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 book is illustrated with framed pictures and evidence suggests the material was intended for a small booklet of its own. Some illustrations are executed in a fluid manner while others are in the style of Potter's early dry-brush technique. The simple nursery rhymes Potter composed capture the rhythm of such verse, but none of the rhymes are especially memorable. Taylor describes the book as "the last squeezings of an almost dry sponge." Potter confidently asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy. She was the first to