Cracked

With time a little short this week I was rushing through various websites trying to find an aspect of Cracked that would do the job. I was thinking of eggs, Agatha Christie, old china sets etc. I came across ‘kintsugi’ which is an embracing of the flawed or imperfect as in cracked vases.

kintsugi bowl

Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear from the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken. It can also be understood as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting cracks and repairs as events in the life of an object, rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage.

Unfortunately, I haven’t got the time to go into this in a way to do it justice so I will have to leave it for another time, which has left me with Humpty Dumpty. 

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 tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings. The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.

The common text from 1882 is:

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.

Humpty Dumpty makes an appearance in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871). There Alice remarks that Humpty is ‘exactly like an egg’, which Humpty finds to be ‘very provoking’. Which is why I’m using Humpty as if he did have a great fall then he would crack. Alice clarifies that she said he looks like an egg, not that he is one. They then go on to discuss semantics and pragmatics when Humpty Dumpty says, ‘my name means the shape I am’.

Alice and Humpty Dumpty

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the seventeenth century, the term ‘humpty dumpty’ referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale. By 1785, the term became slang for a short, squat, clumsy person (or someone who had too much to drink and tumbled over).

There are also various theories of an original Humpty Dumpty. For instance, King Richard III depicted as hunchbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare's play, and who was defeated, despite his armies, at Bosworth Field in 1485.

Another is that Humpty Dumpty was a ‘tortoise’ siege engine, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary-held city of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War.

Colchester tourist board stated that a cannon was used from the church of St Mary-at-the-Walls by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648. It was termed Humpty Dumpty. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty but ‘All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again’.

In science Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics. The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of ‘disorder’. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as it would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.

Humpty Dumpty's Song by Lewis Carroll

In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight.

In Spring, when woods are getting green,

I’ll try and tell you what I mean.

In Summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you’ll understand the song.

In Autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.

I sent a message to the fish:
I told them “This is what I wish.”

The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.

The little fishes’ answer was
“We cannot do it, Sir, because-“

I sent to them again to say
“It will be better to obey.”

The fishes answered, with a grin,
“Why, what a temper you are in!”

I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.

I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.

My heart went hop, my heart went thump:
I filled the kettle at the pump.

Then someone came to me and said
“The little fishes are in bed.”

I said to him, I said it plain,
“Then you must wake them up again.”

I said it very loud and clear:
I went and shouted in his ear.

But he was very stiff and proud:
He said “You needn’t shout so loud!”

And he was very proud and stiff:
He said “I’d go and wake them, if-“

I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but-

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.