Ideas For a New Title and Of Mice and Men

I am kind of obsessed with Scotland. I have been to Edinburgh twice and we are planning a longer trip to the Highlands for next summer. I may or may not have Scottish ancestors, but that doesn’t matter to me. I also play the bagpipes! It is a fun challenge, and I love the music. My favorite bagpipe music is “Piobaireachd.” See if you can guess how to pronounce it. Piobaireachd tunes are slow and haunting. They are long; some are more than eight minutes, and you play them without sheet music.

I’m mentioning this because I am trying to decide on a new title for my novel Shame of Kings. I want something different, something that captures the book better.

This brings up my reasons for mentioning Of Mice and Men. Most people are familiar with John Steinbeck’s great book of that name. Some know that he got that title from a line in Scottish poet Robert Burns’ poem “To a Mouse.”

The actual line is: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” and the next line is: ‘Gang aft agley.” Translated into modern English, this mean often go wrong. This is a very fitting title.

In the poem, a farmer accidentally destroys the home of a mouse in his field. The farmer goes on to say the mouse is actually better off because it doesn’t worry or even think about the future. Sort of a carpe diem message.

Now in Steinbeck’s book, George and Lenny constantly dream of a better life and their plans to have their own farm. Of course, in this tragic, sad story, nothing works out.

I originally gave my upcoming historical fiction book the title, “Shame of Kings,” but I want to change it. I want to give it a more fitting, maybe more thoughtful, title. Shame of Kings doesn’t really represent the story. My novel is darker, and doesn’t have a happy ending, as it includes how the Calusa Indians in Florida and the Aztecs are both invaded by the Spaniards. Neither survive once they encounter the Spaniards. My main character is Sinapa, a Calusa prince whose father sends away instead of letting him lead the tribe’s warriors against the approaching Conquistadors.

So I started thinking about Burns. I really like his poetry. He wrote in an old Scots dialect and was one of the Romantic poets. His works had themes of nature and patriotism and evil. Some were directly about the Devil.

I’ve started looking through Burns’ poems to see if I could find something I might use for my book. I gathered a list of lines I got from his poems. Most are in the original Scots dialect, and I used the modern English translation for a few. Here is the list:

I’m not sure which one I like best or if I will even use one of them. However, I am leaning towards a few: “when royal heads are hunted”, “with toil and pain”, and “what force or guile could not subdue.”

What do you think? I am very open to suggestions. How have you come up with your own titles? Let me know what you think. I have pasted to full text of “To a Mouse” below. I really recommend you listen to it in the original dialect. Here is a link:

And by the way, it’s pronounced “pibroch.” Here a link of one of my favorite pipers, Stuart Liddell playing a tune:

I would really appreciate it if you could share this post. I’m trying get as much attention as possible for my book before I launch it. I’m 99% sure I will go with Draft2Digital.

Thanks for reading.