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Archive 1

New Article!

Thanks for the addition. However, this the image is incorrectly called a "horseshoe nail". Horseshoes are applied with sheet-cut nails, which have four sides. I can't flag the just the image for deletion. Great job on the article though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.184.109 (talk) 01:29, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

The article didn't exist, and this has so much history and relevance to causuality, folklore and even chaos theory, I had to add it. Does anyone know how to create a disambiguation page? There are three references to "the nail" in wikipedia - even an article titled "For want of a nail" that descibes a book published in the 70's - which I find extremely misleading due to seven century history of this proverb. I personally think the article about the book should be retitled "For want of a nail (Novel)" to remove any ambiguity - but I don't know how to do that... Timmccloud (talk) 04:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, it has existed in the Hebrew Wikipedia since January. PRRP (talk) 19:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Restoring versions of poem

Not sure why they were removed, as there are many variations of this poem and not one is the "gold standard" of the poem - Benjamin Franklin published at least two different variations of the proverb in the farmer's almanac so the different variations have a place in the article. Restoring them. Timmccloud (talk) 13:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

WP Poetry assessment

I thought I'd drop by and respond to your assessment request. The article is off to a good start, so good work on that. Not sure if "For Want of a Nail" should be in quotations in the first instance. I would also consider writing the history section as prose - the bullets just don't do justice. Anyway, I've rated this as a start class pending further expansion and referencing. Don't worry about that "importance" field... most of our articles end up at low importance and it's really only for the internal use of the poetry project. Take a look at our project page WP:POETRY to take a look at some of our recognized content; it might give you some ideas as far as where to go next. I'm only on Wiki intermittently the next few days but feel free to drop a comment on my talk page if there are questions. --Midnightdreary (talk) 13:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the use of a list rather than prose in the History section, see WP:EMBED. I think you'll find that prose is the way to go. As long as it's all reference appropriately (which it is), it shouldn't matter how you present the information. Hope that helps! --Midnightdreary (talk) 20:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Proverb

A proverb is a "well-known neatly-expressed sayings that give advice or express a supposed truth" according to Chambers On line Dictionary. I would call this a "nursery rhyme". Nursery rhymes often told stories based on true experiences - Little Miss Muffet, Nankee Doodle (turned in to Yankee Doodle in the US), Humpty Dumpty etc. Hazel johnston (talk) 11:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC) 13th July 2011

Modern family references

(Quoted completely from main article)

Variation

For want of a nail a kingdom was lost

For want of a nail a horseshoe was lost,
for want of a horseshoe a horse went lame,
for want of a horse a rider never got through,
for want of a rider a message never arrived,
for want of a message an army was never sent,
for want of an army a battle was lost,
for want of a battle a war was lost,
for want of a war a kingdom fell,
and all for want of a nail.

Marie Jennie Curzon Mele

Favorite poem of and Version taught by Retired Teacher, Marie Jennie Curzon Mele Paramount Unified School District, Paramount, Calif, approx 1966-1983

Born in Winnepeg/Mannitoba, Canada during the Middle of -40F winter 2/26/21, the Eldest of 4, raised her brother and sister Fred, Dulcie, (and Vic who died at birth) during the depression after her Mother Sarah Jane Pateman died and her Father Sydney Curzon struggled to make ends meet

Widowed at 37, Lived in Lakewood, Calif from 1948-2003, walking to gather signatures to make Lakewood a city in approx 1954

Mentor/teacher/friend to hundreds,
Mother of 2, Robert Anthony Mele and Patricia Ann Mele Krage
Grandmother of 5, Robert's son Jonathan Robert Mele Patricia's 4 Children: (with or without the Honorary 'J' in her never used first name "Jessica" given in honor to match her father, James' Krage's first names 'J') Vanessa Crystal Krage Johnathan Michael Christopher Krage Joshua Robert Christian Krage

Died Peacefully at home, sitting up, taking an afternoon nap, surrounded by loving family, Bellflower, Calif 7/12/06


  • This edit was very nicely done, but Wikipedia has Notability Guidelines which this edit does not adhere too. In specific, "Wikipedia is not the place to honor departed friends and relatives. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must be notable besides being fondly remembered." If you want to keep this article, you might consider a biographical entry on Merle, as long as you also remained within the Biographical Guidelines as well (for example, the Geneology information is not allowed of living people). Thank you for a wonderful story, I have moved it here to the discussion page of the article for others to see, but it doesn't belong in the main article entry. Thanks for being bold! Timmccloud (talk) 12:31, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
    • I've heard this version before too, none of the versions on the main page talk about the rider and the message version. This was the one I knew and I think is one of the best version. I thought it came from Asia somewhere. Then again it might be one of those miss-attributions that happens with proverbs. However I have definitely heard and known the rider delivering a message version so it must occur somewhere more notable than the retired teacher's memory.64.132.80.134 (talk) 19:31, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Old German sources

There are some German texts from the 13th and 14th century that mention something similar

I hear the wise men say
A nail holds a horse shoe
A horse shoe (holds) a horse
A horse (holds) a man who can fight
A man (holds) a castle
...

