Humpty Dumpty

This article is about the nursery rhyme. For other meanings, see Humpty Dumpty (disambiguation).

Humpty Dumpty sits on a wall, prior to his death.

Humpty Dumpty is a character in a Nursery rhyme typically portrayed as an egg. Most English-speaking children are familiar with the rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

The rhyme does not actually state that Humpty Dumpty is an egg. In its first printed form in 1810, the rhyme is posed as a riddle and exploits for misdirection the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also 18th-Century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person; the riddle being that whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall would not be irreparably damaged, an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as Boule Boule in French, or Lille Trille in Swedish & Norwegian; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.

Origins

Previous to the "little, clumsy person" meaning, the term "humpty dumpty" referred to Lucy Arnold. There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". As some are mutually exclusive, the theories necessarily include false etymologies.

• According to an insert taken from the East Anglia Tourist Board in England, Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon used in the Siege of Colchester during the English Civil War. It was mounted on top of the St Mary's at the Wall Church in Colchester defending the city against siege in the summer of 1648. Although Colchester was a royalist stronghold, it was besieged by the Roundheads for 11 weeks before finally falling. The church tower was hit by enemy cannon fire and the top of the tower was blown off, sending "Humpty" tumbling to the ground. Naturally all the King's horses and all the King's men (royalist cavalry and infantry respectively) tried to mend "him" but in vain. Other reports have Humpty Dumpty referring to a sniper nicknamed One-Eyed Thompson, who occupied the same church tower.

Visitors to Colchester can see the reconstructed Church tower as they reach the top of Balkerne Hill on the left hand side of the road. An extended version of the rhyme gives additional verses, including the following:

In Sixteen Hundred and Forty-Eight

When England suffered the pains of state

The Roundheads lay siege to Colchester town

Where the King's men still fought for the crown

There One-Eyed Thompson stood on the wall

A gunner of deadliest aim of all

From St. Mary's Tower his cannon he fired

Humpty-Dumpty was its name

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...

Another version has it:

In Sixteen Hundred and Forty-Eight

When England suffered the pains of state

The Roundheads lay siege to Colchester town

Where the King's men still fought for the crown

Then One-Eyed Thompson stood on the wall

A gunner of deadliest aim

The cannon he fired from the top of the tower

Humpty-Dumpty was its name

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...

• In another theory, Humpty Dumpty referred to King Richard III of England, the hunchbacked monarch, the "Wall" being either the name of his horse (called "White Surrey" in Shakespeare's play), or a reference to the supporters who deserted him. During the battle of Bosworth Field, he fell off his steed and was said to have been "hacked into pieces". (However, although the play depicts Richard as a hunchback, other historical evidence suggests that he was not.)

• The story of Cardinal Wolsey's downfall is supposedly depicted in the children's nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty. At length Cawood Castle (Cawood, a village in Yorkshire, seven miles southwest of York) passed to Cardinal Wolsey, who let it fall into disrepair in the early part of his career (1514 - 1530), due to his residence at the Court, devotion to temporal affairs and his neglect of his diocesan duties. King Henry VIII sent Wolsey back home in 1523 after he failed to obtain a divorce from the Pope - a huge mistake on Wolsey's part. Wolsey returned to the castle and began to restore it to its former grandeur. However, he was arrested for high treason in November, 1530 and ordered to London for trial. He left on 6 November, but took ill at Leicester and died in the Abbey there on 29 November.

• An explanation given on a British radio programme described Humpty Dumpty as a siege tower, used by the Cavaliers (King's Men) during the English civil war. Unfortunately, as it was poorly designed, the tower often toppled over when it was full of men and broke. Hence, "All the King's horses and all the King's men, couldn't put Humpty together again."

• In another twist Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon which was upon the wall of Edinburgh Castle (dates and times unclear)and that the cannon one day (while firing) exploded into a thousand pieces, scattering bits of it far and wide with whatever was left in a shattered heap at the bottom of the wall.

• The story of Humpty Dumpty, is also rumoured to be based upon the untimeley death of a 14th century Romanian Prince Humperdink, who happened to fall from the battlements of his father's castle, shattering his skull. He was also rumoured to have suffered from brittle bone disease.

In Through the Looking Glass

Humpty Dumpty and Alice. From Through the Looking-Glass. Illustration by John Tenniel.

Humpty appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where he discusses semantics and pragmatics with Alice.

