The Two Mice Five Fables

At the end of the 15th century, a Scottish notary and teacher called

Robert Henryson writes a series of animal fables

based on the old stories of Aesop.

Esop, myne authour, makis mentioun

Of twa myis, and thay wer sisteris deir.

Henryson is little known these days, but experts consider him a master.

He's the greatest poet, I think, of the 15th century in English or Scots.

Fast forward over 500 years

and Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney catches

a glimpse of an early manuscript of the Fables and is spellbound.

It had a little rooster on the top right-hand corner of the manuscript.

But the rooster was crowing. Something so jaunty about it.

Over several years, Seamus creates a series of modern English

translations infused with the language of his rural childhood

in Northern Ireland.

It's absolutely brilliant. It's a wonderful translation.

And he persuades Scottish actor

and comedy legend Billy Connolly to record them.

This country mouse when winter came, endured cold and hunger...

I think he's amazing. His reputation swells before him.

It's kind of scary now with you sitting out here.

Oh, for God's sake.

Now five of these fables have been animated for a project that

Seamus Heaney was working on at the time of his death.

Bringing a modern dimension to tales that were written

over half a millennium ago.

With a specially composed score by international pianist

and conductor Barry Douglas.

This is a very major thing for me. It's a new departure.

I'm very excited.

In a moment, the full animated story of The Two Mice.

With an introduction by Seamus Heaney himself.

And later, some revealing behind-the-scenes footage

of how these morality tales made it to the screen.

Five medieval fables are now ready for their second coming.

The Two Mice is a wonderfully innocent story.

And it's in a genre that's as old as European civilisation.

It crops up in Aesop, in Horace, in many of Henryson's sources.

And it's basically part of the old pastoral tradition of

the contrast between the simple, frugal countryside

and the haughty, dangerous town.

One of the most delightful parts of the story as Henryson tells it

is the town mouse coming through the country, crying out,

cheeping to her sister to come out and meet her.

It all goes well for a little while, then the town mouse gets tired of

the rough country fare and invites the country mouse to her place.

Everything's delightful.

Food's good, the furnishings are lovely.

Then two sudden dangers threaten all this.

And the country mouse is just terrified.

So the virtues of the country are ratified

and the town is scolded for its dangers.

It's a delightful story.

Aesop tells a tale - Aesop, my author -

Of two mice who were sisters fair and fond

The elder had a town-house in a borough

The younger dwelt up country, near at hand

And by herself

At times on whinny ground,

At times in corn crops

Living hand to mouth

Beyond the pale and off the land, by stealth

BIRD CAWS

This country mouse, when winter came, endured

Cold and hunger and extreme distress

The other mouse, in town, sat on a board

With guild members, an independent burgess

Exempt from tax, from port and market cess

Free to go roaming wherever she liked best

Among the cheese and meal, in bin and chest

One time, well-fed and lightsome on her feet

She thought about her sister on the land

And wondered how she fared, what kind of state

She lived in, in the greenwood out beyond

So, barefoot and alone, with staff in hand

Like a poor pilgrim she set out from the town

To seek her sister, over dale and down

Through many wild and lonesome ways she goes

By moss and moor, by bank and bush and briar

Calling across the fallow land and furrows

"Come out to me, my own sweet sister dear! Just give one cheep"

With that the mouse could hear

And knew the voice, since it's in our nature

To recognise our own, and came to meet her

If you had seen, Lord God, the high excitement

That overcame those sisters when they met

The way the sighs passed back and forth between them

The way they laughed and then for gladness wept!

They sweetly kissed, they held each other tight

And kept this up until they both grew calm

Then went indoors together, arm in arm

It was, as I have heard, a simple hut

Made expertly of foggage and of fern

On stone supports sunk into earth upright

The jambs set close, the lintel near the ground

And into it they went and there remained

No fire burned for them nor candle bright

For shady rooms best suit the fly-by-night

When they were lodged and settled, these poor mice

The younger sister to the pantry hurries

And brings out nuts and peas instead of spice

Without being there, who'll say how good it was?

The burgess then gets haughty and pretentious

And asks her sister, "Is this how you eat?"

"Why," she replies, "is there something wrong with it?"

"No, by my soul, it's just so ordinary!"

