TikToker might just ruin your childhood by sharing the 'truth' about 'Humpty Dumpty'

One of the first songs that children learn and sing as they grow up are nursery rhymes, helping them understand words, music in the form of a story. The rhymes often talk about pleasant objects or places ‘twinkling stars’, ‘London Bridge’ and people, a couple like ‘Jack and Jill’, animals like sheep or lamb. However, some of them have a dark meaning behind the so-called ‘fun-filled' songs and one of the popular ones, Humpty Dumpty apparently was about the fall of King Richard III in the 15th century.

Tiktoker ‘ruins childhood’ by sharing the truth of Humpty Dumpty 

A content creator on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTuber named Mackenzie Barmen is gaining popularity for her ‘Childhood ruined: Nursery rhymes’ series, which talks about the ‘truth’ of some of the popular rhymes. 

In one of her episodes, she reviewed the lyrics of the nursery rhyme, which reportedly has been around for over two centuries. The lyrics read:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; 

All the King's horses

And all the King's men,

Couldn't put Humpty together again.  

Barmen shoots her videos in the form of a conversation with her alter ego, and in this one, she starts off by singing the rhyme. However, her alter ego baffles her by asking, ‘They were all  waiting for this’ and ‘do you know what you’re singing about.’

Barmen replies that there was not anyone who did not know about Humpty Dumpty, and then narrated the plot of th rhyme, that ‘he was an egg, and he fell off a wall and he cracked into so many pieces, they could put him together. So that was the end of him.'

The alter ago then asks, ‘Have you heard of King Richard III?” and then "You remember the nickname for his horse? Barmen recalled it was ‘called the Wall.’

The alter ego then asked ‘what happened when Richard III fell off the wall.”’ Barmen was in tears as she recalled, “He was bludgeoned so hard that they could not put him together.” 

The video ends on a funny note as she then asks, ‘So Richard III was an egg?’

This, however, is not the only theory about Humpty Dumpty. Among the other interpretations of Humpty Dumpty was from the siege of Colchester in 1648.

Colchester was protected by a city wall, and Royalist defenders placed a large cannon, colloquially called Humpty Dumpty, on it. As the firing of a Parliamentary cannon brought down the wall, Humpty Dumpty too tumbled to the ground. All attempts to put the cannon to another part of the wall failed due to its size and this was the reference to king’s horses and men failing to put ‘Humpty together again.’

Right from the ‘wool tax’ interpretation to the ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ or 'Jack and Jill' symbolising the fall of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution, Mackenzie Barmen has attained popularity for her revelations, thus ‘ruining childhoods.’