And if Bodo on his way home saw one of his bees caught in a brier bush, he immediately stood still and wished—­as some people wish today when they go under a ladder.  It was the Church, too, which taught Bodo to add ‘So be it, Lord’, to the end of his charm against pain.  Now, his ancestors for generations behind him had believed that if you had a stitch in your side, or a bad pain anywhere, it came from a worm in the marrow of your bones, which was eating you up, and that the only way to get rid of that worm was to put a knife, or an arrow-head, or some other piece of metal to the sore place, and then wheedle the worm out on to the blade by saying a charm.  And this was the charm which Bodo’s heathen ancestors had always said and which Bodo went on saying when little Wido had a pain:  ’Come out, worm, with nine little worms, out from the marrow into the bone, from the bone into the flesh, from the flesh into the skin, from the skin into this arrow.’  And then (in obedience to the Church) he added ’So be it, Lord’.[10] But sometimes it was not possible to read a Christian meaning into Bodo’s doings.  Sometimes he paid visits to some man who was thought to have a wizard’s powers, or superstitiously reverenced some twisted tree, about which there hung old stories never quite forgotten.  Then the Church was stern.  When he went to confession the priest would ask him:  ’Have you consulted magicians and enchanters, have you made vows to trees and fountains, have you drunk any magic philtre?’[11] And he would have to confess what he did last time his cow was sick.  But the Church was kind as well as stern.  ‘When serfs come to you,’ we find one bishop telling his priests, ’you must not give them as many fasts to perform as rich men.  Put upon them only half the penance.’[12] The Church knew well enough that Bodo could not drive his plough all day upon an empty stomach.  The hunting, drinking, feasting Frankish nobles could afford to lose a meal.

It was from this stern and yet kind Church that Bodo got his holidays.  For the Church made the pious emperor decree that on Sundays and saints’ days no servile or other works should be done.  Charlemagne’s son repeated his decree in 827.  It runs thus: 

We ordain according to the law of God and to the command of our father of blessed memory in his edicts, that no servile works shall be done on Sundays, neither shall men perform their rustic labours, tending vines, ploughing fields, reaping corn and mowing hay, setting up hedges or fencing woods, cutting trees, or working in quarries or building houses; nor shall they work in the garden, nor come to the law courts, nor follow the chase.  But three carrying-services it is lawful to do on Sunday, to wit carrying for the army, carrying food, or carrying (if need be) the body of a lord to its grave.  Item, women shall not do their textile works, nor cut out clothes, nor stitch them together with the needle, nor card wool, nor beat hemp, nor wash clothes in public, nor shear