"Madam," she said, "you are the more to blame

"When we were born, I heard my mother say

"The womb we both came out of was the same

"I'm true to her example and good name

"And to my father's, to their frugal ways

"We own no lands or grounds or properties"

"Please," the reply came, "let me be excused

"My tastes and this rough diet are at odds

"I live a lady's life now and am used

"To tender meat, it's what my system needs

"These withered peas and nuts and shells and pods

"Will break my teeth and hurt me in the stomach

"Now that I know what standards to expect"

"Well, well, my sister," says the country mouse

"If you would like, and seeing that you're here

"You're welcome to the free run of the house

"And food and drink

"Stay on for the year!

"It'll warm my heart to keep you and to share

"Our friendship matters more than middling food

"Who sniffs at cooking when the company's good?

"Delicacies pall, and fancy dishes

"When they are served up by a scowling face

"A sweetness in the giver's more delicious

"Fine sauces don't make up for lack of grace

"A modicum suffices, we do with less

"When the carver carves from the goodness of his heart

"A sour-faced host can blink the best cook's art"

In spite of all this well-disposed advice

The burgess was in no mood to be humoured

She knit her brows above two glowering eyes

No matter what choice pickings she was offered

Until, at last, she half-sighed and half-sneered

"Sister, for a country mouse, this stuff

"You've laid on makes a spread and is good enough

"Give over this place, be my visitor

"Come where I live, and learn when you're my guest

"How my Good Friday's better than your Easter

"My dish-lickings more luscious than your feast

"My quarters are among the very safest

"Of cat or trap or trip I have no dread"

"All right," says sister, and they take the road

Under cover, through clumps of corn and weed

Keeping themselves hidden, on they creep

The elder acts as guide and stays ahead

The younger follows close and minds her step

By night they make a run, by day they sleep

Until one morning, when the lark was singing

They reached the town and thankfully went in

With none to greet or give them time of day

The town mouse led on and they made their entry

To a residence not far along the way

Next thing they stood inside a well-stocked pantry

With cheese and butter stacked on shelves, great plenty

Of red meat and hung game, of fresh fish and salt

Sacks full of groats, milled corn and meal and malt

Later, when they felt the urge to dine

They washed their hands and sat, but said no grace

There was every course a cook's art could design

Roast beef and mutton relished slice by slice

A meal fit for a lord

But they were mice

And showed it when they drank not wine but water

Yet could hardly have enjoyed their banquet better

Taunting and cajoling all at once

The elder mouse enquired of her guest

Whether she thought there was real difference

Between that chamber and her sorry nest

"Yes, ma'am," said she, "but how long will this last?"

"Forever, I expect, and even longer"

"In that case, it's a safe house," said the younger

The town mouse, for their pleasure, produced more

Groats on a plate and meal piled in a pan

And didn't stay her hand, you can be sure

When she doled the oatcakes out and served a scone

Of best white baker's bread instead of brawn

Then stole a tall white candle from a chest

As a final touch, to give the meal more taste

And so they revelled on and raised a cry

And shouted "Hail, Yule, hail!" And made merry

Yet often care comes on the heels of joy

And trouble after great prosperity

Thus, as they sat in all their jollity

The steward comes along swinging his keys

Opens the door and finds them at their ease

They didn't wait to wash, as I imagine

But rushed and raced and sped off desperately

The burgess had a hole and in she went

Her sister no such place of sanctuary

To see that mouse in panic was great pity

In dread, bewildered, cornered and astray

So that she swooned and nearly passed away

But God had willed and worked a happy outcome

The hard-pressed steward could not afford to bide

He hadn't time to harry or to hunt them

But hurried on, and left the room-door wide

The burgess watched him make his way outside

Then scooted from her hole and cried on high

"How are you, sister? Where? Just cheep for me!"

Sure she was doomed, and terrified to die

This country mouse lay on the ground prostrate

Her heart beat fast, she was like somebody

Shaken by fever, trembling hand and foot

And when her sister found her in this state

For very pity she broke down in tears

Then spoke these words, sweet honey to her ears

"Why do you cower like this, dear sister? Rise! Return to table

"Come, the danger's past"

The other answered in a stricken voice

"I cannot eat, I am so sore aghast

"I'd rather do Lent's 40 days of fast

"On cabbage water, gnawing peas and beans

"Than feast with you here in such dread conditions"

