Curfew bell

The curfew bell was a bell rung in the evening in Medieval Great Britain and Ireland as a curfew signal.

History

The custom of ringing the curfew bell continued in many British towns and cities, especially in the north of England, well into the 19th century, although by then it had ceased to have any legal status. The tradition is still practised in the town of Sandwich, Kent, where a curfew bell known as the "Pig Bell" at St Peter's Church is rung at 8 pm every evening for ten minutes. At Ruthin in Denbighshire, the custom lapsed in the 1970s but was revived in 2020 after the bells of St Peter's Church were restored.
Inverness, Scotland rang a curfew bell at 5 p.m. from Old High St Stephen's; it was later moved to 8 p.m. The custom was once widespread in Scotland.
Ruthin, Wales had a curfew bell at 8 p.m. to warn all citizens to be indoors at night.
In Ireland, Coleraine had a curfew bell at 8 p.m., after which all country-dwellers had to be outside the city walls. Similarly, in the Penal era, St. Eugene's Cathedral, Derry rang a curfew bell at 9 p.m. after which Catholics had to be outside the city walls.

Etymology

At Penrith, Cumbria in the 19th century, the curfew was known as the "Taggy Bell", thought to be derived from the Old Norse tœkke, "to cover".

Poetry

The tyranny of William I is described by the poet Francis Thompson,
Chaucer writes on the curfew bell as just as a time, not a law:
Shakespeare had unusual times for the curfew bell. In Romeo and Juliet, iv 4, he has Lord Capulet saying:
In Tempest, v. 1, Prospero says:
In the sixteenth century Bishop Joseph Hall's "Fourth Satire" it reads:
In the play The Merry Devil of Edmonton, the curfew was at nine o'clock in the evening:
John Milton's put in his allegorical Il Penseroso's mouth the words:
In Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato these words are accompanied by a pizzicato bass-line, representing a distant bell sound.
The most famous mention of the curfew in English poetry is in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, whose opening lines are:
T. S. Eliot Gus the theater cat
Eleanor Farjeon and Herbert Farjeon, William I – 1066 in Kings and Queens. These poems were used to teach history to generations of British schoolchildren: