Wille Gris

This passage was assigned in medieval history class to demonstrate the upward mobility of peasants in the Middle Ages. Well, that's the actual lesson we were supposed to get out of it, but I think my history teacher (an amiable woman named Barbara Grant) also gave it to us because it's a memorable piece of writing. Would that we all remembered our reasons to be humble as well as this guy.

About this time, as I think, there thus grew up in France, from small beginnings, a man of substance and of worthy memory. There lived in Norfolk a simple countryman who had many children, among whom he especially loved a little boy named William, for whom he set aside a pigling and the profits thereof, in order that, grown to manhood, he might provide for himself without burdening his parents, wheresoever Fortune might favour him. The boy followed his father's bidding; and, leaving his fatherland, he hastened to France with naught else in his purse but the profits of that pig; for at home his playfellows were wont to call him the Boy of the Griskin. Now it came to pass, amidst the miseries and evils of those folk, he so advanced himself as to espouse an honourable matron, the widow of a man of some substance; with whom he had wealth and honour and a household of servants. This he did; and, being a man of diligence in all his works, he profited much, and was oftentimes summond to business councils by the king and his great men. From henceforward, even as this honest man grew in substance, so did the fickle favour of the people grow with him; and, lest he should find his prosperity as false and perilous as adversity, he caused a most comely chamber to be built and painted within according to his own choice; whereof he committed the key to none save unto his own care, nor suffered any other, not even his wife, to enter therein. It was his wont, whensoever he returned from the courts of the great, forthwith to neglect all other business and enter into this secret chamber, wherein he would stay as long as he desired, and return in melancholy mood to his family. In process of time, as this custom became inveterate, all were amazed and agape to know what this might mean that they saw; wherefore, having taken counsel, they called all his friends together to solicit this wise man for the reason of his so strange behaviour in this chamber. At last, besieged and imopportuned by their complaints, he unlocked the door and called them all together to see his secret, the monument of his poverty thus set forth. Amid other ornaments of this chamber, he had caused a pigling to be painted and a little boy holding him by a string; above whose heads was written, in the English tongue--

Wille Gris, Wille Gris,
Thinche cwat you was, and qwat you es!

Which may be confirmed by that saying of St Gregory: "We can then keep our present state well, when we never neglect to consider what we were."

Many stories are told of Ayaz's humility. Among them is one in which it is said that when he had risen in royal favour he would oft go to a secret chamber, there put on the rags he wore as a slave and standing before the mirror say to himself, "Ayaz, qadr-i-khud beshanas". Which is to say, don't forget thyself.