Humpty Dumpty

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Gumbo V2.0 on January 31, 2014 at 1:57pm

 The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg, possibly because it may have been originally posed as a RIDDLE. Though not explicitly described as such, the character Humpty Dumpty is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person. The riddle may depend on the assumption that, whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, an egg would be.

There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". One, advanced by Katherine Elwes Thomas in 1930 and adopted by Robert Ripley, posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England, depicted in Tudor histories, and particularly in Shakespeare's play, as humpbacked and who was defeated, despite his armies, at Bosworth Field in 1485. However, the term "humpback" was not recorded until the eighteenth century, and no direct evidence linking the rhyme with the historical figure has been advanced.

 

For more theories as to the origin of the riddle / rhyme, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty#Meaning

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Victoria (Centauromadoose) on February 2, 2014 at 3:02pm

I never knew any of that, and I always wondered about it myself. Thanks for the info, Gumbo!

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