<P> British poetical treatments of the story vary widely . The Scottish Henryson's The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous makes the two mice sisters . The one in the country envies her sister's rich living and pays her a visit, only to be chased by a cat and return home, contented with her own lot . Four final stanzas (lines 190--221) draw out the moral that it is better to limit one's ambition and one's appetites, warning those who make the belly their god that </P> <P> The cat cummis and to the mous hes ee . </P> <P> Henryson attributes the story to Esope, myne author where Sir Thomas Wyatt makes it a song sung by "My mothers maydes when they did sowe and spynne" in the second of his satires . This is more in accord with Horace's description of it as "an old wives' tale" but Wyatt's retelling otherwise echoes Henryson's: an impoverished country mouse visits her sister in town but is caught by the cat . In the second half of the poem (lines 70--112) Wyatt addresses his interlocutor John Poynz on the vanity of human wishes . Horace, on the other hand, had discussed his own theme at great length before closing on the story . </P> <P> By contrast, the adaptation in La Fontaine's Fables, Le rat de ville et le rat des champs (I. 9), is simply told . There it is the town rat that invites the country rat home, only to have the meal disturbed by dogs (as in Horace); the country rat then departs, reflecting, as in Aesop, that peace is preferable to fearful plenty . </P>

The country mouse and the city mouse setting