Humpty Dumpty

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Humpty Dumpty (1790s)

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Humpty Dumpty is a character in a nursery rhyme portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg. The fact that Humpty Dumpty is an egg is not actually stated in the rhyme. In its first printed form, in 1810, it is a riddle, and exploits for misdirection the fact that "humpty dumpty" was 18th century reduplicative slang for a short, clumsy person. Whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall would not be irreparably damaged, 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 as Boule-Boule in French, or Lille Trille in Swedish & Norwegian; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.

4514976Humpty Dumpty

Versions of Humpty Dumpty include:

In collections of nursery rhymes

"Humpty-dumpty" in Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c. by John Harland & T. T. Wilkinson (1873)
"Humpty-dumpty sat on a wall" in A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes by Sabine Baring-Gould (1895)
"Humpty Dumpty" in The Nursery Rhymes of Mother Goose by Arthur Rackham (St. Nicholas, Jan. 1913)
"Humpty Dumpty" in The Real Mother Goose by Blanche Fisher Wright (1916)

Quoted within other works

quoted in Chapter 1 of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
quoted in The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Its Basis in Intuition and Common Sense by William Suddards Franklin

Humpty Dumpty

In collections of nursery rhymes

Quoted within other works

See also