Page:An Old English Home and Its Dependencies.djvu/161

Rh "What old man? He must be very old indeed." "Ay! he be owd; but for sure he'll give trouble yet." It was not till next day that my vicar explained the matter to me. At Dewsbury the devil's knell is thus accounted for. A certain bell there, called Black Tom of Sothill, is said to have been an expiatory gift for a murder, and the tolling is in commemoration of the execution of the murderer. One Thomas Nash, in 1813, bequeathed £50 a year to the ringers of the Abbey Church, Bath, "on condition of their ringing on the whole peal of bells, with clappers muffled, various solemn and doleful changes on the 14th of May in every year, being the anniversary of my wedding-day; and also on the anniversary of my decease, to ring a grand bob-major and merry peals unmuffled, in joyful commemoration of my happy release from domestic tyranny and wretchedness." A singular and beautiful custom still subsists in the village of Horningsham, Wilts, where,