What do bells signify

When I started working in the Cancer Center 15 years ago I thought it would be a sad place. To my surprise, the Cancer Center is far from the sad place I had expected it to be.

The staff is amazing and the patients and families are awesome. Where else can you go to work, stick patients with needles and yet, at the end of the day, they come looking for you to hug you and tell you they love you?

Our patients and families experience difficult times during their treatment. Chemo may make them sick, they may pick up an illness because their immune system is compromised, they may get many needle sticks and endure long hospital stays that take them away from their families. They can also symbolize peace, calm, joy, sadness, and other moods and emotions.

The meaning of a bell in a certain piece of literature depends on the audience for it. For example, bells in Chinese literature may have very different symbolism to bells in western literature.

Have you found this article useful? And if you are looking for more helpful guides, here is one about wheat. She has an interest in numbers, symbols and dreams. She is a mom of three who spends her free time with her family and friends, or just sipping her favorite cup of tea. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. What do bells symbolize? What do bells symbolize at Christmas When rung at Christmas, especially in churches, bells have a celebratory meaning to them.

What do bells symbolize in the bible? What do ringing bells symbolize? Ringing bells can also symbolize the driving away of demons or bad spirits during exorcism. What do bells symbolize in literature? Final words Have you found this article useful? From this custom is doubtless derived that of tolling the church bells at funerals, and also that which is practiced in some localities of tolling, the bell immediately after a death, and indicating the age of the deceased by the number of the strokes.

It was called the couvre feu cover fire bell, and when rung at eight or nine o'clock in the evening it was expected that all fire and light would be extinguished. It is to be remembered that at that early period houses were mostly built of inflammable materials, and the law of the Conqueror, though arbitrary, was intended to prevent conflagrations.

The custom was enforced for less than fifly years, but there are many localities in England where, even now, " the curfew tolls the knell of parting day. The most common of the old inscriptions upon the Latin bells were to this effect. The use of bells to sound alarms in the event of dangers from fire, flood, and the enemy dates from an early period.

It is related that in the year , when Sens was besieged, the Bishop of Orleans ordered the bells' of St. Stephen to bo rung, and the sound so frightened the assailants that they abandoned the siege. When Macbeth shut himself in the forest of Dunsinnane, and it was announced to him that Birnam Wood was moving on the castle, he cried out in his desperation: Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind! Come wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back.

In later years, the use of bells has become so systematized as not only to sound the alarm of fire, but to indicate the locality of the danger, and there are several cities in the United States in which, by means of electricity, every fire bell may at once announce this fact. Perhaps the most perfect operation of this system is to be seen in the city of New York. It was cast by order of the Empress Anne, in ; is twenty-one feet four and a half inches in hight, twenty-two feet five and a half inches in diameter where the clapper strikes, and is believed to weigh from , to , lbs.

Historians are in doubt whether this giant among bells was ever hung. Clark, who saw it about the year , says, in his " Travels," " The Russians might as well have attempted to suspend a line-of-battle ship with all its stores and guns.

It was then consecrated as a chapel, the entrance to the interior being through a large fracture near the mouth, the cause of which is also a subject of controversy. It is doubtless owing to this practice, which prevailed in olden times, that the existing notion is derived that ancient bells are of better material than the modern ones, on account of the silver in their composition.

It may be added, however, that the idea is incorrect, since recent periments have shown that its introduction causes a positiTO deterioration of the resonant quality of bell metal.

Whoever has been in Russia recalls as chief among his memories the sounds of the great bells which form a part of religious worship, and are regarded by the Russians with superstitious veneration. In Moscow alone there are five thousand, and when they unite on festive occasions in one mity chime, the effect especially at a distance, is said to be majestically grand. There is now suspended in the tower of St.

Ivan, at Moscow, a bell which weighs , pounds, and the diameter oi which is thirteen feet. It is said that when it sounds, which is but once a year, " a deep, hollow murmur vibrates all over Moscow, like the fullest notes of a vast organ or the rolling of distant thunder. Peter's at Rome, weighs 17, pounds ; that of Notre Dame Cathedral, Montreal—the largest in America—29, pounds; and that of the Parliament House in London, 30, pounds. When it is remembered that the largest bells heard in our American cities rarely weigh more than three or four thousand pounds, some idea may be had of the v Iume of tone which belongs to the monster bells above described.

The Chinese have likewise produced bells of colossal size, one of which at Pekin weighs , pounds, but the tone of their bells is said to be discordant and " panny " like that of their gongs. It was cfacked while being rung in honor of the visit of Henry Clay to Philadelphia, and since then has been on exhibition in that city, together with other revolutionary relics. The following inscription, taken from Leviticus xxv.

Michael's chimes unworthy of notice in this connection. These bells—eight in number —were imported. On the evacuation of Charleston in , Major Traille, of the Royal Artillery, took them down under the pretence that they were a military perquisite belonging to the commanding officer.

The Vestry applied to Lieutenant-General Leslie to have them restored, on the ground that they were paid for by subscription, and private property was secure under the terms of the capitulation.

No answer was returned. Sir Guy Carleton, at New York, however, anticipated the wish of the vestry, and ordered the bells to be restored. Meanwhile they had been shipped to England.