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
Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes other rhymes about animals, which [Caldecott] did not do." In the autumn of 1920, Potter proposed a book of nursery rhymes to her publisher Fruing Warne from those she had collected over the years. Titled "Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes", Warne doubted such a collection would sell. In 1921, however, Anne Carroll Moore, the Superintendent of Children's Work for the New York Public Library, visited Potter at her home, and expressed great interest in the book. Energized by her visitor's enthusiasm, Potter recommenced work on the rhymes. Fruing Warne realized he was not likely to receive anything else from Potter for