 Jack is the most common name used in English language nursery rhymes and by the 18th century represented an <unk> <unk> hero , while by the end of the Middle Ages Jill or Gill had come to mean a young girl or a <unk> . 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 . This earliest printed version comes from a reprint of John <unk> 's Mother Goose 's Melody , thought to have been first published in London around 1765 . The rhyming of " water " with " after " , was taken by Iona and Peter <unk> to suggest that the first verse may date from the first half of the 17th century . 
