After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again) Lele

Plant nursery rhyme character

Nursery rhyme

"Humpty Dumpty"
Illustration by Due west. W. Denslow, 1904
Plant nursery rhyme
Published	1797

Humpty Dumpty is a grapheme in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed equally an anthropomorphic 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'southward National Plant nursery Rhymes and 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 actor George L. Fox in the pantomime musical Humpty Dumpty.^[2] The evidence ran from 1868 to 1869, for a total of 483 performances, becoming the longest-running Broadway show until it was surpassed in 1881 past Hazel Kirke.^[3] As a character and literary allusion, Humpty Dumpty has appeared or been referred to in many works of literature and pop culture, particularly English author Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, in which he was described equally an egg. The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Vocal Alphabetize equally No. 13026.

Lyrics and melody [edit]

The rhyme is one of the best known in the English language. The common text from 1954 is:^[4]

Humpty Dumpty saturday on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great autumn.
All the rex's horses and all the male monarch's men
Couldn't put Humpty together once again.

It is a single quatrain with external rhymes^[v] that follow the pattern of AABB and with a trochaic metre, which is common in nursery rhymes.^{[half dozen]} The melody unremarkably associated with the rhyme was kickoff recorded by composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs (London, 1870), as outlined beneath:^[7]

Origins [edit]

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

The earliest known version was published in Samuel Arnold's 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 make Humpty Dumpty where he was earlier.

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

A manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose's Melody published in 1803 has the modernistic version with a different last line: "Could not set up Humpty Dumpty up again".^[4] It was published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland.^[ix] (Note: Original spelling variations left intact.)

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

In 1842, James Orchard Halliwell published a collected version as:^[x]

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-solar day version of this nursery rhyme, as known throughout the United kingdom since at least the mid-twentieth century, is as follows:

Humpty Dumpty sabbatum on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a keen fall;
All the King's horses
And all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the 17th century the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale.^[iv] The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a curt and impuissant person.^[11] 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 answer is at present so well known. Similar riddles take 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 equally widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.^{[four] [12]}

Significant [edit]

The rhyme does not explicitly state that the field of study is an egg, maybe because it may have been originally posed as a riddle.^[4] There are besides various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". One, advanced past Katherine Elwes Thomas in 1930^[13] and adopted by Robert Ripley,^[4] posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard 3 of England, depicted as humpbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare'due south 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 hateful the horses physically assisted humpty. But rather, was a metaphor for the crowns resource.

In 1785, Francis Grose'southward Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue noted that a "Humpty Dumpty" was "a short clumsey [sic] person of either sex, also ale boiled with brandy"; no mention was made of the rhyme.^[14]

Punch in 1842 suggested jocularly that the rhyme was a metaphor for the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey; just as Wolsey was not buried in his intended tomb, and then Humpty Dumpty was not buried in his shell.^[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 urban center 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 set on, simply without show that the rhyme was connected.^[sixteen] The theory was function of an anonymous series of articles on the origin of nursery rhymes and was widely acclaimed in academia,^[17] but it was derided by others every bit "ingenuity for ingenuity's sake" and declared to be a spoof.^{[18] [xix]} The link was nevertheless popularised by a children's opera All the King's Men by Richard Rodney Bennett, get-go performed in 1969.^{[twenty] [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 big 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 beneath Humpty Dumpty, which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists (or Cavaliers, "all the King'due south men") attempted to enhance Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, merely the cannon was then heavy that "All the Male monarch'south horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together over again". Author Albert Jack claimed in his 2008 book Pop Goes the Weasel: The Cloak-and-dagger Meanings of Plant nursery Rhymes that there were two other verses supporting this claim.^[23] Elsewhere, he claimed to take establish them in an "old dusty library, [in] an even older book",^[24] but did not state what the volume was or where it was found. It has been pointed out that the 2 additional verses are not in the way of the seventeenth century or of the existing rhyme, and that they do non fit with the primeval printed versions of the rhyme, which practice not mention horses and men.^[22]

In popular civilisation [edit]

