The custom of ringing a bell at funerals, which was a common one before the Reformation, was continued afterwards. There is an entry in the records of Glasgow, for 1577, of the sale of "the auld bell that yed throw the toun of auld at the burial of the dead." In 1621, the Kirk Session of Dumbarton ordained that "the beadle, John Tome, and his successors, shall ring the mort-bell before all persons deceased within town, for such prices as the minister and session shall set down." It may be that the custom, like the ringing of church bells, originated in the superstition that the sound of bells scared away evil spirits; for an edict of the Town Council of Aberdeen, passed in 1643, includes the tolling and ringing of bells among the "superstitious rites used at funerals," which it prohibits. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, it seems to have been usual for the church bell to be tolled at funerals, and that without any charge being made, for, in 1696, the Kirk Session of Mauchline made a minute that they "thought it reasonable that whoever desired the tolling of the bell at the funeral of their relations, should pay some small quantity of money to the kirk treasurer, to be disposed of for the poor's use." Similar ordinances were passed about the same time by the Kirk Sessions of other parishes in Ayrshire. It was decided, however, in the Civil Court, in 1730, that the money arising from fees for the ringing of bells and burials within the church did not properly belong to the fund for the relief of the poor, but might be used for the maintenance of the fabric of the church. The poor, however, do not appear to have lost much by this decision, for during the year ended October, 1732, the "big" bell at Kilmarnock was tolled for funerals only seven times. It may be explained that there were two bells in many churches, the larger one to be tolled at the funerals of the rich, and the smaller at those of the poor. In the register of burials at Inverness, the words "big bells" are added to the entries of the funerals of "persons of quality." The burials register of the parish of Tough, in Aberdeenshire, record that, in 1784, forty-two of the parishioners joined in the purchase of a new bell for the church, stipulating that, when deaths occurred in their families, "the bell be rung once before the day of interment, that is, when the officer gets the first notice of a contributor's death, and then upon the day of interment, from morning until the coffin be laid in the ground, in the manner that bells ought to be rung at funerals, and that by no other person than the officer allenarlie."