WESTMINSTER CHIMES
We all know the chimes of Big Ben, at present silent because of
refurbishment of the tower, but do you know that there is a text to their
melody? I read it recently when in search for a Christmas story to tell you.
This is that story.
Its title was “My most precious Christmas Present”, and it concerned an
heirloom. It interested me because these days I am sometimes looking at
things in my house, wondering which of my children might want this or that
when I have departed this life, and chokingly they tell me “Put a sticker on it.”
The person who told the story had been given, as a Christmas present by
his parents, not something newly bought, but his grandparents’ clock. It
chimed like the Westminster one, and far from being disappointed, he valued
that present above any other. He had heard the chimes from the clock in his
grandparents’ living room all through his childhood, and he had loved those
chimes. When Grandpa died, the clock went with Grandma to the nursing
home, and when Grandma died, his parents gave it to him as a Christmas
present.
Then only he saw that the clock face had a number of fine cracks, and he
asked his mother how these came about. His mother told him that they
originated in April 1945 when bombs fell on her father’s house. The only item
her father had rescued from the burning home was this clock, he had thrown
it out of the window and it landed on the mattress of a neighbour.
“But why was that clock so important to him”, he asked. And his mother told
him:
“He had bought it on the Leipzig Fair for the money which he had received
after selling his Motorbike, which was a BMW and very special to him.” But
the parents had insisted that he should get rid of it when his wife was
pregnant.
And so, there was a family story connected to the clock, which now was in
the living room of another generation. When telling the story to his own
daughter, the man thought of looking up the words behind those chimes.
They are:
O Lord our God, Be thou our guide
That by thy help, No foot may slide.
Brigitte Williams
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