5 Nursery Rhymes and their Dark Origins

2. Jack and Jill

The rhyme goes like this:

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

Going uphill to find water is not something you’d normally do but the rhyme has nothing to do with plain old water. The first interpretation of this rhyme came from the history of King Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. This means that King Louis was beheaded thus the sentence “lost his crown” and well Marie Antoinette’s came tumbling after.

Another origin theory is that the rhyme came from the attempt by King Charles I to reform taxes on liquid measures. To understand this, a Jack is around 1/2 a pint and a Jill or gill is around 1/4 pints. So he wanted to increase taxes due to greedy reasons.

The Parliament didn’t agree to his suggestion but they still made him profit by reducing the amount in a Jack with the tax remaining the same. So since the amount of a Jack is reduced, consequently a Jill would be reduced as well.