COWS HAVE BELLS BUT ELEPHANTS DO NOT HAVE CLAWS

Authentic antique bell made for a cow

Thanks to its prevalent use by innumerable drummers, as well as a classic Saturday Night Live skit performed by Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken, the cowbell is probably the most well-known secondary percussion instrument for the average person.  Everyone is familiar with the sight and sound of a common cowbell but gives it little thought otherwise.  It's just a black metal housing that you beat on with a stick to make a dry, short-ringing note.

I was thinking about cowbells one day, mainly because I have a plethora of them on my drum kit and way too much time on my hands, and the concept intrigued me.  Originally a "cow bell" was a crude, hand-fashioned bell made of steel, copper or some other metal that hung around the neck of an actual cow on a leather strap.  The bell had a metal clapper that would swing and ring the bell as the animal walked or moved around.  In this way a farmer could determine where his cattle were by listening for the sound of the bell.

The reason this was necessary is because cows graze in fields which can be quite expansive.  A cow could wander quite a ways off and still be somewhere on the outer edge of a farmer's property.  In the old days locating the family cow would be a difficult and time-consuming endeavor for a typical agriculturist who might only possess one or two of these animals for milking, as opposed to a cattle breeder who would have a whole herd (which would be hard to lose track of).  A noise-maker tied around its neck would quickly narrow the search for the missing bovine.

This, I surmised, is why there are "cow bells" but not "pig bells" or "chicken bells."  Pigs and chickens are kept in small pens so they are easy to find.  BUT, I pondered, if cows have bells because they wander off in fields, wouldn't there be other domesticated animals that might require Livestock Location Indicators?  As a matter of fact there are, which is how I got involved in researching and collecting other types of LLIs, including goat bells, sheep bells, horse bells, hawk bells, falcon bells and bells for any other animal that needs a noise-maker to be located.

One of the more unusual additions to my percussion collection is this set of ornate hanging bells.  These are brass bells made in India that are called "claw bells" due to their unusual design, but are also commonly referred to as "elephant bells."

Now you are probably thinking exactly what I did initially when I stumbled upon these beautiful bells, and that is, "Who the heck could lose track of a pet elephant??!!"  But locating these enormous, slow-moving creatures is not the intended purpose of these bells.  These heavy brass ringers were crafted and hung on elephants that were used to travel through the jungles of India.  The noise helped to scare away any tigers in the area for the safety of the advancing convoy, which is why I suggest everyone wear a set of these when they wander into the woods.

As shown in the photos, an elephant bell has a distinct "button" on the top for mounting.  A rope was "untwisted" so that the button could be inserted between the strands, and then tightened again to secure the bell in place.  This is all well and good for an elephant rider, but what about me?  How was I going to mount these on my drum set?

After many different ideas were attempted and failed, I finally developed this spring-mounted concept which holds the bells in a hanging position and shakes them when I push on them.  These instruments are considerably heavy, so simply hanging them did not work.  Each bell would ring once and then the clapper would swing in time with the housing and not strike again.  I had to develop a way to shake the bell back and forth so as to sufficiently disturb the swing of the clapper and make it strike the side more than once.  Here is how my custom design worked out:

This concludes my thoughts and notes on cow bells and elephant bells.  Thank you very little.