Nursery crimes?

The messenger came rushing into army HQ. "Bad news, sir," he said. "Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall." The general went pale. "Right," he said. "Whatever it takes, Humpty Dumpty must be put back together."

This is how we imagine the story behind the nursery rhyme. But who was Humpty Dumpty?

Humpty is always shown as a giant egg. But in a recent tweet the writer Holly Bourne pointed out that no egg is mentioned in the rhyme.

One theory is that Humpty Dumpty was a large cannon used in the English Civil WarA series of wars in England from 1642 to 1651 between Royalists led by Charles I and Parliament (followers known as Roundheads) over religious freedom and how the country was run. . It defended Colchester, which was attacked by the RoundheadsA name for people who supported the Parliament of England during the English Civil War. in 1648.

The cannon was put on the city wall by the Royalists. But the attackers used their own cannon to destroy the wall beneath it, so it fell to the ground. The Royalists tried to move it, but it was too heavy.    

Some think the rhyme was made up by their enemies to poke fun at them. As Samantha Bellerose writes on the Nursery Rhyme Central website, "many nursery rhymes do have a secret meaning behind them."

But people argue about these secret meanings. One expert on the Civil War, Robert Hodkinson, does not think Humpty Dumpty was a cannon. The earliest accounts of the siege, he points out,¹ do not give the cannon any name at all.

Tim Devlin, the author of a new book called Cracking Humpty Dumpty, agrees.² According to him, Humpty Dumpty was "an exotic cocktail of boiled ale and brandy drunk by gypsies".

Another rhyme that is argued about is Ring A Ring O'Roses. Many people believe it refers to the Great Plague of 1665, with the "ring of roses" being a fatal rash, and sufferers sneezing before they fall down dead. But, says Tim Devlin:

"The earliest versions have nothing about sneezing... it is in fact a happy children's game like musical chairs which can be traced to the USA and Germany in the 18th Century.

Yes: They are a fascinating connection to the past. Many of them are coded messages from times when people did not dare express their disagreement with the government for fear of harsh penalties. 

No: They perform a very useful task in entertaining young children and training them to learn things by heart. What they originally meant is generally lost in the mists of time and now irrelevant.

Or... It is not important, but it is intriguing. Who would have imagined that Dr Foster could be a reference to Edward I and his horse falling into a ditch at Gloucester in the 13^th Century?