In 1669, the diarist was present at London's Artillery Ground to watch the demonstration of newly-cast gun, which was named Punchinello due to its “bigness and shortness” (Pepys, 20 April 1669). It is true that short-barrelled guns, such as a mortar pieces, were given amusing and fitting names, and a good example is that recorded by Samuel Pepys. ” (Fosbrooke, p.71) Even so, this is as an unlikely a candidate for being 'the real' Humpty Dumpty as either of the two theories aforementioned. This was said to be “their biggest mortar piece”, as a Parliamentarian account described it, which “brake at the first discharging of it they say the biggest in England.
With no reference to the name Humpty Dumpty in the accounts of either Colchester's siege or that of Gloucester, and the probability that Daube's theory was merely a tongue-in-cheek flight of fancy, is there a Civil War connection with the nursery rhyme at all? Interestingly enough, the siege of Gloucester also witnessed the destruction of a large, Royalist gun. There appears to have been no link made between the nursery rhyme and the Civil War until as recently as 1956, when Oxford professor, David Daub, made the suggestion that Humpty Dumpty was the name given to a siege engine employed by the Royalists during their siege of Gloucester in 1643. 1980, that another nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty, derives from the destruction of a cannon at the siege of Colchester in 1648.” (Baggs, et al. In 1994 the compilers of The Victoria County History of Essex were forced to conclude that “ There appears to be no evidence to support the suggestion, popularized c. In fact, the Colchester connection with Humpty Dumpty appears to have been made very recently, perhaps as little forty years ago. Nothing to do with the English Civil War at all, it would seem. Moreover, the rhyme's origins are believed to be French. The r hyme itself is not attested in English until c.1800 and the lines concerning 'All the King's horses' are even later, not documented until 1833 (Oxford English Dictionary). When, then, was the connection made between the nursery rhyme and the 1648 siege?
Notably absent is any mention of the name 'Humpty Dumpty'. Nevertheless, the divergence of Morant's version of events from that which is told today is telling. His information about the siege may well have been gleaned from the folk-memory of Colchester inhabitants, but the fact that he was not there at the time must cast some doubt on the veracity of his account. Morant was writing in the mid-eighteenth century.
0 kommentar(er)
