Zurich Herald, 1950-03-23, Page 700
Th
C t Of '�h
0 w 0 0 . Many Bells
"Tire Ringing • Island," , England
has been called, because from Sax-
on days its people have loved good
bells and the sweet sound of thein,
These bells have rung at the birth
and the passing of countless men
and women. They have sounded the
tocsin of strife and more gladly
celebrated peace on many historic
occasions. So in joy and sorrow
the bells have acquired an almost
sacred character,.
If England could be called the
.ringing island; London assuredly
could be called. the "city of bells,"
for every one of the hundred and
odd churches in the closely packed
°'square mile" had its peal, which
not only called the people to praise
and prayer, but told them also
when their work for the day should
cease, writes Ernest 1-I, Rann in
The Christian Science Monitor.
The "big bell of Bow," for in-
stance, sounded the hour when
work in the neighborhood should
begin and end, -A piercer of the
name of Doune bequeathed two
tenemetits in Hosier Lane, nearby,
so that the rents might pay for
the daily ringing of the tenor bell
as a signal for the workers. It was
to be rung at six in the morning
and eight in the evening—a long'
enough day, in all conscience—and
9 the parish clerk who was re-
oponsible for the signal was late
in his rigning, he heard about it
from the angry apprentices, who
sang:
Clerke of the Bow Bell, with the
yellow locks
Tor thy Hate ringing thy head shall
have knocks < . .
He tried to placate them with
ibe couplet:
Children of Chepe, hold you all still,
Con shall have the Bow hell rung
at your will.
Low Bell came from the White
(chapel Bell Foundry, the oldest in
the country, where church bells
have been made ever since the days
of Queen Elizabeth. It was founded
lby Robertus Mot in 1570, six years
sifter the birth of Shakespeare, and
developed by Richard Phelps, who
took the present site in 1728, where
the Artichoke Inn once stood.
Where the firm of of Mears and
Stainbank, as it is now known,
Bias carried on its good work to
Ws. day.
One of the earliest of its castings
was the fifth bell at Westminster
Abbey, which has been in use since
the 16th. century. The largest bell
made at the Whitechapel foundry
is Big Ben, famous the world over,
with its weight of 13% tons and
Its hourly boom over London. The
neat hour bell of St. Paul's weigh -
g more than five tons, was cast.
there, and also Great Peter of York,
twice that weight, and the bell of
Notre Dame Cathedral, Montreal,
which is the largest bell ever sent
out of England,
The bells of London were con-
demned to silence during the war,
]lest they should give information
to the enemy. Many of the churches
In the city were then destroyed
by the blitz, and their bells brought
to earth. But London is now getting
rid of the scars of war; some of
the churches are being rebuilt—aft
too slowly—and the bells which
have rung throughout the centur-
les will be heard again.
Curiously enough it has not been
a church, but the Royal Exchange
which has led the way. Since the
,time of its founder, Sir Thomas
Gresham, there has been a carillon
at the Royal Exchange. Twice the
Exchange has been burned down,
but each, time that it has been
rebuilt a new carillon has been in-
stalled.
The carillon in use until recent
times was installed in 1895, and
played its tunes at 9 a,rn•, noon,
3 p.m„ and 6 o'clock. It was stopped
on the outbreak of war. When after
the war it was proposed to start
the ringing again, the mechanism
was found to be worn beyond re-
pair, and a new machine, but us-
ing the old bells, was installed.
I -low many generations of Eng-
lish children have run the gantlet
at a merry Christmas party, to this
years -old chords: '
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St, Clemens,
Lend me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.
When will you pay me?
Says the bells of Old Bailey.
When I am rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow..
Here comes a candle to light you
to bed.
And here com-es a chopper to chop
off your head.
Like many another ancienet cus-
tom the origin of the rhyme is
"Ropt in mistry," but one sug-
gestion is that at Clement's Inn,
opposite the church, on New Year's
Day the servants used to make the
round'of the lawyers' chambers and
present each tenant with an orange
and a lemon, while the bells of St.
Clement hailed the new year,
The old custom has been revived
In recent years, but the lawyers
no longer get- the presents, for the
oranges and lemons are given to
the children who attend a special
service there. Quite often the gift
has been the gift of the Danish
children living in London, a pleas-
ant reminder that the Church of
St. Clement Danes, to give it its
full title, is built on the site of
an ancient Danish colony in Lon-
don.
