H is for Humpty and Horses

        (My theme for this year’s A-Z Challenge is traditional English language nursery rhymes, and their block printed illustrations.)

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.

        But really, what did you expect when you asked horses to mend something so delicate?

        This is one of a class of nursery rhymes that began as riddles, which is why I don’t like any of the illustrations that make Humpty Dumpty look more-or-less like a real person.  Everybody knows he’s not supposed to be a human!  If I were to do an illustration of this one, I think I would make a bunch of horses and courtiers sitting around together scratching their heads and frowning in concentration as they try to assemble a big eggshell jigsaw puzzle.  Most illustrations depict Humpty before the fall, although there are a few gruesome ones of the carnage.  Even as a riddle one has to wonder whether there is anything that all the king’s horses could be expected to put together without even opposable thumbs, but as a story it becomes even sillier.  Humpty’s foolishness in sitting on the wall, the king’s foolishness in sending his horses to repair the damage…  It would be a tragic tale if it weren’t so funny.

        Of course Humpty Dumpty’s most famous appearance is in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871), where he is a ridiculously smug and irritating fellow whom Alice tries hard not to offend, even though she can’t figure out whether the cloth around his middle is a belt or a cravat.  He also claims “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”  This is an attitude encountered all too often among insufficiently precise speakers and writers, but once a word has had its meaning scrambled frequently enough, not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put it back together.

        My final illustration is even more meta: a picture of a boy looking at a picture of Humpty Dumpty.  Humpty Dumpty is possibly the single most widely recognized nursery rhyme character.  At any rate, he’s got to be right up there at the top of the list, so it’s easy to see that this boy is reading a book of nursery rhymes.

        How do you like your eggs?  Over easy or over hard, hard-boiled, or scrambled, or devilled?  (Or made of tofu or chocolate?)

        A final note for impressionable children: Don’t balance fragile things in precarious places.

[Pictures: Wood block print by Joan Hassall, c 1955 (Image from Opie, The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book);

Illustration by John Tenniel from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1871 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Color woodcut by David Frampton from My Son John by Jim Aylesworth, 1994.]