User:Jnestorius/Humpty Dumpty

<Humpty Dumpty

Sketch

• lede: ND is the title char of a nursery rhyme, usu depicted as an athropomorphised egg. The rhyme does not state that HD is an egg, and is believed to have originally been intended as a riffle, with the egg as the answer. The rhyme is first attested in 1797 and the association with an egg in 1809. The usual form of the rhyme since the 20th century is:

HD wall
HD fall
All horses men
Couldnt put H together again

The character features in Lewis Carroll's 1872 work, Through the Looking Glass, in which he debates points of semantics with Alice. Since the 19th C, "Putting HD together again" has been a common metaphor or simile for, the impossibility of undoing an action or repairing something broken. In the 20th C, philosophers of language have often quoted Carroll's HD "when I use a word..." to illustrate a view of language.

• Origin: 1797 quote;
  • 1809 riddle egg;
  • quotes saying it was riddle: 1831;
    • Robert Ford 1904: "Attempts have been made to show how that was suggested by the fall of a bold bad baron who lived in the days of King John ; but every child more than ten years old knows that the lines present a conundrum, the answer to which is — an egg"
    • The name "Humpty Dumpty" is appropriate metaphorically for an egg in suggesting plumpness or rotundity, but misleading literally as it implies a human rather than an egg; for Archer Taylor this play of "positive and negative descriptive elements" is the essence of the riddle form.
  • similar riddles
    • Diddle diddle dumpty ... plum tree
    • With proper name, often a nonsense-word:
      • Hickamore, Hackamore, on the King's kitchen door; / All the King's horses, and all the King's men, / Couldn't drive Hickamore, Hackamore, / Off the King's kitchen door [answer: sunshine]
      • Arthur o' Bower has broken his band, He comes roaring up the land : The King of Scots, with all his power, Cannot turn Arthur of the Bower [answer: wind]
      • Little Nancy Etticoat, / In a white petticoat, / And a red nose; / The longer she stands, / The shorter she grows [answer: lighted candle]
    • All foo can't bar
      • As round as an apple, as deep as a cup, And all the king's horses can't fill it up. (A Well)
      • As high as a castle as weak as a wastle [whistle] and all the king's horses acan't pull it down (Smoke)
      • As I was going o'er London bridge, / I heard something crack; / Not a man in all England / Can mend that! (Ice)
  • ancient or recent folk riddle
    • "Like the Humpty Dumpty verse, the earliest riddles were probably not questions but metaphorical statements or symbols".
    • On formal grounds, Senderovich considers H-D "a late imitation of the real [folk riddle]": the "great fall" is "a notion rather than a grotesque image", whereas ancient riddles feature the latter.
    • Because of its Continental analogues, Henry Bett placed it among the rhymes whose origins go back "thousands of years". By contrast, Roaud and Simpson say "Numerous close analogues from continental Europe do not help to date the rhyme, as they are all from 19th-century sources"."
    • Eckenstein connects rhyme to world egg myths of Kalevala and Aristophanes' The Birds.
  • egg illustration in picture-books has spoiled the riddle. "Humpty Dumpty is an egg, but the description suggests a man. Illustrators have usually represented Humpty Dumpty as a man, and properly so".
  • Quotes doubting whether it was a originally a riddle.
    • Thomas Foster 1879 says it was a riddle about the sun, quoting an "Irish lady" who said that was the usual interpretation in Ireland. Against which, the Irish Folklore Commission records from the 1930s show the answer as an egg.
  • Earlier meanings
    • little hunchback 1701 misdirection
      • hump + dump and/or reduplication of one or other. Joseph Twadell Shipley humpty < hump, humpty-dumpty "the reduplication suggesting round-bellied, egg-shaped".
      • Adam Roberts, in a study of riddles in Tolkien's legendarium, invents an etymology in which humpty ["short and fat"] is a corruption of "hobbity".
    • ale and brandy 1698 possibly separate etymology
      • two kinds of beer egg riddle (Eckenstein)
    • Children's game; perhaps HD was not an egg but a child pretending to be an egg.
    • Eva Eickemeyer Rowland's 1899 poem "The Gingerbread Man" uses HD as nonsense words: "Humpty, dumpty, dickery dan, / Sing hey, sing ho, for the gingerbread man!"
  • Putative historic
    • • often originally jocular and/or one of a series of historical interpretations of various nursery rhymes
      • "creativity for creativity's sake"
    • William the Conqueror
    • King John:
      • 1890 Pick-me-up magazine: "Humpty-Dumpty was a bold, bad baron who was tumbled from power in the days of King John. His history was put into a riddle; the meaning of which was an egg."
      • "from the days of King John" (1907 syndicated newspaper item; 1917 magazine article)
      • 1995 book, represents John himself forced to concede Magna Carta
    • Richard III [Stuart 1935 suggests opponents would have applied the pre-existing rhyme to him after his downfall.]
    • Cardinal Wolsey
    • Civil War
      • Siege Gloucester
        • inspired by true event)
        • One of a series Nursery Rhymes and History by David Daube in The Oxford Magazine in 1956. Published under initials but identity of author soon worked out.
        • Opies call the series spoofs. Others unsure if intended as joke.
      • Siege Colchester (was a one-eyed gunner in tower which fell, but it was a small saker gun)
      • No evidence for either but was cannon called Punchinello.
• Variants; some editions of Halliwell list two separately, others list one with other footnoted. Robert Graves 1927 merges the two versions into one 6-line rhyme.
  • lay in a beck ... entrails
    • white counterpane in The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin 1903; recited while stealing an egg.
  • threescore men and threescore more ... before
    • four score; ten score
    • ... and forty wrights ... set HD to rights
  • hd on the wall / hd had a fall / all the doctors in the land / couldn't make hd stand"
  • horses/doctors/soldiers/money
    • ministers and parliament men
  • set/put HD up/in his place/together again [to rhyme with "men"] [standard modern form was used in 1803 manuscript addition to Mother Goose's Melofy, published in 1803 — but when was the manuscript added? — except last line was "Could not set HD up again" and prob cite Opies 1st ed likewise.]
    • set/put HD as he was before [to rhyme with "more"]
    • ...in the land / ... make HD stand
  • "not all... and/not all... Could put..." instead of "all... and all... Couldn't put..."
  • name:
    • Humpty-dumpty vs surname Dumpty; Carroll writes HD throughout, but Walter Lindsay 1898 calls him "Humpty".
    • Spellings: Humpy, Humti, Humpti, humbti, Humty, Humbty, Humptey, Humptdy, Humpitty
    • Hitti-Titti (Yorkshire, 1865) Rowly Bowly (U.S., 1831) roly-poly (Nova Scotia, 1931)
  • Last line too long
    • says Alice
    • zzz flea-market book says to stress "put" not "Could[n't]" in last line to avoid making scansion as scrambled as the egg.
• Foreign language
  • name; sat/lay where; who couldn't restore
  • gathered by folklorists, none widely current
  • translations
    • jocular Latin etc
      • Ancient Greek: Houmptidoúmptios (Οὑμπτιδούμπτιος)
    • Alice translators do not rely on local riddle
    • HC Anderson red herring
• Later history
  • https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hxh3fn;view=1up;seq=329 Jacob Bosanquet [named p.210] [1755-1828] on 26 Jan 1813 in East India Company debate (on Charter Act of 1813) quotes "an old riddle sometimes offered to children" (slight variant text quoted https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951000744057r;view=1up;seq=190 )
    • https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t8z89627m;view=1up;seq=144 1815 note p.209 says "An old riddle quoted on some occasion by a Proprietor of India Stock, to strengthen his arguments against opening the trade to India" p.122 East India Company rhyme; also calls him "Humpty" tout court
    • Satirist 1 March 1813 "Dispute between Monopoly and Power", represented by a hydra and "a stalwart man representing the might of the British Empire"; a hydra head is quoting HD poem. Tottering on the wall is "a porcelain mandarin with a gourd-shaped body and wearing a wide-brimmed conical hat".
  • London alderman Matthew Wood nicknamed "Humpty Dumpty" by satirists of his support for Queen Caroline and dismay at not being mentioned in her will. 1821 cartoon by Richard Dighton: "Alderman Wood, a dumpy figure with a large head, lies on his back, arms and legs in air, with mud splashing up all round him". Also nicknamed thus in John Bull (and wife "Mrs Humpty Dumpty") Another John Bull poem ("Hummpty"..."Mistress Dumpty") later (1854) quoted by The Westminster Review.
  • 5 April 1983, Richard C. Halverson, chaplain of the U.S. Senate began the daily prayer by reciting the rhyme, continuing, "Dear God, in mercy and grace, prevent the Senate from being like Humpty Dumpty. Keep it from being so fractured and fragmented that no one will be able to put it together again."
• Pantomime:

  1818 Humty-Dandy;

  1850 Humpty-Dumpty; transformation into Harlequin; peremptory association with nursery-rhyme

  1868 George Fox US version. Sole US hit pantomime. Script here:

  

  1868 poster

  • "As always in old pantomime, the show started like other musicals, then underwent a magical bit in which a fairy transformed the leads into commedia figures who played the rest of their parts in dumb show (except when they sang)."

  1900 Dan Leno often played HD

  In Denton Welch's 1946 story "The Coffin on the Hill", the protagonist says, "in 'Humpty Dumpty' at the Lyceum in Sheffield, Humphrey — to be literal — was a small and malevolent boy. But this was explained by the fact that he had been in the egg for a thousand years before it fell off the wall".

  By the late 20th C it was less common

• illustrations:

  Wallace Tripp's pictures for "Humpty-Dumpty" are realistic. "Nearly always interpreted as fantasy, the egg personified, Humpty-Dumpty is a real egg."

  • as ordinary egg: 1850 ordinary broken egg with soldiers and horses; 1855 ordinary broken egg with woman and child beside wall.
  • as large egg;
  • as anthropomorphic egg; 1911 Henriette Willebeek le Mair, 1913 Arthur Rackham, 1915 Frederick Richardson.
  • as humanoid with egg head;
  • as human boy: 1890 Kate Greenaway,
  • as human man:
• Lewis Carroll
  • Shape: Alice unsure whether his cravat was a belt, not knowing "which was neck and which was waist".
  • Language
    • "When I use a word..."
    • Philosophy of language, famous text as an extreme view in semantics.
      • Gardner summarises someone else's point that HD reverses the normal order: proper nouns have fixed definite meaning, common nouns are arbitrary.
      • Humptydumptyism as pejorative label for original intent approach to judicial interpretation and authorial intent approach to literary theory and aesthetics.
        • 1932 "Humpty Dumpty's Rule in Law" about "the tendency of the legal mind to pervert ordinary words".
      • Robert D. Sutherland suggests that Alice refers to him as "Humpty Dumpty himself" to emphasise that he is not an egg nor a man but a unique class of being.
    • HD's explanation of " blend words are called "portmanteau" as a descriptive name , explaining the meanings of some of those in the poem "Jabberwocky".
  • Chapter 6 ends with a crash, and chapter 7 opens with all the king's horses and men, who are incompetent; we never see HD after Chapter 6: is it implicit that the crash was his fall?
    • Tekdemir says "nursery-rhyme characters ... are parodied with the purpose of indicating the fatalistic quality of their textual identity as they have to perform what is already written for them. Even Alice cannot prevent Humpty Dumpty's long expected fall despite all her warnings and pleadings."
    • Gardner says the chapter "elaborates on the incidents related in a familiar nursery rhyme".
    • A stage adaptation of the book in the 1890s used a mechanical HD, which fell behind the wall, with a breaking-glass sound effect, at the end of the scene.
  • In adaptations of TLG (alone or incorporated with Alice in W.l.), HD was played by W. C. Fields (1933), Jimmy Durante (1966 TV), Freddie Jones (1976 TV), Jonathan Winters (1985 TV), George Gobel (1987 voice), Wally Wingert (2016 voice).
    • In the original 2008 production of the opera Through the Looking Glass, HD is a tenor role played by the same singer as Lewis Carroll, Train Driver, The Red King, and The White Knight.
  • Allusions and parodies
    • In Henry Kingsley's 1872 novel Valentin, Valentin Schneider suggests TLG is an allegory of the Franco-Prussian War (in which Kingsley had been war correspondent for the Daily Review) with HD as the defeated emperor Napoleon III.
    • In Saki's 1902 parody The Westminster Alice, HD is Redvers Buller, commander in the Second Boer War. HD's poem parodies a speech Buller gave in Westminster Hall in 1901 which led to his dismissal.
    • Elizabeth Prioleau suggests that in Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert's character recalls both Lewis Carroll and the HD of Through the Looking Glass, and his name the latter. David Rampton is not convinced Vladimir Nabokov intended such a connection.
• Other allusions and derivatives
  • John Frederick Stanford recited the rhyme in a speech in the UK House of Commons in 1850.
  • In W. Brunton's 1867 comic verse "The History of Hum Teh Dum Tih", HD is a mandarin ruined by his failed speculative plan to repair the Great Wall of China.
  • Humptee Dumptee Frumtee Chundrer is a conservative brahmin in "Humayscha Agé Jao" in Aliph Cheem's 1871 humorous poetry collection Lays of Ind; perhaps his name's resemblance to HD is only a coincidence.
  • W. W. Denslow
  • 1903 Squirrel Nutkin : "Humpty Dumpty lies in the beck, With a white counterpane round his neck, Forty doctors and forty wrights, Cannot put Humpty Dumpty to rights! ... Hickamore, Hackamore, on the King's kitchen door; All the King's horses, and all the King's men, Couldn't drive Hickamore, Hackamore, Off the King's kitchen door."
  • Finnegans Wake
  • Richard M. Gale gives the name "Humpty Dumpty Intuition" to William James and John Dewey's claim that mind-body dualism splits reality into things that can't be put "together again".
  • Jasper Fforde and other whodunnits
  • The title poem of Chana Bloch's 1998 collection Mrs. Dumpty is from the point of view of HD's wife, after others have given up on saving him.
  • etc

Dictionaries

NED Vol.V Pt.1 pp.454–455

Humpty-dumpty (hɒˑm^pti dɒˑm^pti), sb. and adj. Also 7 humtee dumtee, -y.

[It is doubtful whether the word is the same in senses 1 and 2 : in sense 1 the name may have been concocted out of Hum sb.¹3 ; in sense 2 it is evidently formed from hump and dump, though this would naturally give humpy-dumpy (cf. Humpy a.), and the intrusive t is not clearly accounted for.]

