Jack And Jill (nursery Rhyme)
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"Jack and Jill" (sometimes "Jack and Gill", particularly in earlier versions) is a traditional English
nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From t ...
. The
Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...
classifies the commonest tune and its variations as number 10266, although it has been set to several others. The original rhyme dates back to the 18th century and different numbers of verses were later added, each with variations in the wording. Throughout the 19th century new versions of the story were written featuring different incidents. A number of theories continue to be advanced to explain the rhyme’s historical origin.


Text

The earliest version of the rhyme was in a reprint of
John Newbery John Newbery (9 July 1713 – 22 December 1767), considered "The Father of Children's Literature", was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. He also supported ...
's ''
Mother Goose's Melody The figure of Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. As a character, she appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. This, howeve ...
'', thought to have been first published in London around 1765. The rhyming of "water" with "after" was taken by
Iona Iona (; gd, Ì Chaluim Chille (IPA: iːˈxaɫ̪ɯimˈçiʎə, sometimes simply ''Ì''; sco, Iona) is a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the Ross of Mull on the western coast of Scotland. It is mainly known for Iona Abbey, though there ...
and
Peter Opie Iona Margaret Balfour Opie, (13 October 1923 – 23 October 2017) and Peter Mason Opie (25 November 1918 – 5 February 1982) were an English married team of folklorists who applied modern techniques to understanding children's literature and ...
to suggest that the first verse might date from the 17th century. Jill was originally spelled Gill in the earliest version of the rhyme and the accompanying
woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
showed two boys at the foot of the hill. Later the spelling was changed to Jill and more verses were added to carry the story further, of which the commonest are: As presented over the following century, the rhyming scheme of the six-line stanzas is ''AABCCB'' and they are
trochaic In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee () is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. But in Latin and Ancient Greek poetic metre, a trochee is a heavy syllable followed by a light one (al ...
in rhythm. Alternatively, when given the form of internally rhymed quatrains, this would be an example of the
ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
form commonly used for nursery rhymes. The phrase "Jack and Jill" existed earlier in England to indicate a boy and girl as a generic pair. It is so used, for example, in the proverb "Every Jack (shall/must) have his Jill", to which there are references in two plays by
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
dating from the 1590s. The
compress compress is a Unix shell compression program based on the LZW compression algorithm. Compared to more modern compression utilities such as gzip and bzip2, compress performs faster and with less memory usage, at the cost of a significantly lo ...
of vinegar and brown paper to which Jack resorted after his fall was a common home cure used to heal bruises.


