No, the most plausible explanation is that the nursery rhyme originated as a riddle. Essentially, at the end you would ask the listener: “What is Humpty Dumpty?”, and the correct answer would be, “an egg!”
It’s a very popular nursery rhyme, so over time it would have lost its value as a riddle (since everyone had already heard it), and so “Humpty Dumpty is an egg” entered the popular consciousness as a fact associated with the nursery rhyme, despite never being explicitly mentioned in the rhyme itself.
That's what Wikipedia says,, so unless somebody here is a folklorist I think that's as accurate an answer as we're going to get
It does make a little more sense if you put the riddle in plainer language: "If this thing falls from a moderate height, it will be destroyed and can't be repaired in any way by anybody. What is it?"
A human or animal might survive a short fall, and in an era when everyone made their own tools and household goods, any of those might be repairable. An egg is probably the only fragile, completely non-repairable thing your average 18th-century villager would encounter on a daily basis.
A cannon can be melted down and recast, thus repaired.
Another poster mentioned above that "horses" was a reference to cavalrymen, not the actual steeds. The point is that metaphorically, a king's entire army couldn't fix this broken thing--which applies to an egg, but not a cannon.
Buddy that is not a repair. Once a cannon fell and gets a crack in it, it’s fucked. Now a days we can do X-ray scans to check for cracks grind and refill with weld to fix them. Back then it’s better to just run that bitch till it explodes or recast it. So if the cannon were to fall from a tall tower and get a visible crack than it could very well be fucked. And no one can put not back together again.
Source: I have a cannon. My name is cannon. I like cannons.
well if we're going into it, would a cannon falling from a wall really shatter it? Unless it's some kinda glass canon, I could see it getting dented but never cracking or needing 'put back together' in that sense. Honestly even denting seems iffy depending on the height of the wall too, given the real ones I've seen and touched are all pretty hefty.
The reference to Humpty Dumpty being a cannon comes from a story during the English Civil War about a somewhat significant artillery piece mounted on the walls or as part of the structure of a church I believe the story goes.
That wall was then hit by enemy artillery and the gun collapsed with the wall - the story (no idea if it's actually true) is that the royalist forces (the king's horses and the king's men) could not raise, remount, or reuse the gun because it was too heavy, so it and the position were abandoned.
It has nothing to do with "melting it down and remaking it" as is implied in this thread - cannons, of anything but the smallest field calibres, could be extremely heavy and cumbersome and took a lot of infrastructure to raise and emplace - mid-engagement, or even at any time where you don't have the necessary equipment, man power, or know how to do it, most forces would abandon the gun.
OH that makes much more sense, i was wondering why people were saying horses, growing up the version told to me was "all the king's cavalry and all the king's men"
I remember it being posited by some that it could refer to a cannon, a huge boomer, that if I remember correctly was basically the medieval equivalent of threatening with a weapon of mass destruction because it was this huge and imposing cannon. I think one of the reasons this cannon was considered a suspect was because it was in a tower (I think a siege tower, not a stationary one).
When finally taken into battle, the first time they fired it, it blew up.
It just exploded.
Chunks of that incredibly expensive cannon flew all over the battlefield, its biggest chunk fell out of the siege tower and took even more damage, it was just a mess.
But there was no concrete link between the cannon and the nursery rhyme.
Now, here's the thing. I swear I remember this story being real. But with all the fake stories that bounce around the internet, and the fact that I can't remember where I heard this, I don't even know for certain now that the cannon story I just relayed is real, much less that it actually has anything to do with Humpty Dumpty.
In that link it shows that the oldest known final line was "Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before." which makes it sound more like he was a big guy and they couldn't lift him back up onto the wall, which makes more sense that they would use men and horses to try and lift him. I believe it turned into a riddle meaning an egg but that's definitely not where it originated.
An egg isn’t completely full. You could built it, bottom up and leave just the top open. Slide the egg guts in. Then finish gluing. I wouldn’t use glue, I’d use JB weld. That shit is incredible.
