Short Stuff: Humpty Dumpty

Published Aug 11, 2021, 9:00 AM

Humpty Dumpty is not a good nursery rhyme. And what was Humpty anyway? Listen in to find out.

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Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's chuck this short stuff, as I said, and that means we're going to start now to talk about Humpty Hump. Do the Humpty Hump Dumpty R I P what he passed away recently? I didn't. I definitely did not know that. No, that's sad. It was shocked. G Is that right? I thought his name was Humpty. That's not Humpty. Yeah, I mean I think he died just like within the past couple of months even, Yeah, he din he done in April. Man, that is very sad. Yeah, and I gotta say to just very quickly. That's a great song. But um Digital Underground was awesome, Like that was their big MTV hit. But they and it was kind of joky and fun, but they had they were really really good. Yeah, he was like on this one song that I should say track, I guess the sound hip with a rapper Nameed Merge called Risky Business, and like you get a really good view of what like Humpty was all about. It's pretty cool. So if you liked the Humpty dancing, you want to learn more? I would start there alright, So um Humpy Specting that Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Do you need a minute? Are you good? You just go on, I'll gather myself while you're talking. 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. And the whole point of this episode is to sort of talk about why do we think this thing is an egg when it doesn't say it's an egg anywhere? And what are some of the theories about how this whole thing came about to begin with? Well, supposedly, and I found it very confusing in the article, the rhyme you just said is actually a riddle. It's meant to be a riddle, and somewhere along the way the riddle was answered for us. And now we don't even think of this as a riddle. But that's that's one thing to to bear in mind. When the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty first came out, it was meant to apparently there was some line like what is it? And you were supposed to go an egg? And then that was the delight that you found in it. Yeah, And It's also something that's been rewritten in different forms over the years. I think the first time the rhyme itself was in a book and Juvenile Amusement by Samuel Arnold, and the third line, instead of all the king's horses and all the king's men, it said four score men and four score more. So all of a sudden, it's not rhyming, right unless it's four scoreman and four score more. Couldn't help get Humpty restored or something like that. Sure, that's what I'm going with. I like that. But the first the first rhyme, did you say, it was back in when it first appeared. Yeah, And so from the from the get go, I think everybody was like, what is what is everybody talking about here? There's got to be something to this. So people started thinking that they were there were there was more to the Humpty Nursery rhyme because it is so bizarre, like it gives you almost no context whatsoever. It's really dumb. It's a little dumb. You know, not a lot happens, and the thing that does happen is very unsatisfying. So so I think people after the people who understood what this was all about had died off and failed to pass along with what they meant. Um, those people started wondering exactly what was behind all this, and so there's some theories started developing. Yeah, one of it is that Humpty Dumpty was supposed to be Richard the third, King of England. Uh And Shakespeare about Richard the Third, He's depicted as a poisonous, humpback toad and that's basically how history came to see him thanks to Shakespeare's to fiction. Right, But King Richard was only in office, ruled for a couple of years, about twenty six months, and supposedly, like you know, fought for the common man and was against you know, corruption and bribery and enacted a bunch of laws to fight that stuff. So not fair to King Richard. No, for some reason, some little part of my brain is being tickled right now, Like we talked about King Richard as if he was and I think the Robin was there a robin Hood episode. Isn't King Richard like the bad guy in that? Maybe like he was like a just a lion who just wanted his pudding or something weird like that. I don't remember, But yeah, apparently he wasn't a bad king, but it was basically Shakespeare who did that. But the point is is Richard the Third was the last English king to die in battle. He died at the Battle of Boswell Bosworth. Bosworth. