To a Mouse

“To a Mouse” relies on a combination of Scots dialect and sentimentality to depict the speaker’s empathy for the non-human. These two main qualities, in concert with the spontaneity implied by the poem’s subtitle, work together to characterize the speaker as a humble farmhand with deep feelings and an even deeper connection with the natural world. Burns is careful in creating this depiction to ensure that the speaker’s sentimentality aligns with their use of dialect in order to imply a connection between the speaker’s deep emotion and Scottish authenticity.

These connections are first established by the poem’s subtitle, which provides the narrative frame that the work was composed after the speaker uncovered a mouse “in her Nest, with the Plough.” This subtitle establishes the two main subjects of the poem, the mouse and the farmer-speaker, and communicates that the poem was occasioned by the farmer “turning [the mouse] up.” This frame, then, suggests that the poem was composed soon after the events, meaning that it is not a measured response but a spontaneous composition that reflects the speaker’s emotional state.

The strongest indication, outside of the subtitle, that the poem should be understood as a spontaneous, emotional composition is the prevalent use of Scots dialect in the work’s first stanza. Lines from later stanzas, such as “I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion / Has broken Nature’s social union” (Lines 6-7) clearly indicate a speaker who has a strong grasp on the English language and who is able to use it to articulate complex ideas. The first stanza, which opens by describing the mouse as a “Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie” (Line 1), features the work’s thickest Scots. This overflow of Scots in the first stanza is indicative of the speaker’s emotional state after destroying the mouse’s home. The poem’s first foot is also a spondaic substitution, meaning that the normal single-stressed iamb is replaced with a double-stressed spondee. This substitution results in a more aggressive opening to the poem, sympathetic with the idea that it was composed spontaneously insofar as the poem itself seems to jerk into life like a spontaneous action.

This spontaneous composition—particularly in a rural, lower-class dialect—signals the authenticity of the speaker’s emotion. The speaker, it implies, does not measure his response. Furthermore, the suggestion that the speaker is unable to express these authentic emotions in unadulterated English cements the connection between intense emotion and the Scots dialect. The stark change between the first stanza’s thick dialect and the second stanza’s analytic English marks a similar change in the speaker’s emotional state. Latinate words like “justifies” (Line 9), “dominion”(Line 7), and “opinion” (Line 9), that fill the second stanza, represent the speaker’s attempt to coldly rationalize the events. This attempt is ultimately undone after the speaker’s realization that the mouse is his “earth-born companion / An’ fellow-mortal” (Lines 11-12).

The speaker, having arrived at this sympathy for the mouse both emotionally and logically, turns away from Latinate words for the rest of the poem. Instead, he expresses himself through unaffected English and Scots. After arriving at the logical conclusion that he and the mouse are equal insofar as they are “earth-born” and “mortal” (Lines 11-12), the speaker explores his connection with the mouse more deeply and personally. This connection manifests first as sympathy for the mouse’s need to eat, even if she “may thieve” (Line 13), the speaker admits that the mouse “maun live” (Line 14). The speaker also implores the mouse to “big a new” shelter so that she can overwinter (Line 21), and envisions that the new shelter will be an improvement made of green foliage (Line 22). The speaker expresses this vision despite his acknowledgment, in the next stanza, that the field is “laid bare an’ waste” (Line 25). The speaker’s oversight on this matter again reveals his emotional state.

For most of the poem, the speaker considers the events from the mouse’s perspective. He tries to imagine how the “wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble / Has cost thee monie a weary nibble” (Lines 31-32), and even turns against his own need to live and eat by calling his coulter (a component of the speaker’s plow) “cruel” (Line 29). Part of the speaker’s compulsion to inhabit the mouse’s perspective stems from his conception of the mouse as a participant in the divine. Not only is the mouse considered “blest, compar’d wi’” the speaker (Line 43), the speaker believes that he will receive “a blessin’” himself by treating the mouse well (Line 17). These two statements demonstrate that the speaker sees the mouse as his equal not only insofar as they are both mortal but in that they are both worthy of ethical consideration. The speaker’s consideration of the mouse as being in the same ethical sphere as himself is especially poignant by the poem’s ending, in which he refers to his past misfortunes.

What is most distinct about the means through which the speaker grapples with these complex ideas is that he does so through Scots rather than English; throughout the poem, the speaker’s more emotional self is filtered through his Scots dialect, while the more concrete and detached observations are delivered through the Latinate words and English. Scots allows the speaker a sentimental outlet that reveals deep ecological truths that might otherwise never develop. The technical Latinate language that would normally signal science and philosophy is unable to go beyond the simple realization that humans and mice are “fellow mortal[s]” (Line 12). Scots, meanwhile, allows that empathy to develop into a deeper understanding of mice and morality. This in and of itself can be read as a statement about Burns’ relationship to his native land and his native tongue. While all the observations made throughout the poem—and all the aspects of the speaker that make them—are valuable, it is only the raw, heart-centered aspect of self that is connected to his roots and to the land he farms that can transcend the boundaries of human and non-human, land and industry, mouse and man.