188 Ancient Celtic Ecclesiastical Bell. By J. A. Smith. 



and as Mr Smith, the teacher, emigrated to New Zealand many 

 years ago, and it is doubtful if he is still alive, no more detailed 

 information can apparently be got at present about the discovery 

 of the bell. From Mr Smith, however, through Mr James 

 Douglas, the bell was fortunately presented to the Museum at 

 Kelso, where it is still carefully preserved. 



It belongs to the class of bells carried and rung by the hand, 

 and from its character and shape, to the earliest type of these — 

 the quadrangular-shaped bells in use by the early Celtic Church, 

 previous at all events to the twelfth century — as from that time 

 of Papal progress in Scotland until the present day church bells 

 have all been made, or rather cast, in a circular form. Professor 

 Daniel Wilson, LL.D. (on December 25, 1851), brought before 

 the Society a paper on "Primitive Scottish Bells," giving notes 

 of the Bell of Strowan and other Ecclesiastical Bells of Scotland. 

 He there simply includes in his enumeration the name of the 

 Kelso Bell, if I mistake not, on my authority, as being preserved 

 in the local Museum of that town {Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., vol. i. 

 p. 18), and in his PreMstorie Annals of Scotland (1851), describes 

 various Scottish Ecclesiastical Bells. Dr. Joseph Anderson has 

 also recently given a most interesting and detailed account of all 

 the other square-sided bells of the early Celtic Church known in 

 Scotland, in his valuable work, Scotland in Early Christian Times, 

 vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1881) of his Ehind Lecture Series. 



It is of the greatest interest to discover that this old Celtic bell 

 bad been found in the parish of Ednam, which Mr Cosmo Innes 

 cites as the example, to show the rise or creation of a Scottish 

 parish, in his interesting volume of Sketches of Early Scottish 

 History (Edinburgh, 1861). Mr Innes afterwards refers in 

 detail to this parish of Ednam, as "marking the very birtb of 

 our Parochial institutions," in his introduction to Part I. of the 

 Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Scotland, published by the 

 Government, where indeed copies of "Thor the Long's Charter 

 of Ednam," &c., are given in facsimile, and fully detailed. 



Erom the interest attached to the still earlier Scottish or Celtic 

 Church, to which I believe this bell really belonged, I may be 

 pardoned quoting some explanatory sentences from Mr W. F. 

 Skene's important work, Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1877), 

 vol. ii. 



Mr Skene says: "It is to the Columban church, established 

 in Northumbria by King Oswald in 635, that we must look for 



