We are into a late spring in which the rivers run high and flood from excess snow from the long winter. Much game died but there are many birds. We have storks and linnets; we capture the last in nets and roast them. There is much wild food but many will not eat; they are too long civilized and used to their comforts. So used to cold are we, that we seldom light fires now but to cook upon.

We have a cow; it is a precious donation from a French abbey. We will breed her to a Scotch cattle and raise meat animals and those to milk. We are raising pigs on fresh grass but find they cannot suckle piglets on this fare.

Villagers have some seed set aside, so we will sow millet and corn to harvest for fall; we also plant cabbages and herbs. There is no mill left in this area. The miller died and his stone is in disuse. You would say in your

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time that we are in an “economically-depressed” area.

At this time there is prosperity in Italy and France is much more prosperous than we.

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We will treat of the hay-fields and meadows and how lived the peasant-farmers of the day.

Before the Great Death, family groups of twelve or so commonly worked small farmsteads. These were gradually gathered into larger parcels, where labor was hired and housing for the workers often was provided.

This life being so dull, the young men, especially, often went to war as mercenaries, to sea, or to drift. There was much travel before and after this period, though the roads fell to such disrepair that travel became difficult. Also, roaming bands of brigands waited for the unwary traveler who might have gold or silver, or a book, in his possession.

Our farms were so ill-tended and due to lack of food, it was deemed wise to bring in sheep to eat the herbage and to provide meat and wool. There had been sheep in this part of Britain before but not to such a full extent. There was demand for our wool in all the known world, it being chiefly exported to Italy and India for dyeing and weaving. We bought back our own wool as fabric and thread

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and received food-stuffs and lumber and timber in trade.

The king’s men ceased to collect taxes for much time, he could not spare the effort. We were too poor to assist the rich in their rollickings.

In our valley so few were left that it did not return to the old style of farming and harvest of before. No longer was much grain or grass raised; so, hence no large harvest of many hundreds in one field were joyfully raking in the harvest. Now we were fortunate to find twenty persons to haul stones for fences for the sheep and to put up cheese and wine in the fall. Our diet was much altered over yore.

There was a dearth of babies for much of my lifetime. Mothers did not bear live, healthy children. The Death had made them weak and ill and spoiled them for childbearing. Or perhaps they feared the fortune their loved children would meet if they were to live.

Toward the end of my life, and during it, much of our people came from overseas. We had a rich land despite our troubles and attracted those from harsher climes and seasons. We heard tell that the Norse had not suffered as we had; many young men from those climes came to Britain to take wives. They were chiefly seafarers but some stayed to till the land. They brought new skills such as work with wood and improved farm equipment and many jolly ways and sayings. My wife

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in youth, Anna Rose, was from Danmark.

The sun sets red from fires set to clear land of brush and vermin, which devour some of our precious crops and gardens.

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The Black Death was before our time, as a working order, but not before many of us lived. It is not stated in most histories, but the plague continued to cause deaths for 300 years more, into the early 18th century, at least. the Ottomans were blamed for its reintroduction to Europe.

We were Augustinian monks who organized a society, the Order of St. Sebastian, in honor of his many wounds, the many wounds visited on our fellows, and ourselves, by disease, war, and privation. Our order was composed of these brave men who were of skilled trades and crafts – practical, experienced fellows who could be of service to their fellow men.

There were no farmers, of your sort, in our group. Farming had been a peasant trade. By farming, we mean tilling land and planting, tending and harvesting that which grows from the soil. There were many persons left skilled in those arts.

What was lacking was knowledge

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of those necessary arts lost by death of their few practitioners. There were other groups such as ourselves all over Europe; they were chiefly responsible for the quick recovery of society from such a decimation of culture.

It was very fortunate for mankind at that time that many were able to read and instruct themselves and their children. There were no schools, as such, and not for many years after. Learning fell into gradual disfavor as more practical matters seized men’s minds and as there were so many fewer to discourse with in mental combat.

This chapter in history closed many doors and opened the way for the Industrial Revolution – man as a worker, less a captain of his own fate than he was once destined to be. Until war and the Death fell upon Europe and the rest of the known world, Western man suffered an easy confidence; he felt himself the charter of his own courses and the sweet child of God. Rude destruction of innocence shook man to his roots; he has never regained that peaceful state of mind the medieval man enjoyed.

You in your time have small conception of the blissful peace, the child-like confidence and sweetness felt by most men. There was enough to eat, life was sweet and lovely; it was as a rose, and as mead and persance.

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The wars went on, for years, and devastated man’s spirit, and his land, as never before. You have not lived through such a period since. It was unbelievably disruptive to man’s culture and spirits.

We were there, in spirit before form, and we saw the gathering darkness that was to overtake the land. The second world war was nothing as compared to the wars.

Shoes and boots disappeared from man’s haberdashery; rags and bare feet replaced footwear; cloaks were replaced by mere cloth slung about the shoulders; manners went last, strangely. Man clings to his habits far longer than need would present. Hats simply were not worn any more; I cannot tell you why. A simpler fashion replaced the old. Man’s mind turned toward superstition (surely it could control circumstances, if one knew the key). Potions and talismans became the standard accouterment for man. How strange these times were, love and reason left behind.

I saw women allow their children to eat from their own mouths; I cannot say the reason but a fear of contamination or loss. What few children there were were never set down. Their mothers held them ever in their arms, fearful that the life would leave their babies’ bones if not held safe in mothers’ arms.

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Fear ruled the land; a great timidity replaced the confidence of former centuries. Biting the coin became the practice. A general distrust was prevalent in all areas, at all levels of society. After lack of control, rigid control for a time resumed.

I cannot tell you the real cause of the Plague – some say a passing comet introduced new microbes to which we lacked resistance; nothing we could do helped, except prayer. I watched my mother and all my brothers die. My prayers for naught, they were taken. My father gone years before when an immense stone wall fell upon him.

All except one of us had lost wives and family. We felt the gift of life we had been given warranted our returning service to our fellow man. How glad we were to be alive. Only two of us had been monks formerly, with the addition of Roseo from Italy after two years. The rest were skilled working men. Being a smaller number than peasants and given a different style of life, it was necessary to import certain trades to adjust to changes in agriculture and the general economy. Most in our group were literate, at least to some degree. Emery was educated in an Indian university. He was well-versed in history and textiles. He was an

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artist of sorts, full of desire for beauty in the garden and in all his work. He was a plain fellow, round of face and plain of form, but joyous. His blue eyes shone with the joy of life. Heavenly was his smile and his view of life, until old age, when a veil of comparative solemnity took his hand.

We built a society, an economy, and we saw man take his rightful place again at the head of nature. Open yourselves in your day to see what abounds around you.

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