Dead bell

Belief in the supernatural was common in the Middle Ages and special protective powers were sometimes attributed to certain objects, including bells.

[5] The use of the dead bell is illustrated on the Bayeux Tapestry at the funeral of Edward the Confessor and may have been brought over to Britain by the Normans.

[8] A record of 1509 for Sir Archibald Crawford of Cadder also shows that the ringing of the dead bell sometimes took place more than once and was intended to encourage others to pray for the deceased, his ancestors, and other Christian souls.

[10] The Ballad of Willie's Lyke-Wake from the north of Scotland records the payment of a groat for the ringing of the dead bell at his funeral by the bedral or bell-man.

[11] In later, secular times, the bell ringer would pass through the streets of villages, towns or cities announcing the name of a recently deceased person, with details of the funeral.

Records show that the use of the dead bell was common in Eastern Scotland during the seventeenth and eighteenth century and for many years before.

[6] In the eighteenth century, the church beadle went around the parish farms, Kirton, and hamlets at the time of the death and later when the funeral arrangements had been settled.

[15] In Northern England and Scotland dead bells are not uncommon as symbols of death on funerary monuments.

[2][22] As an emblem of mortality the dead bell was mainly confined to eighteenth-century tombstones in the North-East of Scotland, especially in Morayshire and Aberdeenshire.

[24] James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, wrote that the dead bell was the 'tinkling in the ears' which the country people regard as the secret intelligence of some friend's decease.