RIDDLE-RHYMES
Among other rhymes which date some way back in history are those which
may fitly be called riddle-rhymes. Some of these have close parallels in
the nursery lore of other countries. The most interesting example of
this class is the rhyme on Humpty-Dumpty which deals with the egg. The
egg from the earliest times formed an enigma in itself, and was looked
upon as representing the origin of life. Aristophanes knew of the great
bird that laid the world-egg. According to _Kalevala_, the Finnish epic,
the world-egg fell and broke. Its upper part became the vault of heaven,
its lower part the earth. The yolk formed the sun, the white the moon,
and the fragments of the shell became the stars in heaven. Reminiscences
of this idea of a world-egg linger in the _Senchus Mor_ of Ireland and
in the _Volospa_ of Norse saga. In Tibet the holy Budh is represented
holding in his hand a broken egg-shell, on the edge of which a
diminutive human being is sometimes represented sitting. These
world-wide conceptions account for the existence of numerous riddles
that are current about the egg.
The rhyme on Humpty-Dumpty among us is current in three variations:--
Humpty-Dumpty sate on a wall,
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore more
Cannot place Humpty-Dumpty as he was before. (1810, p. 36.)
Humpty-Dumpty sate on a wall,
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's soldiers and all the king's men
Cannot set Humpty-Dumpty up again. (1842, p. 113.)
Humpty-Dumpty lay in a beck
With all his sinews around his neck;
Forty doctors and forty wights
Couldn't put Humpty-Dumpty to rights. (1846, p. 209.)
Many parallels of this rhyme were collected from different parts of
Europe by Mannhardt. In these Humpty-Dumpty appears under various names.
They include Hümpelken-Pümpelken, Rüntzelken-Püntzelken,
Wirgele-Wargele, Gigele-Gagele, and Etje-Papetje in different parts of
Germany, and Lille-Trille and Lille Bulle in Scandinavia. The closest
parallel of our rhyme hails from Saxony, and stands as follows:--
Hümpelken-Pümpelken sat up de Bank,
Hümpelken-Pümpelken fël von de Bank;
Do is kën Docter in Engelland
De Hümpelken-Pümpelken kurere kann. (M., p. 416.)[45]
"H.-P. sat on a bench, H.-P. fell from the bench; there is no doctor
in Engelland who can restore H.-P."
[45] Cf. also Mannhardt, _Das Rätsel vom Ei_, in _Zeitschrift für
deutsche Mythologie_, IV, 1859, p. 394 ff.
In Switzerland the rhyme of Humpty-Dumpty is told of Annebadadeli. The
usual answer is an egg, but sometimes it is an icicle or a
feeding-bottle.
In Scandinavia they say:--
Lille Bulle trilla' ner a skulle;
Ingen man i detta lan'
Lille Bulle laga kan. (1849, p. 9.)
"Little B. fell from the shelf, no man in the whole land can restore
little B."
This has a further parallel in France in a rhyme which reproduces the
German expression Engelland regardless of its intrinsic meaning:--
Boule, boule su l'keyere,
Boule, boule par terre.
Y n'a nuz homme en Angleterre
Pou l'erfaire.[46]
"B. b. on the bench, B. b. on the ground. There is no man in England
who can restore him."
[46] Rolland, E., _Devinettes on énigmes populaires_, 1877, p. 199,
from Mons.
The forty doctors of our rhyme who figure also as twice threescore men,
reappear in the German rhyme as "no doctor in _Engelland_," as "no man
in all the land" in the Scandinavian rhyme, and as "no man in England"
literally translated, of the French version.
In one version of our rhyme those who are powerless to restore what is
broken are described as "all the king's soldiers and all the king's
men." This expression is also used in the riddle-rhymes on Smoke and on
the Well, which are found in our own and in foreign nursery collections.
As round as an apple, as deep as a cup,
And all the king's horses cannot pull it up.
(The Well, 1846, p. 75.)
As high as a castle, as weak as a wastle,
And all the king's soldiers cannot pull it down.
(Smoke, 1849, p. 144.)
In Swabia they say:--
Es ist etwas in meinem Haus,
Es ziehen es hundert tausend Gäule nicht naus. (Me., p. 79.)
"There is something in my house, not a hundred thousand horses can
pull it out."
The answer is "Smoke." In France they say:--
Qu'est-ce-qui est rond comme un dé,
Et que des chevaux ne peuvent porter.[47]
"What is as round as a thimble, and horses cannot pull it?"
[47] Rolland, E., _Devinettes on énigmes populaires_, 1877, p. 98,
from Paris.
The answer is "A well." Possibly the "king" of these rhymes stands for
the sun as the representative of power, whose horses and men are alike
powerless.
The egg, which in these rhymes is designated by fanciful names, in other
riddle-rhymes current abroad is described as a cask containing two kinds
of beer. A riddle was put by the god Wodan in the character of a
wayfarer to King Heidrek, and stood as follows:--
"Blond--haired brides, bondswomen both, carried ale to the barn; the
casks were not turned with hands nor forged by hammers; she that made it
strutted about outside the isle." The answer is "Eider-ducks' eggs" (C.
P., I, 89).
The egg is also likened to a cask containing beer in a short
riddle-rhyme which is current from Lapland to Hungary. In the Faroe
Islands it takes this form: "Bolli fell from the ledge, all its hoops
fell off. There is no man in the East, there is no man in the West, who
can restore it" (M., p. 417). In Prussia they say:--
Kommt ein Tonn aus Engelland,
Ohne Boden, ohne Band;
Ist zweierleai Bier drin. (Sim., p. 287.)
