"This Is the House That Jack Built" is a popular English nursery rhyme and cumulative tale. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20854. It is Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index type 2035.

Lyrics

This is perhaps the most common set of modern lyrics:

Variations

Some versions use "cheese" instead of "malt", "judge" instead of "priest", "rooster" instead of "cock", the archaic 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.

Translations

Narrative technique

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. 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. 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. It was printed in numerous collections in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Randolph Caldecott produced an illustrated version in 1878 which proved to be extremely popular. Many of the scenes in his pictures are of northern Shropshire where he spent his youth. Cherrington Manor, a timber-framed house in North East Shropshire, with a malt house in the grounds, is believed locally to have inspired Caldecott's depiction of the House that Jack built, although the Ralph Caldecott Society states that Brook House Farm in Hamner is more likely.

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.

References in popular culture

The rhyme continues to be a popular choice for illustrated children's books, with recent examples by Simms Taback and Quentin Blake 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

In politics

In television and film

In music