Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes

Humpty-Dumpty lay in a beck
With all his sinews around his neck;
Forty doctors and forty wights
Couldn't put Humpty-Dumpty to rights.

    (1846, p. 209.)
Many parallels of this rhyme were collected from different parts of Europe by Mannhardt. In these Humpty-Dumpty appears under various names. They include Hümpelken-Pümpelken, Rüntzelken-Püntzelken, Wirgele-Wargele, Gigele-Gagele, and Etje-Papetje in different parts of Germany, and Lille-Trille and Lille Bulle in Scandinavia. The closest parallel of our rhyme hails from Saxony, and stands as follows: —

Hümpelken-Pümpelken sat up de Bank,
Hümpelken-Pümpelken fël von de Bank;
Do is kën Docter in Engelland
De Hümpelken-Pümpelken kurere kann.

    (M., p. 416.)[45 - Cf. also Mannhardt, Das Rätsel vom Ei, in Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie, IV, 1859, p. 394 ff.]

"H. – P. sat on a bench, H. – P. fell from the bench; there is no doctor in Engelland who can restore H. – P."

In Switzerland the rhyme of Humpty-Dumpty is told of Annebadadeli. The usual answer is an egg, but sometimes it is an icicle or a feeding-bottle.

In Scandinavia they say: —

Lille Bulle trilla' ner a skulle;
Ingen man i detta lan'
Lille Bulle laga kan.

    (1849, p. 9.)

"Little B. fell from the shelf, no man in the whole land can restore little B."

This has a further parallel in France in a rhyme which reproduces the German expression Engelland regardless of its intrinsic meaning: —

Boule, boule su l'keyere,
Boule, boule par terre.
Y n'a nuz homme en Angleterre
Pou l'erfaire.[46 - Rolland, E., Devinettes on énigmes populaires, 1877, p. 199, from Mons.]

"B. b. on the bench, B. b. on the ground. There is no man in England who can restore him."

The forty doctors of our rhyme who figure also as twice threescore men, reappear in the German rhyme as "no doctor in Engelland," as "no man in all the land" in the Scandinavian rhyme, and as "no man in England" literally translated, of the French version.

In one version of our rhyme those who are powerless to restore what is broken are described as "all the king's soldiers and all the king's men." This expression is also used in the riddle-rhymes on Smoke and on the Well, which are found in our own and in foreign nursery collections.

As round as an apple, as deep as a cup,
And all the king's horses cannot pull it up.

    (The Well, 1846, p. 75.)
As high as a castle, as weak as a wastle,
And all the king's soldiers cannot pull it down.

    (Smoke, 1849, p. 144.)
In Swabia they say: —

Es ist etwas in meinem Haus,
Es ziehen es hundert tausend Gäule nicht naus.

    (Me., p. 79.)

"There is something in my house, not a hundred thousand horses can pull it out."

The answer is "Smoke." In France they say: —

Qu'est-ce-qui est rond comme un dé,
Et que des chevaux ne peuvent porter.[47 - Rolland, E., Devinettes on énigmes populaires, 1877, p. 98, from Paris.]

"What is as round as a thimble, and horses cannot pull it?"

The answer is "A well." Possibly the "king" of these rhymes stands for the sun as the representative of power, whose horses and men are alike powerless.

The egg, which in these rhymes is designated by fanciful names, in other riddle-rhymes current abroad is described as a cask containing two kinds of beer. A riddle was put by the god Wodan in the character of a wayfarer to King Heidrek, and stood as follows: —

"Blond – haired brides, bondswomen both, carried ale to the barn; the casks were not turned with hands nor forged by hammers; she that made it strutted about outside the isle." The answer is "Eider-ducks' eggs" (C. P., I, 89).

The egg is also likened to a cask containing beer in a short riddle-rhyme which is current from Lapland to Hungary. In the Faroe Islands it takes this form: "Bolli fell from the ledge, all its hoops fell off. There is no man in the East, there is no man in the West, who can restore it" (M., p. 417). In Prussia they say: —

Kommt ein Tonn aus Engelland,
Ohne Boden, ohne Band;
Ist zweierleai Bier drin.

    (Sim., p. 287.)

"A cask comes from Engelland, without bottom, without band; it contains two kinds of beer."

Among ourselves there is no riddle-rhyme, as far as I know, which describes the egg as a cask containing beer. But in the seventeenth century the word Humpty-Dumpty was used to designate a drink which consisted of ale boiled in brandy,[48 - Murray's Dictionary: Humpty-Dumpty.] and this conception obviously hangs together with the two kinds of beer of the foreign riddle-rhymes on the egg.

Other riddle-rhymes current among ourselves or abroad describe the egg as a house or a castle. The following one describes it as an enigma in itself: —

As I was going o'er London Bridge
I saw something under a hedge;
'Twas neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor bone,
And yet in three weeks it runned alone.

    (1846, p. 213.)
Girls in America play a game called Humpty-Dumpty. They sit on the ground with their skirts tightly gathered around them so as to enclose the feet. The leader begins some rhyme, all join in, and at a certain word previously agreed upon, all throw themselves backwards, keeping their skirts tightly grasped. The object is to recover the former position without letting go the skirt (N., p. 132).

Possibly the game is older than the riddle-rhymes, for these rhymes describe Humpty-Dumpty as sitting on a wall, or a bank, or a ledge, or as lying in a beck, which for an actual egg are impossible situations. They are intelligible on the assumption that the sport is older than the rhyme, and that the rhyme describes human beings who are personating eggs.

The name Humpty-Dumpty itself is one of the large class of rhyming compounds which are formed by the varied reduplication of the same word. Perhaps they originally conveyed a definite meaning. The word Humpty-Dumpty is allied to hump and to dump, words which express roundness and shortness. Another name of the kind is Hoddy-Doddy, which occurs in the following riddle-rhyme: —

Hoddy-Doddy with a round, black body;
Three legs and a wooden hat, what is that?