Humpty Dumpty
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Humpty Dumpty sits on a wall, not having yet fallen.
- 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.
He also appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and discusses semantics with Alice. Among other things, he explains the difficult words from Jabberwocky.
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Origins
There are various theories of the origin of Humpty Dumpty.
- According to an insert taken from the East Anglia Tourist Board in England, Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon during the English Civil War. It was mounted on top of the St Mary's at the Wall Church in Colchester defending the city against siege in the summer of 1648. Although Colchester was a Parliamentarian stronghold, it had been captured by the Royalists; they held it for 11 weeks. The church tower was hit by the enemy and the top of the tower was blown off, sending "Humpty" tumbling to the ground. Naturally the King's men (the "men" would have been infantry, and "horses" the cavalry troops) tried to mend "him" but in vain. Visitors to Colchester can see the reconstructed Church tower as they reach the top of Balkerne Hill on the left hand side of the road.
- In another theory, Humpty Dumpty referred to King Richard III of England, the hunchbacked monarch, whose horse was named "Wall". During the battle of Bosworth Field, he fell off of his steed and was said to have been "hacked into pieces". (However, although Shakespeare's play depicts Richard as a hunchback, other historical evidence suggests that he was not.)
- Humpty Dumpty may also refer to a Roman war machine called a Testudo used to cross moats and climb over castle walls. Humpty Dumpty refers to the turtle-like look of the machine and the noise of the wheels.
- Another theory has Humpty Dumpty as medieval slang for a short, clumsy person. Martin Gardner in The Annotated Mother Goose suggests this was exploited in a riddle: after the poem, the reciter asks how could such a thing happen, the answer being that Humpty Dumpty was an egg (which fact is never mentioned in the poem). Since the answer is now so well known, the question is no longer asked. In L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose, the riddle is devised by the King's daughter (having witnessed Humpty's death).
Application in cognitive science
A phonetic variation composed of near-sounding French language words of the rhyme is also used in the fields of systems analysis, knowledge management, and requirements management in software development to illustrate the complexity of human communications. It is useful in bilingual or near-bilingual environments to show the issues involved in crossing over from the oral world typical of implicit knowledge to the written world of explicit knowledge.
One of the many variations is thus:
- Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
- Homme petit d'homme petit, à degrés de bègues folles
- Anal deux qui noeuds ours, anal deux qui noeuds s'y mènent
- Coup d'un poux tome petit tout guetteur à gaine
If this is read out slowly (by somebody who has a good enough knowledge of French to pronounce it properly, but has not been told a nursery rhyme is involved) to an audience of persons who have been warned a nursery rhyme is involved, the reader would be rather bemused and the listeners would very rapidly recognize the nursery rhyme. Reading the passage aloud will make the effect clear.
A literal translation of the French words (by somebody with a good knowledge of French, and a moderate knowledge of English but no knowledge of the nursery rhyme) would come out thus:
- Little man of little man, waits for himself, does not swallow
- Little man of little man, by degrees of stuttering madwomen
- Anal two that knots bears, anal two that leads
- Strike from a louse small volume any watchman with a girdle
Pinball Machine
Humpty Dumpty is a historically important pinball machine released by Gottlieb in October 1947. It is considered to be the first true pinball machine ever produced, distinguishing it from earlier bagatelle game machines. Humpty Dumpty had six flippers, but, unlike modern pinball tables, they faced outward instead of inward and were not placed at the bottom of the table near the main outhole. Like all early pinball tables, Humpty Dumpty was constructed with wood and had backlit scoring in preset units of scoring rather than mechanical reel or electronic LED scoring.
Quote
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." -- Through the Looking-Glass