and dying in the water, he shouted out these words:

“You won’t evade the gods in doing these deceitful things,

tossing me shipwrecked from your body as if off a crag.

You rotten bastard, you were not better than me upon land

at fighting or wrestling or running, so you brought me to the water

and hurled me into it! God has an eye for vengeance.

You will not avoid paying a penalty and

righteous payback to the host of mice who honor me.”

As he said this, he gasped in the water. And Platelicker

saw him as he sat upon the luxuriant banks.

Then he wailed terribly, ran, and informed the mice.

A dread wrath fell upon them as they learned his fate,

and they ordered their heralds to summon their kin

to the assembly at the home of Breadmuncher at dawn.

He was father of pitiful Crumbthief who floated on the pond

as a corpse facing upward, no longer struggling

on the banks but raised up in the middle of the sea.

And so they came hurrying at dawn and among them first

Breadmuncher rose enraged over his son to make this speech:

“Friends, even if I alone suffered these many evils from the frogs,

it would still be a vile crime against us all.

I am wretched because I have lost three children:

a most hateful weasel snatched up the first and killed him

as she dragged him from his hole.

Harsh men dragged the second to his doom

once they designed a wooded trick with their newfangled arts—

that thing they call the trap, the destroyer of mice.

[A mouse-eating great beast made my first son into dinner

as he chanced upon him spinning on his fat heel.]

The third was beloved to me and his prized mother,

Bellowmouth drowned him once he dragged him to the deep.

Come, let us arm ourselves and go out to face them

once we’ve arrayed our bodies in our well-worked arms.”

In saying this, he persuaded everyone to arm themselves;

and so, Ares who loves war armed them.

First, they fit their greaves to their two legs,

after breaking some pale beans and fitting them well,

beans they nibbled clean by working on them all night.

They had chestpieces made of reed-bound hides

which they made skillfully after flaying a weasel.

Their shield was the middle-section of a lamp. And their spear

was a well-measured needle, a completely bronze work of Ares.

The helmet on their temples was the husk of chick pea.

And this is the way the mice were armed. When the frogs noticed

they rose up from the water: and once they gathered in the same place

they summoned a council for wicked war.

While they were examining the conflict and noise,

a herald approached carrying a staff in his hand:

Bowldiver, the son of great-hearted Cheeseborer,

in announcing the evil report of war said these kind of things: