Two different kinds of bell counting
English church bells are counted in two very different ways. One is the tolling of a single bell to announce a death, where the number of strokes carries a message. The other is change ringing, where a team of ringers rings a set of bells in constantly shifting orders, and the numbers describe patterns rather than messages. Both involve strict counting, and they are often confused because the saying “nine tailors make a man” is linked to the first, while the famous novel that borrowed the phrase is about the second.
The saying and the death knell
The old rhyme or proverb says “nine tailors make a man.” One long-standing explanation connects it to the passing bell, rung when someone had died or was dying. By this custom, nine strokes signalled the death of a man, six that of a woman, and three that of a child. After a short pause, the bell would then toll once for each year of the deceased’s age, so listeners could work out who had died. These details varied from place to place, and the sequence is best understood as a typical pattern, not a fixed national rule.
What of the “tailors”? One suggestion is that the word is a worn-down form of “tellers,” a dialect or older word for strokes of a bell, so that “nine tellers” meant nine strokes. Another is that it is a joke about the trade of tailors. The evidence does not settle the question, and writers on the subject offer different theories. It is safe to say only that the phrase is linked in tradition with the bell strokes, and that its exact origin is uncertain.
Counting strokes for the dead belongs to a wider habit of fixed counts at life events, from mourning periods to prayer beads that let a worshipper keep track without thinking.
The novel
Dorothy L. Sayers used the phrase as the title of a detective novel published in 1934, set in an English fenland village, in which her detective Lord Peter Wimsey becomes involved in a case connected to a church ring of bells. The book includes detailed descriptions of change ringing, which was part of why it was admired.
What change ringing is
In change ringing, a ring of bells is hung so that each bell can swing through a full circle and be rung at a controlled time. Ringers pull ropes, one per bell, and the bells sound in a sequence called a “row.” Each row has every bell sounding exactly once. After each row, some bells swap places, so the next row has a different order. A “method” is a set of rules for how the swaps happen, designed so that the sequence runs through many rows without repeating one and eventually returns to the starting order.
Several features make this an interesting number puzzle:
- Bells are numbered by pitch. The highest-pitched bell, the treble, is number one, and the lowest, the tenor, has the highest number. Ringers speak of the bells by these ordinal numbers.
- Rows are permutations. With n bells, the number of different orders is n multiplied by every smaller whole number, written n!.
- Moves are limited. In most methods, a bell moves at most one place between rows, which keeps the ringing manageable.
How quickly the numbers grow
The number of possible rows grows fast. A short table shows the counts for common sizes:
| Bells | Possible rows |
|---|---|
| 5 | 120 |
| 6 | 720 |
| 7 | 5,040 |
| 8 | 40,320 |
Each figure is the previous one multiplied by the new number of bells. For example, 6 bells give 720, and 7 times 720 is 5,040. Then 8 times 5,040 is 40,320.
Ringing every possible row is called an extent. On five or six bells that is feasible, but on eight bells it takes many hours of continuous ringing, which is why such long performances are rare. Instead, ringers usually perform a “peal,” which in modern practice means at least 5,000 changes without repeating a row, typically taking around three hours. The number 5,040 is historically important because it is the full extent on seven bells.
Terms for the number of bells in a method use old names: Doubles for five bells, Minor for six, Triples for seven, Major for eight, Caters for nine, Royal for ten, Cinques for eleven and Maximus for twelve. These names came from older musical vocabulary, and the sequence is a fixed convention among ringers.
A short history
Change ringing developed in England in the seventeenth century, when bells began to be hung for full-circle ringing. A book titled Tintinnalogia, published in 1668, is among the earliest printed works on the subject, and Fabian Stedman is closely associated with the early theory. His name survives in ringing methods, including one called Stedman. The children’s rhyme “Oranges and Lemons” names London church bells, but like other nursery rhyme numbers and names it is a separate tradition from formal ringing.
Change ringing sits at an unusual meeting of craft, mathematics and ritual: a church community uses a counted pattern, learned by memory and by feel, to mark Sundays, weddings and festivals.