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.
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:—
[Pg 113] 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:—