[agurk]

A key excerpt from the wikipage is:

> A campanologist is one who studies campanology, though it is popularly misused to refer to a bell ringer

I once used the term to describe my sister, who quickly told me she was a bell ringer, and that bell ringers never call themselves campanologists.

[crustycoder]

Indeed we don't in the same way that beer drinkers don't call themselves biochemists - even though some of them may be.

Speaking of beer and bell ringers here's what the Rev H. T Ellacombe had to say about them in 1861:

"it was a well-known fact that, as a body, a more drunken set of fellows could not be found."

"I have heard of clergymen who have even refused to accept a living where there was a peal of bells; and of those who have said, upon learning the number of the bells in the tower, 'Then, certain it is, there are as many drunkards in the village.' 'That man is a ringer,' is is quite enough in some places to intimate that he is an idle, sottish character. I know one clergyman curacy who left his curacy in Worcestershire on account of the conduct of the ringers."

Some traditions are worth keeping up ;-)