Forlong - Rivers of Life

Fire Worship.
shaking and tinkling produced the required effects. Stripped, however, of its poetry
and splendour, “the Egis was probably nothing more than a symbolical instrument,
signifying originally the motion of the elements, like the sistrum of Isis, the cymbals
of Kubele, the bells of Bacchus, etc.; hence Jupiter is said to have overcome the Titans
with his Egis, as Isis drove away Typhon with her sistrum.” 1
Jews and others welcome in the new moon, and Christians dispel storms by ringing
bells. They toll solemnly at deaths, merrily at marriages, and softly tinkle when
the Host or sacrificial victim is raised. The Bell is indispensable to various ecclesiastical
rites. Bede translates Campana or Bellun by “Cluggan,” a Keltic word
derived from the Obeliskal Stone, the form which the Keltic bell, according to Mr.
Keane, seems at first to have taken. With Frenchmen in Amorika it was the Cloche,
and then the clock of Bede, who of course did not know of our clocks, but only of
bells which were used to strike the hour, measured by candle-burning or sand-falling.
Large Church Bells were only introduced about 400 A.C.. by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola
in Campania, whence the Campana of impure Latinity. 2 The first French and Italian bells
were all called by feminine names, and Rome’s first was that which she gave to IOne—
or John of the Lateran. The ringing of bells has been held all over the world to have
great effect in suppressing storms and demons. Indians have often assured me that
by ringing bells in passing through dangerous jungles, they scared away tigers, fiends,
and robbers, scorning my idea as to the seemingly more reasonable explanation. So
Kelts used to ring bells to frighten hares from their path, these being held to he evil
spirits, partiularly hags and witches. Woe betide any poor old crone whom they met
after passing a hare, she being almost certain to be drowned or hung. Bells were of
all shapes, many having an opening at the top like those Layard found in Nineveh, 3
and that on page 233 ante, through which the tongue or oracle passed and spoke, in a
manner which clearly had much authority with our highly imaginative but very animal
fore-fathers. The Hebrews affected the Trumpet more than the bell, but all Easterns
and Westerns preferred the clanking Klachan. 4 No member of any tribe would dare
to neglect ringing the bell on the top of Samanela, or Adām’s Peak, in Ceylon, as soon as
he reached it. “The bells of St. Ninian, St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. Ternari, and
many others were not only preserved as venerated monuments, but were believed to
possess miraculous powers inherent in themselves as well as derived from their former
possessors. . . . Superstition for once favoured truth, and men were more afraid of
swearing falsely on the bell of a Saint than on the Gospels of the Evangelists.” 5
Bells, or their prototypes, Shells, Sistrums, Gongs, Cymbals, etc., have for three thousand
years been depicted by many people in various sexual forms. Some have come down
1
See Barker’s reprint of R. Payne Knight’s Symbolic Language, p. 55. London, 1836.
2 3
Brand’s Ants., II., p. 214. Ellis, 1849. Layard’s Nin. and Bab., abridged ed. 1875, p. 58.
4
Clach is a Stone in Gaelic; clachkin, or clach-chin, a “head” or prominent stone; clachan a
Church. In Irish this is slightly altered,”a stone” being cloch, and a cone or pyramid clogad.
5
Early Races of Scot., II., 505.
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