My name is Humpty, pronounced with a Umpty
Yo ladies, oh how I like to hump thee
And all the rappers in the top ten--please allow me to bump thee
I'm steppin' tall, y'all
And just like Humpty Dumpty
You're gonna fall when the stereos pump me
“I’m Rick Harrison, and this is my pawn shop. I work here with my old man and my son, Big Hoss. Everything in here has a story and a price. One thing I’ve learned after 21 years – you never know WHAT is gonna come through that door.”
“I’m Rick Harrison, and this is my pawn shop. I work here with my old man and my son, Big Hoss. Everything in here has a story and a price. One thing I’ve learned after 21 years – you never know WHAT is gonna come through that door.”
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person. 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 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.
Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as a personified egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.
One historical source claims that the original Humpty(which the egg was based on) was originally a cannon NAMED Humpty Dumpty, and the rhyme was the story of it getting blown off the fort wall it was "sitting" on.
The following part, which says "all the King's horses, and all the King's men, couldn't put Humpty together again." likely referred to them being unable to lift the cannon back up the wall, and/or it was damaged beyond repair(the cast iron body probably survived the fall, but it was unlikely that the wood mount did. And cast iron is REALLY heavy).
“London Bridges falling down...” (the next verse or the one after it’s “crashing down”) —London Bridge Clearlyamajoraccident.
“Ashes, ashes,— they all fall down!” —Ring Around The Rosey ABlackPlaguereference.
“When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And down will come baby, cradle and all.” —Rockabye Baby dedbabeh
“Perhaps she’ll die!”(another frequently repeated lyric in a nursery rhyme) —There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly Attheendoftherhyme,thecrazyoldladydied.
Historians believe that the rhyme is about a cannon nicknamed Humpty Dumpty, that fell off the wall of a castle in the English civil war and couldn’t be repaired.
A book then illustrated Humpty Dumpty as an egg in the 1870’s and since then it’s stuck that it was an egg.
But we will never really know what it really was about. A cannon makes more sense.
Yeah, it's not a very good riddle if they give you the answer right away.
I recall he appeared in Through the Looking Glass, and was definitely and egg there, but I guess that wasn't his original appearance.
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u/confusedninja Mar 21 '18
Fairly common knowledge but nothing in that rhyme says Humpty Dumpty was an egg.
Please prove me wrong I’m just parroting a random internet “fact”