To a Mouse: Symbols | SparkNotes

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Mouse

The mouse symbolizes the tenant farmers who lost their homes and livelihoods because of the Scottish Agricultural Revolution. This so-called “revolution” unfolded slowly over the course of the eighteenth century, and it began with a desire among the Scottish gentry to modernize regional agriculture. The successful introduction of new crops, technologies, and farming practices led to the increasing commercialization of the landscape and, in turn, a rapid rise in rents. No longer able to afford their smallholdings, farmworkers across Scotland were forced to abandon their homes and seek new livelihoods elsewhere. The mouse experiences a similar shock of displacement after the speaker destroys its nest. It’s precisely because of this parallel between mouse and man that the speaker feels so remorseful. The speaker’s sympathy also leads him to pardon the mouse for any food it may have stolen from his farm, as he does in lines 13–18:

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss ’t!

Here, the speaker shows compassion for the mouse’s need to snatch the odd ear of corn from a bundle. The fact that it must “thieve” to survive additionally makes the mouse a symbol for those landless poor who lived by collecting scraps left behind after harvests.

The Mouse’s Nest

The mouse’s nest has a twofold symbolic significance in the poem. On the one hand, it symbolizes the universal need for shelter. The speaker suggests as much when he refers to the nest as the mouse’s “wee-bit housie” (line 19). His use of the word “housie”—or, house—implicitly likens the mouse’s nest to a human’s house. Yet even as the mouse’s nest symbolizes the universal need for shelter, it also symbolizes the fact that every shelter is precarious and therefore temporary. The speaker implicitly acknowledges this fact in lines 25–30:

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

According to the speaker’s speculation, the mouse established its nest in the middle of the field out of desperation, seeking warmth and coziness in the face of the coming winter. But as soon as the mouse had gotten comfortable, in crashes the farmer’s “coulter” (that is, cutter blade) and thrusts the mouse back into the harsh elements. In this regard, the destruction of the mouse’s nest may be understood as a symbol for the enclosure of the commons that occurred during the Scottish Agricultural Revolution. The privatization of public lands eventually forced thousands of tenant farmers from their homes—just like the mouse.

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