60 TARRANT RUSHTON CHURCH. 



County of Lincoln, in 1863, there were found in the chancel walls 

 of the Decorated Period three on each side, at intervals of about 

 6ft. and 7ft. or 8ft. above the floor ; whilst at St. Nicholas, 

 Ipswich, in 1848, vessels were met with under the roof, and at 

 East Harling, in 1873, in the alternate spaces between the short 

 timber uprights. In every case they were lying on their sides, 

 with their mouths towards the interior. 



There have been all kinds of conjectures as to their purpose 

 some as ridiculous as they could well be but I am more than 

 disposed to acquiesce in the opinion of one of the best writers on 

 the subject, the Kev. G. W. W. Minns, that they were supposed 

 to enrich the voice. Whether they did so or not is quite another 

 matter. There is a passage in a manuscript of the 15th century 

 containing the Chronicles of the Celestins of Metz, on which 

 reliance is especially placed for the opinion. It is as follows : 

 "In the month of August, 1432, on the vigil of the Assumption, 

 after Brother Odo le Roy, the Prior, had returned from a general 

 chapter, it was ordered that pots should be put into the choir of 

 the Church of Ceans, he stating that he had seen such in another 

 church, and that he thought they made the singing better and 

 resound more strongly." It is only right to add that the 

 Chronicler goes on to ridicule the Prior with some pleasantry for 

 what he had done, and a later hand wrote on the margin " Ecce 

 risu digna." Dr. Codrington, who worked with Bishop Selwyn in 

 Melanesia, visited Rushton Church in October, 1891, with our 

 Rural Dean, and being interested in what he had seen wrote to a 

 well-known antiquary, Sir Henry Dryden, on the subject, who 

 agreed with the writer of the marginal note and said, briefly but 

 expressively, " The idea is all nonsense." I turn, however, to 

 Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, and there under the word TJX^OV 

 (you will recognise in it the familiar word " Echo ") after its 

 common meaning, viz., a kind of loud drum or gong, it is stated 

 that vessels of like kind were let into the walls of theatres to 

 strengthen the sound or to imitate the noise of thunder. And 

 this was done in both Greece and Italy, 



