually the case in arctic expeditions, little could be done during the first season, and the ships were obliged to take up their winter-quarters off the east coast of Greenland. They had already been separated, so that the crew of one vessel had no idea of the condition of the other. An officer upon the Germania thus writes of their Christmas:

'To the men who have already lived many weary months among the icebergs, Christmas signifies, in addition to its other associations, that the half of their long night – with its fearful storms, its enforced cessation of all energy, its discomfort and sadness – has passed, and that the sun will soon again shed his life- and warmth-giving beams on the long-deserted North. From this time the grim twilight, during which noon has been hardly distinguishable from the other hours, grows daily lighter, until at length all hearts are gladdened, and a cheerful activity is once again called forth by the first glimpse of the sun. Christmas, the midnight of the arctic explorer, thus marks a period in his life which he has good cause to consider a joyful one. On no day would it be more natural for him to recall his home; and though far from that loved spot, and cut off from all intercourse save with his little band of comrades, and being, moreover, uncertain whether the ice will retain him in its grasp, as it has retained so many before him, he is right to keep the festival with all cheerfulness; thankful, while remembering what he has already passed through and achieved, and full of firm courage and confidence for the unknown future.

'What are our friends at home doing? was the thought that stirred us all as we prepared to keep our Christmas 1870, in the true German style. We had no suspicion of the mighty struggle in which our Fatherland was then engaged, for what could we know of the affairs of the world, from which no sound had reached us for so many long weeks. Our world was only in our ship, and all around us, in the half-light of the weary monotonous arctic night, lay the apparently boundless desert of ice, while the snow-laden hurricane howled and moaned through the silence. We thought too of our mates on our companion-ship the Hansa, from whom we had been separated. Did they still live? Had they been so fortunate as to reach the shore, and were they, like us, honouring Christmas? Who could tell?

'For days before the festival, an unusual activity was observable all over the ship; and as soon as the severe storm which raged from December 16th to the 21st had abated, parties were organised, under our botanist Dr Pansch, to certain points of Sabine Island, near to which we were anchored, where, in a strangely sheltered nook, several varieties of a native Greenland evergreen plant, Andromeda tetragona, were to be found. A great quantity of this plant was conveyed on board, to be converted into a Christmas tree. Under the orders of Dr Pansch, the Andromeda was wound round small pieces of wood, several of which were attached, like fir-twigs, to a large bough; and when these boughs were fastened to a pole, they formed a very respectable fir-tree.

'After dinner on Christmas-day, the cabin was cleared for the completion of the preparations; and on our recall at six o'clock, we found that all had assumed an unwontedly festive appearance. The walls were decorated with the signal-flags and our national eagle; and the large cabin table, somewhat enlarged to make room to seat seventeen men, was covered with a clean white cloth, which had been reserved for the occasion. On the table stood the "fir" tree, shining in the splendour of many little wax-lights, and ornamented with all sorts of little treasures, some of which, such as the gilded walnuts, had already seen a Christmas in Germany; below the tree was a small present for each of us, provided long beforehand, in readiness for the day, by loving friends and relatives at home. There was a packet too for each of the crew, containing some little joking gift, prepared by the mirth-loving Dr Pansch, and a useful present also; while the officers were each and all remembered.

'When the lights burned down, and the resinous Andromeda was beginning to take fire, the tree was put aside, and a feast began, at which full justice was done to the costly Sicilian wine with which a friend had generously supplied us before we left home. We had a dish of roast seal! Some cakes were made by the cook, and the steward produced his best stores. For the evening, the division between the fore and aft cabins was removed, and there was free intercourse between officers and men; many a toast was drunk to the memory of friends at home, and at midnight a polar ball was improvised by a dance on the ice. The boatswain, the best musician of the party, seated himself with his hand-organ between the antlers of a reindeer which lay near the ship, and the men danced two and two on their novel flooring of hard ice!

