All the Kings Horses and All the Kings Men Couldnt Put That Fat Mother Fucker Back Together Again

Nursery rhyme character

Nursery rhyme

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

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English plant nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and ane of the best known in the English language-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. The beginning recorded versions of the rhyme appointment from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National 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 player George L. Fox in the pantomime musical Humpty Dumpty.^[ii] The show ran from 1868 to 1869, for a total of 483 performances, becoming the longest-running Broadway show until information technology was surpassed in 1881 past Hazel Kirke.^[three] As a character and literary allusion, Humpty Dumpty has appeared or been referred to in many works of literature and popular culture, specially English writer Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, in which he was described as an egg. The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.

Lyrics and melody [edit]

The rhyme is ane of the best known in the English language. The common text from 1954 is:^[four]

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a nifty fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together once more.

It is a single quatrain with external rhymes^[5] that follow the pattern of AABB and with a trochaic metre, which is common in plant nursery rhymes.^[6] The melody normally associated with the rhyme was first recorded past composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his National Plant nursery Rhymes and Plant nursery Songs (London, 1870), as outlined below:^[7]

Origins [edit]

Analogy from Walter Crane's Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes (1877), showing Humpty Dumpty as a boy

The primeval known version was published in Samuel Arnold'due south Juvenile Amusements in 1797^[1] with the lyrics:^[4]

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,
Could non brand Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

William Carey Richards (1818–1892) quoted the poem in 1843, commenting, "when we were v years old ... the post-obit parallel lines... were propounded as a riddle ... Humpty-dumpty, reader, is the Dutch or something else for an egg".^[8]

A manuscript addition to a copy of Female parent Goose'due south Melody published in 1803 has the modern version with a different concluding line: "Could non set Humpty Dumpty upwards again".^[4] Information technology was published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton'south Garland.^[ix] (Annotation: Original spelling variations left intact.)

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

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

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

The modern-24-hour interval version of this nursery rhyme, every bit known throughout the UK since at least the mid-twentieth century, is as follows:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the Male monarch'south horses
And all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Co-ordinate to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the 17th century the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a beverage of brandy boiled with ale.^[4] The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was likewise eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person.^[xi] The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might non be irreparably damaged, whereas an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the respond is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as "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, possibly because it may have been originally posed every bit a riddle.^[4] There are as well various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". One, advanced by Katherine Elwes Thomas in 1930^[thirteen] and adopted by Robert Ripley,^[iv] posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England, depicted every bit humpbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare's 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 not mean the horses physically assisted humpty. Simply rather, was a metaphor for the crowns resources.

In 1785, Francis Grose'south Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Natural language noted that a "Humpty Dumpty" was "a short clumsey [sic] person of either sex, likewise 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; simply every bit Wolsey was not cached in his intended tomb, and so Humpty Dumpty was not buried in his vanquish.^[15]

Professor David Daube suggested in The Oxford Magazine of 16 February 1956 that Humpty Dumpty was a "tortoise" siege engine, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary-held metropolis of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War. This was on the basis of a gimmicky business relationship of the attack, but without evidence that the rhyme was connected.^[16] The theory was part of an anonymous series of articles on the origin of nursery rhymes and was widely acclaimed in academia,^[17] but information technology was derided by others as "ingenuity for ingenuity'due south sake" and alleged to be a spoof.^{[18] [19]} The link was all the same popularised by a children'due south opera All the Male monarch'due south Men by Richard Rodney Bennett, showtime performed in 1969.^{[20] [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 town with a castle and several churches and was protected by the city wall. The story given was that a large 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 below Humpty Dumpty, which caused the cannon to tumble to the basis. The Royalists (or Cavaliers, "all the King'due south men") attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, simply the cannon was so heavy that "All the King'due south horses and all the Rex's men couldn't put Humpty together again". Writer Albert Jack claimed in his 2008 book Popular Goes the Weasel: The Underground Meanings of Nursery Rhymes that there were 2 other verses supporting this claim.^[23] Elsewhere, he claimed to have found them in an "old dusty library, [in] an even older book",^[24] merely did not state what the book was or where it was plant. It has been pointed out that the two 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 not mention horses and men.^[22]

In pop culture [edit]

