Humpty Dumpty
Encyclopedia
Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English language
nursery rhyme
, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an egg
and has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture. The rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index
number of 13026.
. The earliest known version is in a manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose
's Melody published in 1803, which has the modern version with a different last line: "Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again". It was first published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland as:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary
the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy
boiled with ale
in the seventeenth century. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative
slang for a short and clumsy person. The riddle may depend on the assumption that, whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, 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 folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French
, or "Lille Trille" in Swedish
and Norwegian
; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.
There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". The suggestion that Humpty Dumpty was a "tortoise" siege engine
, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary held city of Gloucester
in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester
in the English Civil War
, was put forward in 1956 by Professor David Daube
in The Oxford Magazine
of February 16, 1956, on the basis of a contemporary account of the attack, but without evidence that the rhyme was connected. The theory, part of an anonymous series of articles on the origin of nursery rhymes, was widely acclaimed in academia, but was derided by others as "ingenuity for ingenuity's sake" and declared to be a spoof. The link was nevertheless popularised by a children's musical first performed in 1969. From 1996 the website of Colchester
tourist board attributed the origin of the rhyme to a cannon recorded as used from the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648. In 1648 the town of Colchester was a walled town with a castle and several churches and was protected by the city wall. A huge cannon, colloquially called Humpty Dumpty, was strategically placed on the wall. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists, or Cavaliers, 'all the King's men' attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, but because the cannon was so heavy ' All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again.' In his 2008 book Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes author Albert Jack claimed that there were two other verses supporting this claim. Elsewhere he claimed to have found them in an "old dusty library, [in] an even older book", but did not state what the book was or where it was found. It has been pointed out that the two additional verses are not in the style of the seventeenth century, or the existing rhyme, and that they do not fit with the earliest printed version of the rhyme, which do not mention horses and men.
Another theory, advanced by Katherine Ewles Thomas and adopted by Robert Ripley
, posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England
, depicted in Tudor histories, and particularly in Shakespeare's play, as humpbacked and who was defeated, despite his armies at Bosworth Field in 1485. However, the term humpback was not recorded until the eighteenth century and no direct evidence linking the rhyme with the historical figure has been advanced.
Humpty appears in Lewis Carroll
's Through the Looking-Glass
(1872), where he discusses semantics
and pragmatics
with Alice
.
This passage was used in Britain by Lord Atkin and in his dissenting judgement in the seminal case Liversidge v. Anderson
(1942), where he protested about the distortion of a statute by the majority of the House of Lords
. It also became a popular citation in United States
legal opinions, appearing in 250 judicial decisions in the Westlaw database , including two Supreme Court cases (TVA v. Hill and Zschernig v. Miller
).
It has been suggested that Carroll's Humpty Dumpty had prosopagnosia
on the basis of his description of his finding faces hard to recognize.
American actor George L. Fox
helped to popularize the character in 19th century stage productions of pantomime, music and rhyme.
In addition to his appearance in Through the Looking-Glass, as a character Humpty Dumpty has been used in a large range of literary works, including L. Frank Baum
's Mother Goose in Prose
(1901), where 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. Robert Rankin
used Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy-tale character murderer in The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
(2002). Jasper Fforde
included Humpty Dumpty in two of his novels, The Well of Lost Plots
(2003) and The Big Over Easy
(2005), which use him respectively as a ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike and as the victim of a murder.
The rhyme has also been used as a reference in more serious literary works, including as a recurring motif of the Fall of Man in James Joyce
's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake
. Robert Penn Warren
's 1946 American novel All the King's Men
, the story of populist politician Willie Stark's rise to the position of governor and eventual fall, based on the career of the corrupt Louisiana
Senator Huey Long
, won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize
and was made into a film All the King's Men
and which won the 1949 Academy Award for best motion picture. This was echoed in Carl Bernstein
and Bob Woodward
's book All the President's Men
, about the Watergate scandal
, referring to the failure of the President's staff to repair the damage once the scandal had leaked out. It was filmed as All the President's Men
in 1976, starring Robert Redford
and Dustin Hoffman
.
It has also been used as a common motif in popular music, including Hank Thompson's "Humpty Dumpty Heart" (1948), The Monkees
' "All the King's Horses", Aretha Franklin
's "All the King's Horses" (1972)., Aimee Mann
's "Humpty dumpty
" and Travis
' "The Humpty Dumpty Love Song". In jazz
, Ornette Coleman
and Chick Corea
wrote different compositions, both incidentally titled Humpty Dumpty (in Corea's case, however, it is a part of a concept album
inspired by Lewis Carroll
, called "The Mad Hatter
").
Humpty Dumpty is also one of the main characters in Dreamworks Animation
's 2011 animated film "Puss in Boots
" voiced by Zach Galifianakis
.
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
nursery rhyme
Nursery rhyme
The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...
, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an egg
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...
and has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture. The rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index
Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...
number of 13026.
Lyrics
The most common modern text is: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.
Origins
The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg because it probably was originally posed as a riddleRiddle
A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and...
