
“Don't you think you’d be safer down on the ground?” Alice went on. “That wall is so very narrow!”
“What tremendously easy riddles you ask!” Humpty Dumpty growled out. “Of course I don’t think so! Why, if I ever did fall off—which, there’s no chance of—but if I did—” Here he pursed up his lips, and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing. “If I did fall,” he went on, “the King has promised me—ah, you may turn pale, if you like! You didn’t think I was going to say that, did you? The King has promised me with his very own mouth to—to—”
“To send all his horses and his men,” Alice interrupted, rather unwisely.

Humpty Dumpty was not an egg at all; nor was he an English king as people frequently believe. Humpty Dumpty was the nickname for a huge wooden battering ram built for the army of King Charles I in the mid-1600s to roll down a slope, across the River Severn, and up against the walls of Gloucester. During England's Civil War Gloucester was held by Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads. While Charles' army was busy building the "Humpty Dumpty" the Roundheads were secretly widening the river. Thus Humpty Dumpty was wrecked in midstream, "had a great fall", and toppled into the water, drowning hundreds of soldiers--and there was nothing all the king's men could do about it.
--Phonological Awareness
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