Humpty Dumpty is a character in a Nursery rhyme typically portrayed as an egg. Most English-speaking children are familiar with the rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13026.
The most common 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.[1]
The rhyme does not actually state that Humpty Dumpty is an egg.
In its first full printed form in 1810, the rhyme is posed as a riddle and exploits for misdirection the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person[citation needed]; the riddle being that, whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall, depending on the height of the wall, would probably not be irreparably damaged, an egg would be.[1] 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 & Norwegian; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.[1]

Origins
Previous to the "little, clumsy person" meaning, according to the Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale.[1] There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". As some are mutually exclusive, the theories necessarily include false etymologies.
The theory that Humpty Dumpty was a cannon used in the siege of Colchester in 1648 during the English Civil War is often stated as fact.[2] However, the additional 'discovered' verse which reveals this meaning was actually written as a spoof for the Oxford Magazine in 1956 by Professor David Daube.[3] The story was originally attributed to Gloucester and has no substance in fact, despite its adoption by the tourist industry of Colchester. The additional verse is:
In Sixteen Hundred and Forty-Eight
When England suffered the pains of state
The Roundheads lay siege to Colchester town
Where the king's men still fought for the crown
There One-Eyed Thompson stood on the wall
A gunner of deadliest aim of all
From St. Mary's Tower his cannon he fired
Humpty-Dumpty was its name
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...
Another theory posits Humpty Dumpty referring to King Richard III of England, Shakespeare's hunchbacked Egg, the "Wall" being either the name of his horse (called "White Surrey" in Shakespeare's play) or a reference to the supporters who deserted him. During the battle of Bosworth Field, Richard fell off his steed and was said to have been "hacked into pieces". (Though the play depicts Richard as a hunchback, other historical sources suggest that he was not.)
The story of Cardinal Wolsey's downfall is supposedly depicted in the children's nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty. At length Cawood Castle (Cawood, a village in Yorkshire, seven miles southwest of York) passed to Cardinal Wolsey, who let it fall into disrepair in the early part of his career (1514 - 1530), due to his residence at the Court, devotion to temporal affairs and his neglect of his diocesan duties. King Henry VIII sent Wolsey back home in 1529 after he failed to obtain a divorce from the Pope - a huge mistake on Wolsey's part. Wolsey returned to the castle and began to restore it to its former grandeur. However, he was arrested for high treason in November, 1530 and ordered to London for trial. He left on 6 November, but took ill at Leicester and died in the Abbey there on 29 November.
In another twist, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon which was upon the wall of Edinburgh Castle (dates and times unclear) and that the cannon one day (while firing) exploded into a thousand pieces, scattering bits of it far and wide with whatever was left in a shattered heap at the bottom of the wall.
The story of Humpty Dumpty is also rumoured to be based upon the untimely death of a 14th century Romanian prince, Humperdinck, who happened to fall from the battlements of his father's castle, shattering his skull. He was also rumoured to have suffered from brittle bone disease.

Humpty appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where he discusses semantics and pragmatics with Alice.
"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 a 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 different things.""The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that'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 by Lord Atkin 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 as of April 19, 2008, including two Supreme Court cases (TVA v. Hill and Zschernig v. Miller).[4]

In L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose, 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.
Batman features a character based on Humpty Dumpty, an example of its tendency to base ideas on fairy tales and on Alice in Wonderland (such as the Mad Hatter). He enjoys taking things apart to see if he can put them back together again and make them better, and was thus mislabeled a terrorist.
Neil Gaiman published in Knave, in 1984 a short story called 'The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds', which casts Humpty as a murder victim. The tone is that of hard boiled detective fiction and casts a number of nursery rhyme characters in various roles such as Jill from Jack and Jill as the femme fatale and Cock Robin as the underworld informant. It is now available to read from his website.
Jasper Fforde includes Humpty Dumpty in two of his novels. One, The Well of Lost Plots, the third novel in his Thursday Next series, features Humpty as the ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike. The other, The Big Over Easy sets Humpty as the victim of a murder under investigation by Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his partner Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.
Robert Rankin includes Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy tale character murderer investigated by Bill Winkie, Private Eye and sidekick Eddie Bear the Teddy Bear, in his novel "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse".
Eggorny is a Colombian cartoon, which is about Humpty Dumpty. It takes place in a mediæval landscape. After his great fall, no one was able to put Humpty together again until some 1500 years later. A teenager named Rufus put him together again, and renamed him Eggorny. Eggorny now lives in the modern-day town of Someville.
Humpty Dumpty is also a character in the Vertigo Comics series Jack of Fables, in which he remembers the Battle at Colchester, and actually fires as a cannon once before cracking up. Then later gets pieced together to utilize a treasure map tattooed on his rear.
In Shugo Chara! there is a pair of a lock (Humpty Lock) and a matching key (Dumpty Key). The anime also revolves around the search of the Embryo, an egg that makes wishes come true.
One episode of the American TV-series House is called Humpty Dumpty. It deals with a handyman who falls off a roof and has his hand amputated.
In the 1932 Marx brothers movie Horse Feathers football scene, Chico calls out signals' which off one of them is 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Professor Waggstaff (Groucho's character) gets the ball!'.
In an episode of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Dr. Robotnik was lampooned by artist Sketch Lampoon in the style of Humpty Dumpty in an animated talking comic book "Crack Ups"with the line, "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. But the people of Mobius just stood around and giggled while the rotten eggs just laid there and wiggled" and everyone was laughing at Robotnik with him finally saying "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"
In the 1998 spy film Enemy of the State, NSA character Thomas Reynolds requests "two techs with full electronic capability, two Humpty Dumpties. Get Fielder to organise it." In this sense, Reynolds attempts unsuccessfully to apply plausible deniability so that an investigation by "all the kings men" will not identify NSA management complicity. This ironically contrasts with the Watergate scandal.