. The earliest known version is in a manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose
Mother Goose
The familiar figure of Mother Goose is an imaginary author of a collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes which are often published as Mother Goose Rhymes. As a character, she appears in one "nursery rhyme". A Christmas pantomime called Mother Goose is often performed in the United Kingdom...
's Melody published in 1803, which has the modern version with a different last line: "Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again". It was first published in 1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland as:
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.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy
Brandy
Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink...
boiled with ale
Ale
Ale is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a warm fermentation with a strain of brewers' yeast. The yeast will ferment the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste...
in the seventeenth century. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
slang for a short and clumsy person. The riddle may depend on the assumption that, whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, 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 folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, or "Lille Trille" in Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
and Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.
There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". The suggestion that Humpty Dumpty was a "tortoise" siege engine
Siege engine
A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some have been operated close to the fortifications, while others have been used to attack from a distance. From antiquity, siege engines were constructed largely of wood and...
, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary held city of Gloucester
Gloucester
Gloucester is a city, district and county town of Gloucestershire in the South West region of England. Gloucester lies close to the Welsh border, and on the River Severn, approximately north-east of Bristol, and south-southwest of Birmingham....
in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester
Siege of Gloucester
The Siege of Gloucester was an engagement in the First English Civil War. It took place between August 3 and September 5, 1643, between the defending Parliamentarian garrison of Gloucester and the besieging army of King Charles I. The siege ended with the arrival of a relieving Parliamentarian army...
in the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, was put forward in 1956 by Professor David Daube
David Daube
David Daube DCL, FBA was the twentieth century's preeminent scholar of ancient law. He combined a familiarity with many legal systems, particularly Roman law and biblical law, with an expertise in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian literature, and used literary, religious, and legal texts to...
in The Oxford Magazine
The Oxford Magazine
The Oxford Magazine is a review magazine and newspaper published in Oxford, England. It was established in 1883 and published weekly during Oxford University terms....
of February 16, 1956, on the basis of a contemporary account of the attack, but without evidence that the rhyme was connected. The theory, part of an anonymous series of articles on the origin of nursery rhymes, was widely acclaimed in academia, but was derided by others as "ingenuity for ingenuity's sake" and declared to be a spoof. The link was nevertheless popularised by a children's musical first performed in 1969. From 1996 the website of Colchester
Colchester
Colchester is an historic town and the largest settlement within the borough of Colchester in Essex, England.At the time of the census in 2001, it had a population of 104,390. However, the population is rapidly increasing, and has been named as one of Britain's fastest growing towns. As the...
tourist board attributed the origin of the rhyme to a cannon recorded as used from the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648. In 1648 the town of Colchester was a walled town with a castle and several churches and was protected by the city wall. A huge cannon, colloquially called Humpty Dumpty, was strategically placed on the wall. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists, or Cavaliers, 'all the King's men' attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, but because the cannon was so heavy ' All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again.' In his 2008 book Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes author Albert Jack claimed that there were two other verses supporting this claim. Elsewhere he claimed to have found them in an "old dusty library, [in] an even older book", but did not state what the book was or where it was found. It has been pointed out that the two additional verses are not in the style of the seventeenth century, or the existing rhyme, and that they do not fit with the earliest printed version of the rhyme, which do not mention horses and men.
Another theory, advanced by Katherine Ewles Thomas and adopted by Robert Ripley
Robert Ripley
Robert LeRoy Ripley was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur and amateur anthropologist, who created the world famous Ripley's Believe It or Not! newspaper panel series, radio show, and television show which feature odd 'facts' from around the world.Subjects covered in Ripley's cartoons and text...
, posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England
Richard III of England
Richard III was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty...
, depicted in Tudor histories, and particularly in Shakespeare's play, as humpbacked and who was defeated, despite his armies at Bosworth Field in 1485. However, the term humpback was not recorded until the eighteenth century and no direct evidence linking the rhyme with the historical figure has been advanced.
In Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
's Through the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
(1872), where he discusses semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
and pragmatics
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...
with Alice
Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
Alice is a fictional character in the literary classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There. She is a young girl from Victorian-era Britain.-Development:...
.
“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 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 so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be masterthat’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!”
This passage was used in Britain by Lord Atkin and in his dissenting judgement in the seminal case Liversidge v. Anderson
Liversidge v. Anderson
Liversidge v Anderson [1942] AC 206 is an important and landmark case in English law which concerned the relationship between the courts and the state, and in particular the assistance that the judiciary should give to the executive in times of national emergency. It concerns civil liberties and...
(1942), where he protested about the distortion of a statute by the majority of the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
. It also became a popular citation in United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
legal opinions, appearing in 250 judicial decisions in the Westlaw database , including two Supreme Court cases (TVA v. Hill and Zschernig v. Miller
Zschernig v. Miller
Zschernig v. Miller, 389 U.S. 429 , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated an Oregon statute for unconstitutionally intruding into the federal realm of foreign affairs even though the statute did not conflict with any federal treaty or statute.- Facts of the case...
).
It has been suggested that Carroll's Humpty Dumpty had prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact...
on the basis of his description of his finding faces hard to recognize.
