Like many other holy men, Saint Simon of Blewberry was of lowly and obscure birth. Of his parentage little certain is known. Some say that his father was a man-at-arms broken in the French wars, others a wandering tumbler and rope dancer, and others again one Rutterkin, a travelling scribe. Lo, did not five cities of Greece contend to be accounted the birthplace of Dan Homer, that great and famous Greekish poet? Among so many claimants I may not any more decide who was the father of the Holy Simon. Certainly, however, his mother was the daughter of a poor villein of Sir Robert of Blewberry, a woman much noted in her younger days for the sin of gadding and haunting alehouses. In her latter years, however, it was granted to her to repent and, when she was somewhat past her prime, she entered into wedlock with one Walter Thinshanks, an aged villein of some threescore winters. Simon’s infancy and boyhood were marked by no signs of the grace and piety which distinguished his maturer years. Him indeed in his green days Satan seems to have especially tempted and tried, and full seldom, as he himself was accustomed afterwards to relate, did he escape the snare of the fowler. Chiefly at this time was he filled with carnal desires for dainty food, and to satisfy these ravenous lusts he was wont to steal meat and pies even from the neighbours’ ovens, to rob the Parson’s orchard of pears and apples while they were yet unripe, and to kill and devour in secret such pullets and tender fowls as he could come at. When he was accused of any such sins he would lie remorselessly to save himself from deserved chastisement, saying secretly, ‘Better a soft answer than a sore breech,’ and so deft was he with his tongue, that his tender boy’s flesh usually escaped correction at the expense of his immortal soul. He was a stout lad of his body and a lusty and a great quarreller, so that he was ceaselessly embroiled with the other lads of the village, and generally by reason of his uncommon physical strength had the victory. Folk noted him as a rare companion of wenches at a somewhat premature age, and there were not to lack (and among them observant and sagacious men) who prophesied that his end would be sudden, and neither on the earth nor in the water. But even while they spoke thus, honestly misled by appearances, the spirit of inward grace was stirring in the bosom of the young man, and though now he hid his light under a bushel, it was soon to shine forth with glorious radiance before the eyes of men. Yet such was the jealous humility with which he veiled the true piety of his disposition, that perhaps it had never been brought to light, nay, not during the whole course of his life, had it not been for a chance so happy and unexpected as to more than smack of God’s Providence. It fell out in this way.