Fable by Aesop
"
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse
" is one of
Aesop's Fables
. It is number 352 in the
Perry Index
and type 112 in
Aarne?Thompson
's folk tale index.
[1]
[2]
Like several other elements in Aesop's fables, "town mouse and country mouse" has become an English
idiom
.
Story
[
edit
]
In the original tale, a proud town
mouse
visits his cousin in the country. The country mouse offers the city mouse a meal of simple country cuisine, at which the visitor scoffs and invites the country mouse back to the city for a taste of the "fine life" and the two cousins dine on
white bread
and other fine foods. But their rich feast is interrupted by a cat which forces the rodent cousins to abandon their meal and retreat back into their mouse hole for safety. The town mouse tells the country mouse that the cat killed his mother and father and that he is frequently the target of attacks. After hearing this, the country mouse decides to return home, preferring security to opulence or, as the 13th-century preacher
Odo of Cheriton
phrased it, "I'd rather gnaw a bean than be gnawed by continual fear".
[3]
[4]
Spread
[
edit
]
The story was widespread in Classical times and there is an early Greek version by
Babrius
(Fable 108).
[5]
Horace
included it as part of one of his satires (II.6), ending on this story in a poem comparing town living unfavorably to life in the country.
[6]
Marcus Aurelius
alludes to it in his
Meditations
, Book 11.22; "Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse".
[7]
However, it seems to have been the 12th century Anglo-Norman writer
Walter of England
who contributed most to the spread of the fable throughout medieval Europe. His Latin version
[8]
(or that of Odo of Cheriton) has been credited as the source of the fable that appeared in the Spanish
Libro de Buen Amor
of
Juan Ruiz
in the first half of the 14th century.
[9]
Walter was also the source for several manuscript collections of Aesop's fables in Italian
[10]
and equally of the popular
Esopi fabulas
by
Accio Zucco da Sommacampagna
[
fr
]
, the first printed collection of Aesop's fables in that language (Verona, 1479), in which the story of the town mouse and the country mouse appears as fable 12. This consists of two sonnets, the first of which tells the story and the second contains a moral reflection.
British variations
[
edit
]
British poetical treatments of the story vary widely. The Scottish
Henryson
's
The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous
[11]
makes the two mice sisters.
[12]
The one in the country envies her sister's rich living and pays her a visit, only to be chased by a cat and return home, contented with her own lot. Four final stanzas (lines 190?221) draw out the moral that it is better to limit one's ambition and one's appetites, warning those who make the belly their god that "The cat cummis and to the mous hes ee".
Henryson attributes the story to
Esope, myne author
where Sir
Thomas Wyatt
makes it a song sung by "My mothers maydes when they did sowe and spynne" in the second of his satires.
[13]
This is more in accord with Horace's description of it as "an old wives' tale" but Wyatt's retelling otherwise echoes Henryson's: an impoverished country mouse visits her sister in town but is caught by the cat. In the second half of the poem (lines 70?112) Wyatt addresses his interlocutor John Poynz on the vanity of human wishes. Horace, on the other hand, had discussed his own theme at great length before closing on the story.
By contrast, the adaptation in
La Fontaine's Fables
,
Le rat de ville et le rat des champs
(I.9), is simply told.
[14]
There it is the town rat that invites the country rat home, only to have the meal disturbed by dogs (as in Horace); the country rat then departs, reflecting, as in Aesop, that peace is preferable to fearful plenty.
Adaptations dating from Britain's "
Augustan Age
" concentrate upon the Horatian version of the fable. The reference is direct in
The hind and the panther transvers'd to the story of the country-mouse and the city mouse
, written by
Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax
and
Matthew Prior
in 1687.
[15]
This was a satire directed against a piece of
pro-Stuart propaganda
and portrays the poet
John Dryden
(under the name of Bayes) proposing to elevate Horace's "dry naked History" into a religious allegory (page 4ff).
Part of the fun there is that in reality the Horatian retelling is far more sophisticated than the "plain simple thing" that Bayes pretends it is, especially in its depiction of Roman town-life at the height of its power. It is this aspect of Horace's writing that is underlined by the two adaptations of his satire made by other Augustan authors. The first was a joint work by the friends
Thomas Sprat
and
Abraham Cowley
written in 1666. Horace has the story told by a garrulous countryman, a guise that Cowley takes on with delicate self-irony. It allows him to adapt the comforts of the imperial city described by Horace to those of
Restoration
London, with references to contemporary high
cuisine
and luxury furnishings such as
Mortlake Tapestries
. Cowley's portion appeared separately under the title of
The Country Mouse
in his volume of essays.
