Guthlac, Bartholomew, and Bettelm were the names of the biggest,
Turketul and Tatwin of the middle, and Pega and Bega of the smallest. So
says Ingulf, who saw them a few years after pouring down on his own head
in streams of melted metal. Outside the minster walls were the cottages of
the corodiers, or laboring folk; and beyond them again the natural park of
grass, dotted with mighty oaks and ashes; and, beyond all those, cornlands
of inexhaustible fertility, broken up by the good Abbot Egelric some
hundred years before, from which, in times of dearth, the monks of
Crowland fed the people of all the neighboring fens.
They went into the great court-yard. All men were quiet, yet all men were
busy. Baking and brewing, carpentering and tailoring in the workshops,
reading and writing in the cloister, praying and singing in the church,
and teaching the children in the school-house. Only the ancient
sempects--some near upon a hundred and fifty years old--wandered where
they would, or basked against a sunny wall, like autumn flies, with each a
young monk to guide him, and listen to his tattle of old days. For, said
the laws of Turketul the good, "Nothing disagreeable about the affairs of
the monastery shall be mentioned in their presence. No person shall
presume in any way to offend them; but with the greatest peace and
tranquillity they shall await their end.
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