Editing Humpty Dumpty (section)

==Origins==
[[File:MotherGooseHumptyDumpty.jpg|thumb|Illustration from [[Walter Crane]]'s ''Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes'' (1877), showing Humpty Dumpty as a boy[[File:MotherGooseHumptyDumpty.mid|thumb|left]].]]
The earliest known version was published in [[Samuel Arnold (composer)|Samuel Arnold]]'s ''Juvenile Amusements'' in 1797<ref name="todayifoundout">{{cite web |url=http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/04/the-origin-of-humpty-dumpty/ |title=The Origin of Humpty Dumpty |language=en |publisher=What I Learned Today |author=Emily Upton |date=24 April 2013 |access-date=19 September 2015}}</ref> with the lyrics:{{sfnp|Opie|Opie|1997|pp=213–215}}
<blockquote><poem>
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,
Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.
</poem></blockquote>

A manuscript addition to a copy of ''[[Mother Goose]]'s Melody'' published in 1803 has the modern version with a different last line: "Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again".{{sfnp|Opie|Opie|1997|pp=213–215}} It was published in 1810 in a version of ''[[Gammer Gurton's Garland]]''.<ref>Joseph Ritson, [https://books.google.com/books?id=XtAqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA36 ''Gammer Gurton's Garland: or, the Nursery Parnassus; a Choice Collection of Pretty Songs and Verses, for the Amusement of All Little Good Children Who Can Neither Read Nor Run''] (London: Harding and Wright, 1810), p. 36.</ref> (Note: Original spelling variations left intact.)
<blockquote><poem>
Humpty Dumpty sate on a wall,
Humpti Dumpti had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore more,
Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before.
</poem></blockquote>

In 1842, [[James Orchard Halliwell]] published a collected version as:<ref>J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, ''The Nursery Rhymes of England'' (John Russell Smith, 6th ed., 1870), p. 122.</ref>
<blockquote><poem>
Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck.
With all his [[sinews]] around his neck;
Forty Doctors and forty wrights
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights!
</poem></blockquote>

Evidence of an alternative American version closer to the modern received rhyme quoted above is given by [[William Carey Richards]] in the issue of a children's magazine for 1843, where he comments that he had come across it as a riddle when he was five-years old and that the answer was "an egg".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Richards |first1=William Carey |journal=The Orion |title=Monthly chat with readers and correspondents |date=March–April 1844 |location=[[Penfield, Georgia]] |volume=II |number=5 & 6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E4c4AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA371 |page=371 |language=en}}</ref>
<blockquote><poem>
Humpty-dumpty sit upon a wall,
Humpty-dumpty had a great fall; 
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put humpty-dumpty together again.
</poem></blockquote>

According to the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', in the 17th century, the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of [[brandy]] boiled with [[ale]].{{sfnp|Opie|Opie|1997|pp=213–215}} The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century [[Reduplication#English|reduplicative]] slang for a short and clumsy person.<ref>E. Partridge and P. Beale, ''Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English'' (Routledge, 8th ed., 2002), {{ISBN|0-415-29189-5}}, p. 582.</ref> The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, whereas an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by [[folklorist]]s in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in [[French language|French]], "Lille Trille" in [[Swedish language|Swedish]] and [[Norwegian Language|Norwegian]], and "Runtzelken-Puntzelken" or "Humpelken-Pumpelken" in different parts of Germany—although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.{{sfnp|Opie|Opie|1997|pp=213–215}}<ref>{{cite book |author=Lina Eckenstein |title=Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes |year=1906 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/comparativestudi00eckerich/page/106 106]–107 |url=https://archive.org/details/comparativestudi00eckerich |ol=7164972M |access-date=30 January 2018 |via=archive.org}}</ref>