How To Draw Humpty Dumpty Sitting On A Wall

(Last Updated On: November 19, 2019)

What Is the Real Meaning Behind Humpty Dumpty?

You likely will not be able to find any child over the age of six who has not heard the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme before. This massively popular piece of prose has been around for hundreds of years. In that time, it has undergone a fair amount of alterations. In fact, the version of Humpty Dumpty that we now know is vastly different from the likely inspiration of the rhyme.

The most well-known form of the nursery rhyme goes like this :

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

This is more or less exactly how the nursery rhyme went when it was published in 1810 as part of Joseph Ritson's work entitled Gammer Gurton's Garland. However, it is quite likely that the story behind this innocent little rhyme is a lot different than what most people picture when they hear Humpty Dumpty.

Why An Egg?

The first thing that most people notice when they start examining this nursery rhyme is that there is no explicit reference to eggs in the entire thing. So why is it that everyone universally pictures an anthropomorphic egg in their mind whenever they think of Humpty Dumpty? Surprisingly, this is a direct result of the famous writer Lewis Carroll.

His classic book Through the Looking-Glass involves many sets of extremely unusual characters, one of which happens to be a human-like egg that goes by the name of Humpty Dumpty. As the book explains:

"However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was Humpty Dumpty himself. 'It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself. 'I'm as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.'"

All it took was this one chapter in an 1871 novel in order to forever change the way that we think about Humpty. From then on out, every time someone heard the innocent little nursery rhyme, they immediately imagined a wobbly human-like egg sitting atop a wall.

However, as we have now learned, an egg is not what the originator of the nursery rhyme had in mind when they penned the famous poem. Instead, Humpty Dumpty was likely about something much darker.

Who Is the Real Humpty Dumpty?

Since the original nursery rhyme was created over 50 years before Through the Looking-Glass, it could not have been the egg that was the inspiration behind it. Not only was Humpty not an egg, but according to many historians, he was likely a military cannon.

To get the story behind this, we have to go back to 1648 when the English Civil War was nearing its end. In an attempt to try and hold off the Parliamentary army, King Charles I had his men stationed several cannons along the walls of Colchester. Not surprisingly, one of these cannons happened to be nicknamed Humpty Dumpty.

As the nursery rhyme alludes to, Humpty Dumpty experienced a vast amount of artillery fire on his section of the wall, making it unable to support the weight of the canon any longer. As a result, Humpty came tumbling to the ground and was instantly smashed into several pieces. Try as they might, none of the King's men would be able to fix such a level of destruction caused to the cannon. Therefore, Humpty Dumpty remained inoperable and the King's army would proceed to lose the war the following year.

While this story has never been completely confirmed as being the true inspiration behind Humpty Dumpty, it among the most prevalent origin stories for the rhyme.

Yes, your child's favorite nursery rhyme is likely really about an ancient military weapon.

If you enjoyed this article, here are a few other nursery rhyme posts you can also check out:

What Is the Real Meaning Behind 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep'?
The Story Behind London Bridge is Falling Down
What Is the Real Meaning Behind 'Ring Around the Rosie'?

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