To a Louse
E156482
"To a Louse" is a satirical poem by Robert Burns that humorously reflects on human vanity and self-awareness after the speaker spots a louse crawling on a finely dressed woman in church.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| To a Louse canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1364908 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: To a Louse Context triple: [Poems of Robert Burns, containsWork, To a Louse]
-
A.
Jar of Flies
Jar of Flies is a critically acclaimed 1994 EP by American rock band Alice in Chains, known for its dark, acoustic sound and introspective themes.
-
B.
The Bird in a Cage
The Bird in a Cage is a Caroline-era stage comedy by English dramatist James Shirley, known for its witty exploration of courtly love and confinement.
-
C.
Words I Might Have Ate
"Words I Might Have Ate" is a song by the American punk rock band Green Day from their early album "Kerplunk."
-
D.
The Germ
The Germ was a short-lived 1850 periodical founded by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to promote their artistic and literary ideals.
-
E.
The Obscene Bird of Night
The Obscene Bird of Night is a landmark Chilean novel by José Donoso, renowned for its dark, labyrinthine narrative and its exploration of identity, madness, and social decay within the Latin American literary canon.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: To a Louse Target entity description: "To a Louse" is a satirical poem by Robert Burns that humorously reflects on human vanity and self-awareness after the speaker spots a louse crawling on a finely dressed woman in church.
-
A.
Jar of Flies
Jar of Flies is a critically acclaimed 1994 EP by American rock band Alice in Chains, known for its dark, acoustic sound and introspective themes.
-
B.
The Bird in a Cage
The Bird in a Cage is a Caroline-era stage comedy by English dramatist James Shirley, known for its witty exploration of courtly love and confinement.
-
C.
Words I Might Have Ate
"Words I Might Have Ate" is a song by the American punk rock band Green Day from their early album "Kerplunk."
-
D.
The Germ
The Germ was a short-lived 1850 periodical founded by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to promote their artistic and literary ideals.
-
E.
The Obscene Bird of Night
The Obscene Bird of Night is a landmark Chilean novel by José Donoso, renowned for its dark, labyrinthine narrative and its exploration of identity, madness, and social decay within the Latin American literary canon.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (42)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
poem
ⓘ
satirical poem ⓘ |
| addressedTo | a louse ⓘ |
| addresses | the folly of pride in appearance ⓘ |
| author | Robert Burns ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | Scotland ⓘ |
| creator | Robert Burns ⓘ |
| culturalSignificance | often quoted for its insight into self-knowledge ⓘ |
| exploresConcept |
illusion of social status
ⓘ
self-deception ⓘ |
| famousLine | O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, / To see oursels as others see us! ⓘ |
| featuresCharacter |
a finely dressed woman in church
ⓘ
a louse ⓘ |
| firstLine | Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie ⓘ |
| genre | satire ⓘ |
| hasImagery | insect crawling on a lady’s bonnet ⓘ |
| hasMoral | outward finery cannot hide human frailty ⓘ |
| includedIn | collections of Robert Burns’s poems ⓘ |
| influenced | discussions of perspective and self-perception in literary criticism ⓘ |
| language |
English
ⓘ
Scots ⓘ |
| literaryDevice |
colloquial diction
ⓘ
humor ⓘ irony ⓘ vivid imagery ⓘ |
| literaryForm | lyric poem ⓘ |
| literaryMovement | Scottish literature ⓘ |
| meter | standard Habbie stanza ⓘ |
| narrativePerspective | first person ⓘ |
| originalLanguageVariant | Scots dialect of English ⓘ |
| partOf | Robert Burns’s satirical works ⓘ |
| publicationCentury | 18th century ⓘ |
| rhetoricalMode | apostrophe ⓘ |
| setting | church service ⓘ |
| subject |
human vanity
ⓘ
self-awareness ⓘ social pretension ⓘ |
| theme |
equality of all people beneath outward appearance
ⓘ
the gap between self-image and how others see us ⓘ |
| tone |
humorous
ⓘ
satirical ⓘ |
| writtenBy | Robert Burns ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: To a Louse Description of subject: "To a Louse" is a satirical poem by Robert Burns that humorously reflects on human vanity and self-awareness after the speaker spots a louse crawling on a finely dressed woman in church.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.