poured in on every side, from above, and from beneath, and
everywhere. They were in countenance horrible, and they had great
heads, and a long neck, and a lean visage; they were filthy and
squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears, and crooked
'nebs,' and fierce eyes, and foul mouths; and their teeth were like
horses' tusks; and their throats were filled with flame, and they
were grating in their voice; they had crooked shanks, and knees big
and great behind, and distorted toes, and cried hoarsely with their
voices; and they came with immoderate noise and immense horror, that
he thought that all between, heaven and earth resounded with their
voices. . . . And they tugged and led him out of the cot, and led
him to the swart fen, and threw and sunk him in the muddy waters.
After that they brought him into the wild places of the wilderness,
among the thick beds of brambles, that all his body was torn. . . .
After that they took him and beat him with iron whips, and after
that they brought him on their creaking wings between the cold
regions of the air."

But there are gentler and more human touches in that old legend.
You may read in it how all the wild birds of the fen came to St.
Guthlac, and he fed them after their kind; how the ravens tormented
him, stealing letters, gloves, and what not, from his visitors; and
then, seized with compunction at his reproofs, brought them back, or
hanged them on the reeds; and how, as Wilfrid, a holy visitant, was
sitting with him, discoursing of the contemplative life, two
swallows came flying in, and lifted up their song, sitting now on
the saint's hand, now on his shoulder, now on his knee; and how,
when Wilfrid wondered thereat, Guthlac made answer, "Know you not
that he who hath led his life according to God's will, to him the
wild beasts and the wild birds draw the more near?"