Jack and Jill (nursery rhyme) these stanzas were viewed as quatrains with internal rhymes, this would be an example of ballad form, a common form for nursery rhymes. The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded by the composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his "National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs" (1870). The Roud Folk Song Index, which catalogues folk songs and their variations by number, classifies the song as 10266. The phrase "Jack and Jill" was in use in England as early as the 16th century to indicate a boy and a girl. A comedy with the title "Jack
Nursery rhyme Little Star" which combines the melody of an 18th-century French tune "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" with a 19th-century English poem by Jane Taylor entitled "The Star" used as lyrics. Early folk song collectors also often collected (what are now known as) nursery rhymes, including in Scotland Sir Walter Scott and in Germany Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (1806–1808). The first, and possibly the most important academic collection to focus in this area was James Orchard Halliwell's "The Nursery Rhymes of England" (1842) and "Popular Rhymes and Tales" in 1849, in which he divided rhymes into