The World Carillon Federation conference in Cork has shown that, althoughoften placed in the same tinkly ballpark as Morris dancing, the carillon is not for sissies, writes Mary Morrissey.

Old carillonneur's joke: does my name ring a bell? No, but as any veteran carillonneur will tell you - their hands and feet do.

For the uninitiated, the carillon is an instrument with bells on. Picture an organ, but in place of the stops imagine a keyboard composed of 2ft- long wooden batons which, when struck with the bottom of a closed fist, manipulate clappers attached to an entire set of fixed bells overhead. Oh, and there are foot pedals, too.

A few hundred of the world's finest carillon players and composers have been at play in Cobh, Co Cork, at the World Carillon Federation conference this week. Delegates from the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, Portugal, Poland, Japan and the UK gathered for their biannual conference.

Cobh is an apt location since St Colman's Cathedral boasts the only carillon in Ireland. Set high in the belfry, the carillon is in tip-top condition, having been restored and modernised in 1998 at a cost of £450,000, courtesy of government, corporate and individual funding, and patronage from the Ireland Fund. Adrian Gebruers is the official carillonneur for the cathedral, a job he inherited from his father, Staf, a native of Antwerp.

Those of you who might place the carillon in the same tinkly ballpark as Morris dancing should know that the carillon is not for sissies. Or, as Adrian Gebruers, the first Irish-born carillonneur and president of the World Carillon Federation puts it: "It's quite physically demanding." And that's after you've climbed maybe 200 steps to get to your place of work.

There are more than 1,000 carillon players worldwide (the biggest growth area being in the US, where many universities have carillons) and the carillon is the largest outdoor musical instrument for which serious music is still being composed. Hayden's less famous brother and Mozart wrote for the carillon, as did Elgar and, more recently, movie score composer John Williams, who created a suite for the carillon as part of the inaugural ceremony at the Los Angeles Olympics.

So why a carillon in Cobh? Well, the story goes that in 1916 the then bishop of Cloyne, Bishop Robert Browne - uncle of the famous Father Browne, who took the poignant photographs of the Titanic's last voyage - decided to grace the newly completed spire of the cathedral with a carillon rather than a straightforward bell system. He was inspired by his brother, who had travelled in Belgium and the Netherlands, where carillons were commonplace, and had admired their sound. He suggested that a carillon would be a fitting finishing touch to Cobh's Pugin-designed cathedral, built in 1868. The carillon was regarded, as Adrian Gebruers recalls, as the jewel in the crown.

The 49 bronze bells (two were added during restoration) in Cobh's carillon weigh over 25 tonnes and cover a range of four chromatic octaves. The story of their transport to Cobh was a combination of the divine and the pragmatic. Despite the fact that the world was in the grip of war, a British navy man-of-war shipped the carillon's original bells from Liverpool to Cork in 1916. The bells made their perilous journey through U-boat infested waters, thanks to the friendship between Bishop Browne and Admiral Lewis Bayley, then commander of the Irish station in Queenstown. Worrying about the safe passage of the bells, the bishop was admonished by the admiral with the words: "You pray and I'll watch."

There is a suggestion that there was certain quid pro quo at work: the navy needed to anchor its communication masts on high ground - and St Colman's, which stands on an elevated platform overlooking Cork harbour, was the ideal spot. There are still traces of the anchors of those masts in the cathedral grounds.

It was 1924 before a permanent carillonneur was appointed to Cobh, and that was Adrian Gebruers's father, Staf. "He only came here because his mother wouldn't allow him go to New York, where he'd been offered a similar position," says Adrian ruefully. "She couldn't exactly say no twice." Within a year, he had met his future wife and so the Gebruers family became as permanent a fixture in Cobh as the carillon atop the cathedral.

So what do carillonneurs do when they get together? Exchange ring-ring jokes? Apart from playing - and there are numerous recitals in Cobh during the week-long conference - the music department in UCC hosted an academic day on Tuesday where the historical and technical aspects of the instrument were discussed. Topics included pop music and the carillon, the impact of technology, and the carillon's roots as a community instrument. Though often associated with churches, the carillon is essentially secular, originating in the 15th century in the Low Countries as a warning system for the citizenry. Then there was a separate bell to warn of storm, fire, flood and plague, each tuned separately. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the carillonneur may have played in the church spire but he was often employed by the state.

In keeping with the secular tradition, the carillon in Cobh has played for many illustrious visitors to the harbour. The Tall Ships Race in 1991 was accompanied by three hours of bronzed greeting. In 1953, Staf Gebruers pulled all the batons out for Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel recalled the event in his memoirs; "There were hundreds of boats blowing whistles and mobs and mobs of people screaming on the docks. And then something happened that I can never forget. The cathedral bells in Cobh started to ring out our theme song, and Babe looked at me, and we cried."

In recognition of the instrument's democratic appeal, the world conference has sponsored a tour by a Dutch travelling carillon, which made its way through the south-east to arrive in Cobh on Sunday. After the official opening of the congress at the Sirius Arts Centre, delegates drifted out onto the street as the Eijsbouts Travelling Carillon arrived. Pied Piper-like, the small crowd, undeterred by the drizzly weather, followed the carillon as it was driven down Kennedy Pier, to the appropriate strains of Misty. Throughout the afternoon, delegates climbed the ladder through the porthole entrance and played, while the sister chimes in the cathedral echoed back.

During the week-long conference, visiting musicians are giving recitals both in the cathedral and on the travelling carillon, playing everything from Bach to Phil Coulter.

Meanwhile, when the conference is over, Adrian Gebruers will don his other hat as lecturer in music at UCC, where carillon studies are part of the curriculum. Students used to have to travel to Cobh to play but the campus now has a practice console which uses digitally stored sample bell tones from St Colman's. The course, started in 1994, will ensure there will be someone to carry on the Gebruers family tradition, and has also fostered a corpus of Irish carillon compositions by Michael Bowles, David Cox, Aloys Fleischman, as well as the Gebruers, father and son. The conference continues tomorrow.

Mary Morrissy is a novelist and lecturer in creative writing. Her most recent novel is The Pretender