Talk:Hebrew Melodies

A fact from Hebrew Melodies appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 December 2018 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Lord Byron was called a "melancholy rat" for writing the Hebrew Melodies?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2018/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Hebrew Melodies.

Wikipedia

Poetry Low‑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
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Classical music

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical music, which aims to improve, expand, copy edit, and maintain all articles related to classical music, that are not covered by other classical music related projects. Please read the guidelines for writing and maintaining articles. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.Classical musicWikipedia:WikiProject Classical musicTemplate:WikiProject Classical musicClassical music articles

Reception section[edit]

Here's the sentence I tried to improve as currently written:

In October 1814 Byron wrote to his fiancée Annabella Milbanke (whom he was to marry in January 1815, and was a strict Christian) on his writing on this unlikely topic. "It is odd enough that this should have fallen to my lot - who have been abused as an "infidel" - Augusta says they will call me a Jew next" - and indeed that came to pass in street ballads, with comments from reviewers of the Melodies such as "A young Lord is seldom the better for meddling with Jews".

Note that there is no citation given for the quotation from the letter, no citation for the street ballads, and no citation for the quotation from the review. I've added tags.

I assume the citations will be easy to find. But there are two bigger problems: 1) the street ballads are mentioned so briefly and casually in passing that it would be easy for the reader to miss the point — why not quote from one directly? 2) As written, the sentence conflates a) Byron's line that 'they will call me a Jew next', b) the street ballads (which presumably do actually call him a Jew), and c) the comments from reviewers which do not call him a Jew, but rather make a joke about young lords borrowing money.

I presume the reversion was due to my explanation of the money-lender joke. I won't put that back in now, but I'll try to address the other problems as best I can. Doops | talk 16:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]