One of the sweet joys of our valley (Val di Lima) is to hear the sound of church bells, so soppily evocated in Ketelby’s ‘Bells across the meadows’

They are rung, not just on Sunday morning, as today just one priest has to administer six churches, but also on Saturday afternoons as well.

Church bells recollect Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem:

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Bells are also a premonition of our life’s end when they sound for funerals – a higher tone for ladies and a lower for men

Again, to quote Poe:

 How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy meaning of their tone!

Less poetically, church bells can also mean a noisy nuisance keeping their neighbours wide awake even in the middle of the night when they toll the hours:

..the rolling of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells —
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells —
Bells, bells, bells —
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

A friend I play chess with related to me the following instance of utterly discordant bells sounding between a priest and the owner of a B & B near the village church. In 2010 the parish priest received funds to restore the clock chiming the bells which had been silent for some time. The parishioners were delighted to hear their bells again but, as they also chimed throughout the night, the owners and guests at the B & B were less overjoyed. They asked the priest to silence the bells during the night but he objected and, also, there was no opposition to the bells from the villagers.

The B & B owners called in an environmental agency to measure the bells’ decibels. They were found to be 59, (the tolerance limit is 50). A judicial sentence was issued ordering the parish priest to silence the bells during the night.

The priest objected to the judge’s sentence and also complained that the B & B owners demanded compensation for damage to their custom and the cost of calling in the environmental agency. The priest then went to court stating that he was only implementing the will of the parishioners. The bell tower had been silent for years, because lightning had burned the electric circuit ringing the bells. He said “thanks to the money received from the insurance I was able to restore the clock of the bell tower, to the satisfaction of the faithful, who always asked me to restore the chimes because they gave them comfort and made them feel in company”.

The court hearing, however, ended in favour of the B & B owners who stated that their stance was not a discriminatory act of a religious nature for, although not Roman Catholics, they were Christians and, while not originally from those parts, were integrated and well-liked by the villagers.

There’s a similar story about another village in our valley in which people from abroad objected to the church bells next to their holiday home, this time during the day as well as the night. In that instance they were unsuccessful in their complaint and, shortly afterwards sold up.

The fact is that ‘campanilismo’, the love of one’s church tower, is an important sentiment in Italian society. It’s as deeply felt as loyalty to one’s football team and can be likened to that untranslatable Welsh word, ‘hiraeth’, or longing for home – home-sickness, in fact.

I wonder if a negative mutation of the same attitude is behind the weird phenomenon of brexitisis that has torn apart the fabric, not only of British society, but also of its political life. In any case, beware of finding a house in Italy too near to church bells. They can often sound trouble…