Why do the children's book on the nursery rhyme depict Humpty Dumpty as egg shaped, when the rhyme makes no attempt on describing Humpty dumpty whatsoever ?
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@Phantome When I was a toddler my parents bought me a set of 7 inch childrens' records - all 'nursery rhymes.' Some were quite gruesome. The one called 'Oranges and Lemons' ended with these lines: [i]'Here comes the candle to light you to bed Here comes the chopper to chop off your head'[/i] What were they thinking? Well, there were bombs falling everywhere. Maybe the rhyme fit right in with the times 😳. But nowadays you'd end up in court for marketing that sort of stuff to kids.
@Really Whatever its origins, it has nothing to do with bombs. The second line (the last one of the whole poem) shows it is far too old for that. I don't know when beheading was abolished in England, but I think it was well before the middle of the 18C.
@ArishMellGoodness, my tongue in cheek reference to bombs was about the times & conditions in which my parents bought those records - sorry if you missed that. (We didn't call them discs, much less disks 😊)
The rhyme itself is "traditional" - i.e. old enough for its age to be uncertain. It's about the sounds of various Old London (England) church bells. The context of the last lines is controversial but may refer to the Tower of London where heads had been routinely chopped off.