'Such was our experience of a Christmas in the north polar circle; but the uncertainties of arctic voyaging are great, and the two ships of our expedition made trial of the widely different fates which await the traveller in those frozen regions; and while we on the Germania were singularly fortunate in escaping accidents and in keeping our crew, in spite of some hardships, in sound health and good spirits, the Hansa was crushed by the ice, and her crew, after facing unheard-of dangers, and passing two hundred days on a block of ice, were barely rescued to return home.'

Yet even to the crew of the ill-fated Hansa Christmas brought some share of festivities. The tremendous gale which had raged for many days ceased just before the Day, and the heavy fall of snow with which it terminated, and which had almost buried the black huts that the shipwrecked men had constructed for themselves upon the drifting icebergs from the débris of the wreck, had produced a considerable rise in the temperature, and there was every indication that a season of calm might now be anticipated.

The log-book of the Hansa thus describes the celebration of the festival: 'The tree was erected in the afternoon, while the greater part of the crew took a walk; and the lonely hut shone with wonderful brightness amid the snow. Christmas upon a Greenland iceberg! The tree was artistically put together of fir-wood and mat-weed, and Dr Laube had saved a twist of wax-taper for the illumination. Chains of coloured paper and newly baked cakes were not wanting, and the men had made a knapsack and a revolver case as a present for the captain. We opened the leaden chests of presents from Professor Hochstetter and the Geological Society, and were much amused by their contents. Each man had a glass of port wine; and we then turned over the old newspapers which we found in the chests, and drew lots for the presents, which consisted of small musical instruments, such as fifes, jews-harps, trumpets, &c., with draughts and other games, puppets, crackers, &c. In the evening we feasted on chocolate and gingerbread.'

'We observed the day very quietly,' writes Dr Laube in his diary. 'If this Christmas be the last we are to see, it was at least a cheerful one; but should a happy return home be decreed for us, the next will, we trust, be far brighter. May God so grant!'

THE MISTLETOE

The following notes regarding the mistletoe, which we extract from Hardwicke's Science-Gossip, may be interesting to our readers. The writer informs us that 'the mistletoe abounds far too much in the apple orchards of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, but passes over pear-trees, and long observation has only given me two or three instances where pear-trees had mistletoe upon them. The apple was known to the Druids, and it has been suggested that the wily priests furtively transplanted their mystic plant from apple-trees, where it was sure to grow, to oaks, where otherwise it would be unlikely to be found. This is rendered not improbable by what Davies says in his Celtic Researches, that the apple-tree was considered by the Druids the next sacred tree to the oak, and that orchards of it were planted by them in the vicinity of their groves of oak. This was certainly an astute plan for keeping up the growth of the mistletoe.

'Blackbirds, thrushes, and fieldfares are fond of the mistletoe-berries, and when their bills get sticky from eating them, they wipe their mandibles on the branches of trees where they rest, and from the seeds there left enveloped in slime, young plants take their rise. I have thus observed mistletoe bushes extending in long lines across country where tall hawthorns rise from hedges bounding the pastures; for, next to apple-trees, mistletoe is most plentiful upon the hawthorn. But rather curiously, in modern times, the parasite has shewn a predilection for the black Italian poplar, which has been much planted of late years; and wherever in the Midland counties this poplar has been planted, the mistletoe is sure to appear upon the trees in a short time. The lime is also very often obliged to support the plant, which disfigures its symmetry, raising huge knots upon its branches; and I have observed limes that must have nourished protuberant bushes for thirty years or more. The maple, the ash, and the willow have frequently mistletoe bushes upon them; but common as the elm is, that tree almost entirely escapes an intrusion; and indeed I never but once saw mistletoe upon an elm. On the oak it is very uncommon in the present day, and where apparent, it is on trees of no very great age, whatever their descent may be.

'My friend Professor Buckman, who has written economically upon orchards in his useful book on Farm Cultivation, asserts that while the mistletoe is hurtful to the tree in hastening its decay, yet in apple-trees it has the effect of pressing on their maturity and fruit-bearing earlier than would be the case without the parasite, which urges a quicker growth upon its foster-parent. The tenant of an orchard would thus be benefited for a few years, though premature decay would be the result.

