• The theory that Humpty Dumpty was a cannon used in the siege of Colchester in 1648 during the English Civil War is often stated as fact. ^[3] However, the additional 'discovered' verse which reveals this meaning was actually written as a spoof for the Oxford Magazine in 1956 by Professor David Daube. ^[4] The story was originally attributed to Gloucester and has no substance in fact, despite its adoption by the tourist industry of Colchester. The additional verse is:

• Another theory posits Humpty Dumpty referring to King Richard III of England, ^[5] Shakespeare's hunchbacked Egg, the "Wall" being either the name of his horse (called "White Surrey" in Shakespeare's play) or a reference to the supporters who deserted him. During the battle of Bosworth Field, Richard fell off his steed and was said to have been "hacked into pieces". (Though the play depicts Richard as a hunchback, other historical sources suggest that he was not.)

In Through the Looking Glass

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't – till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.
"They've a temper, some of them – particularly verbs, they're the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!" ^[6]

Other appearances in fiction

• In L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose , the rhyming riddle is devised by the daughter of the king, having witnessed Humpty's "death" and her father's soldiers' efforts to save him.
• Batman features a character based on Humpty Dumpty, an example of its tendency to base ideas on fairy tales and on Alice in Wonderland (such as the Mad Hatter). He enjoys taking things apart to see if he can put them back together again and make them better, and was thus mislabeled a terrorist.
• Neil Gaiman published in Knave , in 1984 a short story called 'The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds', which casts Humpty as a murder victim. The tone is that of hard boiled detective fiction and casts a number of nursery rhyme characters in various roles such as Jill from Jack and Jill as the femme fatale and Cock Robin as the underworld informant. It is now available to read from his .
• Jasper Fforde includes Humpty Dumpty in two of his novels. One, The Well of Lost Plots , the third novel in his Thursday Next series, features Humpty as the ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike. The other, The Big Over Easy sets Humpty as the victim of a murder under investigation by Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his partner Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.
• Robert Rankin includes Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy tale character murderer investigated by Bill Winkie, Private Eye and sidekick Eddie Bear the Teddy Bear, in his novel "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse".
• Eggorny is a Colombian cartoon, which is about Humpty Dumpty. It takes place in a mediæval landscape. After his great fall, no one was able to put Humpty together again until some 1500 years later. A teenager named Rufus put him together again, and renamed him Eggorny. Eggorny now lives in the modern-day town of Someville.
• Humpty Dumpty is also a character in the Vertigo Comics series Jack of Fables , in which he remembers the Battle at Colchester, and actually fires as a cannon once before cracking up. Then later gets pieced together to utilize a treasure map tattooed on his rear.
• In Shugo Chara! there is a pair of a lock (Humpty Lock) and a matching key (Dumpty Key). The anime also revolves around the search of the Embryo, an egg that makes wishes come true.
• One episode of the American TV-series House is called Humpty Dumpty. It deals with a handyman who falls off a roof and has his hand amputated.
• In the 1932 Marx brothers movie Horse Feathers football scene, Chico calls out signals' which off one of them is 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Professor Waggstaff (Groucho's character) gets the ball!'.
• In an episode of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Dr. Robotnik was lampooned by artist Sketch Lampoon in the style of Humpty Dumpty in an animated talking comic book "Crack Ups"with the line, "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. But the people of Mobius just stood around and giggled while the rotten eggs just laid there and wiggled" and everyone was laughing at Robotnik with him finally saying "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"
• In the 1998 spy film Enemy of the State, NSA character Thomas Reynolds requests "two techs with full electronic capability, two Humpty Dumpties. Get Fielder to organise it." In this sense, Reynolds attempts unsuccessfully to apply plausible deniability so that an investigation by "all the kings men" will not identify NSA management complicity. This ironically contrasts with the Watergate scandal.

References in popular music and books

• In Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses" (1972):

All the King's Horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put our two hearts together again ...

• In The Alan Parsons Project's song "The turn of a friendly card":

There's a sign in the desert that lies to the west
Where you can't tell the night from the sunrise
And not all's the king's horse and all the king's men
Have prevented the fall of the unwise

• In The Dubliners's song "Humpty Dumpty":

"Have you heard o' one Humpty Dumpty?
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
Crawled up like lord Oliver Crumble
As the boot of the magazine wall
The magazine wall, hump helmet and all..."

• In ABBA's song "On and On and On", extra video verse:

Standing up is scary if you think you're gonna fall
Like a Humpty Dumpty, 'fraid of falling off the wall

• In Dolly Parton's 1980 song "Starting Over Again", a song about a divorce:

And all the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put mommy and daddy back together again

• Genesis, Squonk:

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could never put a smile on that face

• Aimee Mann, Humpty Dumpty:

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put baby together again

• Billy Joel, The great wall of china:

All the king's men and all the king's horses
Can't put you together the way you used to be

• Two Gallants, Get Proud:

And Humpty Dumpty is climbing higher up the wall,
and how he got there I just won't recall.

And Humpty Dumpty told me not to tell you why,
as if I even had reason to try!

• In Pooh Skies , an episode from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger narrates:

Meanwhile down on the ground
Oh cuddly around
Humfry Dumfry sat on his wall
Then he gazed up on high
The kitten came falling right down from the sky

• Travis, The Humpty Dumpty Love Song:

All of the king's horses and all of the king's men
Couldn't pull my heart back together again.

• Ben Folds, Lovesick Diagnostician:

All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't get back my girlfriend.

• Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (book)

All the king's horses and all the king's men...

We couldn't put Bella together again.

• Counting Crows, Einstein on the Beach

The world begins to disappear
The worst things come from inside here
And all the kings men reappear
For an eggman, on and off the wall
Who'll never be together again.

• Tori Amos, Humpty Dumpty:

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

Humpty Dumpty and Betty Louise
Stole a sony and some camembert cheese
She said "Humpty baby, take me
Oooh, yeah, take me to the river
Cause I like the way it runs, yeah,
Take me to the river
You know I like the way it runs, yeah"

He said, "Ah, ohh, everything's going my way"
He said, "Maybe it's my la-lucky day"
And he said, "Anything you want I can give"
She said, "I wanna take your picture
Mm, just for me"
He said, "Anything"
She said, "Up there, baby
Get on the wall, babe"

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
And looked at her as he was falling and
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again'

Hey, Betty Louise
Hey, Betty Louise
She said, "I like custard in the summer, honey"
Oh yeah, what it takes to be queen
Hey, what it takes to be queen
What it takes to be...oh.

Notes

1. I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 213-5.
2. E. Partridge and P. Beale, ''Dictionary of Slang and Unconvetional English'' (Routledge, 8th edn., 2002), p. 582.
3. A. Jack, ''Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes'' (London: Allen Lane, 2008).
4. I. Opie, 'Playground rhymes and the oral tradition', in P. Hunt, S. G. Bannister Ray, ''International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature'' (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 176.
5. . L. Gillespie, ''The Age of Richard II'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), p. 1.
6. L. Carroll, ''Through the looking glass'' ( Hayes Barton Press, 1872), p. 72.
7. G. Lewis, ''Lord Atkin'' (Hart, 1999), p. 138.
8. Westlaw search (ALLCASES database), April 19, 2008.

See also

• All the King's Horses
• All the King's Men