Talk:This Is the House That Jack Built

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Edit: 24/11/2006 - The version that was previously here had "judge" in place of "priest" and "rooster" in place of "cock", neither of which are in the original form of the rhyme. I have added a note at the bottom of the rhyme about these subsititions.

The Origin and History quotes "The rhyme is derived from a Hebrew hymn in Sepher Haggadah". This looks to me to be a reference to the Aramaic hymn Chad Gadya sung at the Passover Seder and recorded in the Haggadah of Pesach. The source (Reference 1, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales: A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 6]) claims this is the origin of the tale, but variants are found around the world, and it might be safer to say that it's the earliest example of this type of cumulative tale that we have.--Annielogue (talk) 07:16, 24 March 2008 (UTC)