handbell, small bell—usually of brass or bronze but sometimes of copper, clay, porcelain, glass, wood, or other hard material—with an attached stem, loop, or leather strap for a handle; most have a clapper, though some are struck externally. The earliest handbells were probably of beaten copper, but since the Bronze Age most metal bells have been cast.
Handbells have been part of rituals from ancient times to the modern Roman Catholic Angelus and Buddhist altar bells. The latter have a lotus flower design on the end of their handles, a symbol of creation that is also present on the handles of Hindu bells. Such handbells are used to punctuate segments of a ceremony. Other handbells have been used in ceremonies meant to exorcise demons or cure sickness.
To signal and to attract attention, handbells have served street vendors, town criers, and night watchmen in the West. In ancient Greece they announced the opening of the fish market, and in Rome, that of the public baths. The common practice of ringing handbells during funeral processions (often to ward off demons) was recorded on the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry. Medieval European peasants rang handbells in the fields as fertility charms.
Chinese artifacts shaped like fish mouths with handles date from 1600 bc. Though they may have been scoops for measuring rice, such shapes did become sets of hung bells by the 6th century bc and thus may have been handbells earlier. Eighty bronze-cast findings from 7th-century bc Nineveh (in modern Iraq) seem to be handbells. Some 49 6th-century ad Irish bells, made of iron plate, hammered square and riveted, are preserved, the most famous being the Clog-an-Eadhacta Phatraic (Bell of St. Patrick’s Will) of about ad 552.
Sets of handbells tuned diatonically (i.e., to a seven-note scale) first appeared in England in the 17th century for practicing the mathematical permutations of change ringing. By the 18th century, groups of ringers had branched out into tune playing, with the bells’ range expanded to several chromatic (12-note) octaves. Bell-ringing bands were introduced to the United States by showman P.T. Barnum in 1847. Modern Western bell-ringing bands generally consist of 8 to 12 players, each of whom controls from 2 to 12 bells set out on a table.