And All the Kings Hordes and Aall the Kings Men Couldnt Bring Humpty Back Again

Nursery rhyme character

Plant nursery rhyme

"Humpty Dumpty"
Illustration by W. W. Denslow, 1904
Nursery rhyme
Published	1797

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English plant nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking earth. He is typically portrayed equally an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described every bit such. The showtime recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the melody from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Plant nursery Rhymes and Plant nursery Songs.^[1] Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.

Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States on Broadway by histrion George 50. Fox in the pantomime musical Humpty Dumpty.^[ii] The bear witness ran from 1868 to 1869, for a total of 483 performances, condign the longest-running Broadway show until information technology was surpassed in 1881 by Hazel Kirke.^[3] As a grapheme and literary allusion, Humpty Dumpty has appeared or been referred to in many works of literature and popular civilisation, especially English language writer Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, in which he was described equally an egg. The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.

Lyrics and melody [edit]

The rhyme is 1 of the best known in the English language. The mutual text from 1954 is:^[iv]

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a dandy fall.
All the king'south horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

It is a unmarried quatrain with external rhymes^[5] that follow the pattern of AABB and with a trochaic metre, which is common in nursery rhymes.^[six] The tune ordinarily associated with the rhyme was starting time recorded by composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs (London, 1870), as outlined below:^[7]

Origins [edit]

Analogy from Walter Crane'due south Mother Goose's Plant nursery Rhymes (1877), showing Humpty Dumpty as a male child

The primeval known version was published in Samuel Arnold'due south Juvenile Amusements in 1797^[ane] with the lyrics:^[4]

Humpty Dumpty saturday on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a peachy fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,
Could non make Humpty Dumpty where he was earlier.

William Carey Richards (1818–1892) quoted the poem in 1843, commenting, "when nosotros were 5 years erstwhile ... the following parallel lines... were propounded every bit a riddle ... Humpty-dumpty, reader, is the Dutch or something else for an egg".^[viii]

A manuscript add-on to a copy of Female parent Goose'south Melody published in 1803 has the modernistic version with a dissimilar terminal line: "Could not fix Humpty Dumpty up again".^[iv] It was published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton'south Garland.^[nine] (Notation: Original spelling variations left intact.)

Humpty Dumpty sate on a wall,
Humpti Dumpti had a nifty autumn;
Threescore men and sixty more,
Cannot place Humpty dumpty every bit he was before.

In 1842, James Orchard Halliwell published a nerveless version as:^[10]

Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck.
With all his sinews around his neck;
Twoscore Doctors and twoscore wrights
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights!

The modern-day version of this plant nursery rhyme, as known throughout the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland since at least the mid-twentieth century, is as follows:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great autumn;
All the Rex'southward horses
And all the King'due south men,
Couldn't put Humpty together once again.

Co-ordinate to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the 17th century the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale.^[4] The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was as well eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and impuissant person.^[11] The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, whereas 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 every bit "Boule Boule" in French, "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian, and "Runtzelken-Puntzelken" or "Humpelken-Pumpelken" in different parts of Germany—although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.^{[4] [12]}

Meaning [edit]

The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject area is an egg, perchance because it may have been originally posed as a riddle.^[four] There are too diverse theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". One, avant-garde by Katherine Elwes Thomas in 1930^[xiii] and adopted by Robert Ripley,^[4] posits that Humpty Dumpty is Rex Richard III of England, depicted as humpbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare'southward play, and who was defeated, despite his armies, at Bosworth Field in 1485. All that is known for certain, is that the line, "all kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put humpty together again" did non mean the horses physically assisted humpty. Merely rather, was a metaphor for the crowns resources.

