Talk:Jack and Jill (song)
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With regards to using "jill" to denote the female version of a male thing, the term "jilling off" should be added.
[edit] History
- According to [1] the two characters are Jack and Gill—a second boy—and that the rhyme refers to Wolsey and Tarbes. Any corroboration?
- According to [2], the first external source listed in the entry, the rhyme dates back to at least 1760, discrediting the 1795 date and possibly the whole story in the Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette origin.
Acording to Roger Evans in Don't tell I, tell 'ee (an affectectionate look at the somerset dialect.) the Rhyme is based on a historical coulple that lived in Kimersdon, Somerset. Jack who was killed be a stone falling from or falling off a stone on Bad Stone Hill and his lover Jill who died in childbirth. Not only does this hill have a well on top (unusual as gravity usualy drags water down to lowlying levels). But more convincingly liguisticaly Jill and Hill are rhymimg words as are Down and Crown but Water and After dont! unless said in the West Country dialect, so Jack an Jill went up the hill To vetch a payul of wadder Jack fell down an broke ees crown An' Jill came tumbling adder.
Should this be added ?
It might be worth noting that the village of Kimersdon, the self-proclaimed home of the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme has no obvious source of water at the top of the hill, and in fact sports a perfectly servicable stream at the bottom. What were they doing at the top of the hill?. The hill isn't really steep enough to fall down either.
Another possible interpretation is based on the fact that this popular song seems to be expressing public satisfaction at the downfall of some couple which had "gone up the hill," i. e., had risen dramatically in social standing, and has now suffered their comeuppance. One thinks, perhaps, of the downfall of King James I's favorite Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, and his wife Frances, who fell from grace as a result of the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower, in 1615. ---- Dana F. Sutton —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.122.34 (talk) 06:02, August 26, 2007 (UTC)
