# Humpty Dumpty
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
**Created:** [February 26, 2000, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660 "2000-02-26T01:33:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@london](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/london)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2000, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/1 "2000-02-26T01:33:00Z")
Just thought you may want a little information that deals with the answer to the Humpty Dumpty question. Humpty Dumpty was King Richard III of England. He was removed from the throne by Henry Tudor in a two hour battle on August 22, 1485 (during which he was killed). Richard III was called Humpty Dumpty due to his hunchback. The nursery rhyme refers to the fact that, though he had a larger army than that of the Tudor, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty back together again.” As for the reason Humpty is depicted as an egg, I could only conjecture, but hopefully this note can aid in the never ending pursuit of knowledge.
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### Author:  [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2000, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/2 "2000-02-26T01:44:00Z")
I presume that the OP refers to the mailbag article [Why is Humpty Dumpty portrayed as an egg, even though eggs aren’t mentioned in the nursery rhyme?](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhumpty.html) which appeared in April of this year.
## Here and [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000142.html) are the prior threads about the Humpmaster. The second link discusses the tale’s purported origins.
[Change Your Password, Please](http://204.95.48.199/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ubbmisc.cgi?action=getannounce&ForumNumber=3&Start=2451545.99&End=2451911&Session=2451598.1854) and don’t use HTML, as it has been disabled
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2000, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/3 "2000-02-26T04:09:00Z")
London, do you have an authority to cite for this reference?
That would be far more helpful than simply your say-so, no offence.
[Note: This message has been edited by CKDextHavn]
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### Author:  [@london](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/london)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2000, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/4 "2000-02-26T13:11:00Z")
Hi, the information I received from this was directly from a Beefeater at the Tower of London. They may be fancy story-tellers, but they all maintain (I’ve been for the tour three times) that everything they say is only fact. Everything else I’ve heard does match up exactly with British history, so I take their reference as valid. If you want to investigate further, you may want to attempt to contact the Beefeaters, one of them must have an email address by now. I hope this helps.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2000, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/5 "2000-02-26T23:08:00Z")
Tour guides (and Beefeaters are basically just fancily-dressed tour guides) are not reliable sources of information, particularly when they are speaking about something with little relevance to the history or science of the place that they are speaking about. I’ve several times caught guides telling interesting stories which I recognized as common myths. Even if they have been taught to tell these stories by the management of the place where they work, you should take their stories with a grain of salt. Some places don’t put much effort in making sure that the stories told by their guides are true.
In _The Annotated Mother Goose_ by William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, it’s mentioned that there are analogues of “Humpty Dumpty” in several other European languages. The Baring-Goulds aren’t a completely trustworthy source either, but if it’s true that riddle rhymes very close to “Humpty Dumpty” are known in several other languages and in each of those languages is a riddle rhyme for which the answer is “an egg”, it seems to me that this would be pretty good evidence that this rhyme does not refer to a historic event but is simply a riddle. So, can some speakers of other languages tell us if there are riddle rhymes in their languages similar to “Humpty Dumpty” whose answer is “an egg”?
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### Author:  [@Yankee\_Blue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yankee_Blue)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2000, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/6 "2000-03-03T17:46:00Z")
The column appears to indicate that the rhyme originates in the 19th century, even if it’s a bit older it probably won’t date back beyond the 18th century. Richard III died at Bosworth in the 15th century, rather a long way before the rhyme came into being, I’d say. Further Richard III DID NOT have a hunch back (nor a withered arm for that matter) he was a warrior, not the charicature of evil depicted by Shakespeare’s play. Check the conteporary accounts (try Richard III by Paul Kendall for a quick reference). Bosworth was the unfortunate (for the Plantagenets)finale to the Wars of the Roses, Richard probably would not have lost were it not for the treachery of the Stanleys who changed sides on the battle field. So no, I’d say that he was a long way from Humpty Dumpty.
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All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2000, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/7 "2000-03-04T06:57:00Z")
Fascinating.
