As with most of these old rhymes interpretations abound and provable sources are scarce, (hence my inclusion of '
allegedly' in my post). It does appear to be fairly commonly held that the poem pre-dated Carroll and he simply applied his unique imagination in interpreting it.
For me, this rendering is the most sensible/feasible of the many options out there.
There again, we'll never actually know.
Humpty Dumpty was a colloquial term used in 15th century England to describe someone who was fat or obese - giving rise to lots of theories pertaining to the identity of Humpty Dumpty. However, in this case the question should be not Who was Humpty Dumpty but What was Humpty Dumpty?
Humpty Dumpty was in fact an unusually large canon which was mounted on the protective wall of "St. Mary's Wall Church" in Colchester, England. It was intended to protect the Parliamentarian stronghold of Colchester which was in the temporarily in control of the Royalists during the period of English history, described as the English Civil War (1642 - 1649).
A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall underneath Humpty Dumpty causing the canon to fall to the ground. The Royalists 'all the King's men' attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall but even with the help of ' all the King's horses' failed in their task and Colchester fell to the Parliamentarians after a siege lasting eleven weeks.
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!
One source: