Talk:Tam o' Shanter (Burns poem)

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WikiProject Scotland To-do: edit  Template:Scotland opentask

If the policy of Wikipedia prohibits ever including full texts of poems, I think it is a shame.

I posted this to clear up the situation where the Robert Burns article pointed to the hat in reference to the poem. See if you can come up with an acceptable solution/disambiguation rather than just deleting this page. Thanks. Guinnog 20:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• I don't think that long texts of poems, without any discussion/criticism, are encyclopedic content. After all, when you open an encyclopedia such as Britannica, you don't expect poems/stories/novels etc. reproduced in their entirety. An encyclopedic article on "Tam O'Shanter" can be written; this should describe and discuss the poem rather than just reproduce it. Of course you may use short quotations where appropriate. But otherwise Wikipedia is not a repository of source material. 131.111.8.97 20:31, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• • Fair point. I have modified it to a stub linking to the text and will run something better up in the next few days. Don't delete it in the meantime please. Thanks. Guinnog 20:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

    All right, I have removed the "delete" notices for now, as it no longer is just the text of the poem. 131.111.8.97 20:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks.Guinnog 20:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

What a lot of waffle. See the current version which is how Guinnog should have handled it in the first place. -- RHaworth 06:54, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

And would have done had I known about the existence of Wikisource. 131.111.8.97 could have pointed me to this rather than just moaning. God you're ugly, RHaworth. Or did you just choose a particularly unflattering photo? ;) Guinnog 18:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• What on earth do you mean, "moaning"? I have just pointed out (quite politely I trust) why posting whole poems is wrong (in my humble opinion) and what would be the right way to start the article... 131.111.8.97 17:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • And also I do not entirely see the point about Wikisource: of course you can put the text on Wikisource, but I thought you wanted to have a link from another Wikipedia article, and for that you would still want to create something on Wikipedia... 131.111.8.97 18:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I wanted to clear up the situation where the link in the Burns article pointed to the hat. I didn't put the text on Wikisource. As I also said, I didn't know of the existence of Wikipedia until now.

Another time, in my opinion, you would do better to try to remediate the situation rather than just placing a delete notice. Guinnog 21:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

• That's all right, it's just that I don't know very much about Burns or his poems, so I can't possibly write a good article (not everyone is an expert on everything, you know...) I am sure you (and other contributors) have done a really good job, the article really looks quite good now! 131.111.8.101 21:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC) (note it's the same person repyling, though a slightly different IP)

• • I agree that the page now looks decent. Which is a result. Thanks for your help. Guinnog 22:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Proper TOS page 2 "One of the first narrative poems"? 3 Typo? 4 Merge

[edit] Proper TOS page

I've put back a couple of quotes for now; I'm going to try and come up with a proper page in the next day or two. Audio anyone? Guinnog 21:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "One of the first narrative poems"?

Is it reasonable to call it "one of the first narrative poems in a European language"? Weren't the Illiad and the Odyssey narrative poems, and written 2500 years before Tam O'Shanter? 213.250.62.98 21:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair point. Maybe 'modern European lang' would be more accurate? Guinnog 22:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

No, even then it would not be accurate. Possibly the first in Scots, but English has a continuous tradition since Beowulf, and Italian, French and German have similar unbroken traditions from the Middle Ages onwards. The claim is just nonsense. --Doric Loon 20:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Typo?

I changed the block quote to read "as if blasted by a bolt of lightning", but if it was correct before ("as it..."), feel free to revert.--Joel 00:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

As the editor who more-or-less wrote the Cutty-sark article, I would resist its merging with Tam o' Shanter (Burns poem). The phrase cutty-sark has various different references, all going back to the poem of course, but now fairly diverse, and this page is partly a disambig for those. It also explains the use of this phrase in every-day language. It certainly does not only relate to the character in the poem. Trying to do all this in a subsection of the Tam o' Shanter article would be unhelpful, I think. It would be better to have the two articles, even at the expense of having a couple of details about the Burns character given in two places. --Doric Loon 21:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I think they're better separate too - if nothing else, they categorize differently, one being a poem and the other an article of clothing. (Not that anybody feels any restraint about adding every article to every category, sigh.) Stan 22:49, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I see your point. However this is not a good reason for keeping the redundant article. Guinnog 20:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, no, it's not redundant. You've tried to make it redundant by copying the main points into the "see also" section of this article, but that is (a) less detailed and (b) less accessible. Cutty-sark has become a tradition in its own right, and merging is not helpful. You could equally well argue for merging the article on the Tam o' Shanter hat. This article is on its way to being a very good discussion of the poem, though it needs to be expanded with much more analysis, references to literary criticism etc. Cluttering it with later Cutty-sark stories detracts from it. Meanwhile the Cutty-sark article is doing its job well. It will also expand, because there are many more C-S references out there which will eventually have to be disambiguated. So I would reduce the "see also" section of this article to a single cross-reference and let the other article be. --Doric Loon 21:13, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

A possible compromise I can see would be to move Cutty-sark to Wiktionary (as the unique part of it is really just a definition of a two-word phrase). Leave a disambig (about 50% of the present content) to cover all these fascinating other historical examples. Integrate the quote and analysis to ToS article. You are right that it needs improving. Maybe you can help? Guinnog 21:21, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Possibly, Guinnog, you and I are both suffering from that phenomenon of people who shaped articles feeling too possessive about them. We've both made our points, so I would suggest we stand back now and let other parties who are not quite so close to it decide. There's no rush, anyway. Stan agrees with me, but if two or three appear agreeing with you then I won't resist a merge. On the other hand, if no-one else pipes up in the next fortnight or so, I would be for removing the merge tags. As for me helping with the article, well by coincidence I have just sent one of my students off looking for literature on this poem. If he finds useful critical content I will suggest he adds it here - or I'll do so myself. But if you want to go to the library and look for stuff, the place to start would be Egerer, A bibliography of Robert Burns; or put Tam o'Shanter into the MLA bibliography. At present the largest part of the article is a plot summary. What English students will find helpful is a summary of what particular scholars have said about the poem. --Doric Loon 21:42, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed on all points, Doric. I haven't the time or energy to go scouring for books in a library, but I will ask my father who has a respectable collection of Burns-related stuff. Guinnog 21:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Five weeks on and no-one has said any more about this, so I will remove the merge tags meanwhile. It doesn't look good if they are there permanently. You can return to the question at some future point if you like. --Doric Loon 09:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)