MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Megalithic Jack & Cut Throat Jake....... (NEW CONCEPTS)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

My wife says Jack is a King who loses his crown. That means Jack, with Queen, rises to temporary King.

I corrected her that "crown" is merely the top of his head. She believes it a double entandre. If she is right then might the rhyme be a kind of riddle? (the second verse, a recent addition).

What sort of hill has what sort of water atop, that a King (with his Queen?) might climb to fetch but, by so doing, lose his crown?
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
Good point, Ishmael, which has not hitherto been remarked upon by the world.


Not quite.
The rhyme has traditionally been seen as a nonsense verse, particularly as the couple go up a hill to find water, which is often thought to be found at the bottom of hills.
-- Wikipedia
Indeed it is difficult to have an original thought.

Also...
by the end of the Middle Ages Jill or Gill had come to mean a young girl or a sweetheart. 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.
Lots of theories there given with regard to meaning. My favorite being that it is a reference to Louis XVI and wife, Marie Antoinette (not difficult to see the gallows as the "hill" they climb together---nor difficult to imagine the "water" that would fill a pail). Against this is the fact that the earliest known printing pre-dates the French Revolution.

Someone needs to prove that printing a forgery.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Indeed it is difficult to have an original thought.

One does well to assume any new thought you have is completely original and any thought somebody else has that is new to you is also completely original. That way one's morale and excitement take you on to areas where you truly leave everyone else far behind. Irrespective of whether the original idea was in fact original.

As has been observed before in this forum, the normal tendency for people, on hearing a new idea, is to assume either it is novel only because it is fruitcake or (if this is clearly impossible due to the obvious merit of the idea) to believe 'one has always known it'.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The human body contains 10 pints of blood. After decapitation, about 90% of this blood spills out through the neck. 90% of 10 pints is 9 pints. That is almost exactly 1 gallon.

Does one gallon equal a pail?

Interesting now to consider the similarity between the words "gallon" and "gallows".
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
Oh, all right I'll do it meself:

Besides the iron tools, the Romans used fire to fracture the rock for removal. Pliny mentions breaking up flint by means of fire and vinegar [XXXIII 71], and Diodorus talks of "burning the hardest of the gold-bearing matrix with a great fire and making it friable"


So vinegar and the combustible ignition (brown paper ... whatever that was) was used in mining but

Before crushing the stone by hand [3.12-13.1; SB, p. 184]. Many ancient authors, including Livy [XXI.XXXVII.2] and Vitruvius [VIII.3.19] mention fire-setting and vinegar. The vinegar would have produced additional fracturing from the rapid fall in temperature.

in other words it was also used to refine the ore. Naturally, the modern scholars have got it all wrong:

Modern geologists question the value of the vinegar over any other cold liquid [Craddock, 33-35; Shepherd, p. 23-24], but given the frequent mention made of it, vinegar was probably used. Fire-setting continued to be done through Agricola's time [Craddock, p. 34], until explosives were developed. At Reed mine, black powder was available and fire-setting was not used.

Clearly, acetic acid (is it?) has some purpose over and above being a cold liquid.


This might be right, but brown paper and vinegar were a "cure" for bruising....

http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/vinegar_and_brown_paper.html
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Jack and Jill may be a children' rhyme but is clearly about sex. Hill refers to climax, water is fairly obvious.

A jill is the term for a female ferret, which in country lore dies if it doesn't have sex. Jack is a catch-all for a lad, also some male animals, generally horny.

Vinegar was used in abortions. Dame Dob is a cunning-woman or local midwife.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I don't buy it.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hatty wrote:
Jack is a catch-all for a lad.


Maybe...but Megalithic Jack appears to have been a wizard, a hero. He moved huge stones and designed the landscape.

On line Etymology wrote:


Nipper...."small boy," 1859, originally (1530s) a pickpocket who "pinched" other people's property; see nip (v.)


A nipper is also a lad, but he is more than that.
Send private message
Tilo Rebar


In: Sussex
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:

But most of all for tin mining.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
...


May be the notion isn't as daft as it sounds.

A very old fiend of Cornish descent told me that according to his great grand-dad the locals in Gwennap, the largest copper mining area, called miners Baljacks.

I can't find anything to corroborate this on the web, but when Cornish miners joined the USA gold rush, they were known as Cousin Jack

Then there's the symbol of the three hares, cleverly sharing just three large ears...



Jack Rabbits perhaps?

Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Tilo's 'Cornish Jack' is quite a turn up... elsewhere on AEL, Mick was talking about Kernow as a corner and Kent as the opposite one. Reminds me of another nursery rhyme about Jack Horner, who sat in a corner. He seems to have been lucky. Would he be a Cornish Jack?

[There's a Jack o' Kent too, who crossed from one side of the country to the other with mince pies, though no-one seems to sing about him.]
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hatty wrote:
Tilo's 'Cornish Jack' is quite a turn up...


Find a hole in the ground, anywhere in the world, and you will probably find a Cornish Jack at the bottom of it. You will also find

Tommyknockers... warning you of a mine's imminent collapse.

Risky business mineworking, tree felling, climbing steeples.............

Lot of chance involved.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Another risky business is moving very large stones.............

Still we mustn't jump ahead.
Send private message
Tilo Rebar


In: Sussex
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Wile E. Coyote wrote:
...Risky business mineworking, tree felling, climbing steeples.............

Lot of chance involved.


Yes good Wile; so Jack = chancer. Risking his life daily to feed his kin - seeming not to care that each time he leaves home he may never come back. He has to learn the tricks of the trade to cheat death.

Not a career your mum would like you to follow - hence cautionary tales at an early age are the order of the day, you see.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Tilo Rebar wrote:

Not a career your mum would like you to follow - hence cautionary tales at an early age are the order of the day, you see.


You are alluding to Jack's mum. Still in Wile's view, even this one was well worth the gamble.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Here's another allegorical possibility.

Jack and Jill are on a Grael Quest.
To fill the Grael with some special water.
But Jack fulfills his destiny and becomes a Fallen King.
A wise woman does her best to treat his wound with vinegar,
in the same way that vinegar was used as a restorative on Jesus,
while he was on the cross.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next

Jump to:  
Page 2 of 3

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group