# Humpty Dumpty

"Humpty Dumpty" is an English nursery rhyme, in print since 1797, that was probably first a riddle whose answer is "an egg" — which is why the rhyme itself never actually says its hero is one.

## At a glance

| | |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Sung in | English |
| Words by | Traditional |
| First known | 1797 |
| Best for ages | 2–7 |
| Mood | playful, traditional |
| Page | https://littlesongbook.com/songs/humpty-dumpty/ |

## Lyrics

### Verse 1 (en)

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.

## Common questions

**Is Humpty Dumpty an egg?**

The rhyme never says so. Humpty Dumpty is almost always drawn as an egg, and that is because the verse was probably a riddle — "what, once broken, cannot be mended?" — whose answer is an egg. By 1843 it was already being told to children as a riddle with that solution.

**How old is the rhyme?**

It first appears in print in 1797, in Samuel Arnold's "Juvenile Amusements", though as a spoken riddle it is likely older.

**Did Humpty Dumpty represent a king or a cannon?**

Several theories say so — that Humpty was King Richard III (1930), a siege engine at Gloucester in 1643, or a cannon at the siege of Colchester in 1648. None has real historical evidence; they are later guesses layered onto what was first simply a riddle.

**Where does the egg who talks to Alice come from?**

From Lewis Carroll. In "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871) Carroll turned Humpty into a talking egg who sits on a wall and is annoyed when Alice says he looks "exactly like an egg" — the image that fixed him as an egg in everyone's imagination.

## Sources

- [Wikipedia — Humpty Dumpty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q783947