English tradition of ringing church bells to announce someone is about to die.
"In Renaissance England the hoot of an owl flying over one's house was an evil omen, and meant impending death for someone inside. Shakespeare refers to the owl as the "fatal bellman" because it was the bellman's job to ring the parish bell when a person in the town was near death. "This was called the passing bell, and was a signal for all hearers to pray for the dying person."
—Shakespeare Online
We're probably familiar with the tern death knell, being the ringing of church bells to announce that someone in the community had passed. The passing bell was one of the three ringing for a Christian soul, being the first (rung at a point at which it was felt death was inevitable). When i was growing up, an impending death was accompanied by various community actions; as a child, I recall parts of the cobbled street where my grandparents lived being strewn with straw (a callback to the time when horse and cart was the main mode of transport. the idea was that the straw would silence the horses' hooves outisde teh affected house so the dying could depart in quietness and the parishoners might pray for the departing soul.
The bell following this was the actual announcement of the death (the death knell), and in some cases there was a lych bell (usually a handbell wielded by one of the mourners) to announce the funeral was in progress.
Postscript
A few people have asked me if I believe that E2 is dying, and whether this is a comment on that. Well, it's certainly not as healthy as it once was, needs some care and attention, which I addressed in a recent editor log. If you're as concerned as I am, the medicine is to WRITE MORE.
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