'Authors may differ as to the etymology of mistletoe, but it appears to me that our common English name has no very recondite origin. Mistion is an obsolete old English word, used, however, as late as in the writings of Boyle; and this is defined in Dr Johnson's original folio edition of his Dictionary as the state of being mingled. Now this is truly the condition of our plant, which is intermingled with the foliage of other trees, and mixes up their juices with its own; and is indeed in rural places still simply called the mistle. If to this we add the old English tod or toe, signifying bush, we have at once the derivation, meaning the mingled bush, mixed up and growing among foliage dissimilar to its own. Still, in winter its stiff and leathery evergreen leaves and dense bushy aspect give it a visible position on its own account; and thus the epithet of frigore viscum given it by Virgil is peculiarly applicable. It is certainly remarkable that the hanging up of mistletoe in houses for mirthful purposes and emblematical of Christmas should so long endure that the Midland towns have their markets filled with it as Christmas approaches, and loads of it find a ready sale in the north of England (and Scotland), where the plant is a rarity, if found at all.'

A LOCAL INSTANCE OF CANINE ATTACHMENT

A correspondent of the Rotherham Advertiser writes: 'Stories almost innumerable have been enumerated illustrative of the sagacity of the dog and its attachment to its owner. A remarkable and well-authenticated instance, which may not be uninteresting, has just come under my notice, as having occurred some years ago in the neighbourhood of Rotherham. A person in Rotherham obtained a young shepherd dog, which he retained for a long period. While in his possession it became much attached to the whole of the family, and especially to two of its master's sons. After a time, circumstances transpired which led to the animal being sent to live permanently at the residence of a farmer at Thorpe Salvin. After the lapse of a considerable time, one of the sons of the dog's former master paid a visit to the farm. The dog on seeing him appeared to be overjoyed, and was most demonstrative in its indications of delight. During his stay it would not leave him; and when it became necessary for him to leave in the evening, the animal could scarcely be restrained, and had to be chained up in the room where the family were sitting. As the visitor was taking leave of his host, the poor animal howled in a most piteous manner, and manifested other unmistakable signs of grief. Immediately he had left the house, the dog all at once became quiet, and settling down on the floor, seemed to be asleep. The strange and sudden change which had come over the animal was remarked, and on the parties going to him, he was found to be quite dead. The singular occurrence became well known in the neighbourhood, and it was regarded that the dog had died literally heart-broken. When the same dog was only a puppy it was attacked and beaten by a bigger dog. The defeated animal shewed his sagacity and at the same time his revengeful feelings, by waiting until eighteen months had elapsed, when it had fully grown, and then he lay in wait for his old adversary as near as possible to where the former combat took place, and gave his former enemy a "drubbing" that nearly cost him his life.'

MONUMENT AND TURF

Full in the midst of these gray boundsA lordly stone upswells;The scroll, that thrice its bulk surrounds,The passing stranger tellsOf what renownèd line he came,Who 'neath the marble lies,What deeds he wrought of mark and fame,That live when mortal dies.And deep is graved how high his worthWas prized, how widely known,What honours crowned him from his birth,What grief had raised the stone:Yet he sleeps calmly on beneath,Where Silence mocks at Fame;Nor heeds the pomp made over death,This blazon of his name.Some paces off and thou wilt seeA grave of simple show,As lowly and retired as heHad been who rests below;High rank and riches kept afar,While they enjoyed their day,The high and low – what social barMay now divide their clay?No honours mark the poor man's tomb,This green secluded spot,Yet still the pansy's purple bloomProclaims him not forgot;No graven stone reclines aboveTo mourn the humble dead,But woman's grief and children's loveBedew the hallowed bed.Nor here is any record hungOf lineage and race,The turf alone tells whence he sprungWho fills this narrow space;His virtues slumber with his dust,Unrecked of and unknown;But God in Whom reposed his trustReceives him for His own.D. F.