Welcome to my blog about the English art of change ringing! I’m Alison Stevens and you can read a little about me on the about page. The blog name and URL both mention sallies and bobs, things commonly referred to in change ringing.
Sallies are the colorful fuzzy parts of change-ringing ropes. Bobs are a lot more complicated, as they’re not physical objects. There are two places where the word “bob” commonly crops up in change ringing. One is in method names, as “bob” is a category of method. The other is a call a conductor can make to signal to the ringers. To be among bobs is to be surrounded by both bob methods and compositions that include bobs! “Sally and Bob Minor” is an officially named method in the bob category (see the blue line here). It’s one of many method titles in which the category name contributes to the meaning rather than just indicating the method category. Another favorite of mine is “Sponge Bob Minor”. I chose the title for this post because there is a method called “First Bob Doubles”. These methods aren’t how ringers usually encounter bobs, but bob methods are what ringers generally start with and “Plain Bob” might be the most frequently rung method. So even relative newcomers to change ringing will have heard “bob” a lot!
It occurs to me that the reason I find method names like “Sally and Bob Minor” so funny has to do with what linguists call constituency. As a ringer, I expect the word(s) before “bob” to be self-contained or complete somehow, because “bob” is just the classifier. But “Sally and” isn’t complete! I suppose “Complete” could feel complete, but “Complete Surprise” is better (“surprise” is another category of method). “Sally and Bob Minor” and “Complete Surprise Minor” are methods in which “bob” and “surprise” are constituents of two different groups depending on whether you’re considering method title structure or literal meaning.
I hope you’ll stick around and read more, whether you’re interested in complicated things involving music theory or just short posts about fun method names!
Among Sallies and Bobs 