For whom the Roland tolls

I have got to go to Belgium.

In a bellfry, in Ghent, there is a bell called Roland. According to one work of fiction, the inscription on it reads: My name is Roland. When I tell, there is a fire; when I peal, there is a tempest in Flanders. Longfellow wrote a poem about it.

Here’s a fun bit. Sometime just after World War II, Luigi Dallapiccola wrote a short opera – set in sixteenth-century Spain – titled Il Prigioniero (The Prisoner). (Click on the link for a plot summary.) An interesting addition to the Roland corpus, in its odd but unmistakeable parallel to the French Song of Roland. To wit: our knight is the champion of Christendom, whose heart’s desire is to deliver every heathen from their wicked ways by word or steel. Well, okay, mostly steel. Obviously, he fails to do that for the Pagans that kill him. The same pagans whom Charlemagne had just previously besieged for seven years in the Spanish city of Saragossa, the last Pagan stronghold in Europe.

Centuries later, the prisoner finds himself in that same city, and Roland the Ghent bell fails to deliver him from a most evil expression of Christianity.

I did a double-take at that one, but it’s there. I’m wary of trying to see connections where there ain’t none, so this is probably where I’ll stop with The Prisoner. Still, very cool.