[124] Bourn is 10 miles west of Spalding; the river Glen runs mid-way, (this is a tributary of the Welland which it enters 5 miles below Spalding)—Bourn Fen lies to the West of this river.
[125] The site of this manor house of Bourn is shown in an engraving in the “Fenland Past and Present.”
[126] Elsey Wood is one mile south of Bourn and just west of the Car-dyke. It is marked on the Ordnance Map.
[127] This may refer to the Car-dyke which is nearly filled up and consequently “dry” at the present day. (See [Map].)
[128] This town, 9 or 10 miles south-south-west of Bourn, is situate near the Fen boundary, on the river Welland.
[129] The writer says “isle of Crowland,” and so it is marked in our map, and called “a gravel ridge,” from this it is evident there was no necessity to drive piles for building the Abbey upon, for the religious house was established before the town was built.
[130] The legend of the Crowland devils had its origin, no doubt, in the “cramps and rheums and shivering agues and burning fevers” or in the hallucination caused by these ailments. The impure vapours from the swamps, where fresh and salt waters met and deposited animal and vegetable remains—not from the peat bogs—produced those terrible diseases which are almost unknown to the present fen-dwellers. Was it not St. Guthlac and other fen hermits who conjured up those marvellous tales about satanic legions? Those hermits were not the eradicators of malaria nor did St. Guthlac enter upon any great scheme of fen drainage. The “horrible blue lights,” the “Will-o’-the-wisps,” were not banished by the pious action of “the saints,” but by effectual drainage and culture—it is true those lights have “ceased to be seen of men;” for a peep at Jack-o’-lantern would be a rare treat to the young fenners of these days.
[131] The writer of the text has given a Latin termination to the name Guthlac, which word is purely Saxon. This name is derived from two Saxon words, i.e. Guth (Guð), war, and lac, an offering, or sacrifice. Guthlac means simply warfare, but as applied to this anchorite it must be regarded as a compound expressive of the character or deeds of the man. He was the son of a Mercian noble and a soldier, but he may have acquired the name after becoming a monk, if so, Guthlac signifies “an offering in (Christian?) warfare,” i.e., in the conflict of Christianity against Paganism.
[132] The ground of Ely Cathedral is 511⁄2 feet above sea level (Ordnance datum.) Crowland is perhaps 12 or 15 feet (the lowest part of the fens being between Peterboro’ and Wisbech, about 5 feet.) Crowland Abbey was not built upon piles but on solid gravel which runs some way north-east of the structure—the peaty soil lies north-east and south of this. (See “The Fenland past and present,” p. 141.)
[133] The gravel ridge runs south-west of Crowland, and that would afford the best means of access to the monastery; we imagine that the bogs lay in old times to the north-west and south-east of the ridge,—warp or silt is found to the north-east—a roadway was constructed on the peat to the northward towards the Welland and then followed the bend of the river.