Memory Monday: Jack and Jill - Now and Then

JACK AND JILL—NOW AND THEN

Like most people “my age,” I grew up chanting the nursery rhyme. You know the one:

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.

The other day I was doing some research and looking at one of my old books, BABY WORLD—STORIES, RHYMES, AND PICTURES FOR LITTLE FOLKS, published in 1884, five years before my great-grandmother married. I wonder if she heard this from her mother.

JACK AND JILL

Long, long ago, a Mother said

Unto her children small.

"Now Jack and Jill, go up the hill—

And see that you don't fall,

Fetch me a pail of water back,

And hurry with a will,"

"Oh, no, mamma," said Lazy Jack,

"Oh, yes, mamma," said Jill,

The Mother frowned an angry frown;

They went as she directed—

Alas_, she saw them coming down,

Sooner than she Expected !

You know the story, children all ?—

If Jack had. scorned to grumble,

Perhaps he 'd not have had that fall,

And made his sister tumble.

As I read this again, I realized two things: 1) my great-grandmother probably wouldn’t have read this rhyme. She was born in Russia and came to America as a little girl, so I doubt that my great-great-grandmother could read English. 2) After seeing how the longer rhyme was shortened to the version I grew up with, I think I can see how some of the stuff I see today came about—“I laughed out loud” to LOL. In another fifty years, will our minds just send a buzz and the other person will understand what we mean?