• A. sb.
  • 1. A drink made with 'ale boiled with brandy' (B.E. Dict. Cant. Crew, a 1700).
    • 1698 W. King tr. Sorbiere's Journ. Lond. 135 (Farmer) He answer'd me that he had a thousand such sort of liquors, as Humtie Dumtie, Three Threads.
    • 1699 [see Hugmatee],
    • 1837 Disraeli Venetia 1. xiv, They drank humpty-dumpty, which is ale boiled with brandy.
  • 2. A short, dumpy, hump-shouldered person. In the well-known nursery rime or riddle (quoted below) commonly explained as signifying an egg (in reference to its shape); thence allusively used of persons or things which when once overthrown or shattered cannot be restored.
    • 1785 Grose Dict. Vulg. T., Humpty-Dumpty, a little humpty dumpty man or woman; a short clumsey person of either sex.
    • 1810 Gammer Gurton's Garland Part III. 36 [Not in Ritson's ed. c 1760, nor in the reprint of that in 1810] Humpty dumpty sate on a wall, Humpti dumpti had a great fall; Threescore men and threescore more, Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before.
    • 1843 Halliwell Nursery Rhymes Eng. 113 [giving prec. version adds] Note. Sometimes the last two lines run as follows: All the king's horses and all the kind's men, Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again.
    • 1848 Blackw. Mag. July 39 To try the game of Humpty-Dumpty and to fall.
    • 1872 'L. Carroll' Thro' Looking-Gl. vi. 114 'It's very provoking', Humpty Dumpty said, .. 'to be called an egg — very!'
    • 1883 J. W. Sherer At Home & in India 193 She .. could not, by all the miracles of millinery, be made other than a humpty-dumpty.
    • 1896 Westm. Gaz. 26 June 3/1 Now that the Education Humpty-Dumpty has tumbled off the wall, and is hopelessly poached for the present year, and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't set him up again, the life has gone out of Parliament.

(In the nursery rime or riddle there are numerous variations of the last two lines, e.g. 'Not all the king's horses and all the king's men Could [can] set [put] Humpty Dumpty up again [in his place again, together again]'.)

• B. adj.
  • Short and fat. Also allusively referring to the Humpty-Dumpty of the nursery rime.
    • 1785 [see A. 2].
    • 1828 Craven Dial., Humpty-dumpty, short and broad, 'He's a lile humpty-dumpty fellow'.
    • 1898 Westm. Gaz. 3 July 6/3 To set the humpty-dumpty conversion firmly on its legs.
  • b. Applied to a mechanical rhythm, as in the nursery rime.
    • 1887 Saintsbury Hist. Elizab. Lit. iv. (1890) 128 The same humpty-dumpty measure of eights and sixes.

NED Vol.V Pt.1 p.443

Hum (hvm), sb.¹ Also 6-7 humme, 8 humm.

[Cognate with Hum v.¹ It is doubtful whether sense 3 belongs here.]

• II. †3. A kind of liquor ; strong or double ale. Obs. (Cf. Humming ppl. a. 2 b.)
  • • 1616 B. Jonson Devil an Ass 1. i, Strong-waters, Hum, Meath, and Obarni.
    • a 1621 Fletcher Wild Goose Chase II. iii, Would I had some hum.
    • 1670 Cotton Voy. Irel., The best Cheshire hum he e'er drank in his life.
    • a 1700 B.E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Hum, or Humming Liquor, Double Ale, Stout, Pharoah.
    • 1719 D'Urfey Pills (1872) I. 311 To get us stout hum, when Christmas is come.
  • attrib. 1629 Shirley Wedding II. (N.), Sold For physic in hum-glasses and thimbles.

NED Vol.V Pt.1 p.440

†Hugmatee Obs. [? from phrase hug-me-t'ye.] Cant name of a kind of ale.

• 1699 Bentley Phal. Pref. 33 He is better skill'd in the Catalogues of Ales, his Humty Dumty, Hugmatee, Three-Threads, and the rest of that glorious List, than in the Catalogues of MSS.
• a 1704 T. Brown Wks. (1760) IV. 218 (D.) No hugmatee nor flip my grief can smother.

Green's Dictionary of Slang says s.v.

• "humpty-dumpty n.¹" etymology "redup.; the two liquors are ‘humped together’"
• "humpty-dumpty n.²" and "humpty-dumpty adj." sense a person who is a failure, through bad luck or incompetence.

New Dict Cant Crew s.v. humptey-dumptey "Ale boild with Brandy"

Webber, Elizabeth; Feinsilber, Mike (1999). Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions. Merriam-Webster. pp. 277–278. ISBN 9780877796282.

• can't repair
• what I mean

Ale

William King 1698 (pretended to be by Samuel de Sorbiere, whose Relation d’un voyage en Angleterre was from 1664):

I told them, that we had several Liquors in France, as Vin de Bonne, Volne, Mulso, Chabre, Condrieu, and D'Arbris, otherwise called Cberry-Brandy, Vattee, Fenoulliet de l'Isle de Ree. He answer'd me, that he had a thousand such sort of Liquors, as Humtie Dumtie, Three Threads, Four Threads, Old Pharoah, Knockdown, Hugmeteè, Shouldreè, Clamber-Crown, Hot-Pots at Newgate-Market, Fox-comb, Blind Pinneaux, Stiffle, &c.

"King had there [in his Journey to London] given a long and curious list of the ales procurable in London taverns, and now singling out the most strangely named of these, Bentley slightingly dubbed him 'the Humty Dumty Author'." Horne, Colin J. (October 1946). "The Phalaris Controversy: King versus Bentley". The review of English studies. 22 (88): 289–303: 294. JSTOR 509699.

Preface to A dissertation upon the epistles of Phalaris. With an answer to the objections of the Honourable Charles Boyle, Esquire (1699):

pp.xxxiv–xxxv A man must be dos'd with Humty Dumty, that could talk so inconsistently.

p.lxiv Mr. B. must forgive me if I think this Paragraph more becomes the Humty Dumty Author than a Gentleman of Sense and Honour.

p.cx Or if he comes with more Testimonies of his Bookseller or his Humty Dumty Acquaintance; I shall take those for no Answer.

Miscellaneous points

Points

Year	Type	Desc	Ref
1797	Attest	In the 1790s Samuel Arnold sold sheet music in the series Juvenile Amusement, of which No. 68, watermarked 1797, was "Humpty Dumpty".
1809	Attest	"the egg, by the children christened humbti dumpti" [sic; in the poem which followed the spelling was "humbti dumbti"]
1701	Attest	short-person in a burlesque Beau Humpty-dumpty next appears, A merry Lump well grown in Years, With Back and Breast like Punchanello, But for his parts has not his fellow; This is a Crumpling of some Title, A Barronet, and thing of Mettle; But only does himself degrade, When Honour's Tax is to be paid, And then too wisely saves his Purse, He's no more Barr'net than a Horse, Tho' most, two Titles do afford him, Not only Sir-him, but my Lord-him. •;. •:'. [\ 7: Hi-:; /,!.•! ' f . *, . j As for his . Courage, Wit and Serific And every other Excellence,1"-', He's one of universal Knowledge, And deeper Leanrd then a whole College; Physician, Poet and Devine, Musician, Monster, Man and Swine, '. Banterer, Gamster, Sports-rtiah, Drinker,' !'-. Comptroller* nay, and sometimes Skinker,' "" \ A Surgeon to a crippled Sow^" 1 .
1930	Pseudo-history	1485 Richard III (Katherine Elwes Thomas 1930) "my kingdom for a horse" James Planché "half inclined" 1872
1870	Pseudo-history	1485 Richard III James Planché "This rhyme has been generally placed among the riddles, and is stated to mean an egg ; but why more particularly an egg than anything else which would be smashed by such a fall, I am at a loss to imagine. It would I be quite as applicable — to the fall of a despot or usurper. If Horace Walpole had not abolished the historical hump of Richard III and rehabilitated his stature, I should possibly be half-inclined to suspect these lines to be a Lancastrian paean over the fatal tumble of the crook-backed tyrant at Bosworth! But, of course, if he really was as Shakespeare makes him sarcastically call himself, “A marvellous proper man,” neither humpy nor remarkably dumpy, it would be idle to entertain the notion."
1956	Pseudo-history (jocular)	1643 William Chillingworth's siege engine at the siege of Gloucester (David Daube 1956) Plaque in Gloucester commemorating 1643 siege
1886	Pseudo-history (jocular)	1086 William the Conqueror (L'homme qui dompte, "the man who conquers") corpse exploding (Martin Farquhar Tupper 1886)
1959	Commentary	We know he is an egg though the text does not make this explicit; a useful exercise for English students to analyse.
1906	Variants	The rhyme on Humpty-Dumpty among us is current in three variations : — Humpty-Dumpty sate on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall ; Threescore men and threescore more Cannot place Humpty-Dumpty as he was hefore. (1810, p. 36.) (p.47 in this reprint) Humpty-Dumpty sate on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall ; All the king's soldiers and all the king's men Cannot set Humpty-Dumpty up again. (1842, p. 113.) Humpty-Dumpty lay in a beck With all his sinews around his neck ; Forty doctors and forty wights Couldn't put Humpty-Dumpty to rights. (1846, p. 209.) (this source has both versions)

