Jack and Jill

DESCRIPTION: "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." "Up Jack got, and home did trot, As fast as he could caper, He went to bed to mend his head, With vinegar and brown paper."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1767 (Newbery, "Mother Goose's Melody") (source: Devlin & others)
KEYWORDS: injury
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 254, "Jack and Jill went up the hill" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #48, pp. 58-59, "(Jack and Gill)"; also a reproduction of a chapbook edition of c. 1820 facing p. 58
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 86, "Jack and Jill" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 68, "Jack and Jill" (1 text)
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, p. 40, "Jack and Jill" (1 text)
Heart-Songs, p. 277, "Jack and Gill" (1 text, 1 tune, with just the one verse from this song; the other seven I would guess to be a modern addition)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #281, "Jack and Jill went up the hill" (1 excerpt, which Abrahams cites as the only jump-rope version of this rhyme)
ADDITIONAL: Sabine Baring-Gould, _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, "New Edition," 1894 (references are to the 2005 Dover paperback reprint), pp. 112-113, "(Jack and Jill)" (1 short text)
Henry Randall Waite, _Carmina Collegensia: A Complete Collection of the Songs of the American Colleges_ first edition 1868, expanded edition, Oliver Ditson, 1876, pp. 30-31, "Jack and Gill" (a combination of "Jack and Jill," "Old Mother Hubbard," and "Mother, May I Go to Swim," with a "Never Get Drunk" chorus)
Tim Devlin, _Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes_, Susak Press, 2022, pp. 63-69, "Jack and Jill" (1 text plus many variants and alternate sources)
Roud #10266
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Jack and Jill (II)" (form)
NOTES [1275 words]: In line with her standard attempts to make mountains out of nursery rhymes, Katherine Elwes Thomas thought that this song was about Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (d. 1530) "and his coadjutor, Bishop Tarbes" (Thomas, p. 91). As usual, no one who has not been drinking some very unusual Kool-Aid will take Thomas seriously.
Baring-Gould referred it back to the Scandinavian Eddas, with Hjuki and Bil being children with a pole and bucket who were placed in the sky (Baring-Gould, pp. 112-113; it appears to be pp. 200-202 or so in the original printing). Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel reports a story that it's about the execution of Louix XVI and Marie Antoinette (which has the disadvantage of having taken place after Newberry published the piece!).
Devlin, p. 66, says that Elizabeth Knowles referred it to two tax collectors in the time of Henry VII, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. That Henry VII collected high taxes is certainly true, and that Empson and Dudley were deeply implicated is true: "Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, who had served Henry VII's money-gathering and law-enforcement so assiduously, and whose unreasonable and extort doings noble men grudged, mean men kicked, poor men lamented, preachers openly at Paul's Cross and other places exclaimed, rebuked and detested" were cast aside at the accession of Henry VIII (Scarisbrick, pp. 11-12).
"Just why Empson and Dudley were singled out from other similar agents of Henry VII's government we shall probably never know with any assurance. They were both arrested, presumably by Henry VIII's or the council's orders, and confined to the Tower. Indicted at the Guildhall on charges of constructive treason, Dudley on 16 July [1510] was found guilty and sentenced, and was returned to the Tower to await execution, which was to be delayed until 17 August 1510, when Empson, tried and executed at Northampton, was also executed. The charge of treason was palpably fictitious, and great difficulty must have been experienced in finding justification for the execution, which may have been the reason for the long delay. The possibilities of an act of attainder were explored but faded in the parliament. That both were guilty of harsh acts, some of them corrupt, and that both were efficient and ruthless agents of Henry VII's policies and behests need not be doubted. Both therefore were unpopular. They were, indeed, singularly well suited for the role of scapegoats, on whom 'were to be focused all the popular discontent with the old regime'. The reputation of the old king had to be preserved... Their fall was 'deliberately contrived by the Crown'" (Chrimes, pp. 316-317). But they were never high-ranked -- both were mere knights, not barons; they did not climb high, though they certainly fell hard.
