Because the bell is such a reliable feature of life in the hamlet, it seems to belong to all of us living within reach of its sound and to everyone else living here, too.

Active church bells have been on the decline across the nation since WW II, when metals were scarce for civilian use, and the invention of electronic chimes and carillons made large bells seem superfluous. This is so especially in smaller communities because of the challenges of bell tower maintenance and the disappearing art of ringing.

The beginnings of bell ringing are obscure. One story attributes the beginning of the custom to Druids striking a hollow tree trunk to evoke the voice of God. Another story credits an Italian monk in 400 AD who struck a kettle he had hung from his church tower to gain the attention of the villagers below. No doubt there are other stories as well. Chiming bells (swinging them through a short arc using a rope and a lever) goes well back into the Middle Ages, but it was not until the seventeenth century that ringers developed the full wheel which rotates each bell through 360 degrees, giving enough control for orderly ringing.

In any case, over the ensuing centuries, the art of ringing has advanced to include changing, pealing, tolling and carillons. Carillons play melodies, and are controlled by a single chimer. Change ringing refers to a group of full sized bells that are operated by a group of people, and that cannot produce a recognizable melody, but instead produce sequences by changing the order of when each bell is rung. Tolling and ringing are the only compositions that the single bell in Palisades can play.

There are records of stone towers crumbling from the vibrations caused by peals (when a group of bells are rung in sequences over a period of several hours) and of bells, that can weigh many hundreds of pounds and up to over a ton, breaking free of their cages and crashing into the nave below. It is reassuring to know that engineering methods have advanced in the hanging and support of the bells so that now they are quite safe. The bell ringers in our hamlet are also the ushers of the church. Under the guidance and training of Robert Rasmussen of Palisades, they ensure the continuity of this ancient ritual. Bob has been a member of the church since 1965 and he has been a bell ringer for almost all of that time.

Archer Stansbury taught Bob how to ring according to his own emphatic ideas about how the bell should sound. Most of the ushers had a hard time with it and on many Sunday mornings, Archer walked over from his house next door to criticize their technique. Bob, however, had a knack for it, and when Archer died, his wife Helene asked Bob to take on the responsibility of training the ushers.

I asked Bob how it is done. He took me over to the bell pull inside the entrance of the church. It travels through a hole in the ceiling into the tower, around the wheel, which is attached to the bell itself. He demonstrated the technique by giving a good yank to the bell pull and explaining that when he feels the bell rise up in the swing just so, he pulls it back. It’s all about timing, he said. You want to make the bell fall back to strike the clapper to get the deep full sound that satisfied Archer. If instead the clapper strikes the bell, you get a shorter, duller sound that gives no pleasure.

Our bell was ordered by Winthrop Gilman from the Meneely Bell Foundry in West Troy, New York, famous for casting the replacement of the cracked Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. It was cast in October of 1863 and installed in time to ring in the New Year. However, the bell pull rope was not yet in place and the only access to the bell tower was by ladder from the outside of the church. So that night, Winthrop and his brother-in-law, Charles F. Park, Jr. climbed ladders in a fierce north-east snowstorm and in the dark, their lantern having been extinguished by the wind to get to the bell and ring it. Because of their heroic efforts, the new bell rang out the old year and rang in the new year in Palisades.

I tell this story to my husband, and he offers that they must have been well into their private celebrations to do such a thing; it may well have been so, but I haven’t found a reference to it. Perhaps Alice Gerard knows. I should call her.

For more information on the history and art of bell ringing, please go to the website of the North American Guild of Change Ringers at www.nagcr.org.