Thomas Blackburne

“ Come unto the yellow sands, and the wind will blow as Ariel’s song, in soft sad music from a sub-marine belfry. Listen, listen! Those are the old bells of Bosham, carried off, people say, by piratical Danes, and long ago lost under the waves: on a still evening they may be heard chiming in with the new bells. There are similar chimes which fishermen have heard in Cornwall, in Norfolk, and in Normandy; and a sadder peal on the shore near Bangor, whither a sacrilegious, money-loving bishop, who afterwards became blind, went down to see the five fair bells of his cathedral shipped off. ”

“ Winding under oaken shadows along the low grassy meadows of Kent, we hear from the grey minster the pleasant peal that Chaucer’s pilgrims heard, which required twenty-four men to ring. Ringing round the banks of the Cherwell come the notes of the merry Christ Church bells. Along the reedy Cam we can fancy ourselves lean and threadbare students regaling our ears, after a lecture upon Porphyry and the comments of Averroes, with the music of Pope Calixtus’s peal ringing from the belfry of King’s College. ”

“ Salvador; bells that have been duly baptised, exorcised, and provided with godfathers and godmothers who shall be responsible for their conduct in the air, and bells in and round whose metallic cups a whole troop of fairies seems to whirl and dance; bells utterly heathen, conceived and born for the discomfort of all fine-nerved people, that ring us away from all that is pleasant ”