Devlin's preferred explanation for this (pp. 67-69) derives from Albert Mason Stevens, who suggested that the rhyme goes back to the reign of King John (1199-1216). In 1205, Hubert Walter, who had been Archbishop of Canterbury since 1189, died (Warren, p. 160). This was the height of the Investiture Controversy, with popes and monarchs fighting over who got to appoint bishops. The monks on the spot initially nominated their prior Reginald of Canterbury and sent him to the Pope (Warren, p. 161). But John wanted John de Gray, his secretary, to have the post. John had already procured the title Bishop of Norwich for de Gray in 1200 (Warren, p. 160). It appears that the Bishops of England also thought they should have had a say in who became archbishop. So everybody sent delegations to Pope Innocent III (Warren, pp. 161-162. The account above, I should add, is oversimplified -- e.g. it omits how John pressured the monks of Canterbury to withdraw their nomination of Reginald).
Pope Innocent canceled everything and called for a new election, and got a split decision: Some of the monks of Canterbury wanted Reginald, some John de Gray (Warren, p. 162). Innocent, "A man born to rule, uniting exceptional gifts of intellect and character with determination, flexibility, rare skill in handling men, and also humaneness" (Kelly, p. 186), cut the Gordian Knot and gave the post to Stephen Langton -- a man who was one of the greatest scholars of the age (he devised the modern system of chapters in the Bible) who was English by birth. But he was no friend of John's, and had been away from England for some time; John refused to recognize him (Warren, p. 163). Innocent responded by excommunicating John and placing England under interdict in 1209; John finally submitted in 1213 (Kelly, p. 187) and Langton became archbishop.
The evidence that "Jack and Jill" is about this is that Jack and Jill went to "fetch a pail of water," and John de Gray and supporters had tried to go to Rome to "fetch the pallium of Walter" -- that is, the pallium (archepiscopal token of authority) that had belonged to Hubert Walter. The ingenuity of this explanation is obvious.
The difficulty is equally obvious: King John didn't speak English. Innocent III didn't speak English. I don't know with certainty, but I doubt John de Gray spoke English. They certainly didn't speak Modern English, because it didn't exist then! "Pail" is an English word, but the Old English form was "pægel" (Onions, p. 641) and this would likely have been the form still used in John's time. "Fetch" doesn't appear to have been an early thirteenth century form, either, and the equivalent would have been two syllables (cf. Onions, p. 352). So we have to assume that someone made up a rhyme that didn't scan in Middle English, which somehow stayed alive for more than half a millennium, getting modernized along the way, without it being noticed. It strikes me as highly unlikely.
To sum up: If anyone has found an explanation involving historical people that is a serious possibility, I haven't seen it.
Lewis Spence, according to Devlin, p. 64, thinks that climbing the hill to get water implies a ritual of some sort -- a magic spring or the like; that seems a little more likely. Others have suggested the two had a tryst.
Another of Albert Jack's hypothesis was that the song involved alcohol (Devlin, pp. 66-67) -- a jack is of course a drinking cup and a gill a fluid measure. The idea was linked to a wine tax in the time of Charles I. There was a seventeenth century wine tax -- but it was in the reign of Charles II; parliament granted it in 1670, to expire in 1678 (Miller, p. 85). The earlier tax, cited by Devlin, did exist (it's usually called the Malt Tax), and was imposed in 1644... sort of. This was the period of Charles I's civil wars with Parliament, and by 1644, the conflict was military, with the autocrat Charles refusing to accept Parliament's long-recognized right to control taxation and the Long Parliament (which ran from 1640 to 1660) mostly trying to run the country and put down the king. While I can imagine someone writing a jingle about the Malt Tax, I can't imagine it not making some sort of reference to the two sides in the Civil War, since they had their separate taxes. So I think we can cross this one out.
Devlin mentions that an early printing came with a woodcut of two men, and so thinks that Gill was not a woman (Devlin, p. 65). I don't think this follows; as anyone who has studied the early English printing industry knows, most printers had a modest selection of woodcuts, and when they printed something, they usually used the least inappropriate one rather than commission a new one. And the name "Gill" is used for a woman at least as early as the Wakefield "Second Shepherd's Play" of the fifteenth century; Gill is the wife of the dishonest shepherd Mak. - RBW
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