Those who wish to understand the old fen life, should read Ingulf's
'History of Crowland' (Mr. Bohn has published a good and cheap
translation), and initiate themselves into a state of society, a form
of thought, so utterly different from our own, that we seem to be
reading of the inhabitants of another planet. Most amusing and most
human is old Ingulf and his continuator, 'Peter of Blois;' and though
their facts are not to be depended on as having actually happened,
they are still instructive, as showing what might, or ought to have
happened, in the opinion of the men of old.
Even more naive is the Anglo-Saxon life of St. Guthlac, written
possibly as early as the eighth century, and literally translated by
Mr. Goodwin, of Cambridge.
There we may read how the young warrior-noble, Guthlac ('The Battle-
Play,' the 'Sport of War'), tired of slaying and sinning, bethought
him to fulfil the prodigies seen at his birth; how he wandered into
the fen, where one Tatwin (who after became a saint likewise) took
him in his canoe to a spot so lonely as to be almost unknown, buried
in reeds and alders; and among the trees, nought but an old 'law,' as
the Scots still call a mound, which men of old had broken into
seeking for treasure, and a little pond; and how he built himself a
hermit's cell thereon, and saw visions and wrought miracles; and how
men came to him, as to a fakir or shaman of the East; notably one
Beccel, who acted as his servant; and how as Beccel was shaving the
saint one day, there fell on him a great temptation: Why should he
not cut St.
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