Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851. Various

      Matter-of-fact Epitaph.—May I venture to ask a place for the following very matter-of-fact epitaph in the English cemetery at Leghorn?

      which may be thus freely rendered:

      Queries

      ANCIENT DANISH ITINERARY: PROL IN ANGLIAM

      An ancient scholiast on Adam of Bremen, "paululum Adamo ratione ætatis inferior," according to his editor, Joachim Maderus, supplies us with a curious list of the stations in the voyages from Ripa, in Denmark, to Acre, in the Holy Land. Adam of Bremen's Ecclesiastical History dates toward the end of the eleventh century, about 1070. His text is as follows:—

      The scholiast has this note:—

      We may fairly consider that the stations marked in this itinerary are of great antiquity. "Prol in Angliam" is, no doubt, Prawle Point, in Devonshire; a headland which must have been well known to the Veneti long before the days of Adam of Bremen. Its mention here is one among the many proofs of the early importance of this coast, the ancient "Littus Totonesium," the scene of one of Marie's fabliaux, and of some curious passages in Layamon's Brut, which are not to be found in the poem of Wace. I wish to ask,—

      1. Is the word "Prol" Saxon or British, and what is its probable etymology?

      2. Where was "Cuicfal in Flandriam," from whence the voyage was made to Prol?

      CHIMING, TOLLING, AND PEAL-RINGING OF BELLS

      Some of your clerical readers, as well as myself, would probably be glad to have determined, what are the proper times and measures in which the bells of a church ought to be rung. There seems to be no uniformity of practice in this matter, nor any authoritative directions, by which the customs that obtain may be either improved or regulated. The terms chiming, tolling, and peal-ringing, though now generally understood, do not intelligibly apply to the few regulations about bells which occur in the canons.

      I believe that chiming is the proper method of summoning the congregation to the services of the church: and tolling certainly appears to be the most appropriate use of the bell at funerals. But chiming the bells is an art that is not recognised in the older rules respecting their use. For instance, the Fifteenth Canon orders that on Wednesdays and Fridays weekly, warning shall be given to the people that litany will be said, by tolling of a bell. And, on the other hand, though we toll at a funeral, the Sixty-seventh Canon enjoins that—

      The peal here alluded to does not of course mean what Mr. Ellacombe has so clearly described to be a modern peal, in Vol. i., p. 154., of "Notes and Queries;" but it would at least amount, I suppose, to consonantia campanarum, a ringing together of bells, as distinguished from the toll or single stroke on a bell. Horne Tooke says:

      The poet does not clear the ambiguity and confusion of terms, when he sings—

      Peals are not heard in London on Sunday mornings, I believe; but in the country, at least hereabouts, they are commonly rung as the summons to church, ending with a few strokes on one bell; and then a smaller bell than any in the peal (the sanctus bell of old, perhaps, and now sometimes vulgarly called "Tom Tinkler") announces that divine service is about to begin.