Here’s a Celtic woman, Rosalia Castro, encounter of european bells, near the turn of the century. I love the Spanish mystics! Not unlike my own heart’s! I love bells, i love europe, and echoes teach still even back into where they first rang!

I recorded bells for over a year from our single window in Antwerp, it’s an ongoing project to record bells at all times of day in europe. Let you know when it rings forth! Or when the bell tolls on that project!

Bells fascinate me! She seems to understand them well! And what they meant! Born in Santiago de Compostela she had that celtic mystical “porous vision”, as some have described it. Interesting when she turns it to what the sound of old bells (a more relatively modern metaphor) carry!

Here’s a nice line from her turn of the century poem:

Of Europe, she wrote…

“Should her bells become forever mute
what sadness in the air and sky!
what silence in the churches!!
what wonder among the dead.”

In Spanish it reads:

Si por siempre enmudecieran,
que tristeza en el aire y en el cielo!
que silencio en las iglesias!!
que extraneza entre los muertos.

The sadness of bells no longer ringing! So glad they still chime from time to time! Let’s keep listening to the bells in the old world friends. They haven’t stopped ringing yet! I’ll do a reading from some of this lovely poet’s works soon! I’m glad someone beheld the bells! If they stop chiming, we may all be in trouble!