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Charlie's Angels lately and I wanted to say Bosley at first, are you really watching lunch? Yeah? Remember they keep re showing that one where Sammy Davis Jr. Place that got you hooked. But yeah, King Richard had a horse named Wall and supposedly fell off of the horse and was bludgeoned. So you know, fell off. U sat on a wall and fell off the wall. So that's sort of where that connection comes in. Couldn't be saved, all the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put them back together again, So do it. This is where my money is. I just want everyone to know that that is where I think. That's what I think Humpty Dumpty is all about. All right, Well, let's take our break and we'll come back and talk about Louis Carroll kind of gumming up the works and some other theories right after this. All right, Chucks, is where it first starts, Um, We've we see him again a few years later in a book called Mother Goose's Melody from eighteen oh three. Right, yeah, and that one, Um, it was like a little little tubby kid because the last line is couldn't set Humpty up again? I guess just couldn't get him up right, kind of like an Augustus Gloup type character. Yeah and um. Supposedly the British satire Punch, the weekly magazine, said that Humpty was a symbol for Cardinal Wolsey, and other people said that that might be right too. So that's another theory. That one to me. So Cardinal Wolsey was the guy who couldn't get um, couldn't get a divorce from the pope for Henry the eighth. Um, so we kind of went down in infamy. Is not a great advisor helper to the king. Um. That's a little politically nuanced for me, because remember this is a nursery rhyme. So I don't see kids like singing a nursery rhyme about, you know, Cardinal Wolsey falling from favor with Henry the Eighth. I do see them singing a nursery rhyme about the death of King Richard. Though I'm with you so far. I mean, adults don't say, like, hey, kids, I got a nursery rhyme for you here it is. Don't adults just like right down nursery rhymes that they hear kids saying, and then that's how they become widespread and popularized. But they're ultimately created by kids. I think that's a deal. So yeah, all the more reason I got my money on rich with the third All right, well, then Lewis Carroll comes in through Alice. I'm sorry, through the looking Glass in eighteen seventy one, one of the more spectacularly seemingly drug fueled tones to ever be written, and the Eggman has a chapter in this dedicated to him, where in Alice says, she clearly saw that it was Humpty Dumpty himself. It can't be anybody else. I'm as certain of it as if his name were written all over his face. And great and uh, you know, if you've ever read that or even parts of it, it's it's really out there. So the idea of a walking, talking egg person human hybrid is not like far off the mark, right um, and so like that was the whole thing where like you and me and everybody else breathing today thinks of Humpty Dumpty as an egg thanks to that book, thanks to that chapter on him, thinks of the fact that he was just out and out an egg. There was no riddle at this point any longer. It was just Humpty Dumpty is an egg. And the illustrator Um for that first edition, John Tenniel or tenniel Um, his illustration of Humpty Dumpty is like an egg with pants on and a face and um, you know, arms and legs and all that stuff. That's that's where like the idea of Humpty Dumpty that we have today finds a roots almost you know, visually and through our imagination, um, from that book. That's right. That's the first time it was like, look, it's definitely an egg. Let's just let's just cut to the chase. Face. It cut to the chase and there was also that was printed differently in that book to the actual rhyme. The final line is I couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again, so there wasn't even an egg breaking in that version, which I found kind of sweet, nice, Um, so there's one more theory. There's a few more theories, some are literally not even worth mentioning. But um, there's an idea that a humpty dumpty was actually the name of a drink, right, and this is a boy. This doesn't sound good to me, but you never know? And in the old does this sound good to you? Yes? So? Uh, beer boiled with brandy? Okay, not the boiled part. Did you check out the recipe that was revived by by bartenders today? Oh you mean the modern version? Yes, now, I'm sure they made that taste good. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm talking about the original version ale boiled with brandy was called and this is the first time that the rhyme wasn't there. But the words humpty dumpty ever appeared in print was in sixte and a slang dictionary, and it was ale boiled with brandy. And uh. The connection there is that, um, really, that really strong beer was called hum and so humpty dumpty. Hum. There you have it. So, I mean, I feel like we should give the recipe for the Humpty Dumpty, don't you? And I think it sounds delicious. So you take one ounce of brandy one and a half ounces of ale I would go with pale ale FI were you a quarter ounce of lemon juice a dash of angustura, and you put it in a mixing glass with some ice, stir fifteen seconds and strained into a glass without the ice, garne with the lemon peel and raise a glass to your and humpty dumpty and Chuck g Apparently that's a great, great call back. You got anything else for a great MC? I got nothing else. Well, uh, since Chuck said he has nothing else, I can attest that I have nothing else. That means we have nothing else to share with you in this episode of short Stuff, which means short stuff is apt stuff you should know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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