Fiends and monsters peopled the fens, and tales of their doings terrified his childhood.

Spirits of flood and fell swamped his boat or misled him at night.

Water nicors haunted the streams; fairies danced on the green rings of the pasture; dwarfs lived in the barrows of Celtic or neolithic chieftains, and wrought strange weapons underground.

The mark, the forest, the hills, were all full for the early Englishman of mysterious and often hostile beings.

At length the Weirds or Fates swept him away.