The Bell Deep

And what stories does the Bell tell? It is so very old; it was cast before Grandmother's grandmother was born, yet it was scarcely more than a child compared with the Merman. He is a quiet, odd-looking old fellow, with pants of eelskin, a scaly coat decorated with yellow water lilies, bulrushes in his hair, and duckweeds in his beard. He isn't exactly handsome to look at.

It would take years and days to repeat everything the Bell has said; it tells the same stories again and again, in great detail, sometimes lengthening them, sometimes shortening them, according to its mood. It tells of the olden times, those hard and gloomy times.

Up to the tower of St. Alban's Church, where the Bell hung, there once ascended a monk, young and handsome, but deeply thoughtful. He gazed through the loophole out over the Odense River. In those days its bed was broad, and the marsh was a lake. He looked across it, and over the green rampart called "The Nun's Hill," to the cloister beyond, where a light shone from a nun's cell. He had known her well, and he recalled that, and his heart beat rapidly at the thought.

"Ding-dong! Ding-dong!" Yes, such are the stories the Bell tells.

"One day the Bishop's silly manservant came up to the tower; and when I, the Bell, cast as I am from hard and heavy metal, swung to and fro and rang I almost crushed his head, for he sat down right under me and played with two sticks, exactly as if they formed a musical instrument. He sang to them, 'Here I may dare to sing aloud what elsewhere I dare not whisper-sing of all that is hidden behind locks and bolts. It is cold and damp there. The rats eat people up alive! No one knows of this; no one hears of it; even now, for the Bell is ringing so loudly, Ding-dong! Ding-dong!'

"Then there was a king called Knud. He bowed low before bishops and monks, but when he unjustly oppressed the people of Vendelbo with heavy taxes and hard words, they armed themselves with weapons and drove him away as if he had been a wild beast.