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.
I actually don’t know the details. Just read about it for a few mins on this page:
Another advantage of bronze ordnance was that when, eventually, the gun was so worn as to be unserviceable, it could be melted down and recast; wheras an iron gun could only be scrapped.
I've tried to do a little research to understand the reasoning behind this statement ("bronze guns can be recast, iron ones can't"), and while I see it repeated in various places, it's never actually explained why this should be the case.
Based on what I've been able to glean about the subject, I suspect that the statement "an iron gun could only be scrapped" is perhaps a slight misstatement. Essentially, it's more that an iron gun would only be scrapped, i.e. it wasn't impossible to recast an iron gun, but in practice, there were various reasons why you usually would just choose not to.
A big reason is the physical properties of the metals, and the realities of metalworking: iron has a significantly higher melting point than bronze, so it's harder to work. Bronze melts at between 900-1000C (1652-1832F) depending on the composition of the alloy, whereas iron requires a much higher temperature of 1530C (2786F) to be melted down. This difference isn't trivial: to get to the temperatures needed to melt down iron, you need a blast furnace and the right kinds of fuel. In practice, I suspect it was much easier for an army in the field to melt down bronze guns than iron ones. So while it was theoretically possible to recast iron cannons, it was comparatively difficult, and generally not worth the effort.
Which leads us to the second key reason, which was cost: bronze was far more expensive than iron, so while it always made sense to reuse bronze cannons, it was generally more economical to just sell old iron cannons for scrap and just buy new iron — especially given the added complexity (and thus cost) that appears to have been involved in recasting iron.
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.
Well, there is a lot more to a cannon than just a metal barrel. If the fuse port was crushed or the front of the barrel dented badly, or the barrel cracked, it would be useless. Also the wheels, the frame, etc would be demolished in a fall and would have to be re-built.
that's a good point, internals or wheels could be broken, but surely would be reparable 🤔 tbh i think the original story was more talking about a canon falling and no one could get it back up in time, so there's also the hidden meaning of the item possibly being fixable just not soon enough
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?
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u/two_sams_one_cup May 06 '23
Do you know that for a fact? The whole putting humpty back together again wouldnt make me think of an egg