Lyr Add: Solstice song reposted

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Solstice song reposted
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 22 Dec 18 - 07:55 PM

SOLSTICE BELLS was previously posted in this thread, on 21-Dec-2005: Lyr Add: Solstice Bells.

There’s also one called RING OUT, SOLSTICE BELLS, by Ian Anderson, from the Jethro Tull album “Songs from the Wood” (1977), posted in the thread Songs for the Winter Solstice.

Do people really ring bells for the solstice? I have never heard of this.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Solstice song reposted
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Dec 18 - 04:34 AM

This rather misses the point. In the early modern Ottoman Empire, bells were melted down to make cannon for their long war with Catholic Europe - the Orthodox were otherwise tolerated well and their religion was not suppressed. Brotton's "This Orient Isle" gives another angle - Protestant Elizabethan England exported scrapped bells to the Kingdom of Morocco in exchange for saltpetre, which the English needed for their war with the Catholic enemy.

Religious practice was sacrificed to the arms industry makes for a rather different song.

In some parts of the Orthodox world, bells were never used again. Romanian churches hammer on big planks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Solstice song reposted
From: mg
Date: 22 Dec 18 - 12:49 AM

i did. i think it is centered around Greece and Crete

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Solstice song reposted
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Dec 18 - 11:49 PM

Who wrote it? I'm guessing it was you, mg, but it's always best to know for sure.
-Joe-

Subject: Lyr Add: Solstice song reposted
From: mg
Date: 21 Dec 18 - 07:20 PM

I know I have posted this before. Send me a PM and I will give you a modest MP3 of tune.

SOLSTICE BELLS

Chorus:
Ring the bell of loveliness ring the bells of sorrow
Some were ringing yesterday and more will ring tomorrow

When the days are cold and short and the nights are darkest
When hopes are hanging by a thread and memories are starkest                                        
First a tinkle here and there and then a mighty chiming
Till heard by people everywhere in perfect pitch and timing

They ring from little churches and from every ship at sea
And from the mighty mountaintops wherever folks were free
From every home and nation the message they are bringing
You thought that you could silence us but once again we’re ringing.

In the days we were enslaved their music was forbidden
Their brass and silver melted down but many had been hidden
Under stones and inside walls where tyrannies abounded
But mostly in those hearts who still remembered how they sounded

A cost was paid to bring them back a cost that some paid dearly
Some could see it not at all and some could see it clearly.
But all can join in joyful hope and greet each other well
And send their best good wishes with the ring of every bell

That crops will grow that peace will hold that every child be healthy
That all will prosper in this year the humble and the wealthy
That weather will be clement and the ground will not be shaken
That freedom will return to all from whom it has been taken