IF most of those who have described Fenland have lacked imagination, certainly the charge cannot be brought against that eighth-century saint, Saint Guthlac, who fled into this great dismal swamp and founded Crowland Abbey on its north-easterly extremity. Crowland has nothing to do with the Ely and King's Lynn Road, but in describing what he calls the "develen and luther gostes" that made his life a misery, Guthlac refers to the evil inhabitants of the Fens in general. Precisely what a "luther" ghost may be, does not appear. A Protestant spook, perhaps, it might be surmised, except that Lutheran schisms did not arise for many centuries later.
Saints were made of strange materials in ancient times, and Guthlac was of the strangest. Truth was not his strong point, and he could and did tell tales that would bring a blush to the hardy cheek of a Sir John Mandeville, or arouse the bitter envy of a Munchausen. But Guthlac's character shall not be taken away without good cause shown. He begins reasonably enough, with an excellent descriptive passage, picturing the "hideous fen of huge bigness which extends in a very long track even to the sea, ofttimes clouded with mist and dark vapours, having within it divers islands and woods, as also crooked and winding rivers"; but after this mild prelude goes on to make very large demands upon our credulity.
He had a wattle hut on an island, and to this poor habitation, he tells us, the "develen and luther gostes" came continually, dragged him out of bed and "tugged and led him out of his cot, and to the swart fen, and threw and sunk him in the muddy waters." Then they beat him with iron whips. He describes these devils in a very uncomplimentary fashion. They had "horrible countenances, great heads, long necks, lean visages, filthy and squalid beards, rough ears, fierce eyes, and foul mouths; teeth like horses' tusks, throats filled with flame, grating voices, crooked shanks, and knees big and great behind." It would have been scarce possible to mistake one of these for a respectable peasant.
After fifteen years of this treatment, Guthlac died, and it is to be hoped these hardy inventions of his are not remembered against him. No one else found the Fens peopled so extravagantly. Only the will-o'-wisps that danced fitfully and pallid at night over the treacherous bogs, and the poisonous miasma exhaled from the noxious beds of rotting sedge; only the myriad wild-fowl made the wilderness strange and eerie.
