Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English language nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an egg and has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture. The rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13026.
The most common modern text is:
The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg because it pr...
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Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English language nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an egg and has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture. The rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13026.
The most common modern text is:
The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg because it probably was originally posed as a riddle. 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". It was first published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland as:
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...
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