<P> The game has traditionally been seen as a nonsense verse, particularly as the couple go up a hill to find water, which is often thought to be found at the bottom of hills . Vinegar and brown paper were a home cure used as a method to draw out bruises on the body . </P> <P> Jack is the most common name used in English - language nursery rhymes and represented an archetypal Everyman hero by the 18th century, while Jill or Gill had come to mean a young girl or a sweetheart by the end of the Middle Ages . </P> <P> However, the woodcut that accompanied the first recorded version of the rhyme showed two boys (not a boy and a girl) and used the spelling Gill not Jill . This may be related to the fact that a Gill is an Imperial unit of fluid measure, defined in the Imperial system as a quarter - pint . In the same system of measure, a "jack" is defined as a half - gill . Regarding pronunciation, Gill is pronounced with a soft - g as "jill", unlike the hard - g used, for example, in the gill of a fish . So "Jack and Gill" ("Gill" pronounced soft - g) would be familiar to British people as two terms that both refer to small volumes of Imperial fluid measure: a eighth - pint and quarter - pint respectively . </P> <P> The true origin of the rhyme is unknown, but there are several theories . Complicated metaphors are often said to exist within the lyrics, as is common with nursery rhyme exegesis . Most explanations post-date the first publication of the rhyme and have no corroborating evidence . These include the suggestion by S. Baring - Gould in the 19th century that the events were a version of the story told in the 13th - century Prose Edda Gylfaginning written by Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson . Baring - Gould stated that Hjúki and Bil, brother and sister respectively in Norse mythology, were taken up from the earth by the moon (personified as the god Máni) as they were fetching water from the well called Byrgir, bearing on their shoulders the cask called Saegr and the pole called Simul . Around 1835, John Bellenden Ker suggested that Jack and Jill were two priests; this was enlarged by Katherine Elwes in 1930 to indicate that Jack represented Cardinal Wolsey (c. 1471--1530) and Jill was Bishop Tarbes, who negotiated the marriage of Mary Tudor to the French king in 1514 . </P>

What is the meaning behind jack and jill nursery rhyme