“Only this, my lord. I would make the Normans believe that all the blubber-devils of Crowland were come back to earth to drive them from the house.” “I see, yet do not fully comprehend,” said Lord Hereward; “but we will talk of these things with Girolamo to-night, when this my first feast as Lord of Brunn is over, and when every Saxon shall have seen that the hospitality of mine ancestors is not to know decrease in me.” And late that night, when Hereward’s first and most bountiful feast was over, and when his guests had betaken themselves to the town of Brunn, or to their beds or to clean hay and rushes in the manor-house, Elfric and Girolamo followed Hereward to his inner chamber, and consulted with him about the best means of driving out the French from Crowland. First crossing himself—for although he feared not man, he had a lively dread of all manner of goblins and demons—the Lord of Brunn said, “Elfric, thou mayest now tell us about thy Crowland devils.” “You wist well, my lord,” said Elfric, “for who should know it better, that in the heathenish times the whole of the isle[129] of Crowland and all the bogs and pools round about were haunted day and night, but most at night, by unaccountable troops and legions of devils, with blubber-lips, fiery mouths, scaley faces, beetle heads, sharp long teeth, long chins, hoarse throats, black skins, hump shoulders, big bellies, burning loins, bandy legs, cloven hoofs for feet, and long tails at their buttocks. And who so well as your lordship knoweth that these blubber-fiends, angered at that their fens and stinking pools should be invaded, allowed our first monks of Crowland no peace nor truce, but were for ever gibing and mowing at them, biting them with their sharp teeth, switching them with their filthy tails, putting dirt in their meat and drink, nipping them by the nose, giving them cramps and rheums and shivering agues and burning fevers, and fustigating and tormenting not a few of the friars even to death! And your lordship knows that these devils of Crowland were not driven away until the time when that very pious man Guthlacus became a hermit there, and cut the sluices that lead from the fetid pools to the flowing rivers. Then, in sooth, the devils of Crowland were beaten off by prayer and by holy water, and the horrible blue lights which they were wont to light upon the most fetid of the pools, ceased to be seen of men.”[130] “All this legend I know full well,” said the Lord of Brunn, explaining it to Girolamo of Salerno, who crossed himself many times as he heard the description of the very hideous Crowland devils.