The Man in The Bell by William Maginn

 “…during which time my companion below was hastily called away, by a message from his sweetheart I believe, but that is not material to my story.”

…and that is probably the most poignant turning of a blind eye in this man’s whole narration of his being trapped below a giant swinging bell as it is being rung seemingly endlessly an inch away from the face. Stopping as well as starting. The hellish pit or pitch of mental torture from this massive mouth and tongue of metal, a scything pendulum, whereby the actual real-time of the experience and its subsequent effects are to the most harmful degree imaginable in the ranks of human ordeal, not the least or most of which are his ‘raw eyelids’! 

I wonder if the bell ringer who went off to see his sweetheart was subsequently married in  the same church?