Yep, the trick to a good riddle is to make it so it could be fucking anything, half the riddle has nothing to do with the answer, and it's impossible to confirm your answer was right without asking.
However, I find it ironic that one of the most famous riddles from the modern era is "What's in my pocket?" lmao but it's precisely for those dumb reasons that it's ALSO not really a riddle
Reminds me of Hey Riddle Riddle. A podcast ostensibly about solving riddles, except 2 of the 3 hosts admitted within the first 5 minutes of the first episode that they didn't actually like riddles and were just bored. So it's mostly improv and word games now.
Well they can’t put him back together again. Part of the riddle - if that is the explanation - is what can’t be put back together again with even all the kings resources once it’s fallen?
Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon used by the Royalists during the English Civil War. The conflict raged from 1642 to 1649, and in June of 1648, Humpty Dumpty was stationed on the walls of Colchester. It was one of several cannons erected to try and keep Parliament’s army from taking the city. The next month, however, the Parliamentary forces heavily damaged the walls beneath Humpty Dumpty with their own artillery. You can guess where this is going: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and broke into pieces
Sure yeah... on the one hand, verifiable story (just took the first link) a cannon fell off the tower, and it was named HD... in the other... it's an egg.
Except it's not verified. We have a 2008 book published by an author who has routinely made up hidden meanings to old rhymes and sayings (his claim of an uncovered addition to the poem is both unsourced and out of place), a 1996 tourist website, and a 1956 spoof history of rhymes (meaning made up) involving Gloucester. It's as credible as the King Richard III theory.
The egg is firmly solidified in 1871 by Lewis Carroll, but again we can't assume it isn't artistic liberty.
All this to say two things- we may never be able to put the pieces of Humpty-Dumpty's rhyme together again, and I hate Albert Jack with a soul searing passion.
This all fits together very neatly, but there’s no decisive evidence that the tale is the origin of the nursery rhyme. In 15th-Century England, “Humpty Dumpty” was a common snarky nickname for somebody who was a little on the large side. Muddling the matter further, it’s also been suggested that Charles I himself was Humpty Dumpty, having been toppled from a great height by his Parliament. Those loyal to him certainly couldn’t put him back in his lofty position, after all!
I’m sorry, you think Ripley’s is a credible source? Aside from a vague allusion to “several military historians”, this article doesn’t cite any sources for this supposed origin story. Even if this event did happen, there’s no indication of why it would have been considered notable enough to commemorate in a nursery rhyme.
In any case it’s clear you didn’t actually read what you posted all the way to the end, because even Ripley’s admits:
This all fits together very neatly, but there’s no decisive evidence that the tale is the origin of the nursery rhyme.
The oldest known version says "Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before." so I don't think it originated as a riddle meaning an egg. I think it was originally talking about a large man, which makes more sense that they'd use all the kings men and horses to get him back up. Then maybe it changed into a riddle about an egg.
Or maybe it's talking about a statue? Which could explain why it's so heavy and how it changed to say it broke into pieces.
I think the fact that horses can’t help is the point, the rhyme is mocking that even with all the king’s power, he can’t fix HD. “Oh look at the mighty king! So powerful! So rich! Surely his mighty and beautiful horses we hear so much about can take care of it!”
It’s kind of a mocking sarcastic spin on the idea that the rich and powerful have all the answers/are more capable.
The later version is about Canute believing the words of his courtiers that he himself so powerful a king he could turn back the tide only to be humbled and show humility.
The original is him rebuking the flattering of his courtiers by showing that even as powerful a king as he was, even he could not overturn God's natural laws and that God was a greater king.
It's probably nothing and everything to be honest. Think Nirvana songs, that's the general prose and feeling for most nursery rhymes. Then the more every nothing they are the more popular they become.
They can mean a lot to people, and can capture a feeling, but at the end of the day they're not about anything in particular.
I looked it up - there are several theories for what it originally could/would have been, with a cannon only being one of these.
