This Is the House That Jack Built

"This Is the House That Jack Built" is a popular British nursery rhyme and cumulative tale. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20584. It is Aarne–Thompson type 2035.[1]

For other uses, see The House That Jack Built (disambiguation).

"This Is the House That Jack Built"
Randolph Caldecott illustration from The complete collection of pictures & songs, published 1887 (digitally restored)
Nursery rhyme
Published1755

Lyrics

This is perhaps the most common set of modern lyrics:

This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the judge all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rooster that crowed in the morn
That woke the judge all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the farmer sowing his corn
That kept the rooster that crowed in the morn
That woke the judge all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the horse and the hound and the horn
That belonged to the farmer sowing his corn
That kept the rooster that crowed in the morn
That woke the judge all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

Some versions use "cheese" instead of "malt", "priest" instead of "judge", "cock" instead of "rooster", the older past tense form "crew" instead of "crowed", "shook" instead of "tossed", or "chased" in place of "killed". Also in some versions the horse, the hound, and the horn are left out and the rhyme ends with the farmer.

Narrative technique
This Is the House That Jack Built illustrated by Randolph Caldecott

It is a cumulative tale that does not tell the story of Jack's house, or even of Jack who built the house, but instead shows how the house is indirectly linked to other things and people, and through this method tells the story of "The man all tattered and torn", and the "Maiden all forlorn", as well as other smaller events, showing how these are interlinked.

Origins

It has been argued that the rhyme is derived from an Aramaic (Jewish) hymn Chad Gadya (lit., "One Young Goat") in Sepher Haggadah, first printed in 1590; but although this is an early cumulative tale that may have inspired the form, the lyrics bear little relationship.[2] It was suggested by James Orchard Halliwell that the reference to the "priest all shaven and shorn" indicates that the English version is probably very old, presumably as far back as the mid-sixteenth century.[3][4] There is a possible reference to the song in The Boston New Letter of 12 April 1739 and the line: "This is the man all forlorn, &c". However, it did not appear in print until it was included in Nurse Truelove's New-Year's-Gift, or the Book of Books for Children, printed in London in 1755.[5] It was printed in numerous collections in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[2] Randolph Caldecott produced an illustrated version in 1878.

Cherrington Manor, a timber-framed house in North East Shropshire, England, is reputed to be the actual house that Jack built. There is a former malt house in the grounds.

Syntactic structure

Each sentence in the story is an example of an increasingly deeply nested relative clause. The last version, "This is the horse...", would be quite difficult to untangle if the previous ones were not present. See the Noun Phrase for more details about postmodification of the noun phrase in this manner.

Illustration by Walter Crane

The rhyme continues to be a popular choice for illustrated children's books, with recent examples by Simms Taback[6] and Quentin Blake[7] showing how illustrators can introduce a fresh angle and humour into a familiar tale. During California's shelter in place order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Freeman Ng created The House We Sheltered In, a picture book that could be freely downloaded and printed out on home printers. The popularity of the rhyme can be seen in its use in a variety of other cultural contexts, including:

In literature and journalism
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge used it as the basis of a self-parody published in 1797 under the name Nehemiah Higginbotham. This was one of three sonnets, the other two parodying Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. Beginning "And this reft house is that the which he built / Lamented Jack! And here his malt he piled / Cautious in vain!" it piled together phrases from Coleridge's serious work put to ludicrous use.
  • The poem "Château Jackson" by Irish poet Louis MacNeice, in The Burning Perch collection, is a reinterpretation based on the same cumulative process. It starts with "Where is the Jack that built the house".
  • The news stories in 2006 about the shady dealings of lobbyist Jack Abramoff led to editorials about "the house that Jack built".[8]
  • In the graphic novel From Hell by Alan Moore, Inspector Frederick Abberline refers to his house as "the house Jack built" noting the role of Jack the Ripper in financing his home.
  • Mystery author Ed McBain published one of his "Matthew Hope" novels with the name The House that Jack Built in 1988. Practically every character had a corresponding counterpart to one in the original poem – an unpleasant heavyset older woman with a faulty hearing aid represented "the cow with the crumpled horn," for example.
  • Mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens ("A Hand at Cards", Book the Third, Ch. VIII)
An unflattering 1819 caricature of the Prince Regent by George Cruikshank, illustrating "The Political House that Jack Built".