In 1785, Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue noted that a "Humpty Dumpty" was "a short clumsey [sic] person of either sex activity, too ale boiled with brandy"; no mention was fabricated of the rhyme.^[14]

Punch in 1842 suggested jocularly that the rhyme was a metaphor for the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey; only every bit Wolsey was not cached in his intended tomb, and then Humpty Dumpty was not buried in his beat out.^[fifteen]

Professor David Daube suggested in The Oxford Magazine of xvi Feb 1956 that Humpty Dumpty was a "tortoise" siege engine, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to arroyo the walls of the Parliamentary-held urban center of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War. This was on the basis of a contemporary business relationship of the attack, but without evidence that the rhyme was connected.^[16] The theory was office of an anonymous series of articles on the origin of plant nursery rhymes and was widely acclaimed in academia,^[17] merely information technology was derided by others every bit "ingenuity for ingenuity'south sake" and declared to be a spoof.^{[18] [19]} The link was nevertheless popularised by a children's opera All the Rex's Men by Richard Rodney Bennett, first performed in 1969.^{[xx] [21]}

From 1996, the website of the Colchester tourist board attributed the origin of the rhyme to a cannon recorded as used from the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648.^[22] In 1648, Colchester was a walled boondocks with a castle and several churches and was protected by the city wall. The story given was that a big cannon, which the website claimed was colloquially called Humpty Dumpty, was strategically placed on the wall. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty, which acquired the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists (or Cavaliers, "all the King's men") attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another function of the wall, just the cannon was so heavy that "All the King'southward horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again". Writer Albert Jack claimed in his 2008 book Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes that there were two other verses supporting this claim.^[23] Elsewhere, he claimed to take found them in an "old dusty library, [in] an fifty-fifty older book",^[24] but did not state what the book was or where it was plant. It has been pointed out that the ii additional verses are not in the fashion of the seventeenth century or of the existing rhyme, and that they do not fit with the earliest printed versions of the rhyme, which practice non mention horses and men.^[22]

In pop culture [edit]

Humpty Dumpty has become a highly popular plant nursery rhyme grapheme. American role player George L. Play tricks (1825–77) helped to popularise the character in nineteenth-century phase productions of pantomime versions, music, and rhyme.^[25] The character is also a common literary innuendo, specially to refer to a person in an insecure position, something that would be difficult to reconstruct once cleaved, or a brusk and fat person.^[26]

Lewis Carroll'south Through the Looking-Drinking glass [edit]

Humpty Dumpty appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871), a sequel to Alice in Wonderland from six years prior. Alice remarks that Humpty is "exactly like an egg," which Humpty finds to be "very provoking." Alice clarifies that she said he looks like an egg, not that he is one. They discuss semantics and pragmatics^[27] when Humpty Dumpty says, "my proper name means the shape I am," and later:^[28]

"I don't know what you lot mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of form y'all don't—till I tell y'all. I meant 'at that place's a prissy knock-down argument for yous!'"
"Simply 'glory' doesn't mean 'a dainty knock-downwardly argument'," Alice objected.
"When I apply a give-and-take," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it ways but what I choose it to hateful—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can brand words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

Alice was also much puzzled to say anything, and then later a minute Humpty Dumpty began again:

"They've a temper, some of them—peculiarly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you lot can do annihilation with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"

This passage was used in United kingdom by Lord Atkin in his dissenting judgement in the seminal case Liversidge v. Anderson (1942), where he protested virtually the distortion of a statute by the bulk of the House of Lords.^[29] Information technology besides became a pop commendation in Us legal opinions, appearing in 250 judicial decisions in the Westlaw database as of nineteen April 2008^[update], including two Supreme Courtroom cases (TVA five. Hill and Zschernig v. Miller).^[30]

A. J. Larner suggested that Carroll'south Humpty Dumpty had prosopagnosia on the basis of his description of his finding faces difficult to recognise:^[31]

"The face is what one goes by, by and large," Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone. "That's only what I mutter of," said Humpty Dumpty. "Your confront is the aforementioned as everybody has—the two eyes,—" (mark their places in the air with his thumb) "nose in the centre, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance—or the mouth at the top—that would exist some help."

James Joyce'due south Finnegans Wake [edit]

James Joyce used the story of Humpty Dumpty as a recurring motif of the Fall of Man in the 1939 novel Finnegans Wake.^{[32] [33]} One of the most easily recognizable references is at the end of the second affiliate, in the get-go verse of the Ballad of Persse O'Reilly:

    Have you heard of 1 Humpty Dumpty
How he barbarous with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
Past the butt of the Mag Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Mag Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?

