Where indeed? Well Pants, it's an allegory...

'Humpty Dumpty' was, allegedly, a cannon mounted on top of the St. Mary's at the Wall Church in Colchester during the English civil war in 1648. The church tower was hit and the cannon was destroyed and the king's army couldn't repair it. Other sources suggest it derived from the death of Richard the Third, who fell off his horse and was hacked to pieces by Henry Tudor's army.

The reason it took on the form of an egg is because the term 'humpty dumpty' was used as a term for a clumsy person, the original poem was written, in the early 19th century, as a riddle to which 'an egg' was the answer. Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass, which features Humpty Dumpty, ensured that Humpty remained an egg in the public's imagination from then on.

Posted By: tim berry, Jan 1, 22:50:48