Origins of Humpty Dumpty

Is this more than a bizarre nursery rhyme?

When I was a kid, Humpty Dumpty was still a rhyme that was often sang, or chanted, in the playground as well as as an odd verse frequently appearing in various anthologies. I grew up in the sixties and at that time a popular kid’s soft toy was called a gonk. Although it was the creation of English inventor, Robert Benson, with its round egg shape and large eyes, it seemed to closely resemble the vastly older figure of Humpty Dumpty. The rhyme of Humpty Dumpty reaches down the centuries and is a simple enough ditty.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Although the rhyme has gone through a variety of changes over the years, both in word content and length, this single quatrain stanza is the most familiar, with two rhyming couplets of AABB.

But what are its origins?

Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue published in 1785 refers to Humpty Dumpty as ‘a short and clumsy person of either sex, also ale baked with brandy.’ Although it makes no reference to…