Anglo-Saxon; the author of the original document professing to be
one Felix, a monk of Ramsey near by, who wrote possibly as early as
the eighth century. {303}

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 how he found 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. Guthlac's throat, and instal
himself in his cell, that he might have the honour and glory of
sainthood? But St. Guthlac perceived the inward temptation (which
is told with the naive honesty of those half-savage times), and
rebuked the offender into confession, and all went well to the end.

There we may read, too, a detailed account of the Fauna now happily
extinct in the fens; of the creatures who used to hale St. Guthlac
out of his hut, drag him through the bogs, carry him aloft through
frost and fire--"Develen and luther gostes"--such as tormented in
like wise St. Botolph (from whom Botulfston = Boston, has its name),
and who were supposed to haunt the meres and fens, and to have an
especial fondness for old heathen barrows with their fancied
treasure-hoards: how they "filled the house with their coming, and