Humpty Dumpty has go a highly popular nursery rhyme character. American thespian George 50. Pull a fast one on (1825–77) helped to popularise the graphic symbol in nineteenth-century phase productions of pantomime versions, music, and rhyme.^[25] The grapheme is also a mutual literary allusion, particularly to refer to a person in an insecure position, something that would be difficult to reconstruct once broken, or a curt and fatty person.^[26]

Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass [edit]

Humpty Dumpty appears in Lewis Carroll'south Through the Looking-Glass (1871), a sequel to Alice in Wonderland from 6 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 similar an egg, non that he is 1. They discuss semantics and pragmatics^[27] when Humpty Dumpty says, "my proper noun means the shape I am," and later:^[28]

"I don't know what y'all mean past 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there'south a nice knock-downwards statement for y'all!'"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down statement'," Alice objected.
"When I use a discussion," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it ways just what I choose it to mean—neither more than nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether y'all can make words mean so many dissimilar things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to exist primary—that'southward all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say annihilation, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began once again:

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

This passage was used in Britain past Lord Atkin in his dissenting judgement in the seminal case Liversidge v. Anderson (1942), where he protested about the distortion of a statute by the majority of the Firm of Lords.^[29] It likewise became a popular commendation in United States legal opinions, appearing in 250 judicial decisions in the Westlaw database every bit of nineteen Apr 2008^[update], including two Supreme Courtroom cases (TVA five. Hill and Zschernig v. Miller).^[30]

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

"The face is what i goes past, more often than not," Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone. "That's just what I mutter of," said Humpty Dumpty. "Your face is the same as everybody has—the two eyes,—" (marking their places in the air with his pollex) "nose in the center, oral fissure 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 be some help."

James Joyce's Finnegans Wake [edit]

James Joyce used the story of Humpty Dumpty equally a recurring motif of the Fall of Human being in the 1939 novel Finnegans Wake.^{[32] [33]} 1 of the virtually easily recognizable references is at the stop of the second chapter, in the starting time verse of the Ballad of Persse O'Reilly:

    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,
(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?

In movie, literature and music [edit]

Robert Penn Warren's 1946 American novel All the Male monarch's Men is the story of populist politician Willie Stark'due south ascent 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 film in 1949 and 2006, the old winning the Academy Honor for best motion movie.^[34] This was echoed in Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward'southward volume All the President's Men, nearly the Watergate scandal, referring to the failure of the President's staff to repair the impairment once the scandal had leaked out. Information technology was filmed as All the President's 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's Beast Shop) and directed past Mike Portelly, was banned shortly after release, due to being highly unsettling. The advertizement aired but on ITV and its franchises.

In 2021, American band AJR released a song, titled Humpty Dumpty, for their anthology, OK Orchestra. The song uses the nursery rhyme as a parallel for hiding one'due south true emotions equally things, typically unpleasant, happen to the singer.

Jasper Fforde'south 2005 British novel The Large Over Piece of cake ISBN 978-0-340-89710-ii is an do in absurdity, in which Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty Three has been murdered, and Detective Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division is set the job of solving the mystery.

In science [edit]

Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the 2d police force of thermodynamics. The constabulary describes a process known every bit entropy, a measure of the number of specific means in which a organisation may be arranged, oft taken to exist a measure of "disorder". The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the disability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as information technology would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated arrangement never decreases.^{[36] [37] [38]}

See besides [edit]

