The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

A country mouse invited his town friend to the fields. They sat down to barleycorns and roots that tasted of earth. The guest soon complained. “You live no better than ants. Come to my house—my larder is a horn of plenty.”

In town the country mouse saw flour, oatmeal, figs, honey, and dates. He had never imagined such food. They had barely begun when the larder door opened. Both mice fled into a narrow, uncomfortable hole. When it grew quiet they crept out—only for someone else to enter, and off they scampered again.

“Good-bye,” said the country mouse. “You live in luxury, but danger is always at the door. At home I eat simple roots and corn in peace.”

About this fable

This is an Aesop fable, from the ancient Greek tradition, and not an Indian story. It follows V. S. Vernon Jones’s 1912 translation, where the country mouse serves barleycorns and roots and the town larder holds flour, oatmeal, figs, honey and dates.

Joseph Jacobs, retelling the fable in 1894, gives the cousins beans and bacon in the country and the leftovers of a grand feast in town, where two mastiffs burst in. He ends with the country mouse’s famous line: “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.”

Read the original: V. S. Vernon Jones, Aesop’s Fables (Project Gutenberg #11339, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse)

Best for ages 3–5: a cosy, slightly scary fable about two cousins and the difference between rich food and a peaceful home.

A feast includes more than its food

The country mouse does not reject the town meal before tasting its possibilities. He is impressed by the larder. What changes his mind is the repeated interruption: just as the mice settle, a door opens and they must squeeze into hiding. The rhythm of starting, fleeing and starting again makes danger part of every mouthful. His final choice reflects what peace is worth to him, not a rule that everyone must prefer the same home.

Make two menus

List the food offered in each home. Under each menu, add what eating there feels like, using a detail from the scene. Which item on your list explains the country mouse’s decision better than the food itself?

Talk about it

• What did the town mouse think of the country mouse’s dinner?
• Why did the country mouse decide to go home?
• Would you rather live in the town mouse’s house or the country mouse’s? Why?

Related stories

• The Lion and the Mouse — a little mouse who keeps a big promise to a lion
• The Ant and the Grasshopper — busy ants and a singing grasshopper face a hungry winter
• The Oak and the Reed — the humble reeds turn out to be safer than the mighty oak