[Bell Historians] Vandalls?

Tue Apr 9 20:41:00 BST 2019

It  may be significant that the word Vandal seems not to have been 
widely known at that time, thus increasing the likelihood that only 
students of history would have been familiar with it. Looking briefly at 
the earliest dictionaries at www.archive.org, the word is not in /The 
interpreter, or, Booke containing the signification of words/ (1607) 
(https://archive.org/details/interpretero_cowe_1607_00/page/n530), or in 
/A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues/ (1632) 
(https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_662_UDnHVvYC/page/n293). But when we 
get to T/he new world of English words: or a general dictionary: 
containing the interpretations of such hard words as are derived from 
other languages ... together with all those terms that relate to the 
arts and sciences/ ... (1663), we find the following entry:

/Vandelberia/, the ancient name of a place in /Cambridgeshire/, so 
called, for that in times past, the /Vandalls /or /Danes/, there 
encamped themselves with a Trench and Rampire; it is thought to have 
been the same with that which is now called /Wandlesbury/.
(https://archive.org/details/b30329905/page/n344)

/Vandăli /then has an extensive entry in /A large dictionary. In three 
parts... III. The proper names of persons, places, and other things 
necessary to the understanding of historians and poets/ ... (1677) which 
I will let you read for yourself 
(https://archive.org/details/b30324476/page/n1367).

Wandlebury also came up in other googlings, for example:

"Gervase of Tibury reports in his /Otia Imperialia/ of about 1211: in 
England, on the borders of the diocese of Ely, there is a town called 
Cantabrica, just outside of which is a place known as Waldlebiria, from 
the fact that the Wandeli [Vandals], when ravaging Britain and savagely 
putting to death the Christians, placed their camp there."
(/A Literary History of Cambridge/, Graham Chainey, 1995, p.4-5).

What student encamped in Cambridge wouldn't like to be thought of as a 
/Vandal/?!

Lawrence
Getting this email past my spellchecker was a right pain!

On 09/04/2019 19:53, La Greenall wrote:
> If you have any of the names of these ringers, it might be worth 
> checking to see whether they were Cambridge alumni. If a group of them 
> wanted to found a bellringing club, then such a generosity might well 
> be appropriate. If you don't have their names, can any name in the 
> parish registers of this date be found amongst the alumni? Or was this 
> church frequented by them? What inns or meeting rooms were nearby?
>
> Vandals are (so to speak) free (of social conventions), and could 
> notionally have been a current nickname for uni students at the time, 
> when not studying. Therefore to make vandals of the wheels was to make 
> them free too - i.e. to allow them to spin without restriction - but 
> one problem is that it seems the wheels already existed(?) and a 
> second is the stays added to them - countering their free movement.
>
> Lawrence
>
> On 09/04/2019 19:39, La Greenall wrote:
>> One odd thing is the two ways 18s is written. Surely xviijs would be 
>> paid by scholars, and 18s by everyone else? Therefore, on this alone, 
>> perhaps it was a mutual exchange of goodwill - could the ringing 
>> group have just been founded and wanted to 'bless' the bells they 
>> were to ring?
>>
>> I know this doesn't answer the crucial point - sorry!
>>
>> Lawrence
>>
>> On 09/04/2019 15:56, gareth at charollais.co.uk [bellhistorians] wrote:
>>>
>>> I’ve been puzzling over an entry in the churchwarden accounts for 
>>> Great St Mary’s in Cambridge. The puzzle is that the ringers paid 
>>> half the cost of the work. This seems to have been a unique 
>>> occurrence. All earlier and later costs of work to the bells, a 
>>> least up to the 20th century, are paid for by the parish. What 
>>> prompted their generosity? I am wondering if the work involved might 
>>> have been to make the wheels/fittings more suitable for 
>>> change-ringing, rather than the usual essential repairs. The date is 
>>> 1629/30 so it might fit in with Tintinnalogia’s suggested timescale 
>>> for the introduction of change-ringing. However, I can’t really make 
>>> sense of what work was done. Can anyone help with an interpretation, 
>>> especially of what vandalls were in this context?
>>>
>>>
>>> The entry reads: “Item for making vandalls of all the five wheeles & 
>>> an Iron Rowle for the tenure and new stays to all the wheeles which 
>>> amounted to 36 shillings whereof the Schollers that were Ringers 
>>> paid 18s and the parish paid the other half which was xviijs”
>>>
>>> Any suggestions gratefully received
>>>
>>> Gareth
>>> 
>>
>

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