When Ella wrote of hearing Faerie music, which is well documented in a journal she kept while living in the Wicklow Mountains, she mentioned the bells as one of the instruments she could discern. So, I've been exploring the concept of the Bell-Branch - quite literally a branch on which is fastened small bells.
To harken...To bring forth...to summon...
When I was a child we always hung bells on our Christmas tree and on the stroke of midnight my father opened the front door and my brother and I would each hold a length of sleigh bells (metal bells embedded in thick red vinyl) and shake them and shake them.
Why?
To harken...To bring forth...to summon...
When I was a child we always hung bells on our Christmas tree and on the stroke of midnight my father opened the front door and my brother and I would each hold a length of sleigh bells (metal bells embedded in thick red vinyl) and shake them and shake them.
Why?
To harken...To bring forth...to summon...
I love this poem by a contemporary of Ella's in Ireland:
THE BELL-BRANCH
by James Henry Cousins (1873-1956)
Shoheen, sho-lo :
Birds are homeward winging.
Shoheen, sho-lo :
Herdsmen on the hills are singing :
" Short the night, and long the day, —
Come, ye weary flocks, away :
Folded in deep shadows drowse,
And on long sweet grasses browse
Where the murmuring waters flow.
" Shoheen, sho-lo :
Hark, the Bell-branch ringing. Shoheen, sho-lo :
Dannans from the hills are singing :
" Time is old, and earth is gray, — Come, ye weary ones, away,
Where, with white, untroubled brows
The Immortals dream and drowse,
And the streams of quiet flow"
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