In The fantastic tv show Cadfael, there is a ceremony when the brothers of Shrewsbury abbey are disintering the bones of a saint. the Prior, who is overseeing the disinterment, turns to 2 men behind him and nods for them to begin.
One man is holding a wooden pole with a sort of flat piece attached with a chain or string that he swings around over his head while it emits a sound.
Another begins turning a cartwheel atop a pole that has effigies hanging from it.
What was the significance of both of these activites?
Bonus question: in the very next episode, during a funeral procession, there is a man holding a mask on a stick. He is walking along the proession route thrusting the mask into people's faces. Some sort of theatrical mourning perhaps?
Do you happen to have a clip or video of this available? I've had a google about, but can't find anything about the scene you're referring to. I'd be really interested to get a closer look!
None of the activities you describe sound immediately familiar to me as aspects of a disinterrment ceremony, but disinterrment didn't have a fixed liturgy or anything similar (that I'm aware of) by the early twelfth century, so local customs and variation would have been completely plausible, especially given that (as I recall) in the novel, the bones of St Winifred are in a fairly small Welsh village before being translated to Shrewsbury.