“The face is what one goes by, generally,” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.
“That’s just what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has—the two eyes, so” (marking their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance—or the mouth at the top—that would be some help.”
Other appearances in fiction and popular culture
George L. Fox (clown)
George L. Fox was America’s first great white faced clown to follow in the footsteps of Britain’s Joseph Grimaldi.-Early Years:...
helped to popularize the character in 19th century stage productions of pantomime, music and rhyme.
In addition to his appearance in Through the Looking-Glass, as a character Humpty Dumpty has been used in a large range of literary works, including L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
's Mother Goose in Prose
Mother Goose in Prose
Mother Goose in Prose is a collection of twenty-two children's stories based on Mother Goose nursery rhymes. It was the first children's book written by L. Frank Baum, and the first book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. It was originally published in 1897 by Way and Williams of Chicago, and...
(1901), where 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. Robert Rankin
Robert Rankin
Robert Fleming Rankin is a prolific British humorous novelist. Born in Parsons Green, London, he started writing in the late 1970s, and first entered the bestsellers lists with Snuff Fiction in 1999, by which time his previous eighteen books had sold around one million copies...
used Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy-tale character murderer in The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse is a novel by the British author Robert Rankin. It is Rankin's 24th novel and his first for new publishers Gollancz. It is set in Toy City , a place where toys are alive and the characters from nursery rhymes are local celebrities. It is followed by a...
(2002). Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde is a British novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer...
included Humpty Dumpty in two of his novels, The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots is the third book by Jasper Fforde and the continuation of the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next from The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book...
(2003) and The Big Over Easy
The Big Over Easy
The Big Over Easy is a novel written by Jasper Fforde and published in 2005. It features Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant, Sergeant Mary Mary....
(2005), which use him respectively as a ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike and as the victim of a murder.
The rhyme has also been used as a reference in more serious literary works, including as a recurring motif of the Fall of Man in James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
. Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
's 1946 American novel All the King's Men
All the King's Men
All the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....
, the story of populist politician Willie Stark's rise to the position of governor and eventual fall, based on the career of the corrupt Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
Senator Huey Long
Huey Long
Huey Pierce Long, Jr. , nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928–1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. A Democrat, he was noted for his radical populist policies. Though a backer of Franklin D...
, won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
and was made into a film All the King's Men
All the King's Men (1949 film)
All the King's Men is a 1949 drama film based on the Robert Penn Warren novel of the same name. It was directed by Robert Rossen and starred Broderick Crawford in the role of Willie Stark.-Plot:...
and which won the 1949 Academy Award for best motion picture. This was echoed in Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
and Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
's book All the President's Men
All the President's Men
All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists investigating the first Watergate break-in and ensuing scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial...
, about the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, referring to the failure of the President's staff to repair the damage once the scandal had leaked out. It was filmed as All the President's Men
All the President's Men (film)
All the President's Men is a 1976 Academy Award-winning political thriller film based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post...
in 1976, starring Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
and Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
.
It has also been used as a common motif in popular music, including Hank Thompson's "Humpty Dumpty Heart" (1948), The Monkees
The Monkees
The Monkees are an American pop rock group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966 by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork,...
' "All the King's Horses", Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All...
's "All the King's Horses" (1972)., Aimee Mann
Aimee Mann
Aimee Mann is an American rock singer-songwriter, guitarist and bassist.-Early life:Aimee Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, graduated from Open High School in 1978 and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out to sing with her first punk rock band, the Young Snakes...
's "Humpty dumpty
Lost in Space (album)
Lost in Space is an album by singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, released on her own label SuperEgo Records in 2002 . A special edition released in 2003 featured a second disc containing six live recordings, two B-sides and two previously unreleased songs.Mann performed the songs "This Is How It Goes"...
" and Travis
Travis (band)
Travis are a post-Britpop band from Glasgow, Scotland, comprising Fran Healy , Dougie Payne , Andy Dunlop and Neil Primrose...
' "The Humpty Dumpty Love Song". In jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
and Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
wrote different compositions, both incidentally titled Humpty Dumpty (in Corea's case, however, it is a part of a concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
inspired by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, called "The Mad Hatter
The Mad Hatter (album)
The Mad Hatter is an album recorded by Chick Corea and released in 1978.The track names for the album, as well as its title, are derived from the children's fairy-tale Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.-Track listing:...
").
Humpty Dumpty is also one of the main characters in Dreamworks Animation
DreamWorks Animation
DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. is an American animation studio based in Glendale, California that creates animated feature films, television program and online virtual worlds...
's 2011 animated film "Puss in Boots
Puss in Boots (2011 film)
Puss in Boots is a 2011 computer-animated adventure Western film produced by DreamWorks Animation, directed by Chris Miller , executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, and written by Brian Lynch, with screenplay by Tom Wheeler. It stars Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, Billy Bob...
" voiced by Zach Galifianakis
Zach Galifianakis
Zachary Knight "Zach" Galifianakis is an American stand-up comedian and actor known for his numerous film and television appearances including his own Comedy Central Presents special...
.