[16]
In the following century the friends
Jonathan Swift
and
Alexander Pope
combined in a similar imitation of Horace's Satire in octosyllabic couplets, with Pope playing the part of the story-teller from line 133 onwards and attributing the tale to contemporary fabulist
Matthew Prior
.
[17]
The point of the piece is once again to make a witty transposition of the Classical scene into present-day circumstances as an extension of the poem's anachronistic fun. At a slightly later date Rowland Rugeley (1738?76) was to imitate their performance in much the same manner in "The City Mouse and Country Mouse: a fable to a friend in town".
[18]
The argument has been made that, for all the fable's championing of country life, the emphasis on the urban and urbane in these poems is fully in the spirit of the Horatian original.
[19]
In all versions of the original fable, much is made of the poor fare upon which the country mouse subsists. Dried (grey) peas and bacon are frequently mentioned and it is these two that the early 19th-century author Richard Scrafton Sharpe (
c.
1780?1852) uses in a repetitive
refrain
to his lyrical treatment of "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse".
[20]
He was the author of
Old friends in a new dress ? or Familiar fables in verse
, which went through different editions from 1807 onwards. The stories are told in song measures rather than as a narrative, and it was in a later edition that this retelling appeared.
Eastern analogies
[
edit
]
A similar story appears among the fables of
Bidpai
as "The Lean Cat and the Fat Cat".
[21]
It is related that 'There was once a poor, lean old woman, who lived in a tiny, tumbled-down house, with a cat as poor and as lean as herself. This cat had never tasted a bit of bread, and had come no nearer a mouse than to find its tracks in the dust.' A sleek, plump cat boasts to her of how it feasts at the king's table and invites her to come and join in next day. The poor woman advises her pet to be content with its lot. Unheeding, the lean cat sets off for the palace. Owing to its infestation by cats, however, the king had ordered that any caught there were to be put to death. The lean cat dies, regretting that it had not listened to the old woman's wise advice.
Later adaptations
[
edit
]
Beatrix Potter
retold the story in
The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse
(1918). In this she inverted the order of the visits, with the country mouse going to the city first, being frightened by a cat and disliking the food. Returning the visit later, the town mouse is frightened of the rain, the lawnmower and the danger of being stepped on by cows. The story concludes with the reflection that tastes differ. A segment from the tale was incorporated into the children's ballet film
The Tales of Beatrix Potter
, danced by the
Royal Ballet
with choreography by
Frederick Ashton
(1971). The ballet was subsequently performed onstage in 1992 and 2007.
In 1927 the story was made into a French silent film, with puppet animation by the director
Wladyslaw Starewicz
, under the title
Le Rat de Ville et le Rat des Champs
. In this updated version, the urban rat drives out of Paris in his car to visit his cousin on the farm. They return to the city and visit a nightclub but their revels end in pandemonium with the arrival of a cat. Recognizing that city life is too hectic for him, the country rat prefers to dream of his urban adventure from the safety of his home.
[22]
The American equivalent was the
Silly Symphonies
cartoon
The Country Cousin
(1936), in which the country mouse hikes along the railroad track to visit his cousin in the city. The main action takes place on the supper table and is governed by the unexplained need for silence. When the reason for this is revealed as the cat, the cousin escapes into the street, only to face the worse hazards of the traffic.
[23]
In 1980, the fable was whimsically adapted by
Evelyn Lambart
for the
National Film Board of Canada
using paper figures and brightly coloured backgrounds.
[24]
Other cartoons much more loosely based on the fables have included
Mouse in Manhattan
(1945)
[25]
and
The Country Mouse and the City Mouse: A Christmas Tale
(HBO 1993), which eventually led to the television series
The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures
.
In the UK, Vicky Ireland dramatised the fable for
Merseyside
Young People's Theatre in 1987. The 80-minute play has since been acted in the US, South Africa and New Zealand.
[26]
It features William Boot, a country mouse bored with rural life at his grandmother's house, who is visited by his city cousin and learns that he has inherited Tallyhoe Lodge in London. They leave to run a gauntlet of adventures, from which William returns to settle gratefully in his peaceful country retreat.
Among musical interpretations, there have been the following:
- Louis-Nicolas Clerambault
set words based on La Fontaine's fable in the 1730s
[27]
- Jacques Offenbach
included it in
Six Fables de La Fontaine
(1842) for soprano and small orchestra
[28]
- Benjamin Godard
, the last of his
Six Fables de La Fontaine
(op. 17, 1872/9)
[29]
- Auguste Moutin (1821?1900) set it as a song in 1876.
- Ernest Reyer
set La Fontaine's fable for his own performance
[30]
- Jean-Rene Quignard
for 2 children's voices
- Isabelle Aboulker
's setting of La Fontaine's words is on her composite CD
Les Fables Enchantees
(1979)
[31]
- Ida Gotkovsky
, the third fable in her
Hommage a Jean de La Fontaine
for choir and orchestra, commissioned for the tercentenary of La Fontaine's death (1995)
- Claude Ballif
, the fourth of his
Chansonettes : 5 Fables de La Fontaine
for small mixed choir (Op.72, Nº1 1995)
- Debra Kaye set Richard Scrafton Sharpe's lyric version of the fable for
mezzo-soprano
and piano in 1998. She describes this as 'a mini-opera' that combines the simplicity of folk music and operatic styles.
[32]
- Dominique Rebaud choreographed the story in Annie Sellem's dance production of
Les Fables a La Fontaine
in 2004. It is set as a duo which contrasts the routines of contemporary dance and
hip-hop
. This segment also figures among the four included in the film of the same title made by Marie-Helene Rebois in 2004.
[33]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Aarne, Antti
;
Thompson, Stith
.
The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography
. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 45.
- ^
D. L. Ashliman
,
Town Mouse and Country Mouse: fables of Aarne?Thompson type 112
- ^
John C.Jacobs:
The Fables of Odo of Cheriton
, New York, 1985, p. 87
- ^
Woolgar, C.M. (2016).
The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500
. Yale University Press. p. 27.
ISBN
9780300181913
.
- ^
Michael Gilleland (19 February 2005).
"Laudator Temporis Acti: Country Mouse and City Mouse"
. Laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
An online translation
. University of Chicago Press. 15 April 2002.
ISBN
9780226067773
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
"The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius"
.
classics.mit.edu
. Retrieved
15 April
2016
.
- ^
"Fable 12. De mure urbano et rustico. (Walter of England ? Nevelet)"
. Mythfolklore.net
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
Wanda Ostrowska Kaufmann,
The Anthropology of Wisdom Literature
, Westport CT 1996,
pp.110?11
; it appears at lines 1370?86 and there is a translation in
Mediaeval Age
, ed. Angel Flores New York 1963, pp.450?2
- ^
Murray Peabody Brush,
The Isopo Laurenziano
, Columbus, OH, 1899,
pp.1?42
- ^
Mediaeval Scottish Poetry
(Abbotsford Series), Glasgow, Scotland, 1892, pp. 130?8. The text can be found online at
lib.rochester.edu
- ^
The reason for this difference and others is discussed in
David West's essay "Of Mice and Men" in
Quality and Pleasure in Latin Poetry
, London, 1974, pp. 78?80
- ^
"Satire II:The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse by Sir Thomas Wyatt"
. Poemhunter.com. 1 January 2004
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
"Town Mouse and Country Mouse"
. Pitt.edu. 10 April 2011
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
Montagu, Charles; Prior, Matthew (1709).
An online version ia at
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
Cowley's Essays
, Kessinger Publishing, London 2004, pp.43?4; there is an online source at
the first
- ^
pp.16-22
- ^
Miscellaneous poems and translations
(1763),
pp.1-9
- ^
Witke, Charles (1970).
Witke, Charles:
Latin Satire
, Leiden, Netherlands, 1970, pp. 61?78
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
Text at
Storynory
- ^
"The Baldwin Project: The Tortoise and the Geese by Maude Barrows Dutton"
. Mainlesson.com
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
"Available on YouTube"
. Archived from
the original
on 10 July 2014
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
– via YouTube.
- ^
Available on YouTube
Archived
10 July 2014 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
"View online"
. Nfb.ca
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
Available on YouTube
- ^
"The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (Ireland)"
. Dramaticpublishing.com
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
There is an excerpt
online
- ^
There is a performance on
YouTube
- ^
Performance on
You Tube
- ^
The composer's interpretation (under his real name of
Etienne Rey
) is reported in Louis Lacombe's
Philosophie et Musique
, Paris 1896,
p.262
- ^
"Performance on YouTube"
. 14 April 2011.
Archived
from the original on 19 December 2021
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
– via YouTube.
- ^
"Debra Kaye, composer"
. Debra Kaye, composer
. Retrieved
14 April
2013
.
- ^
Arte TV archive
Further reading
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External links
[
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]
Media related to
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse
at Wikimedia Commons
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