the small bell in the bell-house behind the harbour church is, on every other day of the year, rung only once at noon. on midsummer eve it is rung at every quarter hour, from dusk until the short night ends. it is not rung loudly. the practice is old enough to have outlived the reason it was started — the parish accounts of 1591 already refer to it as a "long custom."
by the third hour of ringing, the bell takes on a note that is not quite the note it began with. the villagers call this the bell's singing. metallurgists, when occasionally consulted, have offered theories about warmth and metal; the villagers have offered no theory at all. the bell is allowed its strangeness on this one night.
now the rope is pulled in turn by anyone who wants. boys at first, then sailors, then anyone awake enough at three in the morning to climb the worn stairs. there is bread and a thin wine in the porch. the last ring is given to whoever happens to be holding the rope when the sun returns over the headland. most years it is no one. the rope swings on its own.
— field note: between the second and third hour the bell was distinctly two notes for the length of one peal. nobody else mentioned it.