in the ninth
century, and it is all the more necessary to remember the secret of the
invisible ink.

Bodo certainly _had_ plenty of feelings, and very strong ones. When he
got up in the frost on a cold morning to drive the plough over the
abbot's acres, when his own were calling out for work, he often shivered
and shook the rime from his beard, and wished that the big house and all
its land were at the bottom of the sea (which, as a matter of fact, he
had never seen and could not imagine). Or else he wished he were the
abbot's huntsman, hunting in the forest; or a monk of St Germain,
singing sweetly in the abbey church; or a merchant, taking bales of
cloaks and girdles along the high road to Paris; anything, in fact, but
a poor ploughman ploughing other people's land. An Anglo-Saxon writer
has imagined a dialogue with him:

'Well, ploughman, how do you do your work?' 'Oh, sir, I work very hard.
I go out in the dawning, driving the oxen to the field and I yoke them
to the plough. Be the winter never so stark, I dare not stay at home for
fear of my lord; but every day I must plough a full acre or more, after
having yoked the oxen and fastened the share and coulter to the plough!'
'Have you any mate?' 'I have a boy, who drives the oxen with a goad, who
is now hoarse from cold and shouting,' (Poor little Wido!) 'Well, well,
it is very hard work?' 'Yes, indeed it is very hard work.'[5]

Nevertheless, hard as the work was, Bodo sang lustily to cheer himself
and Wido; for is it not related that once, when a clerk was singing the
'Allelulia' in the emperor's presence, Charles turned to one of the
bishops, saying, 'My clerk is singing very well,' whereat the rude
bishop replied, 'Any clown in our countryside drones as well as that to
his oxen at their ploughing'?[6] It is certain too that Bodo agreed with
the names which the great Charles gave to the months of the year in his
own Frankish tongue; for he called January 'Winter-month', February
'Mud-month', March 'Spring-month', April 'Easter-month', May
'Joy-month', June 'Plough-month', July 'Hay-month', August
'Harvest-month', September 'Wind-month', October 'Vintage-month',
November 'Autumn-month', and December 'Holy-month'.[7]

And Bodo was a superstitious creature. The Franks had been Christian now
for many years, but Christian though they were, the peasants clung to
old beliefs and superstitions. On the estates of the holy monks of St
Germain you would have found the co