432 THE aUlGRlCH. 



trickled down its sides. This ' heavy sweating' as it was termed, was 

 regarded by every one with peculiar horror, and deemed a certain prog- 

 nostication of the death of the sick woman, who departed this life a 

 few hours after I left the room. The agonised bell, I was told, had 

 on many previous occasions given similar tokens as proofs of its sym- 

 pathy, on the approaching demise of its guardians." What gives a 

 special value to this Irish hand-bell is the inscription on it, by whicb 

 its era is believed to be fixed to the eleventh century, though Dr. 

 Petrie assigns it to so early a date as the close of the ninth century. 

 The inscription upon it is : Oroit ar Ghumascach m ailello : i. e., A 

 prayer for Ghumascach Mac Ailello ; who is believed to be Cumas- 

 each, Archbishop of Armagh, A. D,, 1065. 



The Scottish bell of St, Kentigern, the apostle of Strathclyde, after 

 forming an object of devout veneration to the citizens of Glasgow 

 for centuries, has its memorial still preserved in the city arms ; and 

 relics or records of at least a dozen such ancient holy bells of Scot- 

 land are still estant. The majority of them are rude square iron 

 bells, coated with copper or bronze, and bearing a close resemblance 

 to the cattle -bells which tinkle in the woods around our Canadian 

 clearings, with no very musical or harmonious clank, unless when 

 softened by distance and the intervening forest, or rendered grateful 

 to the ear of the wanderer in " the bush," by the promise they give 

 of some farm-house or settled clearing at hand. I^ evertheless, to 

 one of those : the bell of St, Ternan, the apostle of the Picts, was 

 given the name of BonecM, derived seemingly from the Gaelic ron- 

 naich, a poet ; rannacJi, a songster : however unmusical its clogarnack 

 or jangling would sound in modern ears. The Konnell bell of Birnie, 

 still preserved at the Parish Church of Birnie, 'in the old Bishopric 

 of Moray, and said to have been brought from Eome by the first 

 bishop, is of the same rude character already described. It is a 

 single sheet of hammered iron formed into a square bell, with the 

 metal overlapped and rivetted at the joinings, after which it has been 

 coated with brass. Yet this unmusical relic of the ancient bishops 

 of the northern diocese, probably derives its name from the like 

 fond ascription of dulcet sounds to its rude clangour. 



Of this same class was the ancient relic of St. Pillan, which at a 

 comparatively recent period bore a prominent part in the exorcisms 

 already referred to by the present custodier of the Quigrich, by which 

 the votaries of ithe .Saiait were wont to efiect cures of madness and 



