Bell Ringer on Christmas Eve
27, 28, now this is a strange job. Someone has had to do this every Christmas Eve here in Dewsbury since the Middle Ages. And it gets harder every year, 'cause this isn't ordinary bell ringing. In order to celebrate the defeat of the devil when Christ was born, they do what they call the Devil's Knell 1 which is ringing the bell once for every year of the Christian 2 era. So, that's over 2,000 yanks of the rope by now.
And it's not just any bell, Black Tom weighs as much as a Mini-Cooper.
That's 43, 44, 43, that's the year in which the Romans invaded Britain. So there're still quite a few to go. Let's whiz on a few hundred years.
1420, 1421, we are now in the Middle Ages and that's when we get the first recorded Christmas carol, not "Good King Wenceslas". It was one about the boar's head. Because in the Middle Ages, they used to eat boar's head at Christmas, but of course in order to eat a boar's head, first of all, you gotta catch your boar, and that meant, more worst jobs.
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Knell n. 丧钟
whiz v vt.使...发飕飕声. 这里是只是用一个形象的动作表示追溯到历史的某一天.
boar n. 公猪,野猪