In film, literature and music [edit]

Robert Penn Warren'south 1946 American novel All the Rex's Men is the story of populist politician Willie Stark's rise to the position of governor and eventual fall, based on the career of the infamous Louisiana Senator and Governor Huey Long. It won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize and was twice made into a pic in 1949 and 2006, the former winning the Academy Award for all-time motion motion picture.^[34] This was echoed in Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward'south book All the President's Men, well-nigh the Watergate scandal, referring to the failure of the President'south staff to repair the damage one time the scandal had leaked out. It was filmed as All the President'south Men in 1976, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.^[35]

In 1983, an advert for Kinder Surprise featuring a realistic version of the Humpty Dumpty graphic symbol (designed by Mike Quinn, who worked at the Jim Henson'southward Creature Shop) and directed by Mike Portelly, was banned shortly after release, due to beingness highly unsettling. The ad aired only on ITV and its franchises.

In 2021, American band AJR released a vocal, titled Humpty Dumpty, for their album, OK Orchestra. The vocal uses the plant nursery rhyme every bit a parallel for hiding one's true emotions as things, typically unpleasant, happen to the singer.

Jasper Fforde's 2005 British novel The Big Over Easy ISBN 978-0-340-89710-ii is an exercise in absurdity, in which Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty 3 has been murdered, and Detective Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Sectionalization is set up the task of solving the mystery.

In science [edit]

Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics. The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific means in which a organization may be arranged, ofttimes taken to be a mensurate of "disorder". The higher the entropy, the college the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, equally it would exist highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier land of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated arrangement never decreases.^{[36] [37] [38]}

See likewise [edit]