• List of plant nursery rhymes

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} Emily Upton (24 Apr 2013). "The Origin of Humpty Dumpty". What I Learned Today. Retrieved nineteen 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 east f g} Opie & Opie (1997), pp. 213–215.
5. ^ J. Smith, Poesy Writing (Instructor 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 0-203-16812-7, p. 174.
7. ^ J. J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Pop, and Folk (Courier Dover Publications, 5th ed., 2000), ISBN 0-486-41475-ii, p. 502.
8. ^ Richards, William Carey (March–April 1844). "Monthly chat with readers and correspondents". The Orion. Penfield, Georgia. 2 (five & 6): 371.
9. ^ Joseph Ritson, Gammer Gurton's Garland: or, the Nursery Parnassus; a Selection Drove of Pretty Songs and Verses, for the Amusement of All Picayune Good Children Who Tin Neither Read Nor Run (London: Harding and Wright, 1810), p. 36.
10. ^ J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, The Plant nursery Rhymes of England (John Russell Smith, sixth ed., 1870), p. 122.
11. ^ Due east. 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. ^ East. Commins, Lessons from Female parent Goose (Lack Worth, Fl: Humanics, 1988), ISBN 0-89334-110-X, p. 23.
14. ^ Grose, Francis (1785). A Classical Lexicon of the Vulgar Natural language. S. Hooper. pp. ninety–.
15. ^ "Juvenile Biography No IV: Humpty Dumpty". Punch. 3: 202. July–December 1842.
16. ^ "Plant nursery Rhymes and History", The Oxford Magazine, vol. 74 (1956), pp. 230–232, 272–274 and 310–312; reprinted in: Calum M. Carmichael, ed., Nerveless Works of David Daube, vol. 4, "Ideals and Other Writings" (Berkeley, CA: Robbins Collection, 2009), ISBN 978-one-882239-15-3, pp. 365–366.
17. ^ Alan Rodger. "Obituary: Professor David Daube". The Independent, five March 1999.
18. ^ I. Opie, 'Playground rhymes and the oral tradition', in P. Chase, Southward. G. Bannister Ray, International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature (London: Routledge, 2004), ISBN 0-203-16812-7, p. 76.
19. ^ Iona and Peter Opie, ed. (1997) [1951]. The Oxford Dictionary of Plant nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 254. ISBN978-0-19-860088-vi.
20. ^ C. Yard. Carmichael (2004). Ideas and the Man: remembering David Daube. Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte. Vol. 177. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann. pp. 103–104. ISBN3-465-03363-ix.
21. ^ "Sir Richard Rodney Bennett: All the King's Men". Universal Edition. Retrieved xviii 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 Underground Meanings of Nursery Rhymes (London: Allen Lane, 2008), ISBN 1-84614-144-three.
24. ^ "The Real Story of Humpty Dumpty, by Albert Jack". Archived 27 Feb 2010 at the Wayback Car, Penguin.com (United states of america). Retrieved 24 February 2010.
25. ^ Fifty. Senelick, The Age and Stage of George L. Fob 1825–1877 (University of Iowa Printing, 1999), ISBN 0877456844.
26. ^ East. Webber and Grand. Feinsilber, Merriam-Webster'south Dictionary of Allusions (Merriam-Webster, 1999), ISBN 0-87779-628-nine, pp. 277–8.
27. ^ F. R. Palmer, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn., 1981), ISBN 0-521-28376-0, p. viii.
28. ^ Fifty. Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (Raleigh, Due north Carolina: Hayes Barton Press, 1872), ISBN one-59377-216-5, p. 72.
29. ^ Chiliad. Lewis (1999). Lord Atkin. London: Butterworths. p. 138. ISBN1-84113-057-v.
30. ^ Martin H. Redish and Matthew B. Arnould, "Judicial review, constitutional estimation: proposing a 'Controlled Activism' alternative", Florida Constabulary Review, vol. 64 (6), (2012), p. 1513.
31. ^ A. J. Larner (1998). "Lewis Carroll'southward Humpty Dumpty: an early on report of prosopagnosia?". Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 75 (vii): 1063. doi:x.1136/jnnp.2003.027599. PMC1739130. PMID 15201376.
32. ^ J. South. Atherton, The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1959, SIU Press, 2009), ISBN 0-8093-2933-half dozen, p. 126.
33. ^ Worthington, Mabel (1957). "Plant 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: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), ISBN 1-57806-734-0, p. 84.
35. ^ Chiliad. Feeney, Nixon at the Movies: a Book Nigh Conventionalities (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), ISBN 0-226-23968-iii, p. 256.
36. ^ Chang Kenneth (30 July 2002). "Humpty Dumpty Restored: When Disorder Lurches Into Order". The New York Times . Retrieved 2 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 2 May 2013.
38. ^ W.South. Franklin (March 1910). "The Second Law Of Thermodynamics: Its Basis In Intuition And Common Sense". The Popular Science Monthly: 240.

External links [edit]

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

macdonaldshoutered.blogspot.com

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

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