Ermintruder
The greatest risk is to risk nothing at all...
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2013
- Messages
- 6,206
This is one of those curious circumstances, in life so far, where I have been possessed of a vague foggy understanding of a funereal ritual, only through verse. Everyone of course knows the poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen, that memorable cry from the 1914-18 war.
Across the century since then, I have spent nearly half that time believing, misunderstanding, presuming, that a "Passing Bell" was just a literary device, a metaphorical tolling not of this real world. I had no idea it was an actual ceremonial observance, originally, for some Christian deaths.
Perhap's I'm unique in this ignorance. Maybe my later 20th century path through life, or my happenstance geographic stagger, has just insulated this matter-of-fact morbid reality from me....until now.
How well-known/universal or understood is this...tarrif? And is it still invoked, anywhere, in similar/identical style, in the world?
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.....
Across the century since then, I have spent nearly half that time believing, misunderstanding, presuming, that a "Passing Bell" was just a literary device, a metaphorical tolling not of this real world. I had no idea it was an actual ceremonial observance, originally, for some Christian deaths.
Perhap's I'm unique in this ignorance. Maybe my later 20th century path through life, or my happenstance geographic stagger, has just insulated this matter-of-fact morbid reality from me....until now.
How well-known/universal or understood is this...tarrif? And is it still invoked, anywhere, in similar/identical style, in the world?
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.....