 = Jack and Jill ( nursery rhyme ) = 
 
 " 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 . 
 
 = = Lyrics and structure = = 
 
 The first and most commonly repeated verse is : 
 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 . 
 Many verses have been added to the rhyme , including a version with a total of 15 stanzas in a chapbook of the 19th century . The second 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 . 
 
 = = Meaning and origins = = 
 
 The rhyme has traditionally been seen as a nonsense verse , particularly as the couple go up a hill to find water , which is often thought to be found at the bottom of hills . Vinegar and brown paper were a home cure used as a method to draw out bruises on the body . The phrase " Jack and Jill " , indicating a boy and a girl , was in use in England as early as the 16th century . A comedy was performed at the Elizabethan court in 1567 @-@ 8 with the title Jack and Jill and the phrase was used twice by Shakespeare : in A Midsummer Night 's Dream , which contains the line : " Jack shall have Jill ; Nought shall go ill " ( III : ii : 460 @-@ 2 ) and in Love 's Labour 's Lost , which has the lines : " Our wooing doth not end like an old play ; Jack hath not Jill " ( V : ii : 874 – 5 ) , suggesting that it was a phrase that indicated a romantically attached couple , as in the proverb " A good Jack makes a good Jill " . 
 Jack is the most common name used in English language nursery rhymes and by the 18th century represented an archetypal Everyman hero , while by the end of the Middle Ages Jill or Gill had come to mean a young girl or a sweetheart . However , the woodcut that accompanied the first recorded version of the rhyme showed two boys ( not a boy and a girl ) , and used the spelling Gill not Jill . This earliest printed version comes from a reprint of John Newbery 's Mother Goose 's Melody , thought to have been first published in London around 1765 . The rhyming of " water " with " after " , was taken by Iona and Peter Opie to suggest that the first verse may date from the first half of the 17th century . 
 
 = = Interpretation = = 
 
 While the true origins of the rhyme are unknown there are several theories . As is common with nursery rhyme exegesis , complicated metaphors are often said to exist within the lyrics of Jack and Jill . Most explanations post @-@ date the first publication of the rhyme and have no corroborating evidence . These include the suggestion by S. Baring @-@ Gould in the 19th century that the events were a version of the story told in the 13th @-@ century Prose Edda Gylfaginning written by Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson , who stated that in Norse mythology , Hjúki and Bil , brother and sister ( respectively ) , were taken up from the earth by the moon ( personified as the god Máni ) as they were fetching water from the well called Byrgir , bearing on their shoulders the cask called Saegr and the pole called Simul . Around 1835 John Bellenden Ker suggested that Jack and Jill were two priests , and this was enlarged by Katherine Elwes in 1930 to indicate that Jack represented Cardinal Wolsey ( c.1471 – 1530 ) ; and Jill was Bishop Tarbes , who negotiated the marriage of Mary Tudor to the French king in 1514 . 
 It has also been suggested that the rhyme records the attempt by King Charles I to reform the taxes on liquid measures . He was blocked by Parliament , so subsequently ordered that the volume of a Jack ( 1 / 2 pint ) be reduced , but the tax remained the same . This meant that he still received more tax , despite Parliament 's veto . Hence " Jack fell down and broke his crown " ( many pint glasses in the UK still have a line marking the 1 / 2 pint level with a crown above it ) " and Jill came tumbling after " . The reference to " Jill " ( actually a " gill " , or 1 / 4 pint ) is said to reflect that the gill dropped in volume as a consequence . 
 The suggestion has also been made that Jack and Jill represent Louis XVI of France , who was deposed and beheaded in 1793 ( lost his crown ) , and his Queen , Marie Antoinette ( who came tumbling after ) , a theory made difficult by the fact that the earliest printing of the rhyme pre @-@ dates those events . There is also a local belief that the rhyme records events in the village of Kilmersdon in Somerset in 1697 . When a local spinster became pregnant , the putative father is said to have died from a rock fall and the woman died in childbirth soon after . 
 
 