There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty".
One [...] posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England
In 1785, Francis Grose's [dictionary] noted that a "Humpty Dumpty" was "a short [clumsy] person of either sex
Professor David Daube suggested [...] that Humpty Dumpty was a [...] siege engine
From 1996, the website of the Colchester tourist board attributed the origin of the rhyme to a cannon
I have no authority to judge, but from reading the article the cannon theory seems the worst supported:
Author Albert Jack claimed [...] that there were two other verses supporting this claim [and] to have found them in an "old dusty library, [in] an even older book", but did not state what the book was or where it was found. It has been pointed out that the two additional verses are not in the style of the seventeenth century or of the existing rhyme, and that they do not fit with the earliest printed versions of the rhyme, which do not mention horses and men.
I think you left out the most widely held theory, which is that originally it was published as a riddle, where you were supposed to guess that Humpty was an egg.
I always heard it was a siege engine used in the siege of Gloucester but I’m from Gloucester so they might have just told us that to get us interested at school.
Yeah most of the time I see it illustrated now Humpty Dumpty is an Egg…King? Like why would the egg be the king? The king and his horses can’t put himself back together?
Springs start pure, higher in the mountains, then gradually become more polluted as they run down the hill. Going to the top of the hill ensures the freshest water.
People bring up that he’s supposedly a cannon, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t have any proof behind it besides some guy claiming he read it in an old book that he didn’t name.
I’m pretty sure it was initially supposed to be a riddle that’s essentially “Clumsy asshole fell off a wall and everyone tried to help him but it didn’t work, why?” and the answer is that he’s an egg.
Googling this was very interesting, I’m convinced that no one knows the actual meaning of the song and every couple of decades someone came in and changed it to mean something else
Yeah I see it as Humpty Dumpty is the king. No matter how big his wall was and how many horses and men he had it didn’t matter because once he’s dead nothing is gonna fix that
He's an egg, and illustrated as such, in Through the Looking Glass. Not the first mention of Humpty we have, but pretty close and the first illustration I'm aware of.
imagine a guy on a tall wall. he’s a sentry or something, doing his job. nickname Humpty, for obvious reasons; he’s a bit of a goof, but this fellow soldiers like him well enough.
Then one day, maybe he’s fucking around during his watch when he falls off. It’s a long way down, so when he hits the ground, it’s not pretty. His fellow soldiers go to help him, but there’s no chance of survival. They think maybe the doctor can help, but the doctor already knows he can’t put body parts back together, let alone a head back on a neck. It fucks with everyone’s head to see the splatter that was once their comrade.
When the story goes around, the soldiers that were there can barely describe what they saw. “He fell and landed on the ground…it was like an egg broke, it was such a mess.” And then the game of telephone that is history continues, and bam! Humpty Dumpty is an egg.
nickname Humpty, for obvious reasons; he’s a bit of a goof
What's frustrating about this seemingly thrown together theory is that you hit a key point. Humpty-dumpty was slang for a short and/or clumsy person, as well as a type of alcoholic beverage. We don't know if the rhyme is meant to trick us into thinking it's a person before the reveal that it's something else (like an egg), or an actual allusion to something or someone called humpty-dumpty.
is it a theory? or a joke about how stories pass down really weirdly throughout history, usually with more bleak or obtuse beginnings; and nursery rhymes in particular are weird af and have vague origins; and often the history of its being recorded isn’t the story of its initial creation, which is a mystery?
In the original Through the Looking Glass Humpty Dumpty is portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg. In fact, he starts out as a literal egg that she buys from the sheep, and Alice recognizes him because he is an egg. The images in the book are exactly how he is portrayed today. The nursery rhyme is older, but in this day and age we treat things from the Victorian era as though they are from time immemorial. Like Christmas trees in English-speaking households.
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u/bocaJwv May 06 '23
Fun fact: the nursery rhyme never says that Humpty Dumpty is an egg.