Elizabeth Bishop uses the same structure in her poem "Visits to St. Elizabeths",[9] about visiting Ezra Pound in the "huge government insane asylum in Washington". The poem begins "This is the house of Bedlam".

In politics
  • One of the "Political Miscellanies" associated with the Rolliad, an eighteenth-century British satire, was "This Is the House That George Built", referring to George Nugent Grenville, Marquess of Buckingham, who had briefly supported William Pitt the Younger into government before resigning from office. The parody is attributed to Joseph Richardson.[10]
  • Thomas Jefferson, prior to serving as president, first used it to criticize the broad construction approach of the Necessary and Proper Clause of the U.S. Constitution with respect to a bill to grant a federal charter to a mining company. The term was used to suggest that the expansion of federal powers under these arguments would give the federal government infinite powers. "Congress are authorized to defend the nation. Ships are necessary for defense; copper is necessary for ships; mines, necessary for copper; a company necessary to work the mines; and who can doubt this reasoning who has ever played at 'This is the House that Jack Built'? Under such a process of filiation of necessities the sweeping clause makes clean work."
  • A British Radical satire, published in 1819 in response to public outrage over the Peterloo Massacre, was "The Political House That Jack Built," written by William Hone and illustrated by George Cruikshank.[11]
  • In 1863, David Claypoole Johnston published a cartoon "The House that Jeff Built", a satirical denunciation of Jefferson Davis, slavery, and the Confederacy.[12]
  • During World War I, British Propaganda promoted the following version of the rhyme:
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the bomb that fell on the house that Jack built.
This is the Hun who dropped the bomb that fell on the house that Jack built.
This is the gun that killed the Hun who dropped the bomb that fell on the house that Jack built.

In television and film
  • The House That Jack Built (1939) Animation, Short
  • Jack and Old Mac (1956) Disney Animated, Short
  • A 1967 animated short The House That Jack Built was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.[13]
  • The climax of the first adventure of the British fantasy series Sapphire & Steel hinged on the recitation of the rhyme.[14]
  • In Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime the prostitute Kim tells the poem to a child. Both are being kept in a cage at Frau Gerdas Whorehouse in Halbestadt.
  • Lars von Trier's 2018 film The House That Jack Built is alluding to this poem in the title.
  • In The Avengers episode titled "The House That Jack Built" (series 4, episode 23), Mrs. Peel inherited an old house from an uncle Jack, who did not exist. The house is a former asylum and a ruse by a former employee to submit her to mind games which will drive her insane.
  • The rhyme is recited in the Doctor Who serial The Seeds of Doom by the Fourth Doctor and companion Sarah Jane Smith to mock the villains who were trying to force information out of them.
  • The 1996 TV series Profiler is about the investigation of a serial killer nicknamed "Jack of All Trades"; the title of the 13th episode is "The House that Jack Built".
  • The rhyme is referenced in Roots by the character Tom Lea, during a scene in which Kizzy Kinte, son of main character Kunta Kinte, is molested. Lea refers to Kizzy several times as "maiden, all forlorn."

In music

See also

References
  1. D. L. Ashliman, The House That Jack Built: an English nursery rhyme of folktale type 2035
  2. I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 229-32.
  3. James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales: A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 6. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  4. English Translation of Hebrew source. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  5. William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose (New York, 1962), p. 25.
  6. Taback, Simms (2004). This is the house that Jack built (null ed.). New York: Puffin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-240200-9.
  7. Blake, John Yeoman; illustrated by Quentin (1996). The do-it-yourself house that Jack built (null ed.). London: Puffin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-055323-9.
  8. Reynolds, Paul (4 January 2006). "The hum you hear is from lobbyists". BBC News. Retrieved 5 June 2006.
  9. Elizabeth Bishop "Poems, Prose , and Letters" (Library of America) p.853
  10. "Project Gutenberg".
  11. Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture 1790 - 1822, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, ISBN 0-19-811278-5
  12. Boston, David Claypool Johnston (1 July 1863). "English: "The House that Jeff Built". US Civil War editorial cartoon" – via Wikimedia Commons.
  13. Tunis, Ron (1967). "The House That Jack Built". National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
  14. "Sapphire and Steel - The TV Series". h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  15. "Fingers Inc - My House Acapella (Jack Had a Groove) [1988]". Youtube.com.
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