[2] According to legend, he saved the people of Choilley-Dardenay during drought by striking the ground with his pilgrim's staff, which caused a spring of water to bubble up.

[4] One particular story to this effect involves a wild boar, which William is said to have led by the ear from a farmer's plot, instructing it to fast for the night in a solitary cell.

[5] The Little Bollandists go on to record, along with the boar miracle, that It is said of him that even the wildest birds would approach him without fear, and come and eat out of his hand, and take refuge under his clothes from the cold.

When he sat by a pond near his cell, the fish would swim to his feet and readily allow themselves to be taken up by the servant of God, who put them back into the water without hurting them.

The winner was Mortain, which, to procure the relics, used the full force of "its entire clergy and an innumerable crowd of its people".