Mannheim 1858

10) Engelland, der himmlische Wohnsitz der Seligen ist zugleich die Heimat und Ausgangsstätte alles Lebens. So nimmt das Ei daselbst seinen Ursprung. Ein bekanntes Volksrätsel lautet:

Es kommt ein Schiff aus Engelland,
Hat kein Bügel und kein Band,
Und doch zweierlei Bier ).

In Luxemburg ward Engelland begreiflicherweise in Niederland verändert:

Es kommt ein Fässchen aus Niederland,
Hat weder Reifen, noch eisern Band,
Giebt zweierlei Trank doch, wie bekannt ).

Vielleicht hatte Engelland einst auch in einer schwedischen Fassung statt:

Det kom en tunna frän frömmande land,
utan laggar och utan band).

Ein anderes Rätsel, dessen Auflösung ebenfalls das Ei ist, lautet :

Hümpelken, pümpelken sat op de bank,
hümpelken, pümpelken fei von de bank,
do is ken dokter in Engelland,
de hümpelken, pümpelken kuräre kann ).

Daneben stehen die Passungen:

1.

Gigele Gagele auf der Bank,
Gigele Ga2;ele unter der Bank!
Ist kein Doktor im ganzen Land,
Der's Gigele Gagele wieder ganz machen kann ).

2.

Lille trille
laae paa hylde,
fald ned af hylde;
ingen mand
i hele land
lille trille curere kan ).

3.

Lille bylle laae paa hylde,
hlle bylle fald ned of hylde;
ingen mand in verden kon
hjaelpe lille bylle istond ").

4.

Lille trolle
lag pä hölle
ingen man i detta lanii
, lille trolle laeka (heilen) kan ).

5.

Bolli för äf skäröi
allar gjäröir sprungu äf,
han vär hvörki firi eystan, ella firi vestan
iS bolla afturboeta kiindi ).

Das Ei, aus welchem auf geheimnisvolle Weise ein neues Leben hervorgeht, bot der Naturbetrachtung unserer Alten ein tiefes Rätsel. Kunstvoll gefügt ohne Nat und Drat), ohne Reife und Bänder, so dass man weder Anfang noch Ende daran sieht, musste es ihnen als eine Arbeit der schmiedenden Elbe erscheinen und in diesem Sinne sagte man, dass es in Engelland, dem Eibenreich, zu Hause sei, daher gefahren komme. Wir sahen bereits o. S. 346, dass die Elbe auf Eierschalen aus und nach ihrer Heimat fahren. Auch in Holland schreibt man vor, die Eierschalen zu zerbrechen, sonst fahren die Hexen darin nach England ).

Ist das Ei zerbrochen, so kann kein Mensch es wieder heilen, nicht einmal die kunstvoll schmiedenden Geister (Elbe) im Lande der Engel). Wir lernen hier also Engelland als einen Ort kennen, wo kostbare, wundersame Gefäfse gefertigt werden, eine Tätigkeit, welcher unsere Elbe nach vielfachen Sagen im oder hinter dem Berge (dem Wolkenfels) obzuliegen pflegen).

Das Ei musste unsern Altvorderen um so mehr elbisch erscheinen, als sowol seine Gestalt sie an den buckligen Zwerg ), als auch sein Hin- und Herrollen an das Kobold- oder Kopfheisterschiefsen') erinnerte.

Unsorted

• Mannhardt, "Das Rutsel vom Ei", in Zeitsehrift fur deutsche Mythologie, IV, 1859, p. 394 ff.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=wE9HAQAAMAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty&f=false Humpty Dumpty: A Playful Paraphrase By William Winter, A. Reiff

https://books.google.ie/books?id=98shAQAAMAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&pg=PA1379#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&f=false spectator

"That last line is much too long for the poetry," Carroll's Alice says.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=qHxTAAAAYAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty&pg=PA365#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty&f=false chambers journal

https://books.google.ie/books?id=8EMxAQAAMAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty&pg=PA493#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty&f=false St James magazine, for the young of the household

https://books.google.ie/books?id=d31aAAAAcAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty&f=false infinitesimals

https://books.google.ie/books?id=3thUAAAAcAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty&f=false Esmeralda burlesque, frollo calls Quasimodo h.d.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=FdBZAAAAcAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty&f=false Sir George and the dragon burlesque

https://books.google.ie/books?id=Xu0pAQAAIAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty&pg=PA102#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty&f=false mother goose for grown fills

https://books.google.ie/books?id=4KgNAAAAQAAJ&dq=Humpy%20dumpy&pg=PA70#v=onepage&q=Humpy%20dumpy&f=false Mrs sc Hall

https://books.google.ie/books?id=FS3VAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA14&dq=Humpy+dumpy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic39urm_7bAhXJJcAKHbPhAhUQ6AEIUzAI#v=onepage&q=Humpy%20dumpy&f=false excursion through the slave States

https://books.google.ie/books?id=OZAOAAAAYAAJ&dq=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&pg=PA113#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&f=false nursery rhymes an egg

https://books.google.ie/books?id=F0P4O6K5zIAC&pg=PA8&dq=Humpty+dumpty+rhymes&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg44aqnP7bAhWrBcAKHfRtDmcQ6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&f=false Norway and Sweden equivalent

https://books.google.ie/books?id=6nsAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA96&dq=Humpty+dumpty+rhymes&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg44aqnP7bAhWrBcAKHfRtDmcQ6AEIRjAG#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&f=false could not set Humpty Dumpty up again

https://books.google.ie/books?id=IwN1Ur3NgF0C&dq=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&pg=PA16#v=onepage&q=Humpty%20dumpty%20rhymes&f=false rhyme with picture of large egg

Chambers dictionary definition is egg-like rather than egg

https://bshistorian.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/putting-the-dump-in-humpty-dumpty/amp/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humpty-dumpty

"French nursery rhyme hero (the rhyme first attested in English 1810)," https://www.etymonline.com/word/humpty-dumpty

