Atheljack and Ethejill went up the hill

‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water’

This begs the important question, to wit, which idiot built a well at the top of the hill? The water table is reasonably consistent meaning the best place to dig a well in any given geographic area is always at the bottom of a hill, as you don’t need to dig down as far. Digging a well at the top of the hill would require you to did down the full height of the hill and then sink down to the water table.

Arguably of course there is one reason to dig a well at the top of a hill, that being if the hill houses some form of fortification, say a small castle or fortified monastery. Then sinking a well at the top of the hill makes perfect sense. A supply of clean drinking water in a siege situation being important after all, not to mention just the daily convenience of a water supply.

However no mention is made in the nursery rhyme of this being the case. ‘Jack and Jill do not go up the hill and ask permission of a guard to enter the fortress in order to fetch a pail of water’ They would certainly need to enter the fortress because a well outside the walls would defeat the objective of having a well at the top of the hill in the first place. As such this scenario seems unlikely.

Now admittedly, were Jack and Jill to go up the hill to the fortress and ask for permission to enter, and that permission be refused by some over zealous guard who then shoved Jack down the hill. Thus explaining Jacks clumsiness as he ‘fell down’ the hill in the manner in which men of Irish decent often ‘fell down the steps’ of Bow street Police station on there way to the cells in the 1970’s, cells located on the ground floor of a single story building.

Were Jill to offer entirely deserved protestations to the guard after they shoved Jack down the hill, this would explain why she too went ‘tumbling’ after. While it is clearly abhorrent to the right thinking that such an action be undertaken by a guardsman, they had just shoved Jack, so the shoving of Jill is hardly something they would shy away from one suspects.

Could this nursey rhyme in fact be a hidden warning about the perfidy of the lackies of authority in a feudal regimen? Well if so it could have made it a lot clearer, at least mention the castle, it is just lazy writing otherwise.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water

then knocked upon the castle gate, and ask the guard to facilitate

The guard said no, because he was a cog in the feudal power structure and liked to exert his power

He shoved jack down, and broke his crown and then sent Jill tumbling after.

I will admit not of this scans very well.

In essence though this seems unlikely all round. If the guards on the castle gate were unfriendly to the locals this would suggest an occupying power, such as the early Normans. The castle likely a wooden construction of a standard mote and baily design, and that Jack and Jill were of local Saxon descent. But this is just not mentioned in the nursery rhyme either. Nor indeed does a Jack and Jill appear in the doomsday book. Jack and Jill were not common Anglo Saxon names. Unless the names were originally Atheljack and Ethejill

Atheljack and Ethejill went up the hill to the castle to fetch a pail of water

This also doesn’t scan, but it does bring up another question, why were two of them going up the hill to fetch a single pail (or bucket) of water. Realistically could they not carry two buckets each. So if two of them are going why are they not fetching four pails?

Maybe the family only had one bucket? Well sure but why send both of them in that case? And are we not assuming they are related at this point? How do we know? At no point does the rhyme say they are. Let us allow for the moment that the castle is perhaps long ruined and abandoned. Which would explain why it is Jack and Jill not Atheljack and Ethejill. Why are these two going up to the old ruins with a single bucket between them?

Is it really to ‘fetch a pail of water’ or is there something more going on here. Let us consider for a moment that Jill might be naive enough to agree to accompany Jack to the ruins at the top of the hill to get water. We can perhaps assume these are country folk, and perhaps not overly educated, Jack has convinced Jill to go looking for water at the top of a hill amidst an old ruined castle after all. This does however suggest that the most likely reason Jack fell down the hill is that Jill resisted his amour, and she came tumbling after because she lost her footing in the melee between them.

In any regard, for Jill the lesson here is do not go looking for wells at the top of hills, no matter how much Jack tries to convince you that you should. I mean its an old well in an abandoned castle, its unlikely to be clean water fit for drinking in any regard. As for Jack, consent is an absolute you utter swine, I have zero sympathy. So I am not going to send for the doctor, even though it obvious you probably have concussion.

I’ll just patch you up with vinegar and brown paper.