there is as level as the sea, alluring the eye with its green grass,
and so smooth that there is nought to trip the foot of him who runs
through it. Neither is there any waste place; for in some parts are
apples, in others vines, which are either spread on the ground, or
raised on poles. A mutual strife there is between Nature and Art;
so that what one produces not the other supplies. What shall I say
of those fair buildings, which 'tis so wonderful to see the ground
among those fens upbear?"

So wrote William of Malmesbury, after the industry and wisdom of the
monks, for more than four centuries, had been at work to civilize
and cultivate the wilderness. Yet even then there was another side
to the picture; and Thorney, Ramsey, or Crowland would have seemed,
for nine months every year, sad places enough to us comfortable folk
of the nineteenth century. But men lived hard in those days, even
the most high-born and luxurious nobles and ladies; under dark
skies, in houses which we should think, from darkness, draught, and
want of space, unfit for felons' cells. Hardly they lived; and
easily were they pleased; and thanked God for the least gleam of
sunshine, the least patch of green, after the terrible and long
winters of the Middle Ages. And ugly enough those winters must have
been, what with snow and darkness, flood and ice, ague and
rheumatism; while through the dreary winter's night the whistle of
the wind and the wild cries of the waterfowl were translated into
the howls of witches and daemons; and (as in St. Guthlac's case),
the delirious fancies of marsh fever made those fiends take hideous
shapes before the inner eye, and act fantastic horrors round the
fen-man's bed of sedge.

Concerning this St. Guthlac full details remain, both in Latin and