Talk:Tom Gray's Dream

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While looking for some sources on this poem, I found that the version of it that is much more commonly used and written about is under the title "The Hell-bound Train". This really seems to be the title under which the poem/song is more widely known and transcribed as, as there are much fewer sources discussing it under the "Tom Gray's Dream" title. So, should this article be renamed to match the more commonly used title?

There is also the concern of authorship, as it is discussed in the article. Most of the sources I've looked at have largely stated that the poem was usually published anonymously, and has been attributed to a number of different names over the years, most commonly a "J. W. Pruitt". I have only found two sources that talk about the story of it being written by a Retta M. Brown about her uncle, as this article claims, and as both of those sources were published after this article's creation, it could very likely be that those books got that information from this article.

Similarly to the question of authorship is the actual text of the poem. Various sources have given slightly different versions of the poem, with different phrasing used. One of the sources I've added to the article even examines some of the various differences between versions published over the years. So, with that in mind, is it really appropriate to have the current version of the poem written out in full in the article the way it is now?

As this article has been languishing orphaned and unsourced for over a decade, I'm not expecting to get much in the way of feedback, but in the off chance that other editor's come across this, are there any thoughts on these concerns, and how they should be handled? Rorshacma (talk) 17:18, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]