It would take a year and a day to repeat all that the bell said, for it told the same old stories over and over again very minutely, making them sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, according to its mood. It told of the olden days--the rigorous, dark times.
To the tower upon St. Albani Church, where the bell hung, ascended a monk. He was both young and handsome, but had an air of deep melancholy. He looked through an aperture out over the Odensee river. Its bed then was broad, and the monks' meadows were a lake. He gazed over them, and over the green mound called "The Nuns Hill," beyond which the cloister lay, where the light shone from a nun's cell. He had known her well, and he remembered the past, and his heart beat wildly at the recollection.
"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" This was one of the bell's stories:--
"There came up to the tower one day an idiot servant of the bishop; and when I, the bell, who am cast in hard and heavy metal, swung about and pealed, I could have broken his head, for he seated himself immediately under me, and began to play with two sticks, exactly as if it had been a stringed instrument, and he sang to it thus: 'Now I may venture to sing aloud what elsewhere I dare not whisper--sing of all that is kept hidden behind locks and bolts. Yonder it is cold and damp. The rats eat the living bodies. No one knows of it; no one hears of it--not even now, when the bell is pouring forth its loudest peal--ding-dong! ding-dong!'
"There was a king: he was called Knud. He humbled himself both before bishops and monks; but as he unjustly oppressed the people, and laid heavy taxes on them, they armed themselves with all sorts of weapons, and chased him away as if he had been a wild beast. He sought shelter in the church, and had the doors and windows closed. The furious multitude surrounded the sacred edifice, as I heard related; the crows and the ravens, and the jackdaws to boot, became scared by the noise and the tumult; they flew up into the tower, and out again; they looked on the multitude below, they looked also in at the church windows, and shrieked out what they saw.
"King Knud knelt before the altar and prayed; his brothers Erik and Benedict stood guarding him with their drawn swords; but the king's servitor, the false Blake, betrayed his lord. They knew outside where he could be reached. A stone was cast in through the window at him, and the king lay dead. There were shouts and cries among the angry crowd, and cries among the flocks of frightened birds; and I joined them too. I pealed forth, 'Ding-dong! ding-dong!'