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Updated: August 19, 2024
People came from miles in all directions, including all the men who were at work for Mr Marston every one to stand and stare at the poor dead beasts and say nothing. Small farmers, fen-men, people from the town, folk from the shore where the cockle-beds lay, and the fisher-people who were supposed to live upon very little fish and a great deal of smuggling.
"With a change of elements suddenly There shall a change of men and manners be; Hearts thick and tough as hides shall feel remorse, And souls of sedge shall understand discourse; New hands shall learn to work, forget to steal, New legs shall go to church, new knees to kneel." The prophecy has indeed been fulfilled. The barbarous race of Fen-men has disappeared before the skill of the engineer.
They fall short of liberty in not being free, like most of the Germans; and they fall below slavery itself, in that they are slaves to a woman. XLVI. Venedorum et Fennorum. Modern Vends and Finns, or Fen-men. Cf. Latham in loc. Ac torpor procerum. The chief men are lazy and stupid, besides being filthy, like all the rest. Foedantur. Cf. infectos, 4. Habitum, here personal appearance, cf. note, 17.
And as they came alongside, there was not a man in all that ghastly crew but was an ancient friend, by whose side they had fought full many a day, and with whom they had drunk deep full many a night. They were the first-fruits of William's vengeance; thrust into that boat, to tell the rest of the fen-men what those had to expect who dared oppose the Norman.
And they were going, by some by-stream, to Crowland, to the sanctuary of the Danish fen-men, that they might cast themselves down before St. Guthlac, and ask of him that mercy for their souls which the conqueror had denied to their bodies.
Sound travels easily over water, and the decoy-man must have heard the hail, but he paid no heed, only kept on poling his punt along, thrusting down the long ash sapling, which the fen-men used as punt-pole, staff, and leaping-pole in turn; and then as the boat glided on, standing erect in her bows like some statue. "Now, what a dried-up old yellow mummy he is!" cried Dick.
He himself would sail round to the Wash, raise the Fen-men, and march eastward at their head through Norfolk to meet him. Osbiorn himself could not refuse so rational a proposal. All the earls and bishops approved loudly; and away Hereward went to the Wash, his heart well-nigh broken, foreseeing nothing but evil. The voyage round the Norfolk coast was rough and wild.
"Let 'em," said the squire; "we've got leave from the king's magistrates to do it; and as for the fen-men, because they want to live like frogs all their lives, is that any reason why honest men shouldn't live like honest men should. There, fill up your pipe again; and as for the fen-men, I'll talk to them."
The denunciations against the workers of the evil were fierce and long. But in spite of all, the drain progressed slowly and steadily. The engineer was carrying his advances right into the stronghold of the fen-men, who bore it all in silence, but struck sharply again and again. "I wonder who is to get the next taste!" said Tom Tallington one day as he and Dick were talking.
After the battle of Dunbar another cross came among them, of Scotch prisoners, who, employed by Cromwell's Government on the dykes, settled down among the fen-men to this day. Within the memory of man, Scotchmen used to come down into the fens every year, not merely for harvest, but to visit their expatriated kinsmen.
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