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't – till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.
"They've a temper, some of them – particularly verbs, they're the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"

This passage was used by Lord Atkin in his dissenting judgment in the seminal case Liversidge v. Anderson (1942), where he protested about the distortion of a statute by the majority of the House of Lords. It also became a popular citation in United States legal opinions, appearing in 250 judicial decisions in the Westlaw database as of April 19, 2008, including two Supreme Court cases (TVA v. Hill and Zschernig v. Miller).

Possible meaning

This rhyme could teach younger children about reversible and irreversible changes - you can smash an egg but you can't put it back together again.

Other appearances in fiction

Humpty Dumpty, shown as a riddle with answer, in a 1902 Mother Goose story book by William Wallace Denslow

• In L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose, the rhyming riddle is devised by the daughter of the King, having witnessed Humpty's "death" and her father's soldiers' efforts to save him.
• Batman features a character based on Humpty Dumpty, an example of its tendency to base ideas on fairy tales and on Alice in Wonderland (such as the Mad Hatter). He enjoys taking things apart to see if he can put them back together again and make them better, and was thus mislabeled a terrorist.
• Neil Gaiman published in Knave, in 1984 a short story called 'The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds', which casts Humpty as a murder victim. The tone is that of hard boiled detective fiction and casts a number of nursery rhyme characters in various roles such as Jill from Jack and Jill as the femme fatale and Cock Robin as the underworld informant. It is now available to read from his website.
• Jasper Fforde includes Humpty Dumpty in two of his novels. One, The Well of Lost Plots, the third novel in his Thursday Next series, features Humpty as the ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike. The other, The Big Over Easy sets Humpty as the victim of a murder under investigation by Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his partner Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.
• Robert Rankin includes Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy tale character murderer investigated by Bill Winkie, Private Eye and sidekick Eddie Bear the Teddy Bear, in his novel "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse".
• Eggorny is a Colombian cartoon, which is about Humpty Dumpty. It takes place in a mediæval landscape. After his great fall, no one was able to put Humpty together again until some 1500 years later. A teenager named Rufus put him together again, and renamed him Eggorny. Eggorny now lives in the modern-day town of Someville.
• Humpty Dumpty is also a character in the Vertigo Comics series Jack of Fables, in which he remembers the Battle at Colchester, and actually fires as a cannon once before cracking up. Then later gets pieced together to utilize a treasure map tattooed on his rear.
• In Shugo Chara! there is a pair of a lock (Humpty Lock) and a matching key (Dumpty Key). The anime also revolves around the search of the Embryo, an egg that makes wishes come true.
• One episode of the American TV-series House is called Humpty Dumpty. It deals with a handyman who falls off a roof and has his hand amputated.

References in popular music and books

There are many variations on the theme of something breaking for good in contemporary pop music:

• In ABBA's song "On and On and On", extra video verse:

Standing up is scary if you think you're gonna fall
Like a Humpty Dumpty, 'fraid of falling off the wall

• In Dolly Parton's 1980 song "Starting Over Again", a song about a divorce:

And all the king's horses
And all the king's men

Couldn't put mommy and daddy back together again

• Genesis, Squonk:

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could never put a smile on that face

• Aimee Mann, Humpty Dumpty:

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put baby together again

• Billy Joel, The great wall of china:

All the king's men and all the king's horses
Can't put you together the way you used to be

• Two Gallants, Get Proud:

And Humpty Dumpty is climbing higher up the wall,
and how he got there I just won't recall.

Further into the song...

And Humpty Dumpty told me not to tell you why,
as if I even had reason to try!

• Travis, The Humpty Dumpty Love Song:

All of the king's horses and all of the king's men
Couldn't pull my heart back together again.

• Ben Folds, Lovesick Diagnostician:

All the king's horses

And all the king's men

Couldn't get back my girlfriend.

• Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (book)

All the king's horses and all the king's men...

Further into page...

We couldn't put Bella together again.

See also

• All the King's Horses
• All the King's Men

External links

• Why is Humpty Dumpty portrayed as an egg? — from The Straight Dope
• Humpty Dumpty — Various suggested origins
• The Canon of the Cannon
• Humpty Dumpty at KidsBuilder.com
• Humpty Dumpty Illustrations and the Reality of Text — Paper discussing the emergence of the "egg" interpretation
• Eggorny, a colombian cartoon about Humpty Dumpty Spanish page
• Humpty Dumpty and the fall of Colchester An Animated and Narrated version of the Origins of the Humpty Dumpty
• Humpty Dumpty Heart by Hank Thompson Humpty Dumpty Heart by Hank Thompson. Lyrics by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen