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Y'know, the weirdest thought occurred to me the other day. How do we know for sure that Humpty Dumpty was an egg? Nowhere in the classic rhyme is it stated that Humpty Dumpty is a giant, talking egg. We all have simply assumed such thanks to the illustration that accompanies the poem in books.

My guess is that the egg is a cover up. I'm sure way back when, that rhyme was created to keep children from playing on the walls near roads, because if they fell, they DIED. End of story. Not even the most powerful of men (the king) could fix them.

This should naturally lead you to wonder about what other falsities Mother Goose rhymes may contain...I'm sure the majority of adults already know about the origins of Ring Around the Rosie...but what about the rest?

And Grimm's Fairy Tales!!

I'm well aware that a lot of the original Grimm's Fairy Tales are much more morbid than what many of us grew up believing.

For instance, in Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf actually ate everyone at first and the Woodsman had to cut open his stomach to save everyone and then they refilled it with rocks and sewed it back up so the Wolf wouldn't notice.

And then in Hansel and Gretel, The witch actually cut off a few of Hansel's toes to see if he was getting any fatter or not. Oh, and I don't know how edited the story is now, but when I read it, Hansel was put in a cage and Gretel became the witch's slave...is that still the current version?

I bought this HUGE book that contains all the original Grimm's Fairy Tales so I could find out how accurate todays stories are. Problem is, I bought it months ago...maybe almost a year...I really need to get around to reading it.

I should also go back and look at other Mother Goose rhymes as well...