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If you're not familiar with the nursery rhyme: after Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall, you get the two lines

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again

But what do the horses have to do with anything? Talking about the king's healers/medics would make sense, but why mention the horses whatsoever?

Normally, I'd dismiss it as some throwaway nursery line that doesn't mean anything, but in Zack Snyder's cut of the Justice League, Part 5 is named "All the King's horses", leading me to believe that there is some actual meaning there.

If I had to guess: the point is the irrelevance. The King can afford a zillion things, such as horses, but those can't save his people. Is that about right?

chausies
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    I believe the meaning of the rhyme is unknown. If it refers to a historical event, perhaps the king's "horses and men" are his cavalry and infantry, rather than medics. – user14111 Jun 17 '23 at 07:28
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    Wouldn't it simply represent the largest, strongest (military) force imaginable? (And hence the impossibility of reconstituting the character, if not even they could do it.) – gidds Jun 17 '23 at 10:40
  • Warning: NSFW - Ricker Gervais on precisely this subject; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwAookPFWZQ – Valorum Jun 17 '23 at 17:15
  • See https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/1489/how-do-we-know-humpty-dumpty-was-an-egg?rq=1 – reinierpost Jun 19 '23 at 10:14
  • Funny enough, there was a gag about just this in The Rookie episode i saw last night, where a doctor was like "and why horses? I never understood why it was relevant that horses couldn't fix him. Why not just take him to a doctor instead of horses?" – Blindy Jun 19 '23 at 17:50

4 Answers4

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The phrase "The King's Horse" is still in use today and is well understood.

It refers to the mounted royal bodyguard, the Guards Regiments. There are a number of Guards Regiments, hence the plural, Kings Horses.

Anyone watching the recent Coronation on TV will have heard the expression in the commentary.

Chenmunka
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    Somewhat obvious but pointing it out anyway: the "men" in the song are therefore infantry, footsoldiers, rendering "all the king's horses and all the king's men" to mean "all of the king's army". – Flater Jun 19 '23 at 03:26
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The modern version of the rhyme is not original

The earliest known version was published in Samuel Arnold's Juvenile Amusements in 1797 with the lyrics:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Four-score Men and Four-score more,

Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

The contemporary version was widespread in the UK in the mid-Twentieth century and retrofitted the then-popular phrase "all the King's horses", which is a reference to the full power of the Crown (or the nation). It appears that to make it fit, the second line about the King's men" was created, and it was the popularity of Humpty Dumpty that popularised the phrase "all the King's men" meaning exactly what "all the King's horses" meant.

Both phrases (All the King's horses, All the King's men) now have a life of their own in pop-culture.

Dale M
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One interpretation of the nursery rhyme is that Humpty Dumpty was a cannon, rather than an egg (which the first reference for the egg imagery was apparently in Lewis Carol's Through the Looking Glass).

The cannon was positioned on the battlements of Colchester under the control of the Royalists (supporting the King) during the English civil war in 1648 and when the battlements under the cannon collapsed and the cannon fell from the battlements then "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again" as it could not be raised back to the battlements.

MT0
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  • My appologies, I had this review open whilst I also had my own question open and seemed to have thought this was answer to my separate question! Comment retracted... – Skooba Jun 19 '23 at 15:31
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    Wikipedia claims that Humpty Dumpty was an Egg before Carroll: “William Carey Richards (1818–1892) quoted the poem in 1843, commenting, "when we were five years old ... the following parallel lines... were propounded as a riddle ... Humpty-dumpty, reader, is the Dutch or something else for an egg". Through the Looking Glass was published in 1871. “Humpty Dumpty” meant a short squat person centuries before Carroll, and I think it's possible that the rhyme was originally a riddle, implicitly asking “what is being described”, and the well-known answer was “an egg”. – Mark Dominus Jun 19 '23 at 18:15
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    Apparently, not a cannon! This article explains how the cannon story got its start as a spoof in a 1956 episode of Oxford Magazine. – Spencer Jun 19 '23 at 22:21
  • EXcept ... the use of "all the King's horses ..." only dates from the mid-20th century - pop culture usually doesn't reference events from 400 years ago. – Dale M Jun 20 '23 at 02:13
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I don't know what you mean, it's very clear to me. In the days before trucks and cranes people used horses to haul heavy and awkward loads. Horses were used during construction projects too to lift and put things together. In the rhyme, Humpy Dumpty is broken so badly that he became a construction project himself. EDIT: Thank you very much for your feedback. I hope this image clears it up for everyone. enter image description here

vlsh
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