New versions

Though approximately the words above are what have survived of the nursery rhyme to the present, their sense is preserved at the start of a 15-stanza
chapbook A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookle ...
, ''Jack & Jill and Old Dame Gill'', published in 1806. The work dates from the period when children’s literature was beginning to shift from instruction to fun in the wake of the success of ''
Old Mother Hubbard "Old Mother Hubbard" is an English-language nursery rhyme, first given an extended printing in 1805, although the exact origin of the rhyme is disputed. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19334. After a notable nursery success, it was eventu ...
'' and kindred works. This change of emphasis was signalled by the book's coloured illustrations and introductory epigraph: "Read it who will, They’ll laugh their fill". In this version the trio of Jack, Jill, and their mother Dame Gill experience further mishaps involving the dog Ball, an attack from a goat, falls from a see-saw, a swing and a pig, followed by a parental whipping for getting dirty. Many pirated editions of the work followed from both London and provincial presses, accompanied by black and white as well as coloured woodcuts. Sometimes there were several different editions from the same press, such as, for example, the Banbury editions of John Golby Rusher (1784–1877) between 1835–1845. The wording also varied in these, and there were multiplications of the creatures involved in the adventures of the three protagonists – a donkey, a reindeer, a bull, a goose and a camel. As the decades advanced there were changes in form as well as wording. An 1840s edition from
Otley Otley is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish at a bridging point on the River Wharfe, in the City of Leeds metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. Historic counties of England, Historically a part of the West Ridi ...
, titled ''The adventures of Jack & Jill and old Dame Jill'', was written in longer and more circumstantial quatrains of between ten and twelve syllables, rhymed AABB. Among other changes in the poem, Jack's injuries are treated, not with vinegar and brown paper, but "spread all over with sugar and rum". There were also radical changes in the telling of the story in America. Among the ''Juvenile Songs'' rewritten and set to music by Fanny E. Lacy (Boston 1852) was a six-stanza version of Jack and Jill. Having related their climb and fall from the hill, the rest of the poem is devoted to a warning against social climbing: "By this we see that folks should be/ Contented with their station,/ And never try to look so high/ Above their situation." There is a similar tendency to moral instruction in the three "chapters" of ''Jack and Jill, for old and young'' by Lawrence Augustus Gobright (1816–1879), published in Philadelphia in 1873. There the pair have grown up to be a devoted and industrious married couple; the fall is circumstantially explained and the cure afterwards drawn out over many, many quatrains. In the introduction to his work, Gobright makes the claim that the two-stanza version of the original nursery rhyme was, in earlier editions, followed by two more: No such verses are found in English editions, although they do appear in a later American edition of ''Mother Goose's nursery rhymes, tales and jingles'' (New York 1902). Yet another American variation on the story appeared in the ''
Saint Nicholas Magazine ''St. Nicholas Magazine'' was a popular monthly American children's magazine, founded by Scribner's in 1873. The first editor was Mary Mapes Dodge, who continued her association with the magazine until her death in 1905. Dodge published work by t ...
''. This was Margaret Johnson's "A New Jack and Jill", in which the brother and sister constantly return with an empty bucket because they have not noticed that there is a hole in it. Clifton Bingham (1859–1913) followed it with "The New Jack and Jill", which appeared in the children’s album ''Fun and Frolic'' (London and New York, 1900), illustrated by
Louis Wain Louis William Wain (5 August 1860 – 4 July 1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings, which consistently featured anthropomorphized large-eyed cats and kittens. Later in life, he was confined to mental institutions and struggl ...
. Here there is a return to the six-line stanza form: But the cow objects and chases them down again. The exclamatory style used in all three stanzas replicates that used only in the sixth stanza of the popular ''Jack and Jill and Old Dame Gill''.


Musical settings

A musical arrangement of the rhyme as a catch by
Charles Burney Charles Burney (7 April 1726 – 12 April 1814) was an English music historian, composer and musician. He was the father of the writers Frances Burney and Sarah Burney, of the explorer James Burney, and of Charles Burney, a classicist a ...
was published in 1777, at a date earlier than any still existing copy of ''Mother Goose's Melody''. But the melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded with the three stanza version by the composer and nursery lore collector
James William Elliott James William Elliott (J.W. Elliott) (1833 – 1915) was an English collector of nursery rhymes. Together with George Dalziel and Edward Dalziel The Brothers Dalziel (pronounced ) was a prolific wood-engraving business in Victorian London, found ...
in his ''National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs'' (1870), which was published in America as ''Mother Goose Set to Music'' the following year. And in 1877 the single-stanza version illustrated by
Walter Crane Walter Crane (15 August 184514 March 1915) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Ka ...
appeared in ''The Baby's Opera'' (London 1877), which described itself as "a book of old rhymes in new dresses, the music by the earliest masters". The Victorian composer
Alfred James Caldicott Alfred James Caldicott (26 November 1842 – 24 October 1897) was an English musician and composer of operas, cantatas, children's songs, humorous songs and glees. Early life and education He was born in Worcester, the eldest son of William Cald ...
, who distinguished himself by setting several nursery rhymes as ingenious
part song A part song, part-song or partsong is a form of choral music that consists of a song to a secular or non-liturgical sacred text, written or arranged for several vocal parts. Part songs are commonly sung by an SATB choir, but sometimes for an all ...
s, adapted "Jack and Jill" as one in 1878. These works were described by the ''
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'' as a "humorous admixture of childish words and very complicated music…with full use of contrast and the opportunities afforded by individual words". Among American adaptations of his work for female voices, there were settings by E. M. Bowman (New York, 1883) and Charles R. Ford (Boston, 1885). In Canada, Spencer Percival was responsible for a part-song of his own for four voices, first performed in 1882.
Sigmund Spaeth Sigmund Gottfried Spaeth (April 10, 1885 – November 12, 1965) was an American musicologist who traced the sources and origins of popular songs to their folk and classical roots. Presenting his findings through books, lectures, liner notes, newsp ...
was eventually to have fun with the rhyme by adapting it to a number of bygone musical styles as ''The musical adventures of Jack & Jill in Words & Music: A Book of Burlesques'', (Simon and Schuster, 1926). These included a Handel aria, Italian operatic and Wagnerian versions. Later on the English composer Geoffrey Hartley (1906–1992) set the original as a chamber piece for horn and two bassoons, or for wind trio (1975), and later reset it as a bassoon trio.


