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 which is ringing the bell once for every year of the Christian 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.
---------------------------------------
Knell n. 喪鐘
whiz v vt.使...發(fā)颼颼聲. 這里是只是用一個形象的動作表示追溯到歷史的某一天.
boar n. 公豬,野豬