Jack and Jill (song)

"Jack and Jill"
Nursery rhyme
Published	c. 1834

"Jack and Jill" (sometimes "Jack and Gill", particularly in earlier versions) is a traditional English nursery rhyme. The Roud Folk Song Index classifies this tune and its variations as number 10266. The rhyme dates back at least to the 18th century and exists with different numbers of verses each with a number of variations. Several theories have been advanced to explain its origins and to suggest meanings for the lyrics.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after

Only a few more verses have been added to the rhyme, including a version with a total of 15 stanzas in a chapbook of the 19th century. The dab verse, probably added as part of these extensions has become a standard part of the nursery rhyme. Early versions took the form:

Up Jack got, and home did trot
As fast as he could caper;
To old Dame Dob, who patched his nob
With vinegar and brown paper.

By the early 20th century this had been modified in some collections, such as L. E. Walter's, Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes (London, 1919) to:

Up Jack got and home did trot,
As fast as he could caper;
And went to bed and bound his head
With vinegar and brown paper.

A third verse, sometimes added to the rhyme, was first recorded in a 19th-century chapbook and took the form:

Then Jill came in, and she did grin,
To see Jack's paper plaster;
Her mother whipt her, across her knee,
For laughing at Jack's disaster.

Twentieth-century versions of this verse include:

When Jill came in how she did grin
To see Jack's paper plaster;
Mother vexed did whip her next
For causing Jack's disaster.

The rhyme is made up of quatrains, with a rhyming scheme of abcb (with occasional internal rhymes), using falling rhymes (where the rhyming sound is on a relatively unstressed syllable: de-emphasising the rhyme) and a trochaic rhythm (with the stress falling on the first of a pair of syllables), known as a ballad form, which is common in nursery rhymes. The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded by the composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs (1870). The Roud Folk Song Index, which catalogues folk songs and their variations by number, classifies the song as 10266.

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