References in popular music and books
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward wrote a famous book All the President's Men about Watergate as all the President's staff couldn't put things back together again once the scandal had leaked out. This was made into a film All the President's Men in 1976 starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel All the King's Men, is the story of Willie Stark's rise to the position of Governor and his great fall, based on the career of the corrupt Louisiana Senator Huey Long. It won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film All the King's Men which won the 1949 Academy Award for best picture.
There are many variations on the theme of something breaking for good in contemporary pop music:
In Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses" (1972):
All the King's Horses and all the King's menCouldn't put our two hearts together again . . .
In The Alan Parsons Project's song "The turn of a friendly card":
There's a sign in the desert that lies to the westWhere you can't tell the night from the sunriseAnd not all's the king's horse and all the king's menHave prevented the fall of the unwise
In The Dubliners's song "Humpty Dumpty":
"Have you heard o' one Humpty Dumpty?How he fell with a roll and a rumbleCrawled up like lord Oliver CrumbleAs the boot of the magazine wallThe magazine wall, hump helmet and all..."
The whole song is a reedition of Finnegan's Wake, read by Ronnie Drew.
In ABBA's song "On and On and On", extra video verse:
Standing up is scary if you think you're gonna fallLike a Humpty Dumpty, 'fraid of falling off the wall
In Dolly Parton's 1980 song "Starting Over Again", a song about a divorce:
And all the king's horsesAnd all the king's menCouldn't put mommy and daddy back together again
Genesis, Squonk:
All the king's horses and all the king's menCould never put a smile on that face
Aimee Mann, Humpty Dumpty:
All the king's horses and all the king's menCouldn't put baby together again
Billy Joel, The great wall of china:
All the king's men and all the king's horsesCan't put you together the way you used to be
Two Gallants, Get Proud:
And Humpty Dumpty is climbing higher up the wall,and how he got there I just won't recall.
Further into the song...
And Humpty Dumpty told me not to tell you why,as if I even had reason to try!
In Pooh Skies, an episode from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger narrates:
Meanwhile down on the groundOh cuddly aroundHumfry Dumfry sat on his wallThen he gazed up on highThe kitten came falling right down from the sky
Travis, The Humpty Dumpty Love Song:
All of the king's horses and all of the king's menCouldn't pull my heart back together again.
Ben Folds, Lovesick Diagnostician:
All the king's horsesAnd all the king's menCouldn't get back my girlfriend.
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (book)
All the king's horses and all the king's men...
Further into page...
We couldn't put Bella together again.
Counting Crows, Einstein on the Beach
The world begins to disappearThe worst things come from inside hereAnd all the kings men reappearFor an eggman, on and off the wallWho'll never be together again.
Tori Amos, Humpty Dumpty:
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wallHumpty Dumpty had a great, great fallAll the king's horses and all the king's menCouldn't put Humpty together again Humpty Dumpty and Betty LouiseStole a sony and some camembert cheeseShe said "Humpty baby, take meOooh, yeah, take me to the river'Cause I like the way it runs, yeah,Take me to the riverYou know I like the way it runs, yeah" He said, "Ah, ohh, everything's going my way"He said, "Maybe it's my la-lucky day"And he said, "Anything you want I can give"She said, "I wanna take your pictureMm, just for me"He said, "Anything"She said, "Up there, babyGet on the wall, babe" Humpty Dumpty sat on the wallAnd looked at her as he was falling andAll the king's horses and all the king's menCouldn't put Humpty together again Hey, Betty LouiseHey, Betty LouiseShe said, "I like custard in the summer, honey"Oh yeah, what it takes to be queenHey, what it takes to be queenWhat it takes to be...oh.