Jack and Jill (nursery rhyme) and brown paper were a home cure used as a method to draw out bruises on the body. 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. 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. The true origin of the rhyme is unknown, but there are several
Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes in an effort to stave off the firm's complete ruin. Potter was unwilling to become involved in the intense labour of preparing an entirely new book, and suggested the publisher raid the "Appley Dapply" dummy book prepared a decade and a half earlier. Seven rhymes with their accompanying illustrations were chosen and published as "Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes". The book sold well. Modern critics consider "Appley Dapply" an uneven compilation of illustrations spanning decades and styles across Potter's career and suggest that it fails as a unified work. The rhymes of Potter's composition are critically considered not particularly memorable, and