As history states:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall:
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not put Humpty together again.
Is there a missing verse or something?
2007-01-08 15:35:23 · 6 answers · asked by imarobotwah! 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Mythology & Folklore
Or more to the point, why do we assume he is an egg? If not, what is he?
2007-01-08 15:37:40 · update #1
The writer of Mother Goose nursery rhymes turned the rhyme into a riddle - it ended with "what was Humpty Dumpty" and had a picture of an egg. Although supposedly the original version related to a cannon used in a battle that got smashes to pieces.
2007-01-08 15:54:38 · answer #1 · answered by Livian 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
humpty dumpty was actually originally a cannon used in the enligh civil war....it was also a term used to describe obese people, in any case after the war it took on a different meaning because of illustrations made popular by a lewis carroll Novel 'alice through the looking glass' that illustrated the humpty dumpty in the poem as an egg-like cartoon.
extra info on actual events the poem was written about: "A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists, or Cavaliers, 'all the King's men' attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall. However, because the cannon , or Humpty Dumpty, was so heavy ' All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again!' This had a drastic consequence for the Royalists as the strategically important town of Colchester fell to the Parliamentarians after a siege lasting eleven weeks. Earliest traceable publication 1810."
2007-01-08 15:56:12 · answer #2 · answered by elisabette 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
"....the certainty that Humpty Dumpty is an egg isn't extremely reported interior the rhyme. In its first revealed style, in 1810, that could be a riddle, and exploits for misdirection the certainty that "humpty dumpty" became 18th-Century reduplicative slang for a short, clumsy person. while an ungainly person falling off a wall does not be irreparably broken, an egg may be. The rhyme is not posed as a riddle, because of the fact the respond is now so properly wide-spread...."
2016-12-15 19:18:54 · answer #3 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Father Peter Osborne.
2007-01-08 15:43:43 · answer #4 · answered by robert m 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You see? -And people tend to think nursery rhymes are just made up nonsense! -Wait till you learn the true origins of "Ring Around the Rosie"!
2007-01-08 16:28:26 · answer #5 · answered by BuddyL 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Wow. This is mind boggling... a cannon, eh?
2007-01-08 17:08:56 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