Editorial note — APPENDIX.

The legend of the Crowland devils had its origin, no doubt, in the “cramps and rheums and shivering agues and burning fevers” or in the hallucination caused by these ailments. The impure vapours from the swamps, where fresh and salt waters met and deposited animal and vegetable remains—not from the peat bogs—produced those terrible diseases which are almost unknown to the present fen-dwellers. Was it not St. Guthlac and other fen hermits who conjured up those marvellous tales about satanic legions? Those hermits were not the eradicators of malaria nor did St. Guthlac enter upon any great scheme of fen drainage. The “horrible blue lights,” the “Will-o’-the-wisps,” were not banished by the pious action of “the saints,” but by effectual drainage and culture—it is true those lights have “ceased to be seen of men;” for a peep at Jack-o’-lantern would be a rare treat to the young fenners of these days.