See "184 Der Nagel" on http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Kinder-_und_Haus-M%C3%A4rchen_Band_3_(1856)/Anmerkungen and page 333 of http://books.google.com/books?id=m5YmgtlQJH8C.

Thesaurus proverbiorum medii aevi quotes Reinmar von Zweter and Hugo von Trimberg


  • I added Freidank's Bescheidenheit to the main page. Reimar von Zweter's version can be found in the codex manesse [1], but Freidank's is more succinct, and why mention both. In Leopold Zatocil, Textkritische Bemerkungen zum Ackermann aus Boehmen, a latin version (Ferrum per clavum ferrumque equus, per equum vir, perque virum Castrum, per Castrum patria durat) in a 12th century MS (Zwettler Handschrift) is mentioned, but of the sources given there I can only find very bad OCR versions online, so I didn't look into this further. Rathgemz (talk) 16:43, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Dad's Army

In the episode "No spring for Fraser" (Series Three Episode 025), this proverb is paraphrased by Captain Mainwaring whilst berating fraser for his loss of a Lewis Gun butterfly spring. Somebody put it on the main page pls. --89.12.249.49 (talk) 19:38, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Early Reference

After reading the article's section on earliest reference, I was struck by the 1400s time frame as being not quite so early as John Gower's usage in "Confessio Amantis" from 1390, the excerpt reading: 

 For want of a nail, the shoe is lost ; 
 For want of a shoe, the horse is lost ; 
 For want of a horse, the rider is lost.— Heywood. 
 Spare well and spend well (Hazlitt).

My reference can be found at archive.org (http://archive.org/stream/earlyenglishprov00skeauoft/earlyenglishprov00skeauoft_djvu.txt) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Butlerwm (talk • contribs) 18:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The Gower version from his 1390 Confessio Amantis is quoted in the article. It does not mention a nail, shoe, horse, or rider. The excerpt quoted above is an annotation added by Walter William Skeat in his 1910 book Early English Proverbs Chiefly of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Heywood referred to is presumably John Heywood, but I could not spot this saying in an 1867 reprint of the 1562 edition of his Proverbs. Exactly the same wording (except for the punctuation) is found in George Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs (posthumously published in 1640), also quoted in the article. The incorporation in Outlandish Proverbs suggests Herbert believed the proverb to have a non-English origin. I guess Skeat made a mistake, mixing up Herbert and Heywood.  --Lambiam 18:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Chaos Theory

I don't think the butterfly effect or the chaos theory is relevant. If a king was about embark upon a war on which the outcome of the kingdom depended he might reasonably issue an order requiring key personnel to make sure all their equipment is in order or it might be just standard practice.

Army privates are required to keep their weapons clean. Nobody had to anticipate which specific rifle will play a key role, keep them all clean at all times. It is reasonable that a kingdom require that all messengers check that there horses were in proper order. That the battle might turn upon a butterfly in a distance land is a totally random event and not in the same category. CaptCarlsen (talk) 15:27, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

→100%. The chaos theory claim represents a manifest lack of understanding of the butterfly effect and I have removed the following sentance from the introduction "The rhyme thereby relates a conjectural example of the "butterfly effect," an effect studied in chaos theory, involving sensitive dependence on small differences in initial conditions." Silverwood (talk) 15:00, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Implications of Franklin variations – original research?

The article currently claims that references to Kings and England were "stripped out" in the versions due to Franklin, thus "circumstantially enforcing the argument" that the Richard III story is the source of the original proverb. But none of the early versions refers specifically to England, or even to kings or kingdoms. The surrounding narrative of Baldwin's story does, but this was published in 1912, more than a century after Franklin's death, and it has no claim, even implicitly, that the storyline is "about the proverb". So even if Franklin knew a version involving a kingdom, it could be any kingdom fought over in a battle with horsemen, including entirely fictional ones. But we don't know which versions he knew or could have known, so the claim that references were "stripped out of a popular proverb" by Ben is not based on any of the information or sources referenced in the article. Even if further research shows that a version referring to a kingdom waa current in Franklin's days, the omission would in my opinion at best suggest that Franklin thought the public might take this as a reference to England, not that he personally thought it was. But even this original speculation is moot unless we have a reliable source for a "kingdom version" predating Franklin's. And then, even if we find a diary entry by Franklin explicitly stating that he believed the proverb to refer to Richard III, it would certainly be of interest to mention that here, but the fact that he believed this to be true would not make it any more plausible than it was already. So I suspect that what we have here is some original research.  --Lambiam 17:37, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

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