for the dead. On Saint Edmund's day the wayfarers from Crowland arrived, and that abbat took possession of the cell and of the seat in the refectory which had been occupied by Frithric. Fitting place was also found for Father Adhelm, who had grown so thin upon his journey that even Elfric scarcely knew him again. The feast in the hall was as magnificent as any that had been given there to King Canute, or even to any that had been given in the happy days of King Edward the Confessor; and the appetites of the company assembled were worthy of the best times. Fish, flesh, and fowl, and pasties of venison-nothing was wanting. The patrimony of Saint Etheldreda, the lands and waters appertaining unto the abbey and administered by the bountiful abbat, furnished the best portions of the feast. Were there in the world such eels and eelpouts as were taken in the Ouse and Cam close under the walls of the abbey? Three thousand eels, by ancient compact, do the monks of Rumsey pay every Lent unto the monks of Peterborough for leave to quarry stone in a quarry appertaining to Peterborough Abbey; but the house of Ely might have paid ten times three thousand eels, and not have missed them; so plenty were they, and eke so good! The fame of these eels was known in far countries; be sure they were not wanting on this Saint Edmund's day. The streams, too, abounded with pike, large and fit for roasting, with puddings in their bellies; and the meres and stagnating waters swarmed with tench and carp proper for stewing. Ten expert hinds attended to these fresh-water fisheries, and kept the abbat's stews and the stews of the house constantly filled with fish. It is said by an ancient historian that here in the

fenny country is such vast store of fish as astonishes strangers; for which the inhabitants laugh at them: nor is there less plenty of water-fowl; and for a single halfpenny five men may have enough of either, not only to stay their stomachs, but for a full meal! Judge, then, if my Lord Abbat was well provided. It was allowed on all sides that, for the Lenten season, and for all those fast-days of the church when meat was not to be eaten, no community in the land was so well furnished as the monks of Ely; and that their fish-fasts were feasts. While the brethren of other houses grew thin in Quaragesima, the monks of Ely grew fat. Other communities might do well in roast meats and baked meats; but for a fish dinner-for a banquet in Lent-there was not in the land anything to compare with the dinners at Ely! Nor was there lack of the fish that swim the salt sea, or of the shell-fish that are taken on the sea-coast, or of the finny tribes that come up the river to spawn; the fishermen of Lynn were very devout to Saint Etheldreda, and made a good penny by supplying the monks; they ascended the Ouse with the best of their sea-fish in their boats, and with every fish that was in season, or that they knew how to take. And so, at this late November festival there were skates and plaice, sturgeon and porpoises, oysters and cockles spread upon my Lord Abbat's table. Of the sheep and beeves we speak not; all men know the richness of the pasture that springs up from the annually inundated meadows, and the bounty of the nibbling crop that grows on the upland slopes with the wild thyme and the other savoury herbs that turn mutton into venison. Of the wild boars of the forest and fen only the hure or head was served up in this Aula Magna, the

inferior parts being kept below for the use of the lay-brothers and hinds, or to be distributed by the hospitaller to the humbler degrees of pilgrims and strangers, or to be doled out to the poor of the town of Ely-for wot ye, when the Lord Abbat Thurstan feasted in Ely none fasted there: no! not the poorest palmer that ever put cockle-shell in his cap or took the pilgrim's staff in his hand to visit the blessed shrine of Saint Etheldreda! Of the wild buck, though less abundant in this fenny country than the boar, nought was served up for my Lord Abbat and his own particular guests except the tender succulent haunch; the lay-brothers and the loaf-eaters of the house, and the poor pilgrims and the poor of the town, got all the rest. The fat fowls of Norfolk, the capons of Caen in Normandie, and the pavoni or peacocks that first came from Italie a present from the Legatus à latere of his holiness the Pope, were kept and fattened in my Lord Abbat's farm-yard; and well did his coquinarius know how to cook them! To the wild-fowl there was no end, and Elfric, our bold novice, the son of Goodman Hugh, who dwelt by Saint Ovin's Cross, hard by the village of Hadenham, and who had been a fen-fowler from his youth, could have told you how facile it was to ensnare the crane and the heron, the wild duck and teal, and the eccentric and most savoury snipe. Well, we ween, before men cut down the covering woods, and drained the marshes, and brought too many people into the fens and too many great ships up the rivers, the whole land of Saint Etheldreda was like one great larder; and my Lord Abbat had only to say, "Go forth and take for me so many fowl, or fish, or boars," and it as done. It is an antique and venerable proverb,

that which sayeth good eating demands good drinking. The country of the fens was not productive of apple-trees, and the ale and beer that were drunk in the house, and the mead and idromel likewise, were brought from Norfolk and other neighbouring countries; but the abbat, and the officials, and the cloister monks drank better wine than apple-wine, better drink than mead or than pigment, for they drank of the juice of the generous vine, which Noah planted on the first dry hill-side he found. The monks of Glastonbury and Waltham, and of many other houses of the first reputation, cultivated the grape on their own soil, where it seldom would ripen, and drank English grape-wine much too sour and poor. Not so our lordly monks of Ely! They sent the shipmen of Lynn to the Elbe, and to the Rhine, and to the Mosel, to bring them more generous drink; and they sent them to the south even so far as Gasconie and Espaing for the ruby wine expressed from the grapes which grow in the sunniest clime. In the good times four keels, two from the German Ocean and two from the Gulf of Biscaye, steered every year through the sand-banks of the Wash to Lynn, and from Lynn up the Ouse even unto Ely, where the tuns were landed and deposited in the cellars of the abbey, under the charge of the sub-cellarer, a lay-brother from foreign parts, who had been a vintner in his youth. And in this wise it came to be a passant saying with men who would describe anything that was super-excellent-" It is as good as the wine of the monks of Ely!" Maugre the cellarer's calculation of quantities, the best wine my Lord Abbat had in hand was liberally circulated at the feast in silver cups and in gold-mounted horns. Thus were the drinks equal to the viands,

as well in quantity as in quality; and if great was the skill of the vintner, great also was the skill of the cook. In other houses of religion, and in houses, too, of no mean fame, the monks had often to lament that their coquinarius fed them over long on the same sort of dishes; but it was not so with our monks of Ely, who possessed a cook that had the art of giving variety to the selfsame viands, and who also possessed lands, woods, and waters that furnished the most varied materials for the cook to try his skill upon. As Father Adhelm finished his last slice of porpoise, curiously condimented with Eastern spices, as fragrant to the nose as they were savoury to the palate, he lifted up his eyes towards the painted ceiling, and said, "I did not hope, after the death of Oswald our cook at Spalding, to eat of so perfect a dish on this side the grave!"

Flowers were there none to strew upon the floor; but the floor of the hall was thickly strewed with sweet-smelling hay, and with the rushes that grow in the fens; and the feet of the loaf-men of the abbat and of the other servitors that waited on the lordly company made no noise as they hurried to and fro with the dishes and the wine-cups and drinking-horns. While dinner lasted, nought was heard but the voice of the abbat's chaplain, who read the Psalms in a corner of the hall, the rattle of trenchers and knives, and, timeously, such ejaculations as these: "How good this fish! how good this flesh! how good this fowl! how fine this pasty! how rich this wine!" But when the tables were cleared, and grace after meat had been said, and my Lord Abbat's cup-bearer had filled the cup of every guest with bright old Rhenish, Thurstan stood up at the head of the