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.
We all know this rhyme, don’t we? So why do we depict
poor Humpty as an egg when the word egg doesn’t appear in
the words? Is it because Humpty is something other than an
egg? The words as it was written in 1803 were slightly
different:
Humpty Dumpty sate on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore more,
Cannot place Humpty Dumpty as he was before.
There are many explanations as to what Humpty was, from
a 17th Century drink made with ale and brandy, to a 18th
Century term to describe a short, clumsy person!
Possibly though, the most likely one is that Humpty Dumpty
was an English Civil war gun used by the Royalists at the
siege of Colchester in 1648, where it was sat on the wall or
tower of the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall (marked with an
‘f’ in the bottom left hand corner of the map overleaf).
Map of Colchester 1648
The story goes that during the siege a Parliamentarian
cannon ball damaged the wall upon which Humpy sat which
causing it to fall from its position to the ground below, where
it was either damaged beyond repair, or as the earlier
version of the rhyme suggests, Cannot place Humpty Dumpty
as he was before, due to its weight.
In the version we are familiar with today, All the King’s
Horses and all the King’s men, refer to the Cavalry and
Infantry of King Charles I, who was eventually defeated in
the December of 1648 and was executed by having his head
chopped off on 30th January 1649.
We may never know for certain exactly what or who
Humpty Dumpty actually was, but when you walk around
the museum today and look at some of the old guns it’s not
hard to imagine Humpty sat on a Church tower in Essex
over 360 years ago.
There is a fine example of an English Civil war gun on
display at the top of the stairs in the History Gallery, called
a Falconet.
www.firepower.org.uk
Learn About Series Handout #6