Why was it that the king’s horses and men were employed to try and put him back together again, and not the nurses, surgeons, doctors or medics?
I mean, horses? Really!? Horses and men? That’s the best you’re going to do!? Poor guy never had a chance.
The song is supposed to be a riddle. One possible answer is that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III. Sitting on a wall was when he was King, having a fall was when he was overthrown by Henry Tudor, and horses and men was a reference to cavalry and infantry.
The answer is easy for an anglophile.
Humpty Dumpty is the name of a very big cannon that rested on a parapet
of a castle wall at Harwich or Colchester, IIRC.
This big cannon was so heavy that the castle wall collapsed under its weight.
When the King’s horses and men could not restore Humpty Dumpty, it
was written off as a total loss by the insurance people.
Dunno the King nor year of Humpty Dumpty’s great fall.
Cheers, David H
“But along came a doctor with patience and glue
Who put Humpty together again, better than new.
Now he’s all healthy and back on the scene,
Busily editing this magazine.”
Credo of the old “Humpty Dumpty” magazine.
Ahhhhh… hmmm… I can’t tell if the mystery has been solved or has grown deeper!
Deeper. Wiki has a decent summary of proposed origins and meanings of the rhyme/riddle, btw.
The cannon one seems a bit contrived after the fact.
FWIW (and IMHO) the fact that “Humpty Dumpty” at the time the rhyme was first recorded meant variably a drink of brandy boiled with ale and a short clumsy person is consistent with how I’ve always thought of it, a political satire of its time - some political figure was clumsily trying to straddle a wall between factions, couldn’t pull it off, and even though he had the full support of the King (and implied King’s forces brought to bear) his position, his power, his influence, was destroyed. Was it King Richard III himself? It seems improbable to me. More likely some lower level power broker.
This joke was clever when Mad Magazine did it in the 60s.
If we’re going to date it to Richard III — i.e., the Wars of the Roses — a remote possibility is Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, who definitely straddled the fence (he helped depose Henry VI [Lancaster], which put Edward IV [York] on the throne, then turned around and was instrumental in restoring Henry). After Edward pulled off one of the quickest political recoveries in history, Warwick commanded the Lancastrians at the Battle of Barnet, during which he was defeated and killed.
A stretch of the imagination, to be sure, but even stranger origins abound in literature.
To me, Richard III seems to fit the riddle better. There’s the final line about how “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again”. If this is describing the fall of some advisor it doesn’t make sense; the king obviously could have restored him to power if he had wished. But if you accept the idea that horses and men refer to an army, then it’s a description of a king losing a battle.
Please be mindful that none of the replies to your OP appear to originate in the
U.K. This infers that very few actual Brit faux historians are “guarding” this
website. So I suggest that you defer your conclusions about the real Humpty
Dumpty until we hear something from the other side of the pond.
Singanas
Stop hitting the carriage return. These new-fangled computational engines are quite capable of “word-wrapping,” which formats the text regardless of how it might display in the “Reply” window.