Humpty Dumpty has become a highly popular nursery rhyme character. American histrion George L. Fox (1825–77) helped to popularise the grapheme in nineteenth-century phase productions of pantomime versions, music, and rhyme.^[25] The character is as well a common literary allusion, particularly to refer to a person in an insecure position, something that would be hard to reconstruct once broken, or a brusk and fat person.^[26]

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

Humpty Dumpty appears in Lewis Carroll'due south Through the Looking-Glass (1871), a sequel to Alice in Wonderland from six years prior. Alice remarks that Humpty is "exactly like an egg," which Humpty finds to exist "very provoking." Alice clarifies that she said he looks like an egg, not that he is i. They talk over semantics and pragmatics^[27] when Humpty Dumpty says, "my proper noun means the shape I am," and later:^[28]

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down statement for you!'"
"But 'celebrity' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "information technology means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether y'all tin make words mean then many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that'due south all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so subsequently a infinitesimal Humpty Dumpty began again:

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

This passage was used in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland past Lord Atkin in his dissenting sentence in the seminal instance Liversidge v. Anderson (1942), where he protested about the distortion of a statute by the majority of the House of Lords.^[29] It also became a popular citation in United States legal opinions, actualization in 250 judicial decisions in the Westlaw database as of nineteen April 2008^[update], including 2 Supreme Court cases (TVA v. Hill and Zschernig 5. Miller).^[30]

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

"The confront is what one goes past, more often than not," Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone. "That'southward merely what I complain of," said Humpty Dumpty. "Your face is the same as everybody has—the two optics,—" (marking their places in the air with his thumb) "nose in the middle, mouth nether. It'southward always the same. Now if yous had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance—or the mouth at the tiptop—that would be some help."

James Joyce'due south Finnegans Wake [edit]

James Joyce used the story of Humpty Dumpty as a recurring motif of the Fall of Human in the 1939 novel Finnegans Wake.^{[32] [33]} One of the about hands recognizable references is at the end of the second chapter, in the starting time poetry of the Ballad of Persse O'Reilly:

    Take you lot heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a ringlet and a rumble
And curled upwards like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Mag Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?

In film, literature and music [edit]

Robert Penn Warren'due south 1946 American novel All the King's Men is the story of populist political leader Willie Stark's 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 flick in 1949 and 2006, the former winning the Academy Award for all-time movie.^[34] This was echoed in Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's volume All the President's Men, nigh the Watergate scandal, referring to the failure of the President's staff to repair the damage once the scandal had leaked out. It 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 character (designed past Mike Quinn, who worked at the Jim Henson's Creature Shop) and directed by Mike Portelly, was banned shortly afterward release, due to being highly unsettling. The advertizing aired only on ITV and it's franchises.

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

Jasper Fforde's 2005 British novel The Big Over Easy ISBN 978-0-340-89710-two is an practice in applesauce, in which Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty Three has been murdered, and Detective Jack Spratt of the Plant nursery Criminal offense Partitioning is set the task of solving the mystery.

In science [edit]

Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second police of thermodynamics. The police describes a process known as entropy, a measure out of the number of specific ways in which a system may be bundled, often taken to exist a measure of "disorder". The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together over again is representative of this principle, as it would exist highly unlikely (though non impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated organization never decreases.^{[36] [37] [38]}

See as well [edit]

