The Mouse in Folklore: Medicine, Omens, and Collecting Teeth

The humble mouse appears in a surprising amount of folklore. Both a harbinger of death if spotted in the house, and a medical remedy for a range of ailments, it seems the mouse both harms and heals.

This reputation even stretches back to ancient Egypt, demonstrating just how ambivalent humans have felt about the tiny rodent for centuries. With strange origin stories, links to a Belgian saint, a use in divination, and a helpful role as the Tooth Mouse, their lore covers a lot of bases!

Let’s take a look at the mouse in folklore!

Mice Origin Stories

Irish folklore contains two tales to explain where mice came from. In one, St. Martin left some food under a tub. He told the other monks not to touch it until the next day. As you can guess, one monk ignored the rule and lifted the tub. A horde of mice ran out, and St. Martin had to deal with the issue. He threw a glove at them, which turned into a cat (Daly 2024).

Another tale involved St. Colmcille. He wanted to feed the poor so he asked Jesus for help. Jesus gave him some cooking fat and told him to leave it in a cooking pot for 24 hours. If he did so, plenty of young pigs would climb out of the pot. St. Colmcille did as he was told, but only mice emerged at the end of the twenty-four hour period. It turned out that the serving girl had stolen some of the fat and put it in a bowl for herself. The act of theft doomed the fat to become an animal well known for stealing food (Daly 2024).

In ancient Egypt, people believed the mouse spontaneously appeared from the Nile whenever the river receded (Dawson 1924: 83).

The Mouse and Medicine

The use of the mouse in medicine dates back to ancient Egypt, and there is archaeological evidence of such a use (Dawson 1924: 84). Here, it was beneficial in medicine, but generally seen as a bad omen. The mouse was considered an associate of those enemies of Ra (Dawson 1925: 227).

In the Ebers Papyrus, one recipe suggested mixing equal parts of pig fat, mouse fat, snake fat, and cat fat, and then applying it to areas beset with rheumatoid stiffness. The Hearst Medical Papyrus recommended putting a cooked mouse in fat until it rotted, and then applying the fat to the hair – though I’m not sure why (Dawson 1924: 84).

A spell in a papyrus concerned with magic suggested that an ill child should eat a cooked mouse. Next, the parent should bind the mouse’s bones with string tied in seven knots. The child should wear this around their neck (Dawson 1924: 84).

Dioscorides said that mice could be applied to scorpion stings. Parents could prevent children from dribbling by making them eat roasted mice (Dawson 1924: 84).

One recipe also suggested smearing everything with the fat of a cat to stop mice running around (Dawson 1925: 228).

Surprisingly, Warren Dawson suggested people were still using mice for medicinal purposes in the 1920s in England and Wales. He reported the mice were sometimes made into a pie and given to children to cure incontinence, dribbling, or whooping cough (1924: 86).

That said, reports exist of people making their children eat roasted or fried mice into the 1980s to cure whooping cough (Opie 2005: 268). And in 1958, a belief was recorded in Norfolk that rubbing a dead mouse on the cheek would end toothache (Opie 2005: 268).

Mouse Divination

Pliny considered mice prophetic animals, while finding white mice meant good luck. We see something similar around white rats.

The ancient Greeks and Romans used both rats and mice in a form of divination called myomancy. The name comes from ‘mus’, or mouse, and ‘manteia’, or prophecy.

Thankfully this is not the type of “cut something open and look at its guts” divination. Instead, priests watched how the animals behaved and drew conclusions accordingly.

So they might open a cage to release a mouse and see how it escaped and which direction it chose. Or the diviner might let a mouse lose in a maze and draw conclusions from the route it took. Unsurprisingly, if the mouse cried, that was a bad omen (Ferre 2013).

Pliny also relates mice prophesying wars, and the death of generals based on what they gnawed, like shields and even shoe laces (Opie 2005: 322). Meanwhile, Marie Trevelyan recorded that if a mouse nibbled your clothes, you would die soon (1909: 283).

Even the sheer number of mice that might arrive in your house was an omen. Finding a sudden influx of them meant death would visit the house, while a mouse running over someone meant they would die (Opie 2005: 323).

The Mouse and the Soul

In the medieval era, some believed the soul might take the form of a mouse. A Saxon story featured an episode of a soul leaving the mouth of a sleeping person as a red mouse. A similar belief in Transylvania meant children were supposed to sleep with their mouths closed in case the soul ran away as a mouse and the child never woke up again (Dawson 1925: 243). Yet it was also perilous to harm the soul-mouse, which would likewise harm the human. Even moving the sleeper was dangerous since the mouse would be unable to find and re-enter the body. Sabine Baring-Gould relates a tale from Germany in which servants saw a mouse run out of a miller. They scared the mouse away, but could never rouse the miller (1877: 461).

In Germany, people believed the soul left the body as a mouse after death. The souls of maidens and children took the form of white mice. The soul then spent its first night as a mouse with St. Gertrude, the second with St. Michael, and the third wherever they were supposed to go (Baring-Gould 1877: 462). This is an odd part of the legend since one version of the belief sees St. Gertrude as a patron saint of souls, with a mouse symbol. Yet the more common legend around St. Gertrude sees her drive mice away (Dawson 1925: 244).

