The Foolish Weaver

There was once in a certain village a weaver who worked hard but could not earn his living save by overwork.  Now it chanced that one of the richards of the neighbourhood made a marriage feast and invited the folk thereto:  the weaver also was present and found the guests, who wore rich gear, served with delicate viands and made much of by the house-master for what he saw of their fine clothes.  So he said in his mind, “If I change this my craft for another craft easier to compass and better considered and more highly paid, I shall amass great store of money and I shall buy splendid attire, so I may rise in rank and be exalted in men’s eyes and become even with these.”  Presently, he beheld one of the mountebanks, who was present at the feast, climbing up to the top of a high and towering wall and throwing himself down to the ground and alighting on his feet.  Whereupon the waver said to himself, “Needs must I do as this one hath done, for surely I shall not fail of it.”  So he arose and swarmed upon the wall and casting himself down, broke his neck against the ground and died forthright.  “Now I tell thee this that thou sayst get thy living by what way thou knowest and thoroughly understandest, lest peradventure greed enter into thee and thou lust after what is not of thy condition.”  Quoth the woman’s husband, “Not every wise man is saved by his wisdom, nor is every fool lost by his folly.  I have seen it happen to a skilful charmer, well versed in the ways of serpents, to be struck by the fangs of a snake[FN#172] and killed, and others prevail over serpents who had no skill in them and no knowledge of their ways.”  And he went contrary to his wife and persisted in buying stolen goods below their value till he fell under suspicion and perished therefor:  even as perished the sparrow in the tale of

The sparrow and the peacock

There was once upon a time a sparrow, that used every day to visit a certain king of the birds and ceased not to wait upon him in the mornings and not to leave him till the evenings, being the first to go in and the last to go out.  One day, a company of birds chanced to assemble on a high mountain and one of them said to another, “Verily, we are waxed many, and many are the differences between us, and there is no help for it but we have a king to look into our affairs; so shall we all be at one and our differences will disappear.”  Thereupon up came that sparrow and counselled them to choose for King the peacock (that is, the prince he used to visit).  So they chose the peacock to their King and he, become their sovereign, bestowed largesse upon them and made the sparrow his secretary and Prime Minister.  Now the sparrow was wont by times to quit his assiduous serve in the presence and look into matters in general.  So one day he absented himself at the usual time, whereat the peacock was sore troubled; and, while