"A cask comes from Engelland, without bottom, without band; it
contains two kinds of beer."
Among ourselves there is no riddle-rhyme, as far as I know, which
describes the egg as a cask containing beer. But in the seventeenth
century the word Humpty-Dumpty was used to designate a drink which
consisted of ale boiled in brandy,[48] and this conception obviously
hangs together with the two kinds of beer of the foreign riddle-rhymes
on the egg.
[48] Murray's Dictionary: _Humpty-Dumpty_.
Other riddle-rhymes current among ourselves or abroad describe the egg
as a house or a castle. The following one describes it as an enigma in
itself:--
As I was going o'er London Bridge
I saw something under a hedge;
'Twas neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor bone,
And yet in three weeks it runned alone. (1846, p. 213.)
Girls in America play a game called _Humpty-Dumpty_. They sit on the
ground with their skirts tightly gathered around them so as to enclose
the feet. The leader begins some rhyme, all join in, and at a certain
word previously agreed upon, all throw themselves backwards, keeping
their skirts tightly grasped. The object is to recover the former
position without letting go the skirt (N., p. 132).
Possibly the game is older than the riddle-rhymes, for these rhymes
describe _Humpty-Dumpty_ as sitting on a wall, or a bank, or a ledge, or
as lying in a beck, which for an actual egg are impossible situations.
They are intelligible on the assumption that the sport is older than
the rhyme, and that the rhyme describes human beings who are personating
eggs.
The name Humpty-Dumpty itself is one of the large class of rhyming
compounds which are formed by the varied reduplication of the same word.
Perhaps they originally conveyed a definite meaning. The word
Humpty-Dumpty is allied to _hump_ and to _dump_, words which express
roundness and shortness. Another name of the kind is Hoddy-Doddy, which
occurs in the following riddle-rhyme:--
Hoddy-Doddy with a round, black body;
Three legs and a wooden hat, what is that? (1849, p. 142.)
The answer is "An iron pot."[49] The word Hoddy-Doddy in the sixteenth
century was directly used to express "a short and dumpy person" (1553).
It was also applied to a "hen-pecked man" (1598).[50] The meaning of
shortness and roundness is expressed also by the name of the foreign
equivalents of Humpty-Dumpty. The German Hümpelken-Pümpelken, and
probably Lille Bulle of Scandinavia convey the same idea. On the other
hand, the names Wirgele-Wargele and Gigele-Gagele suggest instability.
The Danish Lille Trille is allied to _lille trölle_, little troll, that
is, a member of the earlier and stumpy race of men who, by a later age,
were accounted dwarves. These were credited in folk-lore with
sex-relations of a primitive kind, an allusion to which seems to linger
in the word Hoddy-Doddy as applied to a hen-pecked man.
[49] A workman in Berkshire in 1905 repeated this riddle to H. P.
[50] Murray's Dictionary: _Hoddy-Doddy_.
Among other rhyming compounds is the word _Hitty-Pitty_. It occurs in a
riddle-rhyme which Halliwell traced back to the seventeenth century (MS.
Harl. 1962):--
Hitty Pitty within the wall,
Hitty Pitty without the wall;
If you touch Hitty Pitty,
Hitty Pitty will bite you. (A nettle, 1849, p. 149.)
This verse is sometimes used in playing _Hide and Seek_ as a warning to
the player who approaches the place that is "hot" (1894, I, 211). A
variation of the word is _Highty-Tighty_, which is preserved in the
following rhyme:--
Highty, tighty, paradighty, clothed in green,
The king could not read it, no more could the queen;
They sent for a wise man out of the East,
Who said it had horns, but was not a beast. (1842, p. 118.)
The answer is "A holly tree."
Another rhyming compound is preserved in the riddle-rhyme on the
sunbeam:--
Hick-a-more, Hack-a-more
Hung on a kitchen door;
Nothing so long, and nothing so strong,
As Hick-a-more, Hack-a-more
Hung on the kitchen door. (1846, p. 207.)
The following riddle-rhyme preserves the word lilly-low, which is the
north-country term for the flame of a candle:--
Lilly-low, lilly-low, set up on end,
See little baby go out at town end. (A candle, 1849, p. 146.)
Another riddle on the candle, which also stands in MS. Harl. 1962, and
has found its way into nursery collections, is:--
Little Nancy Etticoat with a white petticoat,
And a red nose;
The longer she stands, the shorter she grows. (1842, p. 114.)
This recalls a riddle current in Devonshire, where the sky is called
widdicote:--
Widdicote, widdicote, over cote hang;
Nothing so broad, and nothing so lang
As Widdicote, etc. (1892, p. 333.)
All these riddle-rhymes are based on primitive conceptions, and all have
parallels in the nursery lore of other countries. The rhyme on
Hoddy-Doddy in Norwegian is simply descriptive; in France it is told in
the form of words exchanged between _Noiret_, "Blacky," the pot, and
_Rouget_, "Ruddy," the fire. In Italy the Pot, the Smoke, and the Fire
are described as three sisters. Again, the riddle-rhyme on the candle is
told in Swabia and in France. But in no case are the foreign parallels
as close as in the riddle-rhyme of Humpty-Dumpty, and in no case do they
preserve the same interesting allusions.