lowbell

low-bell

From low +‎ bell. See low (“a flame”).

lowbell (plural lowbells)

1. A bell used in fowling at night, to frighten birds, and, with a sudden light, to make them fly into a net.
   • c. 1700-1708, William King, Art of Love

     The fowler's lowbell robs the lark of sleep.

2. (obsolete) A bell to be hung on the neck of a sheep or cow.
   • 1831, Thomas Burgeland Johnson, The Sportsman's Cyclopedia, page 527:

     […] take the lowbell […] ; toll this bell just as a weather sheep does, while he is feeding in pasture ground […]

   • 2009, Newton Key, Robert Bucholz, Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714, page 113:

     […] pipes and horns were sounded, together with lowbells [cow- or sheep-bell] and other smaller bells which the company had amongst them […]

• “lowbell”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.