Alasl St. Clement's is little more
than a shell today. It has got ahead
of other London churches, though,
in one respect, for steel scaffolding
is crawling up its battered walls
After "Swim Throne"—Helen
Hagen, a model, has been chos-
en to represent New Jersey in
the national finals in June when
the "Swim for Health" Queen
will be chosen for 1950,
By Magid Arnett
H ow
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USE STRING TO PULL WK
RING AND RELEASE JAWS,
Gables At Home—Clark Gable and his recent bride, former
Lady Sylvia Stanley, are pidtured for the first tin7e at their
borne following their wedding trip, They spent their vacation
in Hawaii.
and steeple, and the bells, which
were buried in sand during the war,
will be heard again, playing, among
other tunes, the old nursery
rhyme.
4: M
There are other bells to be heard -
again soon. Bow Bells have a magic
of their own, with which London
is familiar, and they too will be
heard before many of us are much
older. The bells of Shoreditch have
not yet "grown rich," except in
tone and tradition, and £3,300
is now the price of restoring their
fortunes and enabling them to ring
again in the tower of St. Leonard's.
parish church,
Hard by the Tower of London
is the ancient Church of All Hal-
lows, Barking,—or what remains of
it—where William Penn, the foun-
der of 11enn.sylvania, and John
Quincey Adams, sixth President
of the United States, were married.
When Queen Eliabeth went there
a little time ago to re-lay the foun-
dation stone of the now re -building
church, the bells were in position,
and rang out a merry peal. They
had been recast as a gift from
Mr. J. W. McConnell, President of
the "Montreal Star."
So today All Hallows, Barkng,
by its bell forges another link of
love and friendship across the At-
lantic between the Engils•h-speaking
peoples,
PLATYP�S PALATE IS PLEASED
Y WORMS FROM Z00'S FARM
Is your girl a finicky eater? Take
your troubles to the Bronx Zoo.
You'll get plenty of sympathy.
They have a girl—Penelope is her
name—who's so ..fussy about her
food that they've finally had to turn
the lion house at the zoo into the
biggest worm breeding farm in the
world.
Penelope is a platypus, a small,
duck-billed animal from Australia
who insists on 14,000 worms a
month to stay alive and happy. And
not just any old worm, either?
Three years ago, when the zoo
got word that Penelope and two
relatives were on their way from
Australia, Christopher Coates was
assigned as curator in charge of the
platypuses.
,kms
"we started looks for worms, but
the earthwormNfarms couldn't sup-
ply enough to meet the needs of the
duckbills. Our initial order for
worms was 25,000. Months later,
we received 3,596," Coates says.
So Coates and Keeper Thomas
Callahan took up farming in the
dark basement of the lion house.
After several months of digging and
breeding, they figured they had a
pretty good supply of worms.
They did, if they wanted to go
fishing. But not if they expected
to satisfy Penelope and her two
companions, The crop from Coates'
farm was the common earthworm,
and Penelope wasn't having any.
While Penelope went on a hunger
strike, zoo workers went worm
hunting all over Bronx Park and
— Give To The Red Cross —
%tO MAYS T* SAW TWO
smar am @1#On9' on f .
neighborurrg parks, They danglee
thin worms, fat worms. short
worms and long worms under Pene-
lope's nose, and she reacted like a
child sniffing spinach. Finally they
turned up a nice fat specimen in a
pile of decayed leaves.
Penelope fairly snapped at it.
Coates promptly tagged it the
leafworm and filled his farm with
leafworm eggs. Today they're being
cultivated like prize dahlias. Calla-
han harvests two pounds a day,
which is anywhere from 250 to 2,000
worms, depending on size and
weight.
In his spare time he also dishes
up egg custard, crayfish and frogs
for Penelope and friends. But he
doesn't use Penelope's dinner to go
fishing.
Highest Village
In All Europe
Chamois, as we all know, is the
name of a nimble, long -horned
mountain goats and it is the name
of the soft leather duster with which
we wash down our cars. Chamois
Is, also, the name of the little valley
and its community, to which I re-
cently paid a very interesting visit.
There were two disappointments
in store for me: There are no more
mountain goats left at Chamois, and
the .people of Chamois have never
heard of a "shammy' leather, be-
cause such leather happens to have
nothing whatever to do with the
Chamois goat.
