Talk:The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)/Archive 2

Archive 1 Archive 2

plagiarized?

The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)#Origins cites https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/twelve-days-christmas/

In fact, one appears to plagiarize the other, but which came first? My guess is snopes.

Copied and pasted from Wikipedia:

as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as offering up a kiss or a sweet.[1]

Copied and pasted from Snopes:

as a Twelfth Night “memory-and-forfeits” game in which the leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as a offering up a kiss or a sweet.

Side by side comparison in Wikipedia sandbox edit history

Should Wikipedia rephrase, or merely reformat to show the line is a quotation, not just a citation?

Are there any other instances of plagiarism in the article?

71.121.143.172 (talk) 20:14, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Good catch. We can get to the bottom of it quickly. The edit was made just over a decade ago on 2008-12-11T01:43:12 (UTC) by an editor who is still somewhat active: PlaysInPeoria (talk · contribs). Perhaps we can find out what happened.
I don't know of any archives that show the state of the Snopes article at that time, but I'll just reword if for now to avoid potential copyright issues. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "The song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was created as a coded reference". Snopes.com. 15 December 2008. Retrieved 10 December 2011. There is absolutely no documentation or supporting evidence for [the claim that the song is a secret Catholic catechism] whatsoever, other than mere repetition of the claim itself. The claim appears to date only to the 1990s, marking it as likely an invention of modern day speculation rather than historical fact.

The secret Catholic Catechism

When I started to edit this article I wanted to get to the sources for the claims - the article at that time only labeled them as "unlikely". I pulled a paper copy of McKellar's article from a research library to get the quotes that appear here. I also located the first appearance of the Stockert and Gilhooley claims - to give specific references to "the 1990's" as the point of origin. I have looked for other pre-1982 references and I think these three are all there is, speculation and assertions without evidence or even plausibility. Nevertheless, it's repeated every year as originating in 1558. I write this to let editors know this was not lifted from other sources. They are downstream from this article. patsw (talk) 22:29, 1 January 2020 (UTC)