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Archiver > MEMORY-LANE > 2006-09 > 1157333647


From: "Frederick H. Whitley" <>
Subject: [ML] FW: On Bells
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2006 21:34:07 -0400


After reading so many interesting comments about 'bells', I thought of a
topic I taught with a 'folk-lore' unit with my students. I live in
Lancaster Co, PA. There is an old highway called the Lincoln Highway that
still goes from Lancaster to Philadelphia. In colonial times, the Conestoga
Wagon was used to transport cargo between these cities. When the teamsters
began their trip, they would add a string of bells to their team. It was
considered 'good luck' to traverse the trip and retain one's bells. Oh, how
would one loose their bells you ask? If one
'Broke-down' along the way and another teamster stopped and assisted you, it
was customary to give him your 'bells' as a token of thanks. Thus the
saying, "I'll be there with bells on" really implies than one would arrive
at one's destination without incident!

Isn't history interesting? FRED in PA

-----Original Message-----
From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of Doug Crim
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 3:09 PM
To: Walter S. Barge
Cc: MemoryLane
Subject: Re: [ML] On Bells

The movie was based on an E. Hemmingway book of the same name... one of my
childhood heros... lol

Doug :-)


> Many of you remember a very famous Ingrid Bergman movie with Gary Cooper:
> "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The quotation is from a famous early 19th
> century poem by John Donne, an English Anglican clergyman:
>
> "No man's death is of thee a thing apart;
> Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for
> thee."
>



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