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Hold on to your hats because I’m about to turn your world upside down.

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“Yup, it turns out that Humpty Dumpty from
one of your favourite nursery rhymes wasn’t
actually an egg and the more we think about
it, the more obvious it seems.

Let’s give you a rhyme refresher:

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.

Still a banger even now, but does it actually
mention that HD was an egg?

The idea that Humpty was an egg first
appeared in Lewis Carroll’s 1872 novel,
Through the Looking-Glass. Chapter six of the book is entitled “Humpty Dumpty’ where
he is described in all his eggy glory.
“However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and
a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was Humpty Dumpty himself. It can’t be anybody else!’ she said to
herself. I’m as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.”

So it’s safe to say that this is where the idea
that Humpty was an egg came from, but the
rhyme apparently came before Lewis Carroll’s novel.
Fortunately, after a Twitter exchange, the truth has been uncovered again, and Humpty’s true identity is even weirder than we first thought.
It all started when author Holly Bourne tweeted:

Who decided Humpty Dumpty was an
egg? Its not in the lyrics, and deciding
he’s a giant egg is quite a random leap
for someone to make, and everyone
else being like, “yeah, a giant egg on a
wall. Of course.

She added in a follow-up tweet:

Also, imagine having NO ARMY because they’re
busy fixing a broken egg.
“The king sent literally EVERYONE out to
save the giant egg who isn’t actually an egg,
leaving the realm wide open for attack.

Jane Etheridge, who is the Vice Chair of
Federation of Children’s Book Groups, came
to the rescue and offered a theory as to what
HD actually is.

And apparently he was… a cannon?!

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She wrote: “It’s believed to be Roundhead
propaganda about a Royalist cannon. First
appearance as an egg was in Through the Looking Glass
It adds up with the ideas of several war
historians, who agree that he was in fact a
cannon.

Yep.

A large cannon which is
believed to have been used in English Civil
War (1642-1649), specifically, in the
1648 Siege of Colchester.”

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Humpty Dumpty was a canon? I had to research this further.

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“The original story pre-dates Carroll’s take on the character. According to a number of military historians, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon used by the Royalists during the English Civil War.

The conflict raged from 1642 to 1649, and in June of 1648, Humpty Dumpty was stationed on the walls of Colchester. It was one of several cannons erected to try and keep Parliament’s army from taking the city. The next month, however, the Parliamentary forces heavily damaged the walls beneath Humpty Dumpty with their own artillery. You can guess where this is going: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and broke into pieces.”

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And if that’s not bad enough? Here’s another theory…

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“This all fits together very neatly, but there’s no decisive evidence that the tale is the origin of the nursery rhyme. In 15th-Century England, “Humpty Dumpty” was a common snarky nickname for somebody who was a little on the large side. Muddling the matter further, it’s also been suggested that Charles I himself was Humpty Dumpty, having been toppled from a great height by his Parliament. Those loyal to him certainly couldn’t put him back in his lofty position after all.”

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So our beloved egg was actually a canon… or a fat king.

In light of this discovery there’s only one thing I can be certain of now.

My entire childhood was a lie.

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