In Memoriam: Nine Tailors Doth Make A Man

The death of a man is marked by the ringing of the Nine Taylors - nine strokes of the bell, a pause, followed by the number of strokes equal to his age. A woman gets six strokes, pause and her age.   On hearing the tolling bell, it was the custom to send someone to the tower or the church porch to discover the name of the deceased, but very often in a small village they would know as soon as the final stroke rang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE6q-oa2K1A

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee” [John Donne].

Now, they only ran the bell three times, and at that it wasn’t the tenor bell, but only a weak electronic chiming sort of thing, fit for a weak electronic kind of church.

To all the end doth come, to some seemingly too soon, to some apparently too late for the safety of their dubious souls. For the latter extended time seems only extended opportunity to fall into perilous temptation. To all the end doth come and God takes up the end, make its timing perfect for each who dies, and writes it in His book.

In talking with others who share my time of life, I find a common theme. It is not so much that we fear being what some call “dead” for that is but a doorway into a life more real than in this land of shadows. What does create anxiety is the transition itself; the unknown journey. How will we go through that solemn door?

But after all is said and done, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” That, in the lofty language of the Book of Common Prayer, is the faith of the Church as we pray, in resurrection faith believing,

“Grant us, with all who have died in the hope of the resurrection, to have our consummation and bliss in thy eternal and everlasting glory, and, with all thy saints, to receive the crown of life which thou dost promise to all who share in the victory of thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” [BCP p. 481].