Humpty Dumpty looks transparent, for he was short, even if not “thick”; this jocular word must be a derivative of dump. In such compounds, as a general rule, the determining element is the second, while the first one is meaningless, has no ascertainable origin, and often begins with an h (helter-skelter, hoity-toity, hootchy–kootchy, etc.). https://blog.oup.com/2017/02/humpty-dumpty-and-his-kin/

http://folklore_en.enacademic.com/556/Humpty_Dumpty Opie and Opie 1997 cited in 2014

https://books.google.ie/books?id=dOk8AQAAIAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=PA184#v=onepage&q=dumpty&f=false "It is very like a certain gentleman mentioned in history, and named Humpty Dumpty, ... And so it is with a man's reputation, Mr. Latimer. It takes a great many horses and a great many men to set up a character once fallen; friable materials, Sir— friable materials— easily cracked, and not easily mended."

https://books.google.ie/books?id=jnVIAAAAYAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=RA1-PA8#v=onepage&q&f=false Figaro in London No.162 (10 Jan 1835) p.8 "TWELFTH NIGHT CHARACTERS AT WINDSOR"

The Duke of Wellington drew General Bombastus Furiso. Sir Robert Peel drew Charles Surface. Lord Winchester drew a Donkey. The Lady Mayoress drew Sappho. Lord Ellenborough drew a Unicorn. Lord Thynne (by favour of Mr. Selby,) Nimming Ned. Her Majesty drew Queen Dollalolla. His Majesty drew Humpty Dumpty. His Majesty was so struck with the ominous meaning of the verses underneath his character ... Prophetic words, which his Majesty applied to his own fate and that of his ministers, that he immediately broke up the party, just at the very moment that the intelligence of the first day's poll in the city was brought to him.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=kGtiAAAAcAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=PT93#v=onepage&q&f=false "Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again"

https://books.google.ie/books?id=23sAAAAAMAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false "[An Egg]" 1846

Chambers, William; Chambers, Robert, eds. (1851). "Humpty Dumpty". Chambers's Journal. Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers: 365–366. a rumination on childhood moral tales, nostalgia, mortality. ("yolk...albumen...eggy"; but later "man" in "Never believe it to be the mere story of an unhappy man's precipitation; least of all, to be a mere riddle, hard of solution, and unimportant, and perhaps of little meaning when solved")

https://books.google.ie/books?id=GGkDAAAAYAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=PA1241#v=onepage&q&f=false 1843 German article has German version and Low German "Ente potente", and ref to another German article

https://books.google.ie/books?id=TxcYAAAAYAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=RA1-PA326-IA14#v=onepage&q&f=false 1838 Calcutta Monthly Journal cites usual form as "some old English lines"

https://books.google.ie/books?id=Qawzy18xaV8C&dq=dumpty&pg=RA3-PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false 1830-1 in connection with Wellington's downfall cites usual form as "Nursery Song"

Already in 1869 The Spectator suggests "Dumpty" as a surname:

she neglects to connect the remarkable fragment which she makes the subject of a legend,

"Diddledy diddledy Dumpty, The cat ran up a plum tree ; Half-a-crown to fetch her down, Diddledy, diddledy, Dumpty,"

with one far more widely known of the same cycle, and certainly connected with the same family name :—

" Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

William Thoms' 1843 review of Halliwell in The Athenaeum no.809 pp.409–411 sees "Humpty Dumpty" not as a mere riddle but as a moral story of pride before a fall.

https://archive.org/stream/TheAnnotatedAlice Finnegans Wake, cosmic egg

https://archive.org/stream/EuropeanIndo-EuropeanPoetsOfUrduPersian-RamBabuSaksena/European%20And%20Indo-European%20Poets%20Of%20Urdu%20And%20Persian._djvu.txt Urdu/Persian translation

https://archive.org/stream/nationalrhymesof00brow#page/23/mode/1up Nursery Rhymes 1896 egg picture

Isaac D'Israeli says Richard Bentley nicknamed William King "Humty-Dumty" [sic] for his alleged drinking. (cf. King's 1698 use of phrase)

• Hoefer, Albert (1843). von der Hagen, Friedrich Heinrich (ed.). "Ein Plattdeutscher Reim nach einem Englischen erklärt". Germania (in German). 5. Berlin: Berlinischen Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache und Alterthumskunde: 252–254.

Low German

Ente Potente sat up de benk,
Ente Potente fèl von de benk:
Do kémen de herren von Akel Dörschäkel,
Wull'n Ente Potenten wedder héle mäken.

A duck-egg, with other ducks gathering round.

• • Hoefer, Albert (1844). von der Hagen, Friedrich Heinrich (ed.). "Weiteres über das deutsche Räthsel vom Ei". Germania (in German). 6. Berlin: Berlinischen Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache und Alterthumskunde: 155–156. [Item 7 is additions to Ente Potente variants]

1850 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=humpty;id=inu.30000135384893;view=image;seq=111;start=1;sz=10;page=search;num=83 Humpty Dumpty, or Robbin de Bobbin and the First Lord Mayor of Lun'on. Humpty Dumpty is an intelligible sprite, who issues from an egg, and is employed in counteracting the efforts of the £ characters of the pantomime by £ under their le and turning them topsy-turvy. The heroine is the “Old Wo…

• same pp 850-851 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=humpty;id=nyp.33433082282025;view=image;start=1;sz=10;page=root;size=100;seq=700;num=810 full synopsis

• "G." (1867). "Un ancien adage flamand". Handelingen (in French). 19: 63–72.

refs and repeats Hoefer with Flemish similar.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=humpty;id=nnc1.cu17085624;view=image;seq=911;start=1;sz=10;page=search;num=5 list of egg riddles from German article

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=humpty;id=nnc1.cu17085624;view=image;start=1;sz=10;page=root;size=100;seq=20;num=12 index numbers for H-D in various collections

Sale-Barker, Lucy, ed. (1876). "Humpty Dumpty". Little wide-awake. pp. 250–251. pictured as a man falling

https://books.google.ie/books?id=aJBVAAAAcAAJ&dq=humpty%20horses&pg=PA136#v=onepage&q&f=false 1872 book man "Humphie" mangled as "Humpty-Dumpty" to child's amusement and bemusement, mother explains he wasn't Humpty-Dumpty as he wasnt an egg.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=11ACAAAAQAAJ&dq=humpty%20horses&pg=PA91#v=onepage&q&f=false 1876 Second verse predicated on his being an egg

https://books.google.ie/books?id=GiIOAAAAQAAJ&dq=humpty%20horses&pg=PA18#v=onepage&q&f=false pictured as a boy on a wall [with some eggs? no, fruit from the tree beside him]

https://books.google.ie/books?id=4BleAAAAcAAJ&dq=humpty%20horses&pg=PA61#v=onepage&q&f=false nonce variant still eggs "smashed by the wall"

https://books.google.ie/books?id=3vc_AQAAMAAJ&dq=humpty%20horses&pg=PA151#v=onepage&q&f=false 1864 Humpty as the Sun, ditto the King

https://books.google.ie/books?id=J3VPAQAAMAAJ&dq=humpty%20horses&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false 1867 - Fun gives an Americanised H-D lampoon

https://books.google.ie/books?id=aNABAAAAQAAJ&dq=humpty%20horses&pg=PA155#v=onepage&q&f=false 1871 the wall where poor old Humpty fell

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.81371862;view=1up;seq=82 German txn of Englsih novel incl HD

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t4hm5xr72;view=1up;seq=44 Romaunt Carols of Cockaine Chivalry for the Cradle 1869 published indiv earlier

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951p01160704s;view=1up;seq=446 pp 418-9 fn 2 German variants

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b255214;view=1up;seq=411 Latin Circulus

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044019673656;view=1up;seq=278 Latin version

1874 Latin Humptius Dumptius

1868 Latin Humptius in muro sedit.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101048494213;view=1up;seq=376 Swiss German Annebadadeli

https://books.google.ie/books?id=Q6KRptHLx7EC&pg=PA65 Pennsylvania Dutch

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000121009439;view=1up;seq=271 p245-6 Annebadadeli again

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$c190123;view=1up;seq=211 Punch 1859 "Humpty Dumpty" the pope as an egg

Petty 1953 points out that the picture spoils the riddle; suggest

Humorous theory that H-D was human with osteopetrosis.