I am impressed by the depth of knowledge of Richard III. He may be my lineal male ancestor, by the following reasoning:[ul][li]my surname, Wilbur, is known to have been derived from “wild boar”; there are cases of early Wilburs spelling it “Wildbore.”[_]The earliest known Wilbur was William, Mayor of Pontefract in the early 1500s.[_]Generally mayors of smaller English towns were selected from the nobility or landed gentry of the immediate area, where there were no known Wilburs other than William himself.[_]Richard used a white boar as his personal badge.[_]His illegitimate son John was given arms with the principal charge of a wild boar.[_]After Bosworth in 1485, John was exiled to Pontefract and eventually imprisoned and executed in the royal castle there.[_]He was in his late teens at the time of Bosworth, and could easily have married and fathered a son, who would have adopted his father’s arms or a close variation.William’s arms, which were not registered with the College of Arms under Henry, were a very close approximation of John’s.[/ul][/li]
Nonetheless, Humpty is probably not Richard but an earlier Duke of Gloucester, Humphrey, brother of Henry V, who was a rather self-important and imperious Regent of England under the infant Henry VI until overthrown (“a great fall”) a few years into the reign. He was eventually executed. The ease of conversion of Humphrey into Humpty is pretty obvious.
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### Author:  [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2000, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/8 "2000-03-03T21:38:00Z")
Let’s not confuse “boar” with “bore,” eh?
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### Author:  [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2000, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/9 "2000-03-08T21:01:00Z")
“A box without hinges, key, or lid–and inside a golden treasure is hid.”
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### Author:  [@benwc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/benwc)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2000, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/10 "2000-03-28T06:49:00Z")
[http://hc.hanszen.rice.edu/~alkahn/conspiracy.html](http://hc.hanszen.rice.edu/~alkahn/conspiracy.html)
A page devoted to explaining that Humpty Dumpty is not an egg. I had heard the cannon story before in a different location - nursery rhyme site somewhere on the net.
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### Author:  [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2000, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/11 "2000-03-28T06:22:00Z")
Just because something is on the net does NOT, repeat NOT, mean that it’s – gasp! – true. There’s lots of crap out there. And until someone shows me some sort of reliable reference, I think this one is pure speculation. And the East Anglia tourist pamphlet is NOT a reliable source, not when pitted against nursery rhyme and folk lore expers.
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2000, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/12 "2000-03-28T20:33:00Z")
Richard III still holds some affection for us in Yorkshire it was,after all, only 500 years ago he was mudered by that upstatr Henry V. (we’ve got long memories-we still hate the Normans for the harrying of the north-for that read genocide-in 1068)
There is an annual Richard III convention held in Scarborough every year. (as in - are you going to…?)
There you will be informed that RIII did not have a hump and that he was an obsessive archer (check out your local friendly archer dude) and that he was the subject of a vicious Tudor propaganda campaign.
As for Humpty ,well I believe it was an archbishop who had become a religious persecutor a taxman an had a small private army but not a convincing way with Henry VIII who had him arrested tried and beheaded ,hence he could not be put back together again.
There used to be a newspaper column called ‘old codgers’ (Daiy Mirror) which was a geriatric version of Cecil and it was in one of their books.
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### Author:  [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2000, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/13 "2000-03-29T15:11:00Z")
And, for the record, we note that Henry the V **II** was the person who defeated Richard III, not Henry V.
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### Author:  [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2000, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/14 "2000-03-30T06:02:00Z")
[singing] I’m her seventh old man, I’m Hen-er-y,
Henry the Seventh I am [/singing]
Naw… doesn’t scan.
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### Author:  [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2000, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/15 "2000-03-30T07:10:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Originally posted by CKDextHavn:
> **Let’s not confuse “boar” with “bore,” eh?**
Polycarp, are you related to Richard?
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2000, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humpty-dumpty/1660/16 "2000-03-31T17:34:00Z")
SIGH!