The Saint To Rid You of Vermin

St. Gertrude was also the saint to call upon to drive away rats, mice, and bats. According to legend, this dislike of animals considered as vermin came from a particular incident. The devil decided to try St. Gertrude’s patience by tearing her spinning yarn in the form of a mouse (Hennig 1942: 182).

Official processions in honour of St. Gertrude took place in Cologne until the 18th century to ask for her help in driving away mice (Hennig 1942: 183). It was tradition to put away your spinning wheel on St. Gertrude’s Day, or March 17, lest mice would eat your yarn (Hennig 1942: 184). Her association with driving away mice probably explains why she’s the unofficial patron saint of cats.

There is a suggestion that St. Gertrude took the place of Holda or Perchta, the ancient Teutonic goddesses, who turned into a white mouse in order to get into someone’s home (Baring-Gould 1877: 463).

The Mouse and the Lion

The fable of the Mouse and the Lion even dates back to a Demotic papyrus, before being retold in a Greek version, and then again in Aesop’s Fables.

In this story, a mouse ran under a lion’s paws. Before the lion could crush her with a paw, the mouse pointed out that if he ate her, he’d still be hungry, but if he let her go, she could one day repay the favour. The lion thought she was joking in her ability to save his life, but he agreed that she wouldn’t make a satisfying meal, and thus released her.

It was a good thing that he did, because soon after, a hunter caught the lion in a pit. The hunter tied up the lion with rope and left him to take back to his village in the morning. The little mouse turned up, and fulfilled her promise, by gnawing through the lion’s bonds. She hid in his mane once he was free, and they ran away into the wilderness (Dawson 1925: 230).

The Tooth Mouse

While many might be familiar with the concept of the Tooth Fairy, there was also an idea of the Tooth Mouse. This was more prevalent in France and Spain, and a French fairy tale by Madame D’Aulnoy from 1697 sees a fairy take the form of a mouse to steal an evil king’s teeth (Hellisen 2017). By contrast, the Tooth Fairy doesn’t appear in print until 1927, in The Tooth Fairy: Three-act Playlet for Children by Esther Watkins Arnold.

An American superstition collected in the 1920s among college girls held that if you lost a tooth, you should put it in your shoe that night. You’d find a ten-cent piece in its place the next morning because a mouse had bought it (Beckwith 1923: 8). In South Africa, a similar belief persists, with the Tooth Mouse far more common than the Tooth Fairy (Hellisen 2017).

In the Scottish Highlands, parents put their children’s milk teeth into the nearest mouse hole (Dawson 1925: 245). A similar belief appears in Germany and Mexico, apparently to ensure the adult tooth would only come through if the parent left the milk tooth in the mousehole. According to Warren Dawson, Jewish children in southern Russia threw their milk teeth onto the roof, asking mice to give them an iron tooth to replace the tooth they’d lost (1925: 245).

What do we make of this mouse folklore?

Much of it comes from this idea of harming and healing. There is the old belief that mice and rats cause plague, leading to the idea they could also heal. There are even links between mice and a particular version of Apollo, because he was the god of plague, which explains why he would be associated with the animal that would bring the plague.

It’s less clear why the mouse then takes the form of the soul, unless it’s because it’s small. It may be that people saw mice running around next to sleeping people and made the association. If you’re going to see something in your room at night, then a mouse is more likely than many other things.

The Tooth Mouse is a far cuter concept than the Tooth Fairy, and is slightly less creepy. It feeds into those ideas around the strength and continual growth of rodent teeth. Because these practises about giving your tooth to the mouse, either by throwing them on the roof or putting them in the mouse hole, already existed, it makes sense you would then create a being that would come and collect them.

What do you think? Let me know below!

References

Baring-Gould, Sabine (1877), Curious myths of the Middle Ages, Oxford: Rivingtons.

Beckwith, Martha Warren (1923). ‘Signs and Superstitions Collected from American College Girls’. The Journal of American Folklore, 36 (139), pp. 1–15.

Daly, Eugene (2024), ‘The Mouse in Folklore’. Ireland’s Own, available at: https://www.irelandsown.ie/the-mouse-in-folklore/. Accessed 25 November 2024.

Dawson, Warren R. (1924). ‘The Mouse in Egyptian and Later Medicine’. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 10 (2), pp. 83–86.

Dawson, Warren R. (1925). ‘The Mouse in Fable and Folklore’. Folklore, 36 (3), pp. 227–248.

Ferre, Lux (2013), ‘Myomancy’. Occult World, available at: https://occult-world.com/myomancy/. Accessed 25 November 2024.

Hennig, John (1942). ‘Irish Influences in the Folkloristic Tradition of St. Gertrude’. Béaloideas, 12 (1/2), pp. 180–184.

Hellisen, Cat (2017), ‘Children’s Teeth and the Mice That Take Them’. Folklore Thursday, available at: https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/childrens-teeth-mice-take/. Accessed 25 November 2024.

Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem (2005), Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions, Oxford: Oxford University Press (aff link).

Trevelyan, Marie (1909), Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales, London: Elliot Stock.