Humpty Dumpty

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: 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. 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 & Norwegian; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale prior to the "little, clumsy person" meaning. There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". As some are mutually exclusive, the theories necessarily include