This happened a very, very long time ago. A huge bell hung on the belfry in the Sennenji Temple in Shimonoseki. Its ringing carried far throughout the area and always made people happy.
Every morning at the same hour the bell ringer struck the bell.
“Well,” said the peasants, “the bell of the Sennenji Temple is ringing.” So, it’s time for us to go to the field.
And every evening people recognized the time by the sound of a large bell.
- Do you hear? - they asked each other. - The bell has already rung. We should return home. This is how people lived in those places: at the sound of a bell.
But one day this happened. The peasants went out into the fields, working tirelessly, when suddenly they heard the big bell of the Sennenji Temple ringing. The peasants were surprised:
“It’s not time to ring our bell yet.” Maybe some kind of trouble has happened?
The abbot of the temple himself heard the ringing of the bell. This made him very angry: “What a mess this is! - he thought. “Who dared to ring the bell at this hour?!”
The rector came out of the church, looked at the belfry, and was dumbfounded: the bell was ringing, but the bell-ringer was not there!
- This is incredible! — the abbot clasped his hands. “Where have you seen bells ringing on their own?”
From that day on, real miracles began at Sennenji Temple. As soon as evening comes, a breeze will rise in the belfry, and when midnight comes, the bell will begin to hum and ring out throughout the entire area: rut! rut! rut!
People began to notice that it sounded especially loud during rain or storm. “It’s not all for nothing,” they thought. But they didn’t know what to do.
Meanwhile, the bell completely stopped life in that village. It beats all night long, even if you close your ears. The peasants pull the blankets over their heads, but still cannot sleep.
And how it all would have ended is unknown if a beautiful girl had not appeared to the abbot one night. She silently entered the temple, stood at the head of the temple and said:
“The Lord of the Sea sent me to you from the Dragon Palace itself.” He really wants to have a bell from your belfry. Order him to be sent to our palace, otherwise a big disaster will come - your temple will shatter, and the bell to boot, to smithereens!
She said so, and at the same moment she turned into a stream of smoke. That smoke floated over the sea and disappeared.
The next morning the abbot called the peasants, and they began to hold council.
“Since the Lord of the Sea from the Dragon Palace demands that the bell be given to him, we will do so,” the peasants decided. “Otherwise he’ll kill us.” But how can we remove the bell from the belfry and take it to the seashore?
They thought and thought, and decided to weave the strongest mesh from women’s hair. They collected hair from around the village - some gave a strand, some two, and wove a large net in two nights. And it must be said: neither on the first night nor on the second did the bell ring again.
On the third day, in the morning, peasants gathered in front of the temple. The strongest were called so that they could lower the bell down. The abbot also left the temple.
Just as people were about to get down to business, they heard something creaking in the belfry. They raised their heads and were stunned: the bell swayed, seemed to sigh, and began to go down itself. As he walks, he rolls from side to side. Step on the stone steps carefully! And there will be almost a hundred of them! The bell went down, he shook off the net and walked around the village.
And when he approached the hill, he stood there, caught his breath, and began to climb up the steep path. So I reached the seashore. He stopped at the very water, rooted to the spot, and then didn’t move.
The peasants ran up and began to think about how to lower the bell into the water.
“Call Matagoro quickly,” they shout. - He is the strongest in our village!
Matagoro came running, and with him all the village strongmen. They picked up the bell and began to push it into the water. They pulled the bell into the sea for a long time, until finally it sank to the bottom of the sea.
I looked at Matagoro: and he still had the bell ear in his hands - they pulled so hard that they tore it off.
They say that since then a calm life has flowed in the village, and great secrets have been revealed to the rector of the temple. He learned to guess the time of storms and typhoons, ebbs and flows, often helped fishermen and saved the harvest from bad weather.
And a new bell was cast for the temple - no worse than the previous one. And they attached an old ear to the top so that people would not forget about the bell from the Dragon Palace.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru