Yeah, that’s like it was in those days when everything was different, when the farmers were still cutting their sods and the roughness, they rode it on their carts into the stable and many still used sods for heating. In the heart of the mire it wasn’t easy to get, and also Kuunders had heard about it, about the bell that was lying there, in a pool a thousand metres under the ground.
- What kind of bell?
- Yes, it was a bell that sounded every Christmas night and wherever you stood in the mire, you could hear it everywhere. In early years people had to bring the bell from the village to the other side where it would be inaugurated for Christmas. It happened during advent, like now, and bad weather. The bell was standing on a high cart. But the Devil was after it, the people who got the bell from the village weren’t much good, they didn’t have a clean conscious. Then the Devil could become the boss of the bell. Here then they got stuck in the moor and the axis of the cart broke. And so they lost the bell here in the mire and there it lies in the pit of a pool a thousand metres deep.
- What you’re saying!
- You know that I had to go out a lot, also at night, come rain or come shine. Well, at Christmass one day with my own ears, I have heard that bell sound, with my own ears.
- You’re pulling my leg!
- I’m telling you, Kuunders, that I’ve heard it with my own ears. Those people the Devil was after, they went almost mad when they heard that bell that deep under the ground. But they had to go after it, whether they wanted or not. They were never seen again. They were drowned in the moor. If you’d go and dig there and you’d be digging deep enough, you’d be finding bones there.
- That’s an easy thing to say! Dig where? The bog is so awful and vast.
Antoon Coolen, 1937. Kerstmis in de Kempen. (transl. J.C.)