Jon, you've touched on the thing that interested me. I remember that Dorothy L Sayers wove a lot of bell-lore into her Lord Peter Whimsey novel 'The Nine Tailors' but I don't have access to the book any more. I am always suspicious of these things and haven't been to enough funerals (Thank God!) to know if they really do ring the great bell nine times. Is there an expert in the house?

Elsewhere SBG talks about the way in which tailors were seen as 'less than manly' and the nine tailors make a man could be taken in that context. Certainly the tailor gets a pretty raw deal in folk song.