What proof is there that Humpty Dumpty was an egg?

BengaLover · 07-04-2011 4:04pm #1

Just pondering. all the poem says is
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
HD had a great fall etc etc..
Whos to say he wasnt say, a dog or a dwarf or something..
Everyone assumes HD is an egg.
WHY???

Yeah nobody cares · 07-04-2011 4:06pm

I'm fairly sure I read somewhere that it was actually a cannon.

Hookah · 07-04-2011 4:06pm

This conundrum has been cracking me up for ages.

NoDice · 07-04-2011 4:06pm

"Humpty Dumpty was a colloquial term used in 15th century England to describe someone who was fat or obese - giving rise to lots of theories pertaining to the identity of Humpty Dumpty. However, in this case the question should be not Who was Humpty Dumpty but What was Humpty Dumpty? Humpty Dumpty was in fact an unusually large canon which was mounted on the protective wall of "St. Mary's Wall Church" in Colchester, England."

http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/nursery_rhymes/humpty_dumpty.htm

Tar.Aldarion · 07-04-2011 4:06pm

None, illustrations maybe.

07-04-2011 4:08pm

The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg because it probably was originally posed as a riddle.[1] The earliest known version is in a manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose's Melody published in 1803, which has the modern version with a different last line: "Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again".[1] It was first published in 1811 in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland as:

Humpty Dumpty sate [sic] on a wall,
Humpti Dumpti [sic] had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore more,
Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before.[2]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century.[1] The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person.[3] 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.[1] The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known.[1] Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French, or "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.[1]

There you go
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

BengaLover · 07-04-2011 4:08pm

So HD was a reference to a fat man sat on a wall that fell off..
Anyone remember the VERY disturbing Kinder Egg ad in the 80's?
Yabba hoooo, twas scary.

Duckworth_Luas · 07-04-2011 4:10pm

BengaLover wrote: »

Just pondering. all the poem says is
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
HD had a great fall etc etc..
Whos to say he wasnt say, a dog or a dwarf or something..
Everyone assumes HD is an egg.
WHY???

Think the rhyme originally referred to some deposed British monarch. As I recall the first reference to HD being an egg was in an illustration in some nursery rhyme book. Later, in Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass the illustrations of Humpty Dumpty were also as an egg.

Penn · 07-04-2011 4:15pm

But they couldn't put him together again. So he had to have been something which could break into pieces, which wouldn't be easy to put back together (so we can discount jigsaw)

I bet he was an ice sculpture. No way could some men and a bunch of horses put it together again. It'd melt. Chances are someone left it on the wall, but the concrete capping meant it didn't sit right and it fell off.

Mystery solved. **** you, Jessica Fletcher!

Bryan4president · 07-04-2011 4:19pm

Barrington wrote: »

Mystery solved. **** you, Jessica Fletcher!

Sure it was probably Jessica Fletcher who pushed Humpty off the wall. Did ya ever think it was slightly suspicious, that wherever she travelled, someone always got killed? I think she's more than just a novelist, she's also a SERIAL KILLER.

RichieC · 07-04-2011 4:22pm

all the kings horses and all the kings men wouldnt give a fk about an egg... so it must have been the cannon.

Duckworth_Luas · 07-04-2011 4:22pm

Bryan4president wrote: »

Sure it was probably Jessica Fletcher who pushed Humpty off the wall. Did ya ever think it was slightly suspicious, that wherever she travelled, someone always got killed? I think she's more than just a novelist, she's also a SERIAL KILLER.

Is that you Lt. Colombo?

orourkeda · 07-04-2011 4:23pm

Humpty Dumpty is a fat cant

mikom · 07-04-2011 4:23pm

What proof is there that Humpty Dumpty was an egg?

I sucked his yolk ?

saintsaltynuts · 07-04-2011 4:23pm

Why did Humptey Dumpdey push his girlfriend off the wall?
...To see her crack!
Humptey Dumpdey Sat on the wall,
Humptey Dumpdey had a great fall,
All the Kings horses and all the Kings men,
Had egg sandwiches!

Gunsfortoys · 07-04-2011 4:27pm

Eggceptional story bro!

Bryan4president · 07-04-2011 4:30pm

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Is that you Lt. Colombo?

Actually, Mr Luas, (takes off sunglasses) I'm Horatio Caine. :cool:

NoDice · 07-04-2011 4:35pm

mikom wrote: »

I sucked his yolk ?

Hookah wrote: »

This conundrum has been cracking me up for ages.

Gunsfortoys wrote: »

Eggceptional story bro!

You guys are poaching all my best yolks!!!

I can't stop myself.

On a serious note, it's eggstraordinary we've found so many different eggamples of the nursery rhyme's meanings! I believe my one is the correct one and every one else is wrong.

LimeTime · 07-04-2011 5:06pm

This has been wrecking my head for ages now. I guess it's just because he fell apart. You couldn't see a man fall to peices? Why did they send horses to fix him is what I want to know?

NoDice · 07-04-2011 5:12pm

LimeTime wrote: »

This has been wrecking my head for ages now. I guess it's just because he fell apart. You couldn't see a man fall to peices? Why did they send horses to fix him is what I want to know?

Again to quote the link from my OP here -

"The Royalists 'all the King's men' attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall but even with the help of ' all the King's horses' failed in their task and Colchester fell to the Parliamentarians after a siege lasting eleven weeks"

http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/nursery_rhymes/humpty_dumpty.htm

chin_grin · 07-04-2011 5:12pm

You saw this on Reddit/r/wtf earlier didn't you?!

cml387 · 07-04-2011 5:16pm

BengaLover wrote: »

So HD was a reference to a fat man sat on a wall that fell off..
Anyone remember the VERY disturbing Kinder Egg ad in the 80's?
Yabba hoooo, twas scary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4kHmbZTvyI

chillywilly · 07-04-2011 5:18pm

this

LimeTime · 07-04-2011 5:32pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwAookPFWZQ

BengaLover · 07-04-2011 5:54pm

Thats the one...VERY scary then and still is now...:eek::eek:

What proof is there that Humpty Dumpty was an egg?

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