The Bell on the Seventh Night | An Old Folk Story by the Fire

Pull your stool a little closer to the fire, friend. This evening I will tell you a folk story from a small village in the western country, in the high valley between two rivers. The village is called Asherwych. It is a small place. Forty households when the story begins, perhaps sixty at its end. The kind of village that passes through a long history without ever becoming part of it. The story concerns the bell. Or rather, it concerns the people who rang it. Every year on the seventh night after the longest night of winter, a single careful bell-ringer of Asherwych climbs the sixty stone steps of the village bell tower at the half-hour before midnight. They sit with the bell. They ring it once at the moment of midnight. They walk back home. The practice has been done this way for five hundred years. This is the story of three bell-ringers across a hundred years. The grandfather, the daughter, and the grandson. Each of them with their own quiet question on the long walk up to the tower in the deep cold of the seventh night. And the morning when the bell did not ring. A long quiet folk story for the long night. 🔥 The Travelers' Fire — folk stories told slowly, by an old bard at his small fire. 🌙 New stories every week. 🕯️ Pull your blanket closer. The fire is good. — #FolkStory #SleepStory #BedtimeStory #FolkTale #LongformStory #StoryToFallAsleepTo #CalmStory #SlowStorytelling #VillageStory #FolkHorror #MidwinterStory #SleepNarration #PeacefulStory