This Is the House That Jack Built was printed in numerous collections in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Randolph Caldecott produced an illustrated version in 1878. Cherrington Manor, a handsome timber-framed house in North East Shropshire, England, is reputed to be the actual house that Jack built. There is a former malt house in the grounds. Each sentence in the story is an example of an increasingly deeply nested relative clause. The last version, "This is the horse...", would be quite difficult to untangle if the previous ones were not present. See the Noun Phrase for more details about postmodification of the noun phrase in
Jack and Jill (nursery rhyme) 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 rhyme is related to a narrative in the 13th-century "Prose Edda" section "Gylfaginning" composed by Icelander Snorri Sturluson. In "Gylfaginning", 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