Joseph Grimaldi played My Lord Humpy Dandy (a Regency fop) in Harlequin Munchausen; or, The Fountain of Love (1818)." He is changed into a clown in scene 4. Presumably a progenitor of the 1868 U.S. Humpty Dumpty pantomime if not the earlier 1850 one.

Already by 17 May 1872, Alexander John Ellis was quoting Lewis Carroll's HD in his presidential address to the Philological Society.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=GzoGAAAAQAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=PA423-IA4#v=onepage&q&f=false 1873 "Humpty Dumpty" children's drama about a "fat boy" prince, pictured.

1876 sheet music https://books.google.ie/books?id=yV62PKolgrMC&dq=dumptie&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false says James Anthony Froude equated with Richard III

https://books.google.ie/books?id=zq7Q6maJ34sC&dq=humpty%20carriage%20dumpty&pg=RA2-PA438#v=onepage&q&f=false "threescore men.." quoted atributed to "Sphynx" in The Reformers' Gazette No.58, 9 June 1832, "the Court", p.438

Eliab Harvey quoted "Humpty Dumpty" in 1826 in opposing Catholic Emancipation.

Albert Jack says real meaning is Royalists' gun in tower of St Mary-at-the-Walls during the siege of Colchester, quotes two "extra verses", and claims Tenniel's Alice is first known depiction as an egg. The theory is mentioned in the Victoria County History of Essex, cited to the Colchester Express (1 December 1972) and Essex County Standard (14 January 1983), but VCH says "There appears to be no evidence to support the suggestion, popularized c. 1980, that another nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty, derives from the destruction of a cannon at the siege of Colchester in 1648." Jack's verse names the gunner "One-Eyed Thompson", whereas Pluckwell (1987) calls him "One Eyed Dick".

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092636364;view=1up;seq=234 "All the king's horses and all the king's men" in quotes in 1837 poem

1838 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=horses;id=nyp.33433081881991;view=plaintext;seq=328;start=11;sz=10;page=root;num=326;size=100;orient=0 "some old English lines"

1839 "the old nurse riddle" https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=king%27s%20horses;id=uc1.c3007311;view=plaintext;start=1;sz=10;page=root;size=100;seq=1025;num=1017

1871: youth with cracked-shell egg head. Sheet music shows intended rhythm. Contents page says picture was by Henry Stacy Marks. Review in The Spectator doesn't mention eggs:

[another illustration] gives as much of the effect of a grotesque situation lit upon by a whimsical accident, as art could give. So, too, with Mr. H. S. Marks's admirable picture of "Humpty-Dumpty's" great broken bald head, over which you see the cracks running in all directions as in splintered glass. .He lies on his back at the foot of the wall,—the head, a very big, empty, philanthropic one (suggesting that Humpty Dumpty would have done better to sit on a School Board than on a wall), upturned, and the face disfigured by a painful smile (like that painted on the signboards of any " Sun " Inn), while a sedate frog is apparently examining anxiously the nature of this fractured globular body near him, and contemplating a jump on to its upper surface. The completely extemporized character of Humpty Dumpty and his misfortune could hardly have been more effectually represented than by the astonishment and curiosity with which this frog is exploring his smooth, bald, fractured brain.

1874 sheet music and picture of mannikin with egg head falling past medieval princesses.

1821 Alderman Wood as "Humpty Dumpty"

1874 a boy on a wall holding a nest or basket of eggs.

The riddle-rhyme of "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" is, in one form or other, a favorite throughout Europe. A curious Danish version is given by Thiele, iii. 148:

Lille Trille
Laae paa Hylde;
Lille Trille
Faldt ned af Hylde.
Ingen Mand
I hele Land
Lille Trille curere kan.

Which may be thus translated:

Little Trille
Lay on a shelf:
Little Trille
Thence pitch'd himself:
Not all the men
In our land, I ken,
Can put Little Trille right again.

And Mr. Stephens has preserved two copies in his MS. Swedish collections. The first is from the province of Upland:

Thille Lille
  Satt på take';
Thille Lille
   Trilla' ner;
Ingen liikare i hela verlden
Thille Lille laga kan.

Thille Lille
  On the roof-tree sat;
Thille Lille
  Down fell flat;
Never a leech the world can show
That Thille Lille can heal, I trow.

Another from the province of Småland:

Lille Bulle
Trilla' ner a skulle;
Ingen man i detta lan'
   Lille Bulle laga kan.

Down on the shed
Lille Bulle rolled;
Never a man in all this land
Lille Bulle helpen can.

— 

1868 E.T.Smith's pantomime at the Lyceum is "HD and Dame Trot and her Cat" in which HD is "Prince of the Enchanted Islands", who imprisons Princess Hushaby before his "sad accident" is among the rhymes enacted.

French letter to Figaro 15 May 1862 p.6 from "Humpty Dumpty" https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k270100c/f6.image.r=dumpty?rk=21459;2

French Rolland 1882 quotes and cites 1 German and 2 English versions https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5433286x/f127.image.r=dumpty check the 2 other than Halliwelll one is Gregor 1881 ("Humpity Dumpity")

1866 montois boule-boule p.59 sv "Advinette" https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k64889518/f65.image.r="boule%20boule"?rk=1180263;2

1883 Folies Bergère de Paris https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5479613c/f4.image.r=dumpty?rk=150215;2

Humpty-Dumpty, est le nom générique des pierrots d'outrè-mer, et la pantomine à laquelle il donne son nom, se rattache en plus d'un point à la vieille pantomine(...)L'orang outan, (car il n'y a pas de ' S bonne pantomine américaine sans singe ni ' i.bête fauve), tout en secondant les projets ' d'Humpty-Dumpty, ne cesse de lui jouer -, quelques bons tours de sa façon(...)apprête-t-il a donner Une séréna- ' de, Humpty-Dumpty l'a déjà devancé

"H.B." (John Doyle) POLITICAL SKETCHES. 27 December 1836 CCCCLXIII. NURSERY RHYMES, No. 5. Explanation in this book.

2007 claim that Tenniel was first egg, cited to Opie 1962.

Burns, Tom, ed. (2006). "Mother Goose". Children's Literature Review: Excerpts from Reviews, Criticism, Amd Commentary on Books for Children and Young People. 117. Cengage Gale: 35–. ISBN 9780787680480.

• Partial version at Encyclopedia.com
  • Check cited sources and sections not included by Encyclopedia.com
• Warner, Marina (Spring 1990). "Mother Goose Tales: Female Fiction, Female Fact?". Folklore 101 (1): 3–25. — discusses HD in sections IV and V:
  • "IV. The Formalist Approach"
    • An even more telling example of a riddle now divorced from its answer is one of the most famous of the rhymes: few people who recite the story of "Humpty Dumpty" realize they are giving a riddling description of an egg.
    • Cautionary tale? Mother Goose's egg? Egg as symbol of fertility, life, birth; Fall as Fall of man.
  • "V. The Psychological and Psychoanalytical Approach" Freudian -- Mother Goose's unwanted-pregnancy egg, infanticide/abortion.