Still, being soothed so sweetly, she got up

And went to table where again they sat

But hardly had they time to drink one cup

When in comes Hunter Gib, our jolly cat

And bids good day CAT MEOWS

The burgess ups with that

And speedy as the spark from flint makes off

His nibs then takes the other by the scruff

From foot to foot he chased her to and fro

Whiles up, whiles down, as quick as any kid

Whiles letting her go free beneath the straw

Whiles playing blind man's buff with her, shut-eyed

And thus he kept that poor mouse in great dread

Until by lucky chance, at the last call

She slipped between the hangings and the wall

Then up in haste behind the tapestry

She climbed so high that Gilbert couldn't get her

And hung there by the claws most capably

Till he was gone

And when her mood was better

And she could move with no cat to upset her

Down she came on the town mouse, shouting out, "Sister, farewell"

"Your feast I set at nought

"Your spread is spoiled, your cream in curds from worry

"Your goose is good, your sauce as sour as gall

"Your second helpings sure to make you sorry

"Mishaps still sure to haunt you and befall

"I thank that curtain and partition-wall

"For guarding me against yon cruel beast

"Save me, Almighty God, from such a feast

"If I were back on home ground, I would stay

"Never, for weal or woe, come forth again"

With that she took her leave and went her way

Now through the corn, now on the open plain

Glad to be on the loose and given rein

To gambol and be giddy on the moor

What then became of her I can't be sure

Though I have heard she made it to her nest

That was as warm as wool, if small and strait

Packed snugly from back wall to chimney breast

With peas and nuts and beans and rye and wheat

When she inclined, she had enough to eat

In peace and quiet there, amidst her store

But to her sister's house she went no more.

OK, Billy, let's go.

Okey-dokey.

Lots of 'first thing in the morning' energy.

EXAGGERATED LAUGH

Big thumbs up from Seamus Heaney there.

Once we had Seamus Heaney involved in this project and very interested

in working with us on this series,

we had then suggested to him to use a couple of different narrators.

Seamus kind of listened to us and then he said,

"Well, what about Billy Connolly?"

Aesop tells a tale - Aesop, my author...

He's highly intelligent and I saw him in a movie called Mrs Brown

where he acted John Brown - a servant to Queen Victoria.

It established him in my mind as somebody with possibilities

other than the wild man doing the comic act on the stage.

Which is also deeply attractive.

-Billy Connolly.

-Billy Connolly.

-Billy Connolly.

-Mr Billy Connolly.

-Billy Connolly.

-Billy Connolly.

-Billy Connolly.

APPLAUSE

I've invented a new form of fishing. It's called nutting the salmon.

LAUGHTER

"There's one, John!"

LAUGHTER

So I thought that that wiliness and wildness

from the comic side of his performance,

and the strength of his performance as an actor,

that those would be two qualities to combine

because that's what we have in Henryson also.

This country mouse when winter came, endured

Cold and hunger and extreme distress...

He also had the accent, of course,

which is not to be disrespected either.

It's a down-home voice. It's a familiar voice.

It's a flexible voice that can do the intonations necessary

to make the poetry live, and it's a voice that has a chortle

in it and the poems have a chortle in them.

"Come where I live, and learn when you're my guest

"How my Good Friday is better than your Easter

"My dish-lickings more luscious than your feast"

I genuinely believe he's perfect for this

because he can bring out the humour and on the other hand

when things get profound,

when things get serious or finger-wagging, he can do that too.

His bonnet round, in the old-fashioned style

Beard white, eyes wide and grey, a head of hair

That curled and lay in locks upon each shoulder.

I thought, "My God, it's Billy Connolly!"

LAUGHTER

While we expected Billy to be messing around in the studio,

and of course there was a bit of that...

The firmament... Star-stippled shearing clear!

But basically he was incredibly professional.

He got his head down and got on with it.

Billy had an affinity with poetry.

He was very knowledgeable about it, he knew his Burns,

he was in awe of Seamus Heaney.

The funniest thing is I hated it at school.

I just learnt it by rote like everybody else

but when I left school I got a job in John Smith's bookshop

in St Vincent Street, the dispatch department, a messenger boy.

But I also had to sweep the floor in the morning,

and I remember lifting a wee book and having a look at it

when nobody was looking and it was a tartan book, a tourist

version of a book of Robert Burns's poems.

And then I found McGonagall.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!

Alas! I am very sorry to say

That 90 lives have been taken away

On the last Sabbath day of 1879

Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

After that I went seeking poetry and liking it for its own sake

and it's never kind of left me.

He obviously had a sudden predisposition to work on this

kind of material.

That's a subject matter quite close to his heart.

To live on earth and know the greatest joy,

content yourself with just a few possessions...

He got on brilliantly with Seamus, the two of them

had an instant rapport.

The two of them were quite in awe of each other.

