364 (19)

337

Bells

220 Bells wom as dress accessories (after a Rhenish tapestry c. 1385, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg)

detail evident from a late 14th-century Rhenish tapestry, which shows ladies and gallants engag-ing in various games (fig 220; Hampe 1896, 111 no. 68 fig 7). Women were also accustomed to wearing bells on festive occasions in the late 14th and early 15th century, at least on the continent. The German tapestry already referred to shows a lady wearing bells attached to either side of a sash wom diagonally across the shoulder, while the betrothal portrait of Lysbeth van Duvenvoorde, painted c.1430, shows her wearing a high-waisted girdle to which rumbler bells were fitted by means of plied, bi-coloured cords so that they jangled on her hips (Fingerlin 1971, 361 fig 408). A similar girdle hung with bells can be seen in the alabaster effigy of Margareta, Queen of Sweden, Norway and Denmark (died 1412) which was erected in Roskilde cathedral, Denmark, in 1423 (Geijer, Franzen and Nockert 1985, fig 23).

There is little to distinguish the rumbler bells wom as an accessory of dress from those attached to the collars of pets or hunting dogs, or to horse hamess, which were madę in profusion; Richard Patemoster, for example, provided 800 little bells (tintunabul’) to be wom by horses in a jousting toumament at Windsor Park in 1278 at a cost of 3s per 100 (Lysons 1814, 302). Conse-ąuently, all the excavated rumbler bells from medieval London are included here, but among clapper bells only those which bear no indication that they were mementoes from the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury are described, sińce these will be described in a volume in this series on pilgrim souvenirs (Spencer forthcoming).

Rumbler bells

Rumbler bells from medieval deposits in London are generally madę from brass, gunmetal or tin. However, one early beli is copper, and another from an unstratified deposit is pewter.

Copper

The earliest of the rumbler bells is madę from copper. It is otherwise similar to examples from deposits of the 13th and 14th centuries except that its loop is madę from wire instead of from a narrow strip of sheeting.