Song Of The Bell

In his article on the Burndy Library (Fall 1985), I. Bernard Cohen mentions that in the eighteenth century church bells were commonly rung in a vain attempt to ward off lightning strokes, and that they often bore the words fulgura frango . In fact, the full citation reads: Vivos voco,/ Mortuos plango,/ Fulgura frango (The living I call,/ The dead I mourn,/ Lightning I break).

Schiller used this as the motto for his “Das Lied von der Glocke” (“The Song of the Bell”), one of the most famous poems in the German language. Every high school student in Germany, at least some time ago, had to know it by heart. It seems Schiller copied it from the large bell in the cathedral of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland. The inscription indicated the three principle occasions at which the bell was rung: to greet a newborn (at baptism), to bid farewell to one who had died (at burial), and to warn of—and possibly ward off—lightning.