Wednesday, August 17, 2005
More on the Humpty Dumpty Question
A few entries back, I posted Uncle Pookie's question about Humpty Dumpty. Well, I then happened to be rereading the Alice books (which, incidentally, I did not enjoy as much as when I was a child, although the songs are still great fun) and noticed that even back then Humpty Dumpty was already being depicted as an egg. Hmm. Why? Wikipedia offers four suggestions. One was that the nursery rhyme was originally a riddle, the answer to which was that HD was an egg. There were also two military explanations and a political explanation; I'd suggested to Uncle Pookie that the rhyme might refer to a political downfall, but I'm not so sure I buy the Wiki explanation of its referring to Richard III--for one thing, by the time he fell off his horse in Bosworth field, it was pretty much over for him and I don't think any of his men or horses were trying to put him together again.
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