If you wake up in the morning to bells coming from a nearby church tower, the instrument that is being played is a carillon. A carillon is a simply a set of bells in a tower.
The Old French ancestor of this word is carignon. The car part of this word traces back to the Latin word for four, so a carignon was a set of four bells. Today, however, a carillion can have many many bells. Though you might picture someone playing it by pulling giant strings one after another, it is usually played by a keyboard that controls the bells. Some play automatically, with notes etched into a metal roll like you might find on a player piano.
