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A poem by an American poet Max Ehrmann, written around 1940 and entitled Desiderata, is known in many countries. Nevertheless, in popular culture it functions almost everywhere – among others in Poland – as an apocrypha. Such a reception, in which the author is forgotten, is facilitated by the structure of the text and its message. The poem is written in a style of protestant moral warnings known from preachers’ texts. Also, the way it is popularized follows folklore’s patterns of distribution (e.g., hand copying, rewriting, public performances, singing). By analyzing this case study we can observe the mechanisms of apocryphal way of functioning of a common knowledge.