-SEAMUS:

-We're very lucky.

And I said to him, did you find this difficult? And he said no!

Pacing is the whole thing, isn't it, I mean... And er...

reading verse, keeping the line ending and the sense of shape and the movement.

Well, I had a wee go in bed last night, so... I wasn't speaking out

though, I was just reading it, speaking it into myself.

Cos the verse can be quite concealed.

There can be a dodgy way to get there and if you get it, it's lovely.

You get a lift.

I like the way you kept the metre and respected the shape on the page.

There's a definite metre there and rhyme.

-The comma is a mighty beast!

-Yeah.

'Oh, I love him. He's great.'

He's...

How can I put it? He's a lot gentler than I expected him to be.

For some reason, I thought he'd be more aggressive. I don't know why,

never having met him before. But he's a big gentle dumpling, it's lovely.

We're getting very fastidious here.

I think he's amazing. Yeah.

Cos his reputation swells before him.

-It's kind of scary having you sitting out here.

-Oh, for God's sake. Not at all!

Well, I admired Billy Connolly when he was doing the commentary,

reading the verse. He is, after all, a world star and so on.

But he took instruction, and he was as ready to get the thing

right for himself and for the director.

-It felt as though you were rushing that a wee bit at the beginning.

-OK.

I am glad I didn't make the mistake there. I want to do it again.

I thought that there was total professionalism,

and that was something that made it a pleasure to work with him.

-Can I go?

-All yours, sir.

The carter howls, "A gutting I'll give you, a herring treat

"A second helping that you'll not forget"

It was quite an interesting recording session,

because as I recall Seamus Heaney was editing his own work

during the recording session.

Billy would narrate an entire stanza -

of course, he narrated with great gusto and drama

and so forth - but sometimes he got stuck at certain words

and Seamus was sitting there with the book in hand and he would

then suggest an alternative word which would flow better.

Then Wolf said, "I will risk it. We must fetch that Lent-feed here."

Great. I want a wee chat with Tim.

If you couldn't see the text,

you might find that a little confusing if it's all run together.

I wonder whether - "We must fetch that...LENT-FEED here," maybe.

Maybe we could do something untoward and change it to "Lent food".

Oh, yeah, you could. "We must fetch the Lent food."

Billy, could you go back a page to, "We must fetch that Lent-feed."

-Can we change it to "that Lent food"?

-Lent food.

I was thinking of a feed in the northern sense.

Then Wolf said, "I will risk it. We must fetch that Lent-food here."

He was asking us, "Is this the right word?

"Is it a slang word, do you want to change it to this or that?"

So we had a lot of little suggestions.

Some of Seamus's language was a little bit colourful, and

we had to be mindful of the family audience we were pitching this at.

"And if I begged and went down on my knees on all fours here

"before him in the gutter, yon idiot wouldn't hand one

"herring over. But still, no matter, wait a while and see.

"I'll put one over on him presently."

For the second recording in Belfast Seamus couldn't make it

up to the recording but he was desperate to be across it,

so we installed Skype in his house in Dublin. And we were sitting there

with a computer screen with Seamus all the way through the session.

By this stage, Seamus was in his element, and he had his red

biro out and was making changes left, right and centre.

There was quite a lot of changes in the second session.

-Including one or two mistakes.

-Is it "who WRITE those fables"?

I've just seen it. I think it should be maybe "who wrote", definitely.

You can get away with "who write" but "who wrote" is more natural.

Let's change it to "wrote", says Seamus.

I'm sure it was a mistake first time round.

Seamus is confessing to a mistake here!

Seamus was having a lot of fun with this.

He was making some changes, letting a few other imperfections go.

It was all to do with Billy's delivery really.

"But one good turn deserves another so do we free him?"

"Sister," they said, "We do!"

That's terrific.

I just wonder if it would help to put Aesop

into the vocative there somewhere.

-"Master, I asked Aesop."

-Rewrite from the writer!

"Master, I asked Aesop" I think, to run better.

"Maser," I asked Aesop, "does a morality attach to this fable?"

"Master," I asked Aesop, "does a morality attach to this fable?"

"Yes," he said. "A good one." "Please," I said then,

"share it in conclusion."

Very good. Yeah.

Blessed be simple life lived free of dread

And blessed be a frugal decency

Whoever has enough is not in need

No matter how reduced his portion be

Abundance, comfort, blind prosperity

Often prove the last and worst illusion:

So to be safe, not sorry in this country

Content yourself with just a few possessions.