Talk:Jack Spratt (fictional detective)

message: Has Fforde acknowledge any connection between the Jack Spratt from Caversham Heights / Big Over Easy and the one mentioned in Eyre Affair?
(End of ch 9 "Can I get down?  It's time for Jack Spratt's Casebook.") Ralphmerridew 19:27, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: I undid your move.  There does not seem to be any point, and you gave absolutely no reason.  Choor monster (talk) 19:49, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It's due to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, the majority of book refs refer to the original Jack Spratt, not the detective character based on Jack Spratt. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:05, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What was the move for? 

message: I'm not sure what you mean by 1639.  Spelling in those days was non-standardized, and pretty much everything existing in multiple variants.  I'm citing dictionaries and reference works, treating them as WP:RS.  Almost all of them are coming up exclusively "Jack Sprat", with no hint of a variant "Jack Spratt".  The OED2, for example, has an entry for "Jack sprat", meaning a little fellow, and two citations: "Hard you euer such a counsell of such a Iacke sprot?" (1570) and
"Jack-sprat, a Dwarf, or very little Fellow, a Hop-on-my-thumb." (1699).  dictionary.com lists "jack sprat" only.  Merriam-Webster does not seem to have any entry whatsoever.
Note that "sprat" is a real word, meaning some kind of little fish.  That's why it's "Jack Sprat".
A fascinating variant is in Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales: A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England (James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, John Russell Smith, 1849) comes the following.  The author gives a very condensed comment on "Jack Sprat would eat no fat", and cites the following 1659 printing:
:Archdeacon Pratt would eat no fatt,
::His wife would eat no lean;
:'Twixt Archdeacon Pratt and Joan his wife,
::The meat was eat up clean.
The same authors go one step further in A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century, Volume 2 (1872) and say (under the entry PRATT) that "Jack Spratt" is a common substitute for "Archdeacon Pratt".
The Dictionary of Proverbs (George Latimer Apperson, 2006) considers, instead, that the Archdeacon Pratt version is an oddity, and his other citations all involve "Jack" or "Jack Sprat".  His 1639 source cites Jack and Jill, no last name, but in Apperson's next entry, he cites (from the same 1639 source) "Jack-Sprat teacheth his grandame."  (This is part of my bewilderment regarding what you were referring to by 1639.  A version of the rhyme goes that far back.)
I found these by doing a Google book search for "jack sprat" dictionary.  If you just do a book search for "jack sprat" versus "jack spratt", you'll notice the former has many more reference sources than the latter.  It's this, plus the sources I've already cited, which convinces me "Jack Spratt" should be thought of as a misspelling instead of a simple variant. Choor monster (talk) 12:34, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sprat versus Spratt 

message: Jack Sprat of nursery rhyme fame is just as much a "character" as Jack Spratt of Fforde fiction fame.  Using "character" to dab flat out doesn't make any sense. Choor monster (talk) 13:56, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newest move doesn't make any sense 

message: A WP:BEFORE search today for "Jack Spratt" -Sprat turned up no discussion of anything related to Jasper Fforde. It did turn up another book with the same title by Joshua Robertson.
This leads me to believe Jack Spratt is not a notable character and does not merit a standalone article.  It might be worthy of a merge with Jasper Fforde. Rhadow (talk) 19:42, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Jack Spratt notable?