Humpty Demetti's Identity Crisis

Humpty Dumpty. You remember him, right? He sat on a wall, fell off… and that was the end of him. A gripping tale, really.

I’d wager just about anything that when I mention Humpty Dumpty, the image that pops into your head is of a well-dressed egg. But what if I told you… that’s all wrong?

What if I told you that for your whole life, you’ve been fed a lie?

According to some scholars, Humpty Dumpty wasn’t an egg at all. He might have originally been a powerful king, a massive siege cannon, a rather unfortunate-looking bachelor, or even just a chubby little kid.

Personally, finding out Humpty wasn’t an egg would hit me almost as hard as learning I was adopted. And I’m not alone—Gunther agrees with me.

So today, I’ve set out on a mission: to uncover the real identity of Humpty Dumpty, trace the origins of that sad little nursery rhyme, and figure out why we all think of him as a fragile little egg in the first place.

You probably remember some nursery rhymes so well you could recite them off the top of your head—even if you haven’t heard them in years. But the lines you think of as “classic” might be completely different from what someone else remembers.

In fact, almost every English nursery rhyme has gone through at least a few different versions over time—some stuck around, while others quietly faded away.

But Humpty Dumpty is a rare exception. While there have been slight changes in wording over the years, just about everyone today agrees on the version that goes like this:

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.

That familiar version dates back as far as 1882, where it appeared in a song collection from Yale College. But the earliest known printed version actually goes back much further—to 1797, in Samuel Arnold’s children’s book Juvenile Amusements.

That version reads:

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.

What makes Arnold’s version especially interesting is that he didn’t present it as a nursery rhyme…

He presented it as a riddle and It was up to the reader to figure out what kind of creature or being Humpty Dumpty was . Kind of like what scientists have been doing with Kirby for years.

But here’s where life gives us a sharp kick in the ol’ egg sack:

The answer to the riddle?

It’s lost to time—just like most of the rest of that book. Gone, faded, destroyed by history’s slow erosion.

You can find a few really poor-quality scans of Juvenile Amusements floating around online, but I’ll be honest: I couldn’t find a scan of the specific Humpty Dumpty rhyme I quoted earlier. And this is one of those frustrating situations where every online source ends up tracing back to the same place: Wikipedia.

Now, to be fair, the Wikipedia page does cite a credible source: The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes by respected folklorists Iona and Peter Opie. And yes, the Opies do reference Arnold’s version of the rhyme—but unfortunately, they don’t include a scan of the original page either. They just describe it in text.

So we kind of just have to trust that the Opies actually saw the original document with their own eyeballs, and weren’t just quoting someone else who quoted someone else.

Still, just because the original book doesn’t give us a clear answer doesn’t mean we’re out of leads. There are clues scattered throughout history—starting with the first known use of the name "Humpty Dumpty."

Thanks to an amazing blog post by Mike Sutton, we know that “Humpty Dumpty” shows up in a 1701 satirical poem titled A Rod for Tunbridge Beaus. In it, a group of absurd suitors (called “beaus”) is described in over-the-top, comical fashion. Their names are fantastic, by the way—one is called “Pout-Mouth,” another “Catch-Fart,” and then there’s our old friend Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty gets a long-winded description that goes completely off the rails—at one point, he’s helping deliver a pregnant cow’s calf. But the most important part comes at the start, where he's described as:

“A merry lump, well grown in years,

With back and breast like Punchinello.”

That last bit is telling. “Punchinello” refers to a character from Italian commedia dell’arte—a clown figure often portrayed with a round, egg-like body. So already, Humpty was being described as a jolly, rounded figure—decades before the rhyme we know today was even published.

Mike Sutton also uncovered another key reference from 1785 a dictionary called The Dictionary of Vulgar Language was published—think of it as the great-grandparent to Urban Dictionary. And this is where things get even more interesting: it defined "Humpty Dumpty" as a "short, clumsy person of either sex" and added, "also ale boiled with Brandy."

That right there shows that the term “Humpty Dumpty” was already associated with short, squat, egg-like bodies long before we started picturing him as a literal egg. This aligns perfectly with how the character was viewed by the public. So, by the time Samuel Arnold published his version of the rhyme in Juvenile Amusements in 1797, the image of Humpty as an egg was likely starting to take shape—though it wasn't fully solidified yet.

Fast forward to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and that's when the egg-shaped Humpty Dumpty really became iconic. Carroll’s portrayal of him crushed any hope of Humpty becoming a sex symbol (not that he ever stood much of a chance). But here’s where things get really fascinating—at least to me.

While re-reading my copy of The Annotated Alice, which has loads of behind-the-scenes info, I came across an interesting citation. It says:

"While most people cite John Tenniel’s illustrations as the first visual representation of Humpty Dumpty as an egg, there is one earlier example."

One other earlier depiction, to be exact.

In 1843, 22 years before Carroll's second Alice book was published, an Oxford alumnus named Samuel Edward Mabberly created an accordion-style book titled The Pictorial Humpty Dumpty. This little gem depicted Humpty’s story as the pages were unfolded, with Humpty drawn as an egg.

Now, of course, John Tenniel’s illustrations from Through the Looking-Glass are what made the egg version of Humpty famous, and they had an enormous influence on how the public perceives him. But I think it’s worth noting that Mabberly’s illustration was already envisioning him as an egg long before Carroll. Even though Tenniel's version is the most famous, it’s clear that the egg-shaped image had already been in public imagination by then.

Of course, that didn’t stop other interpretations from popping up. For example, there's a 1877 book of Mother Goose rhymes that shows Humpty as a round little boy—and based on his pose, I’m guessing he might have some IBS issues. Classic.

This leads me to wonder: how much of Humpty's backstory was Lewis Carroll aware of when he wrote Through the Looking-Glass? Because there are some clear connections to his earlier origins.

For starters, Humpty Dumpty is perched precariously on a wall in Carroll’s story. His position is almost symbolic of the early depictions of him being a vulnerable, top-heavy figure. He also presents Alice with multiple riddles, and—just like the Humpty Dumpty in the Tunbridge Beaus poem - Humpty is described as a poet, someone of universal knowledge, and more learned than a whole college. Not to mention, you’d have to have some interest in linguistics to figure out exactly what kind of being Humpty Dumpty is supposed to be.

That brings me to a great moment in Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice tells Humpty Dumpty that he’s shaped like an egg—and he gets super offended. He says it’s provoking to be compared to an egg. Honestly, I don’t blame him! I imagine he’s used to people solving his riddle with, “Humpty Dumpty’s an egg!” shouted from the rooftops. Talk about a cursed existence.

Personally, I find this whole timeline of Humpty’s evolution—from a quirky bachelor to an egg—to make some sense. It’s not a perfect story, and some assumptions are definitely made along the way, but at least there’s a trail we can follow.

l.