The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #37342   Message #1058403
Posted By: GUEST,steele@dca.net
21-Nov-03 - 07:45 AM
Thread Name: Origins: White Coral Bells/White Choral Bells
Subject: RE: White Coral Bells: date? provenance?
About "White Coral Bells"---I learned it at Camp Fire Girls Camp in Texas in about 1954. Many years later, I was visiting historic Williamsburg and in one of the restored houses, I saw an object made of a curved metal wire with a wooden handle. From the wire were suspended a dozen or so little white beads made of coral, fashioned to look like bell-shaped flowers. It looked just like a lilly-of-the-valley stalk. The label said something like, "Coral Bells: Used in the Colonial Period as a baby's rattle." Suddenly I could hear "White Coral Bells" in my mind, and the words made sense for the first time.

Shirley