A 1973 herbalism book claims HD is a riddle whose solution is not an egg but "a basket or butt of malt swung between two trunks".

Search for "humpty" in Vaughan Williams Memorial Library includes Roud Folk Song Index and more

Variants

DUMPY, or DUMPTY. A thick, short, stumpy person or thing; as an egg, according to the riddle. Perhaps "Dumpy" which is used in Scotland, is the true word, and according to Jamieson derived from Isl. doomp.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
[Humpty Dumpty went to bed,
Humpty Dumpty broke his head,]
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Can't set Humpty Dumpty together again.

Scene in 1854 play Flowers for the Altar, Or, Play and Earnest:

it is a pity certainly for us that the eggs are broken ... He sings:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
Not all the king's horses nor all the king's men
Could set Humpty Dumpty up again

Fraser's Magazine 1848:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall:
Not all the King's horses, nor all the King's men,
Could put Humpty Dumpty on the wall again.

An 1852 Fraser's Magazine review of "A very pretty edition of some Ditties of the Olden Time, illustrated by a lady, [which] was published at Brighton, and by Bogue, London, in 1850":

There is one mistake in the text which, though probably given for the sake of rhyme, destroys the intention of the original by making the meaning too plain, which is fatal to a riddle. This occurs in the last line of “Humpty Dumpty,” which should stand thus—

Could not set Humpty Dumpty on his legs again,

and not—

Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again,

as this collection has it, which would make the discovery of the egg too easy.

"Fourscore men" variant current in North Carolina in 1917.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=3_Q7AQAAMAAJ&dq=dumpty&pg=PA956#v=onepage&q&f=false

All the king's money

Variants of Appalachian migrants in Cincinnati, including:

Humpy Dumpy on the wall,
Humpy Dumpy had a fall,
All the doctor in the world
Could not cure Humpy Dumpy

Similar in Bahamas.

Antigua:

Humpy Dumpy sittin' on de wall
Humpy Dumpy had a fall
All de white king ladies
Tell what do Humpy Dumpy.

Humpy Dumpy, 1874 novel about a humpback girl named Caroline Mornay nicknamed Humpy Dumpy.

Nursery Jingles/XLVII. A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes Sabine Baring-Gould (1894)

Humpty-dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty-dumpty had a great fall;
Not all the king's horses, nor all the king's men
Can put Humpty-dumpty on the wall again.

"All the king's doctors" in A New Spirit of the Age (Richard H. Horne, 1844), Volume 1, "Thomas Ingoldsby" p.85 https://books.google.ie/books?id=rJA9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA85

1833 Yorkshire

Nea doot thoo knaws t’ oad riddle of an eyg,
I’ve knawn’t sen Ah was boot t’ bookc o’ my leg,—
Its “hoompty doompty sat upon a wall,
“And hoompty doompty gat a desprit fall,
"And all t’ king’s hosses there, and all t’ king's men,
“Could neer set hoompty doompty reet agen.”
Se’a they consated if they carved this screen
Bood yance fre’t ple’ace in which it had awlus been,
Like hoompty doompty, it could neer age’an
Be set te reets let what pains wad be te’an.

Parodies

"THE ROMAUNT OF HUMPTY DUMPTY" by Henry S. Leigh

'Tis midnight, and the moonbeam sleeps
Upon the garden sward;
My lady in yon turret keeps
Her tearful watch and ward.
"Beshrew me!" mutters, turning pale,
The stalwart seneschal;
"What's he, that sitteth, clad in mail
Upon our castle wall?"

"Arouse thee, friar of orders grey;
What ho! bring book and bell!
Ban yonder ghastly thing, I say;
And, look ye, ban it well!
By cock and pye, the Humpty's face!"
The form turned quickly round;
Then totter'd from its resting-place—

That night the corse was found.

The king, with hosts of fighting men
Rode forth at break of day;
Ah! never gleamed the sun till then
On such a proud array.
But all that army, horse and foot,
Attempted, quite in vain,
Upon the castle wall to put
The Humpty up again.

"Imitation" by Anthony C. Deane

Calm and implacable,
Eying disdainfully the world beneath,
Sat Humpty-Dumpty on his mural eminence
In solemn state:
And I relate his story
In verse unfettered by the bothering restrictions of rhyme or metre,
In verse (or "rhythm," as I prefer to call it)
Which, consequently, is far from difficult to write.

He sat. And at his feet
The world passed on—the surging crowd
Of men and women, passionate, turgid, dense,
Keenly alert, lethargic, or obese.
(Those two lines scan!)

Among the rest
He noted Jones; Jones with his Roman nose,
His eyebrows—the left one streaked with a dash of gray—
And yellow boots.
Not that Jones
Has anything in particular to do with the story;
But a descriptive phrase
Like the above shows that the writer is
A Master of Realism.

Let us proceed. Suddenly from his seat
Did Humpty-Dumpty slip. Vainly he clutched
The impalpable air. Down and down,
Right to the foot of the wall,
Right on to the horribly hard pavement that ran beneath it,
Humpty-Dumpty, the unfortunate Humpty-Dumpty,
Fell.

And him, alas! no equine agency,
Him no power of regal battalions—
Resourceful, eager, strenuous—
Could ever restore to the lofty eminence
Which once was his.
Still he lies on the very identical
Spot where he fell—lies, as I said on the ground,
Shamefully and conspicuously abased!

Don L. F. Nilsen presents the following excerpt from Thomas Holly Chivers as a Humpty-Dumpty parody of Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem "The Raven":

As an egg, when broken, never
  can be mended, but must ever
Be the same crushed egg forever,
  so shall this dark heart of mine,
Which, though broken, is still breaking,
  and shall nevermore cease aching,
For the sleep which has no waking —
  for the sleep which now is thine!

In fact the lines are from "To Allegra Florence in Heaven", published in 1842, whose style Chivers felt Poe plagiarised. The "notorious simile of the egg" was compared to Humpty Dumpty by critics ridiculing Chivers' bathos.

"W H Auden's Humpty Dumpty" (2010) by Tom Mathews; rewritten in the style of "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden. (Though Auden had written a poem called "Humpty Dumpty" aged 19.)

Translations

Of poem

Latin:

• Henry Drury 1841 "Humtius Dumtius"
• Fraser's Magazine 1848 "Orbiculatus"
• Circulus by "J. M. N." https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=humpty;id=uc1.%24b255214;view=image;start=1;sz=10;page=root;size=100;seq=411;num=387

French, Hebrew, Latin, Welsh, Greek, German, and Italian in 1843 by Samuel Edward Maberly.

French translations of Through the Looking Glass have coined different names for the character Humpty Dumpty, including le Gros Bossu ("the Fat Hunchback"), Dodu-Mafflu ("Plump-Chubby"), le Gros Coco ("the Fat Egg").

