The Bells of Notre Dame

The Bells of Notre Dame" is a song from the 1996 Disney film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, composed by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. It is sung at the beginning of the film by the clown-like gypsy, Clopin.

The song details about Quasimodo's origin and is the film's opening credits. During the song, Clopin tells young children about the mysterious bell-ringer of Notre Dame. He then talks about a story that goes back twenty years where a group of gypsies attempted to ferry their way into Paris, but a trap had been laid and they are captured by Judge Claude Frollo and several soldiers. When the woman amongst Quasimodo mother gypsies is seen carrying a bundle, a guard attempts to confiscate it prompting her to flee.

Frollo pursues her on his horse, believing her to have stolen goods, in a brutal chase that comes to a head on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral. Here Frollo takes the bundle out of her hands but in doing so strikes a blow to her head with his boot causing her to fall down onto the stone steps, breaking her neck and killing her. Frollo then learns that the bundle is actually a deformed baby. He sees a well and attempts to drown the baby as he thinks it is a demon from Hell but is stopped by the Archdeacon, who tells Frollo that he has killed an innocent woman and that if he wishes for the survival of his immortal soul, he must raise the child as his own. Frollo reluctantly does so and raises the baby in the bell tower of Notre Dame, and gives him a cruel name; Quasimodo, which, according to Clopin, means "half-formed". It is quickly learned that Quasimodo is the mysterious bell-ringer.