116 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
makes you wince with its abounding welcome, all 
combine to set you there and then at your ease; 
and talk begins at once on the old, familiar plane 
among bee-keepers—the quick, enthusiastic inter- 
change, each participant as ready a listener as 
learner, common all the world over, wherever 
flowers grow and men love bees. 
The brothers of the old Benedictine monastery 
—so the Abbot tells you, as he leads the way 
towards the hives, through the sun-riddled laby- 
rinth—have kept bees, probably, for more than a 
thousand years. There is no doubt that the original 
abbey building stood there, in the wooded cleft of 
Devon valley, so long ago as the sixth century, nor 
little question that its founder was a bee-man, for 
he was contemporary and friend of the great St 
Modonnoc who himself first taught Irishmen to 
keep bees. 
““ Monks, in the very earliest times, were almost 
invariably apiculturists,’’ argues the Abbot. He 
stops in the orchard, the more impressively to quote 
Latin, the glib leaf-shadows playing the while over 
his tonsured head. ‘“ Lac et mel; panis, vena 
rudis. Milk and honey, and coarse oaten bread. 
At least we know, from our chronicles, that these 
were the common daily fare of our Order more 
than eight hundred years ago; and honey remains 
a part of our food to this day.” 
Thus overawed with the centuries, you begin to 
form a mental picture of the bee-garden you are 
about to visit, voyaging so pleasantly through wind- 
ing path and shady thicket, with the bell-like sound 
of the water growing clearer and clearer at every 
step. With all that hoary tradition of the ages 
