Burns's Shelterless Mouse

'To a Mouse' is one of my favourite poems, which I came across during school. Robert Burns wrote it in 1785, after he indeed met by putting athwart a nest of mice amid agricultural pursuits, according to his brother. He writes it from the point of view of marauding man, with a half-affectionate disrespect that is already in the first lines. I am guessing from a knowledge of English rather than of Scots, but he is naming the mouse 'little, sleek, cowering and timorous.'

Its Scots Wikipedia entry is worth citing here:

'To a Mouse' (Scots: Tae a Moose) is a Scots poem written bi Robert Burns in 1785 that wis includit in the Kilmarnock Volume, his first settin furth o musradry.

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I'm truly sorry Man's dominion

Has broken Nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion,

                               Which makes thee startle,

Northumberland Bestiary: folio 33.
Between 1250 and 1260.
via Wikimedia Commons

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WEE, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

Physiologus's Salamander

THIS time the literary text discussed on this 'Alexandrian' site does, in fact, come from Alexandria. Last year in university, the teacher of a Byzantinian folk literature course started his semester by presenting three tales from Physiologus.

One fable reminded me particularly of end of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the healing sun berries that are carried to the old star by the firebird) and C.S. Lewis's other Narnia books, and in retrospect the Wikipedia article clarifies that Physiologus, written apparently before the final downfall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D., is in fact the origin of Christian beast myths which are present throughout Europe even in these centuries.

Master Drawings I: Jerome

In honour of the incipient Master Drawings exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford, I have decided to append a string of texts or books to some of the pictures which I find most striking, culled from the exhibition slideshow on the Guardian website.

The first is Lucas van Leyden's rendering of Jerome, the saint who is said — historically speaking — to have roamed the Mediterranean brink from somewhere between 347 – 420 A.D. Van Leyden was, aptly enough, of Leyden in the Netherlands; he lived from 1494 to 1533 and thus was a contemporary of Albrecht Dürer, who drew his picture.

The text is from the Golden Legend (Jacobus de Voragine, c. 1275), as it was transferred into English by William Caxton in the 15th century and edited by F.S. Ellis into the tolerably comprehensible modern tongue.

Illustration: Saint Jerome (1521) by Lucas van Leyden, from the Ashmolean [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

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St. Jerome and the Lion

"ON a day towards even¹ Jerome sat with his brethren for to hear the holy lesson, and a lion came halting suddenly in to the monastery, and when the brethren saw him, anon they fled, and Jerome came against him as he should come against his guest, and then the lion showed to him his foot being hurt. Then he called his brethren, and commanded them to wash his feet and diligently to seek and search for the wound. And that done, the plant² of the foot of the lion was sore hurt and pricked with a thorn. Then this holy man put thereto diligent cure, and healed him, and he abode ever after as a tame beast with them.

Then St. Jerome saw that God had sent him to them, not only for the health of his foot, but also for their profit, and joined to the lion an office³, by the accord of his brethren, and that was that he should conduct and lead an ass to his pasture which brought home wood, and should keep⁴ him going and coming, and so he did. For he did that which he was commanded, and led the ass thus as a herdsman, and kept him wisely going and coming, and was to him a right sure keeper and defender, and always at the hour accustomed he and the ass came for to have their refection⁵ and for to make the ass to do the work accustomed.

ON a time it happed that the ass was in his pasture, and the lion slept fast, and certain merchants passed by with camels and saw the ass alone, and stole him and led him away. And anon after, the lion awoke and when he found not his fellow, he ran groaning hither and thither, and when he saw that he could not find him he was much sorrowful and durst not come in, but abode at the gate of the church of the monastery, and was ashamed that he came without the ass.

And when the brethren saw that he was come more late than he was wont⁶, and without the ass, they supposed that by constraint of hunger he had eaten the ass, and would not give to him his portion accustomed, and said to him: Go and eat that other part of the ass that thou hast devoured, and fill thy gluttony.

And because they doubted, and they would wit⁷ if he had so eaten, they went to the pastures of the town to see if they could have any demonstrance of the death of the ass, and they found nothing, and returned and told it to Jerome, and then he commanded them to enjoin him to do the office of the ass⁸. Then they hewed down bushes and boughs and laid upon him, and he suffered it peaceably.

Aesop's Fables: Odo of Cheriton's "De Lupo, Vulpe et Asino"

Since I am not well informed, this precis on Aesop is a bit of an 'Aesop for Dummies' case:

AESOP was, according to Herodotus and by way of a certain online encyclopaedia, a slave who lived in Greece in the fifth century before Christ. It is also possible that the fables are cribbed from the lore of Mesopotamia or even more easterly lands, or that Aesop himself did not exist at all. Divers Latin translations already existed six hundred years afterwards, by Phaedrus, Ennius and Aphthonius of Antioch and others.

The Fox and the Geese

Fox once came upon a meadow where a herd of lovely fat geese was sitting. He laughed and said, "I have come at the right time. You are sitting together so nicely that I can eat you up one after the other." The geese quacked with affright, leapt to their feet, and began to wail and plead piteously for their lives. Fox, however, refused to listen to them and said, "There will be no mercy here! You must die." At last one of them took heart and said, "If we poor geese are to lose our lives in the flower of youth, grant us one favour and allow us a prayer, so that we do not die with our sins upon us; and afterwards we will even set ourselves in a row so that you may always choose the plumpest." — "Very well," said Fox, "that is fair and it is a pious request. Pray; I will wait that long." So the first started a pretty long prayer, always "Gah, gah," and because she refused to stop, the second did not wait for her turn, but also started: "Gah, gah!" The third and fourth followed her example, and soon they were all quacking together. (And when they have prayed themselves out, this tale shall be told further; but they are still perpetually praying on.)

Original text: "Der Fuchs und die Gänse," Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Bayreuth: Gondrom Verlag, 1982)

THE END