We think of nursery rhymes as essentially for children, but many of them contain coded political messages which. A way of passing on news or information during dangerous times. Some have simply lost their original conotations. For example, Humpty Dumpty was not a giant egg but actually a huge gun mounted on a church by the Royalists during the English Civil War to defend the town of Colchester. It was eventually toppled when the church tower was hit bu opposing Parliamentarians and the gun fell to earth, shattering on the ground beneath and never to be put back together again.