Inscriptions for a peal of eight bells (James Walker)

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  • (Posted 2014-11-09)  CPDL #33323:  Network.png PDF & MIDI files available
Editor: John Kilpatrick (submitted 2014-11-09).   Score information: A4, 15 pages, 155 kB   Copyright: Personal
Edition notes: Transcribed from the 1981 manuscript, copyright James Walker. Permission has been granted by the composer's family for the work to be freely available for performance.

General Information

Title: Inscriptions for a peal of eight bells
Composer: James Walker
Lyricist: Thomas Hardy

Number of voices: 8vv   Voicing: TTTTBBBB
Genre: SecularUnknown

Language: English
Instruments: Piano

First published: 1981
Description: Dedicated to Trevor Hold

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png English text

Inscriptions for a peal of eight bells
After a restoration.

Thomas Tremble new-made me
Eighteen hundred and fifty-three:
Why he did I fail to see.

I was well-toned by William Brine,
Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine;
Now, re-cast, I weakly whine.

Fifteen hundred used my date to be,
But since they melted me
'Tis only eighteen fifty-three.

Henry Hopkins got me made,
And I summon forth as bade;
Not to much purpose, I'm afraid.

I likewise: for I band and bid
In commoner metal than I did,
Some of me being stolen, and hid.

I, too, since in a mould they flung me,
Drained my silver, and re-hung me,
So that in tin-like tones I tongue me.

In nineteen hundred, so 'tis said,
They cut my canon off my head
And made me look scalped, scraped, and dead.

I'm the peal's tenor still, but rue it!
Once it took two to swing me through it:
Now I'm re-hung, one dolt can do it.