1810 in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland. (Note: Original spelling variations left intact.) Humpty Dumpty sate on a wall, Humpti Dumpti had a great fall; Threescore men and threescore more, Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before. In 1842, James Orchard Halliwell published a collected version as: Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck. With all his sinews around his neck; Forty Doctors and forty wrights Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights! The modern-day version of this nursery rhyme, as known throughout the UK since at least the mid-twentieth century, is as follows: 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. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the 17th century, the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person. The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, whereas an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French, "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian, and "Runtzelken-Puntzelken" or "Humpelken-Pumpelken" in different parts of Germany—although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English. Meaning The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg, possibly because it may have been originally posed as a riddle. There are also various theories of an original "Humpty Dumpty". One, advanced by Katherine Elwes Thomas in 1930 and adopted by Robert Ripley, posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England, depicted as humpbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare's play, and who was defeated, despite his armies, at Bosworth Field in 1485. In 1785, Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue noted that a "Humpty Dumpty" was "a short clumsy person of either sex, also ale boiled with brandy"; no mention was made of the rhyme. Punch in 1842 suggested jocularly that the rhyme was a metaphor for the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey; just as Wolsey was not buried in his intended tomb, so Humpty Dumpty was not buried in his shell.