• Listing of plant nursery rhymes

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} Emily Upton (24 April 2013). "The Origin of Humpty Dumpty". What I Learned Today. Retrieved 19 September 2015.
2. ^ Kenrick, John (2017). Musical Theatre: A History. ISBN9781474267021 . Retrieved xvi May 2020.
3. ^ Humpty Dumpty at the Internet Broadway Database
4. ^ ^{a b c d e 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'south Literature (London: Routledge, 2004), ISBN 0-203-16812-7, p. 174.
7. ^ J. J. Fuld, The Volume of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, 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. Two (five & half-dozen): 371.
9. ^ Joseph Ritson, Gammer Gurton's Garland: or, the Nursery Parnassus; a Pick Collection of Pretty Songs and Verses, for the Entertainment of All Little Good Children Who Can Neither Read Nor Run (London: Harding and Wright, 1810), p. 36.
10. ^ J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, The Nursery Rhymes of England (John Russell Smith, sixth ed., 1870), p. 122.
11. ^ East. Partridge and P. Beale, Dictionary of Slang and Anarchistic 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 xxx Jan 2018 – via archive.org.
13. ^ E. Commins, Lessons from Mother Goose (Lack Worth, Fl: Humanics, 1988), ISBN 0-89334-110-10, p. 23.
14. ^ Grose, Francis (1785). A Classical Lexicon of the Vulgar Tongue. S. Hooper. pp. 90–.
15. ^ "Juvenile Biography No IV: Humpty Dumpty". Punch. three: 202. July–December 1842.
16. ^ "Nursery Rhymes and History", The Oxford Magazine, vol. 74 (1956), pp. 230–232, 272–274 and 310–312; reprinted in: Calum M. Carmichael, ed., Collected Works of David Daube, vol. iv, "Ethics and Other Writings" (Berkeley, CA: Robbins Drove, 2009), ISBN 978-one-882239-15-3, pp. 365–366.
17. ^ Alan Rodger. "Obituary: Professor David Daube". The Contained, 5 March 1999.
18. ^ I. Opie, 'Playground rhymes and the oral tradition', in P. Hunt, S. M. Bannister Ray, International Companion Encyclopedia of Children'southward Literature (London: Routledge, 2004), ISBN 0-203-16812-7, p. 76.
19. ^ Iona and Peter Opie, ed. (1997) [1951]. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2d ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 254. ISBN978-0-19-860088-half-dozen.
20. ^ C. 1000. Carmichael (2004). Ideas and the Man: remembering David Daube. Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte. Vol. 177. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann. pp. 103–104. ISBN3-465-03363-9.
21. ^ "Sir Richard Rodney Bennett: All the King's Men". Universal Edition. Retrieved 18 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 Clandestine 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 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Penguin.com (USA). Retrieved 24 February 2010.
25. ^ L. Senelick, The Age and Stage of George L. Fox 1825–1877 (Academy of Iowa Press, 1999), ISBN 0877456844.
26. ^ E. Webber and K. Feinsilber, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions (Merriam-Webster, 1999), ISBN 0-87779-628-9, pp. 277–8.
27. ^ F. R. Palmer, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 2d edn., 1981), ISBN 0-521-28376-0, p. eight.
28. ^ 50. Carroll, Through the Looking-Drinking glass (Raleigh, Due north Carolina: Hayes Barton Printing, 1872), ISBN 1-59377-216-5, p. 72.
29. ^ Grand. Lewis (1999). Lord Atkin. London: Butterworths. p. 138. ISBNi-84113-057-five.
30. ^ Martin H. Redish and Matthew B. Arnould, "Judicial review, constitutional interpretation: proposing a 'Controlled Activism' alternative", Florida Law Review, vol. 64 (6), (2012), p. 1513.
31. ^ A. J. Larner (1998). "Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty: an early on report of prosopagnosia?". Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 75 (7): 1063. doi:10.1136/jnnp.2003.027599. PMC1739130. PMID 15201376.
32. ^ J. S. Atherton, The Books at the Wake: A Report of Literary Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1959, SIU Press, 2009), ISBN 0-8093-2933-6, p. 126.
33. ^ Worthington, Mabel (1957). "Plant nursery Rhymes in Finnegans Wake". The Journal of American Folklore. seventy (275): 37–48.
34. ^ K. Fifty. 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. ^ M. Feeney, Nixon at the Movies: a Volume About Belief (Chicago IL: Academy of Chicago Press, 2004), ISBN 0-226-23968-3, p. 256.
36. ^ Chang Kenneth (xxx July 2002). "Humpty Dumpty Restored: When Disorder Lurches Into Order". The New York Times . Retrieved two May 2013.
37. ^ Lee Langston. "Part III – The Second Police force of Thermodynamics" (PDF). Hartford Courant. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 May 2008. Retrieved ii May 2013.
38. ^ W.S. Franklin (March 1910). "The Second Law Of Thermodynamics: Its Basis In Intuition And Common Sense". The Pop Science Monthly: 240.

External links [edit]

• Humpty-Dumpty themed educational activity
• 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 Fifty. Frank Baum
• Loyal Books: Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
• The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly

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

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