French Punch 1842 https://books.google.ie/books?id=eGA2AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA104

Halliwell 1843 already lists two of the above https://books.google.ie/books?id=OZAOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA208

Of Carroll

Language	Book title	Humpty-Dumpty's name
Danish	Bag spejlet	Klumpe-Dumpe
Esperanto	Trans la spegulo	Humpti Dumpti
Finnish	Liisan seikkailut peilimaailmassa	Tyyris Tyllerö / Nokkelis Kokkelis (cf. Lilleri Lalleri in Finnish folk riddle)
French	De l'autre côté du miroir	Heumpty Deumpty, Gros Coco, Dodu-Mafflu, Rondu-Pondu
German	Alice hinter den Spiegeln	Goggelmoggel (German name of Kogel mogel egg-based dessert)
Hungarian	Alice Tükörországban	Dingidungi [Révbíró, 1980]; Undi Dundi [Zsuzsa & Dániel Varró], Tojás Tóbiás [István Tótfalusi 1974]
Italian	Attraverso lo specchio e quel che Alice vi trovò	Humpty Dumpty (Elda Bossi 1991), Unto Dunto, Coccobello, Tondo Dondo, Bindolo Rondolo (Almanzi & Pozzi), Tombolo Dondolo (1992)
Norwegian	Gjennom speilet / Alice – gjennom speilet	Humpty Dumpty
Spanish	A través del espejo y lo que Alicia encontró allí	Zanco Panco or Tentetieso
Swedish	Alice i Spegellandet	Humpty Dumpty

Other languages

In Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 story "The Fir-Tree", there is mention of the story within a story of 'Klumpe-Dumpe' "who fell down-stairs, and yet was raised to high honours, and obtained the princess's hand"; most English translations render 'Klumpe-Dumpe' as "Humpty-Dumpty" for euphony, though Mette Norgaard points out that the story is different, of the "Blockhead Hans" type. In modern Danish, klumpedumpe means a clumsy or sloppy person. It seems "Klumpe-Dumpe" is used for HD in Danish translations of Alice. It seems non-English translations of "The Fir Tree" leave "Klumpe-Dumpe" untranslated, as English ones leave "Ivede-Avede", and make no connection to Alice's Humpty-Dumpty.

Norwegian rhyme "Lille Trille".

• German, Mecklenburg: Entepetente, humpeldipumpel, Polickerpolacker, Hünningpetünning, Tatteratter.
  • More variants from Mecklenburg, xref to other works.
  • "hyplkm pyplkn" (Soest)

Hillerin lillerin nurkassa istuu, torven lorven päällä makaa, eikä sitä seppää Suomessa, joka hillerin lillcrin parantaa.

Hillerin lillerin sitzt in der Ecke, torven lorven liegt auf demselben, es gibt in Finland keinen Schmied. der hillerin lillerin wieder heil machen kann.

Russian "Shaltai Boltai", (Шалтай-Болтай; "nonsense, idle talk") as translated (Alice or Mother Goose?) by Samuil Marshak. Shaltai Boltai is also the name of a hacker group.

Hobbertibob Pennsylvania German

Derivatives and allusions

The 1843 Pictorial Humpty Dumpty depicts a literal version of the story: an anthropomorphic egg falls off a wall; his shell cracks; cavalry soldiers can neither put him back on the wall nor repair his shell. The egg is said to be the "king's favourite".

Harlequin and Humpty Dumpty, or, Robbin de Bobbin and the first Lord Mayor of Lun'on (Pantomime, 1850 Theatre Royal, Drury Lane). By Edward Fitzball. W. M. Thackeray may have contributed. Image "The Old Woman of Finchley" transforms Humpty Dumpty into Sprite.

Humpty Dumpty (Pantomime, U.S. c.1867) starring George Washington Lafayette Fox; the first American pantomime to be performed in two acts. The title pf Humpty Dumpty was as good as meaningless .. bore little discernible relationship to the Mother Goose rhyme". The Fairy Queen transformed Humpty Dumpty into the Clown. Picture

Misunderstood (1869) a maudlin take of the death of a boy named Humphrey with HD as its leitmotiv. https://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/dbjgo1.htm

Poem "Humpty Dumpty" in 1884 collection Under a Fool's Cap by Daniel Henry Holmes, in which HD is a degenerate memory of the the Sphinx.

Humpty Dumpty's Little Son; 1907 children's story by Helen Reid Cross. 'Little Dumpty lived with his Mother, who was called Widow Dumpty... Little Dumpty was a little bit like a nice goblin, it was therefore very interesting to his school fellows to have him for a chum, and the funny part about him was that he never took his hat off. Of course no one said anything about it, but they just remembered that his Father was an egg, and got cracked and broken, and they thought that had something to do with it.'

According to Chisholm, the rhyme gave a name to a children's game in which players try to balance with hands on ankles without falling backwards.

In Ford Madox Ford's 1912 novel The New Humpty-Dumpty, the title refers to Count Macdonald, a Russian–Scottish aristocrat who leads an unsuccessful counterrevolution to replace a small republic's democracy with an absolute monarchy.

Multiple references in Finnegans Wake (1922–1939) including name Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, allusions to the Fall of Man, and:

[p.11] And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty times as awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our grand remonstrancers there'll be iggs for the brekkers come to mourn- him, sunny side up with care.

[p.44]

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,

"All the King's Men" has been used as a title for various works, most notably a 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren and several film adaptations. "All the King's Horses" has also been use, as have the variations All the President's Men, All the Queen's Men, and All the Queen's Horses.

"Humpty Dumpty", W. H. Auden c.1927

"Humpty Dumpty was pushed"

"Scrambled eggs for dinner again"

Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty in Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy, 2005 murder mystery

The Humpty Dumpty riddle becomes ... a part of Dickens's elaborate narrative riddle of Our Mutual Friend".

"Others" by Allen Ginsberg names Humpty Dumpty and riffs on the story.

Paula Rego's 1989 series Nursery Rhymes includes a "Humpty Dumpty" aquatint depicting a man-sized empty broken eggshell with a human face, surrounded by infantry and cavalry.

References

Sources

• Aarne, Antti (1917–1920). "Vertailevia arvoitustutkimuksia : tulta ja sauhua, harakkaa ja munaa merkitsevät arvoitukset". Suomalais-ugrilaisen seuran aikakauskirja: Journal de la Société finno-ougrienne (in Finnish). 34. Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran kirjapainossa.
• Possibly relegate Gardner to reflist
  • Carroll, Lewis (1999). Gardner, Martin (ed.). The annotated Alice : Alice's adventures in Wonderland & Through the looking glass. illustrated by John Tenniel. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-04847-0.
  • Carroll, Lewis (6 October 2016) [1872]. Through the looking glass (Millennium Fulcrum 1.7 ed.). Project Gutenberg.
• Eckenstein, Lina (1906). "Riddle-Rhymes". Comparative studies in nursery rhymes. London: Duckworth. pp. 104–114. Retrieved 18 July 2018.
• Could we rationalise all these editions?
  • Halliwell, James Orchard (1842). The Nursery Rhymes of England. Early English Poetry, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages. Edited from Original Manuscripts snd Scarce Publications. Vol. IV (1st ed.). Percy Society. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
  • Halliwell, James Orchard (1849). Popular rhymes and nursery tales: a sequel to the Nursery rhymes of England. London: John Russell Smith. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
  • Halliwell, James Orchard (1853). The Nursery Rhymes of England (6th ed.). John Russell Smith. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
• Hancher, Michael (Autumn 1981). "Humpty Dumpty and Verbal Meaning". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 40 (1): 49. doi:10.2307/430352. JSTOR 430352.
• Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1997). "233. Humpty Dumpty". The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). OUP Oxford. pp. 252–255. ISBN 9780198600886.
• Potter, Beatrix (1903). The tale of Squirrel Nutkin. London: Frederick Warne. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
• Senderovich, Savely (2016). Riddle Of The Riddle. Routledge. ISBN 9781136893292. Retrieved 5 July 2018.
• Sutherland, Robert D. (1970). Language and Lewis Carroll. Janua Linguarum. Series Maior. Vol. 26. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110801682.
• Wells, Carolyn (22 December 2007) [1920]. The Book of Humorous Verse. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 26 July 2018.