Talk:The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

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How exactly is the poem "nonsense?" It makes perfect sense to me.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.12.73 (talk) 06:28, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, how often do you see an owl playing a guitar? 213.249.135.36 21:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Granted, yet there are plenty of other anthropomorphised animal tales not similarly classified here as nonsense. 02:55, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

There is a song by Global Goon entitled "The Owl, Pussycat". This song is on the cd "Goon" which was released in 1996 according to the Wiki page. The title of the song warrants the consideration of including this as a popular culture reference to the poem.

Is the plot section really necessary?

All it does is summarise what can easily be discerned from the poem itself. If no-one has any objections I'm going to delete it. --2.120.125.69 (talk) 09:12, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I had exactly the same opinion. K9ine (talk) 11:20, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sand or strand?

My wife and I both remember being taught 'they danced on the strand', not 'on the edge of the sand'. This is trivial and pedantic and doesn't really relate to discussion of article, but does anyone have a similar memory? Any explanation: different editions -- or something more sinister... Sam Dutton (talk) 09:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lear definitely wrote "sand". Such memory errors are common.--SvanBueren (talk) 12:53, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Popular Culture Reference - Eddie Izzard

This poem is referenced in Eddie Izzard's stand-up comedy show "Stripped" during his bit about Noah's Ark. His squirrel character, who is the loan animal survivor of the Ark, besides Noah,his family, and the lions and tigers("those stripey bastards killed everything, man"), finds his wife has escaped with an owl and a cat on a boat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.154.166.77 (talk) 16:07, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bowdlerizing

I have fond memories of this poem from my childhood. Now, 40 or so years later, I'm a father. And I notice that modern children's books almost always bowdlerize this poem. Specifically this part: 'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love, / What a beautiful Pussy you are, / You are, / You are! / What a beautiful Pussy you are!

If one looks, one observes that the books nowadays avoid using the word "pussy", replacing it with "pussycat" and completely destroying the scansion. Why the publishers would do this mystifies me; it's not like a child will be corrupted by a perfectly legitimate use of the contraction of "pussycat".

I think this is worth mentioning in the article, but beyond my own observations of contemporary children's books that include this poem, I can't find any 3rd party sources that mention this fact. ~Amatulić (talk) 05:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Musical settings

I wanted to mention that I made an amendment to the part about the Elton Hayes version. Some people may think that he composed the music for his recording, but he actually sang the setting by Victor Hely-Hutchinson. The Elton Hayes recording also credits Hely-Hutchinson as the composer of the music. I've also mentioned Hely-Hutchinson in the list of composers who have set the poem to music, and I've also mentioned John Rutter and Humphrey Searle, except that the Searle version is spoken to music and not sung. Yip1982 (talk) 11:30, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (January 2018)

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Publication year?

How come the text says it was published in 1871 and the sidebar says 1867? Atario (talk) 10:16, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reference in popular culture

This poem may be referenced by Mister Roger's Neighborhood characters X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat. I can't find sources for this. Acaudel (talk) 02:29, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]