ring the welkin

O. Henryの短編 The Moment of Victoryに出てきた表現です。
Willie and I belonged to the same german club and athletic association and military company. He played the triangle in our serenading and quartet crowd that used to ring the welkin three nights a week somewhere in town.
"welkin" は空の意味があると記憶していますが "ring the welkin" は慣用句の様なきがしますがどうでしょう？　まず "welkin" で辞書を見ます。
・Webster's New World College Dictionary： the vault of heaven, the sky, or the upper air: now chiefly in make the welkin ring, to make a very loud sound、例文： Love came down at Christmas Christ was born on Christmas Day Hark, how all the welkin rings!
The sky; heaven; the firmament.
・World Wide Words: We don’t use this much nowadays -- dictionaries usually tag it as archaic or literary -- except in the set phrase make the welkin ring, meaning to make a very loud sound. What supposedly rings in this situation is the vault of heaven, the bowl of the sky. In older cosmology this was thought to be one of a set of real crystal spheres that enclosed the Earth, to which the planets and stars were attached, so it would have been capable of ringing like a bell if you made enough noise.（以下略）
O. Henryは "make"　は使わず "ring" を動詞として使っていますが "make the welkin ring" と同じ意味で使っていると思います。
次ぎの辞書には "make the welkin ring" の項がありました。
・The Wordsmyth English Dictionary: make the welkin ring: to make a very loud noise, esp. vocally