Talk:The Spider and the Fly (poem)

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Poetry Mid‑importance

	Poetry portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Poetry, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of poetry on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoetryWikipedia:WikiProject PoetryTemplate:WikiProject PoetryPoetry articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

74.60.29.141 (talk) 23:45, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Date of publication came from this page. Also, since the poem is out of copyright, is it permitted to reproduce it in whole here? -- Raj 12:08, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

probably. Anywyay, its a bit late now, its been up for almost a year and no ones done anything about it :) The Dark Lord Trombonator (((¶))) 09:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but that doesn't make this a good article. This isn't wikisource. A text dump does not an article make. Quale 17:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"This poem was also referenced in a player-made mod for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, called MALEVOLENT( http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17781 ), by Paul 'Simyaz' Thomson and served as a warning to players of how The Armour of Malevolence (The Main Antagonist [or friendly NPC, depending on how you played through the mod]) will, in a sense, twist the player's thoughts around, until s/he no longer has a choice about how to go about certain actions. It has been said that you could, in a way, determine the manipulative characteristics of The Armour from his usage of this poem at the early stages of the mod."

this seems obscure and irrelevant at best 24.17.211.150 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Tune?[edit]

According to Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice, Lewis Carroll requested that his parody should be sung to the same tune as the original. But what tune was he referring to? Is there one particular tune that's associated with the poem, and who wrote it and when? 2.25.141.2 (talk) 18:12, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support and attribution needed[edit]

This edit caught my eye. The edit summary says, Text: Reverted the poem's text to that of the source. There were simply too much changes and vandalism, plus some novel additions that could easily be copyright protected. We need a source verify its copyright protection status.

Looking at the Text section. which the edit modified, I see that it purports to quote the text of the poem, without support and from some source which is unidentified there. Please see WP:V: "All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." I see that the External links section of the article includes a link which it presents as "Text of the poem", and I note that the link points to a web page on this website, which identifies itself as "my name is Weed - i live in England - this is my homepage". Please see WP:IRS.

I'm not into poetry, but perhaps someone over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Poetry could help out. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 09:18, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Expert attention needed[edit]

I happened to see this edit, which reverted an unsupported change of "pretty maidens" to "sweet children" back to what it had previously been. However, I noticed that the reverted-to "pretty maidens" version in the quoted text of the piece which begins this article is likewise unsupported. I googled for a supporting source and couldn't find a source which I could verify online (I did come up with this in Wikisource, but no support is cited there either). Among other things I came up with are Moffat, Alfred (2013). 75 British Nursery Rhymes (And A Collection Of Old Jingles) With Pianoforte Accompaniment. Read Books Limited. p. 88. ISBN 978-1-4474-8883-5. and Searson, James William; Martin, George Ellsworth (1911). Studies in Reading. University publishing Company. pp. 212–215.. However, those sources do not support either version; the first says "young maidens" and the second does not have the lines containing the differing bit. I'm guessing that the 1911 source, in particular, might be of interest but it looks to me as if this needs attention from someone who knows more about this topic than I. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:02, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

{update) This edit to the {{expert needed}} tag in the article, the addition of which is documented here, caught my eye. Looking at the current version of the article vs. this September 7, 2019 version which prompted addition of the tag, it appears to me that the problem has been resolved. Since I added the tag, I'm now removing it. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:33, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant mix-up[edit]

The article states: "When Lewis Carroll was readying Alice's Adventures Under Ground for publication as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he replaced a negro minstrel song[4] with The Mock Turtle's Song, a parody of Howitt's poem that mimics the meter and rhyme scheme and parodies the first line, but not the subject matter, of the original.[5]"

Very interesting, but what does this have to do with the poem 'The spider and the fly' ?!? According to my source, the poem 'The spider and the fly' is parodied by Lewis Carrol with another different rhyme, namely 'The lobster quadrille'.

Joe Gatt (talk) 21:05, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In my inexpert understanding, this article and the source it cites ([1]) say that The Lobster Quadrille is from Carrill's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and that it is based on or is very similar to The Spider and the Fly. The WP article The Mock Turtle's Song says pretty much the same thing, as does this pther outside source. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:20, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your kind clarification, Wtmitchell.

Joe Gatt (talk) 03:10, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]