<P> In 1842, James Orchard Halliwell published a collected version as: </P> <P> Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck . With all his sinews around his neck; Forty Doctors and forty wrights Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights! </P> <P> According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century . The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth - century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person . The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, whereas 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, "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian, and "Runtzelken - Puntzelken" or "Humpelken - Pumpelken" in different parts of Germany--although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English . </P> <P> The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg, possibly because it may have been originally posed as a riddle . There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". One, advanced by Katherine Elwes Thomas in 1930 and adopted by Robert Ripley, posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England, depicted as humpbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare's play, and who was defeated, despite his armies, at Bosworth Field in 1485 . </P>

What is the real meaning behind humpty dumpty