The people of Chamois make only
one claim to fame; they say they
live higher up in the clouds than
any other people in Europe. They
may be right and they may be
wrong, but I can tell you this, they
grow edelweiss in the front gar-
dens, said Ivor Benson in a recent
international broadcast.
There are only two possible
ways of reaching Chamois—by the
winding, stony footpath from the
bottom of the ValtOurnanche, or by
helicopter. As there are no heli-
copters to be had in the Aosta Val-
ley, I had to walk, carrying on my
back enough bread rolls and
smoked sausage to last a week. For
there is no shop at Chamois, and
nothing to buy except mills and
butter.
And for a week, I lived in the
priest's house at Chamois, studying
the life of one of the most inter-
esting communities in the world.
The twentieth century, with all its
bustle and its inventions, is sweep-
ing us along with it; but here is
a cluster of 150 people who have
been by-passed and left behind; to
go on living exactly as their fore-
fathers lived for many centuries.
First of all, a short word picture
of the place: The air is clear and
crisp; the clouds are whiter, and
the sky beyond is bluer than any-
where else in Italy. Far away to
the south are the snow -streaked
mountains of Gran Paradiso. Here,
on the sloping fields in front of the
white -washed church, the women
are working. They wear long cot-
ton frocks with aprons. On their
heads they wear kerchiefs, and on
their feet big, wooden clogs. With
rasping sounds from their sharp
scythes, they cut the rich grass,
sand with it the white and yellow
daisies and wild violets. In another
field, the grass cut yesterday is now
dry and pale, and is being gathered
into great bundles and carried into
the storage bins situated above the
cowsheds.
Higher up the mountain slopes,
the small red and white cattle are
grazing contentedly, the bells
about their necks making a per-
petual din that can be heard a Anile
away. The men sit and watch, now
and again sending their do,Ss to
round up one or two beasts that
are straying too far from the herd,
Most of the milk from these
herds is 'made into a sweet, soft
cheese called Fontina, for which
Aosta is famous. The money they
get for it the peasants spend ora
matches, salt, and the few other
things they must buy.
Here, life is simple. The daily
menu is maize, porridge, which they
call polleenta, potatoes, and always
some milk, Sometimes they have
an egg, meat only in November,
when a few pigs are slaughtered.
When the sun goes down, it is
bedtime. And long before dawno
they are up again and working.
Life is hard. The people are all
lean and tough; the women have
deeply lined faces, for they gener-
ally do the heaviest work. With
long, horn -shaped baskets strapped
to their backs, they carry 75 -pound
loads of clieese and butter to the
bottom of the valley, and, most
times, they have to carry similar
loads of provisions back to their
homes.
In autumn, they carry larch logs
from the mountain sides, and in the
winter, w!ten the snow is a metre
and a half deep outside, the men and
women cut this timber into laths
and weave baskets for the markets
lower dawn the main valley. Every
moment of the day they must work
it they are to keep themselves alive
on this narrow shelf in the moun-
tains.
But life is real. They may be
the hardest -worked people in all
Europe, but they seem to be happy
and courtent, and they get along
very well without many of the
things so necessary outside their
valley—things like police stations,
jails, hospitals.
The day I left Chamois, some-
thing happened that may bring
many changes. One of the peas-
ants who had been working in
Turin returned with a wireless set.
It was installed in his bedroom, and
the villagers crowded in to hear it.
And so, at last, the loud voice of
the modern world has come to
Chamois, The old people shook
their heads; they could make noth-
ing of it. But I noticed that the
young people listened with shining
eyes.
Good Reason.
Bride: "I think we should open
a new bank account."
Hubby: "Why?"
Bride: "Our old one doesn't have
any more money in it."
Deepest lake is Scotland's Lula
Morar, 1,017 feet.
;Flow The "Breakaway" Cockpit Works --These sketches show the working of a new "break-
away" cockpit unit, designed to allow . pilots of high-altitude super -sonic planes to escape ifta
emergencies by means of a parachute -borne "pool." The pressurized pod (1) is ejected fror
the plane's main body; a small, "drogue" parachute is released (2), the drogue chute operates
mechanism which releases the main hate (3), which then billows out (4) to drop the pod
gently to earth or water (5). In water landing, the ;)ilot releases his chute and pod serves
as lif a -boat,
By At-thur Foister