Interpretations

There are several theories concerning the origin of the rhyme. Most such explanations postdate the first publication of the rhyme and have no corroborating evidence. S. Baring-Gould suggested that the rhyme is related to a story in the 13th-century Icelandic ''
Gylfaginning ''Gylfaginning'' (Old Norse: 'The Beguiling of Gylfi' or 'The Deluding of Gylfi'; c. 20,000 words; 13th century Old Norse pronunciation ) is the first part of the 13th century ''Prose Edda'' after the Prologue. The ''Gylfaginning'' deals with t ...
'' in which the brother and sister Hjuki and Bil were stolen by the Moon while drawing water from a well, to be seen there to this day. Other suggestions rooted in history include a reference to the executions of
Richard Empson Sir Richard Empson (c. 1450 – 17 August 1510), minister of Henry VII, was a son of Peter Empson. Educated as a lawyer, he soon attained considerable success in his profession, and in 1491 was a Knight of the shire for Northamptonshire in Par ...
and
Edmund Dudley Edmund Dudley (c. 1462Gunn 2010 or 1471/147217 August 1510) was an English administrator and a financial agent of King Henry VII. He served as a leading member of the Council Learned in the Law, Speaker of the House of Commons and Presi ...
in 1510, or to a marriage negotiation conducted by
Thomas Wolsey Thomas Wolsey ( – 29 November 1530) was an English statesman and Catholic bishop. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figur ...
in 1514. Alternatively it has been taken to satirise the attempt by King
Charles I of England Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until Execution of Charles I, his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of ...
to raise extra revenue by ordering that the volume of a Jack (1/8 pint) be reduced, while the tax remained the same. In consequence of this, the Gill (a quarter pint in liquid measure) "came tumbling after". There is also a belief in Somerset that the rhyme records events in the village of
Kilmersdon Kilmersdon is a village and civil parish on the north eastern slopes of the Mendip Hills in Somerset between the towns of Radstock and Frome. It is located on the B3139 between Wells and Trowbridge in Wiltshire. The settlement is recorded in Wi ...
when a local girl became pregnant; the putative father is said to have died from a rockfall and the woman afterwards died in childbirth. The local surname of Gilson is therefore taken to derive from Gill's son. A more prosaic origin of the rhyme is suggested by historian Edward A. Martin, who notes that pails of water may readily have been collected from
dew pond A dew pond is an artificial pond usually sited on the top of a hill, intended for watering livestock. Dew ponds are used in areas where a natural supply of surface water may not be readily available. The name dew pond (sometimes cloud pond or mist ...
s, which were located on the tops of hills.


See also

*
List of nursery rhymes The term "nursery rhyme" emerged in the third decade of the nineteenth century although this type of children's literature previously existed with different names such as ''Tommy Thumb Songs'' and ''Mother Goose Songs''. The first known book contai ...


Notes


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Jack And Jill (Nursery Rhyme) Literary duos Jack tales English nursery rhymes Songs about fictional male characters Songs about fictional female characters