I learned it with the first two lines as given here, followed by "All the king's horses and all the king's men / Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again." In order to make it scan properly, the speaker must place a slight emphasis on the word "put" in the last line.more »
Credit where it's due--this is a part of Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" which appears in his book _Through The Looking Glass_; the vocabulary and the sophisticated wit as well as the length of the verse, mark it as the work of a professional author, not of Mother Goose (though Carroll was not shy about borrowing that good woman's verses to embellish them with his own nonsense.)more »
As a child, I learned it as "Patty-cake, patty-cake, Baker's man / Bake me a cake as fast as you can / Roll it and roll it and mark it with B / and put it in the oven for Baby and me." There was also a sequence of actions, starting with patting hands together, that a mother could teach her little baby so the child could participate even before he could talk.more »
In the third line, it should read: "...sew a fine seam". "Sew" means to work with needle and thread, as in dressmaking. "Sow" means to plant seed in the ground, as in farming, a much more physically demanding task. The two words are pronounced exactly alike, but the spelling and meaning differ.more »
