Aesop and his fable

When I had a light bulb moment about naming this blog I rang the Country Mouse in excitement. "I am going to call our blog The City Mouse and the Country Mouse". I thought I was so clever; I knew he would think I was so clever too. Instead there was silence.

"Am I a mouse?"

"Yeah, you're the Country Mouse, you know like in the fable".

Silence.

"You know the Aesop’s fable".

Silence, then "No". Oh dear he was going all monosyllabic, not a good sign.  

"Aesop’s fable The City Mouse and the Country Mouse".

Silence, then "Oh well, as long as you are not calling me a rat".

Okay – time to do a fast rewind.

"Darling do you know who Aesop is?"

"No".

"So you don’t know the Aesop’s fable The City Mouse and the Country Mouse? And so you have no idea what I am talking about?"

"Yeah, well it seemed a bit strange all that stuff about the mice".

Now the Country Mouse is a smart mouse, but you can’t be up on everything and obviously early Greek fables are not his area of speciality, nor, I suspect of even the slightest interest to him. But…it’s the title of the blog after all and that matters, so explanations must be given. In case anyone else is puzzling over this blog’s moniker, here goes.

Aesop was a Greek folk hero who is supposed to have lived in the 6th century BC, c. 620-564. He was born a slave and one story about him has his wisdom so delighting one of his masters that he was given his freedom. Aesop gained a great reputation as a teller of animal fables, through which he showed both the wise and foolish behaviour of humans, teaching a moral lesson at the same time.

In most of his fables animals speak and have human characteristics; their antics are simply a reflection of human frailties, vanity and foibles. Well-known Aesop’s fables include The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Fox and the Grapes (from which the term ‘sour grapes’ originates).

Although today his fables are told as children’s tales, they were not meant as children’s stories at all, but as ethical lessons for adults. I loved one writer’s description of early Greek fables as “a technique of criticism and persuasion, which, by its indirectness, i.e. by making the protagonists animals, might avoid giving offence to those it was targeting. It was particularly valuable to the weak as a weapon against the powerful”. I like that.

No writings by Aesop himself survive, but what we do know is that numerous fables attributed to him were gathered, written down and translated into many languages in a moral storytelling tradition that still continues in many countries today. Not much else is known about the life of Aesop, although some accounts have him being murdered at Delphi. Some scholars even believe he may not have existed at all and that the fables were written by a number of different authors and all attributed to a fictional wise Greek slave.

I like to think that Aesop was a real person, probably because I like his fables and the fact that he was such a smart slave – I am very partial to the idea that he used his intelligence to gain his freedom. Also I have philosophical heavy weights Socrates and Aristophanes (who thought him a real person) on my side and who am I to argue with them?

The first written collection of Aesop’s fables appeared about 200 years after his death (or supposed death, depending on whether you believe him to be 'real' or not) and now have been translated into almost every language in the world. Obviously over time and with multiple translations there are slight variations to the fables’ details, but their moral message remains unchanged.

In the fable The City Mouse and the Country Mouse (also known as The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse), a proud city mouse visits a friend (or sometimes a relation, usually a cousin) in the country. The Country Mouse offers the City Mouse a meal of simple country foods, at which the visitor scoffs and invites the Country Mouse back to the city for a taste of the ‘fine life’. But their rich city meal is interrupted by a cat (or, in some versions of the fable, a dog) which force the mice to abandon their feast and scurry to safety. After this, the Country Mouse decides to return home, preferring a quiet life of security to a precarious life of plenty.

Here then is the fable:

Aesop’s fable: the City Mouse and the Country Mouse

There once was a mouse who liked his country house until his cousin came for a visit.

"In the city where I live," his cousin said, "we dine on cheese and fish and bread. Each night my dinner is brought to me. I eat whatever I choose. While you, country cousin, work your paws to the bone for humble crumbs in this humble home. I'm used to finery.”

Upon hearing this, the Country Mouse looked again at his plain brown house. Suddenly he wasn't satisfied anymore. "Why should I hunt and scrape for food to store?" he said. "Cousin, I'm coming to the city with you!"

Off they went into the fine town house of the plump and prosperous City Mouse. "Shhh! The people are in the parlour," the City Mouse said. "Let's sneak into the kitchen for some cheese and bread."

The City Mouse gave his wide-eyed country cousin a grand tour of the leftover food on the table. "It's the easy life," the City Mouse said, and he smiled as he bit into a piece of bread. Just as they were both about to bite into a chunk of cheddar cheese, in came a cat!

"Run! Run!" said the City Mouse. "The cat's in the house!"

Just as the Country Mouse scampered for his life out of the window, he said, "Cousin, I'm going back to the country! You never told me that a cat lives here! Thank you, but I'll take my humble crumbs in comfort over all of your finery with fear!"