• List of nursery rhymes

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} Emily Upton (24 Apr 2013). "The Origin of Humpty Dumpty". What I Learned Today. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
2. ^ Kenrick, John (2017). Musical Theatre: A History. ISBN9781474267021 . Retrieved sixteen May 2020.
3. ^ Humpty Dumpty at the Internet Broadway Database
4. ^ ^{a b c d due east f g} Opie & Opie (1997), pp. 213–215.
5. ^ J. Smith, Poesy Writing (Teacher Created Resources, 2002), ISBN 0-7439-3273-0, p. 95.
6. ^ P. Hunt, ed., International Companion Encyclopedia of Children'due south Literature (London: Routledge, 2004), ISBN 0-203-16812-vii, p. 174.
7. ^ J. J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk (Courier Dover Publications, 5th ed., 2000), ISBN 0-486-41475-ii, p. 502.
8. ^ Richards, William Carey (March–April 1844). "Monthly conversation with readers and correspondents". The Orion. Penfield, Georgia. Two (5 & 6): 371.
9. ^ Joseph Ritson, Gammer Gurton's Garland: or, the Nursery Parnassus; a Option Collection of Pretty Songs and Verses, for the Amusement of All Little Good Children Who Tin can Neither Read Nor Run (London: Harding and Wright, 1810), p. 36.
10. ^ J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, The Nursery Rhymes of England (John Russell Smith, 6th ed., 1870), p. 122.
11. ^ E. Partridge and P. Beale, Lexicon of Slang and Unconventional English (Routledge, 8th ed., 2002), ISBN 0-415-29189-5, p. 582.
12. ^ Lina Eckenstein (1906). Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes. pp. 106–107. OL 7164972M. Retrieved 30 January 2018 – via annal.org.
13. ^ E. Commins, Lessons from Mother Goose (Lack Worth, Fl: Humanics, 1988), ISBN 0-89334-110-X, p. 23.
14. ^ Grose, Francis (1785). A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Natural language. South. Hooper. pp. 90–.
15. ^ "Juvenile Biography No IV: Humpty Dumpty". Punch. three: 202. July–Dec 1842.
16. ^ "Plant nursery Rhymes and History", The Oxford Magazine, vol. 74 (1956), pp. 230–232, 272–274 and 310–312; reprinted in: Calum Grand. Carmichael, ed., Nerveless Works of David Daube, vol. 4, "Ethics and Other Writings" (Berkeley, CA: Robbins Drove, 2009), ISBN 978-one-882239-15-three, pp. 365–366.
17. ^ Alan Rodger. "Obituary: Professor David Daube". The Independent, 5 March 1999.
18. ^ I. Opie, 'Playground rhymes and the oral tradition', in P. Hunt, S. G. Bannister Ray, International Companion Encyclopedia of Children'southward Literature (London: Routledge, 2004), ISBN 0-203-16812-7, p. 76.
19. ^ Iona and Peter Opie, ed. (1997) [1951]. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 254. ISBN978-0-xix-860088-6.
20. ^ C. M. Carmichael (2004). Ideas and the Homo: remembering David Daube. Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte. Vol. 177. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann. pp. 103–104. ISBNiii-465-03363-9.
21. ^ "Sir Richard Rodney Bennett: All the King'due south Men". Universal Edition. Retrieved eighteen September 2012.
22. ^ ^{a b} "Putting the 'dump' in Humpty Dumpty". The BS Historian. Retrieved 22 February 2010.
23. ^ A. Jack, Popular Goes the Weasel: The Hole-and-corner Meanings of Plant nursery Rhymes (London: Allen Lane, 2008), ISBN 1-84614-144-iii.
24. ^ "The Real Story of Humpty Dumpty, past Albert Jack". Archived 27 Feb 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Penguin.com (USA). Retrieved 24 February 2010.
25. ^ L. Senelick, The Age and Stage of George L. Fob 1825–1877 (Academy of Iowa Printing, 1999), ISBN 0877456844.
26. ^ E. Webber and Yard. Feinsilber, Merriam-Webster'southward Dictionary of Allusions (Merriam-Webster, 1999), ISBN 0-87779-628-ix, pp. 277–eight.
27. ^ F. R. Palmer, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn., 1981), ISBN 0-521-28376-0, p. viii.
28. ^ L. Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (Raleigh, North Carolina: Hayes Barton Printing, 1872), ISBN 1-59377-216-v, p. 72.
29. ^ G. Lewis (1999). Lord Atkin. London: Butterworths. p. 138. ISBN1-84113-057-5.
30. ^ Martin H. Redish and Matthew B. Arnould, "Judicial review, constitutional estimation: proposing a 'Controlled Activism' alternative", Florida Police force Review, vol. 64 (vi), (2012), p. 1513.
31. ^ A. J. Larner (1998). "Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty: an early on report of prosopagnosia?". Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 75 (7): 1063. doi:10.1136/jnnp.2003.027599. PMC1739130. PMID 15201376.
32. ^ J. S. Atherton, The Books at the Wake: A Written report of Literary Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1959, SIU Press, 2009), ISBN 0-8093-2933-6, p. 126.
33. ^ Worthington, Mabel (1957). "Nursery Rhymes in Finnegans Wake". The Journal of American Folklore. 70 (275): 37–48.
34. ^ G. L. Cronin and B. Siegel, eds, Conversations With Robert Penn Warren (Jackson, MS: Academy Press of Mississippi, 2005), ISBN 1-57806-734-0, p. 84.
35. ^ G. Feeney, Nixon at the Movies: a Book Nearly Conventionalities (Chicago IL: Academy of Chicago Press, 2004), ISBN 0-226-23968-3, p. 256.
36. ^ Chang Kenneth (30 July 2002). "Humpty Dumpty Restored: When Disorder Lurches Into Order". The New York Times . Retrieved two May 2013.
37. ^ Lee Langston. "Part III – The 2d Law of Thermodynamics" (PDF). Hartford Courant. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 May 2008. Retrieved ii May 2013.
38. ^ Westward.Due south. Franklin (March 1910). "The Second Law Of Thermodynamics: Its Basis In Intuition And Mutual Sense". The Popular Science Monthly: 240.

External links [edit]

• Humpty-Dumpty themed pedagogy
• Humpty-Dumpty themed educational and arts and crafts pages
• Library of Congress' Facsimile of the 1899 illustrated edition of Through the Looking-Drinking glass
• Loyal Books: Mother Goose in Prose by 50. Frank Baum
• Loyal Books: Through the Looking Glass past Lewis Carroll
• The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

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