“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after”

Prepared by Andrew Stone, Hydrogeologist (andrewstonewater(at)gmail.com)

What! – that first line is a great groundwater learning opportunity!

Have you ever realized that for many generations of young children the well-known Jack & Jill nursery rhyme, published in 1795, serves as their first introduction to groundwater! The rhyme provides four subliminal water resources messages:

1 Illustrations of the rhyme typically depicted a well with a rope and bucket. The message: there is water down the well, hidden in rocks and earth below ground level, (groundwater).

2. To get the water out of the well there has to be some way to raise the water up to the surface.

In this case, a rope connected to a handle that works by muscle power. [Many 18th and 19th century illustrations show Jack & Jill as young children. However, even if they could reach the handle, lifting the bucket up the well is probably more than small children can manage!]

3.Once out of the well and into the bucket, the real work begins because the (heavy) water has to be carried (without spilling) from the well to the home. [For many, but not all, communities worldwide, pumps have transformed the chore of getting groundwater out of the well.]

4.Two-person teamwork may be needed when carrying a heavy bucket to ensure that the precious water arrives safely. [Pipelines have revolutionized “fetching water” although UNICEF reports that 2.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to safely managed water. Children often have “fetching” responsibility.]

The first line of the rhyme has relevance from a water perspective. There are also interesting backstories about the rhyme’s origins and meaning. The names Jack & Jill were typically used in the 16th century as generic names for a man and a woman or boy and girl. Shakespeare uses the names in the plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Love’s Labor’s Lost.

The village Kilmersdon in western England claims to be the place where the rhyme originated. The village has a road sign claiming “ownership.” A local historian, Martin Horler, researched the folklore and gives a date of 1645, when according to legend, Jack and Jill (who are teenagers) climb a local hill called Badstone, and in a quarry at the top, a boulder falls and crushes Jack (broke his crown) and two days later the disaster is compounded when Jill dies in childbirth (came tumbling after). This disaster, (if true and the date accurate!) took place 150 years before the first known publication of the nursery rhyme, giving plenty of time for the words retelling the tragedy to be transformed. The water well origins of the story received supporting evidence in 1999 when an old well was discovered on the top of Badstone Hill in Kilmersdon. This gave the village “proof” that their claim to the origins of Jack & Jill was correct. Archaeologist Dr. Peter Addyman confirmed the 35 foot deep well’s 16th century origins and Kilmersdon doubled down on their claim to be the home of the Jack & Jill story.

A French claim to the rhyme’s origins is that the rhyme, (Jack et Jill la colline ont monté), originates from France’s Revolution. The words describe the demise of King Louis XVI who was guillotined in1793 (broke his crown) and his wife Marie Antoinette, who was beheaded the following year (came tumbling after).

Yet another suggestion of the rhyme’s meaning is that is satirizes England’s King Charles I, who in the 17th century tried to raise money by reducing (“tumbling down”) the volume of a Jack (1/8 pint), of beer or wine while keeping the same tax. The size reduction the gill (1/4 pint) would then come “tumbling after,” (Jack & Gill)

As is the case with many nursery rhymes, the origins of tragedy: “rocks crushing heads” “kings and queens beheaded” “raising taxes on drinks” may refer to real occurrences that are retold in a gentler form.

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More Information

• The true meaning of dozens of nursery rhymes is documented and speculated in many publications, for example:
  the book “Pop Goes the Weasel, The Secret Meaning of Nursery Rhymes” by Albert Jack, 2009, Penguin Books.
• For information about Kilmersdon’s claim to be the “home of Jack & Jill”, go to Wikipedia or any search engine.
• Visit UNICEF for information about global drinking water challenges – https://www.unicef.org/wash/water-scarcity

Water from Owens Valley for Los Angeles Water Supply Includes Groundwater! Tribes Want it Back!

Prepared by Andrew Stone, Hydrogeologist (andrewstonewater(at)gmail.com)

This Owens Lake picture has a groundwater backstory! | photo credit: Andrew Stone

Looks are deceiving! The placid reflections in this photograph of Owens Valley Lake disguise the realities of the negative economic, social and ecological results of “forced” water transfers from Mono Basin and Owens Valley. It is not generally recognized that groundwater is a significant component of the “stolen” water. Since the early 20th century, the Owens Valley and later, the Mono Lake hydrologic system have been systematically commandeered, and their streams, lakes and wetland ecosystems east of the Sierras have been continually deprived of adequate water.

The Owens River Valley is on the northeastern foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Geologic faults and volcanic activity formed the Mono Lake basin over the last 5 million years. [LINK]

For the last 100+ years vast quantities of water have been diverted via pipelines, siphons, canals and aqueducts for water supply 200+ miles away in Los Angeles. Groundwater contributes to the flow of the diverted headwater streams and in addition, groundwater in the Owens Valley hydrologic system is also accessed by wells owned by the City of Los Angeles. In the 1940s, tunnels were constructed north from Owens Valley to the Mono Basin and 1970 a second aqueduct was built that doubled the capacity to divert water south to LA.

An October 18th , 2025, article by the Mojave Desert, journalist Ian James, published in the Los Angeles Times, reports that leaders of the Native tribes in the Owens Valley are asking the city to take less water because current groundwater pumping has dried up the few existing springs and negatively affected meadow vegetation. According to the L A Times article, the Owens Valley “once had so many springs, streams and wetlands that the Paiute and Shoshone people called their homeland Payahuunadü, (the land of flowing water.) Today, tribal members say LA’s extensive use of water has transformed the landscape, desiccating many springs and meadows, killing native grasses and altering the ecosystem.”

Since 1941 when flow to Mono Lake was diverted, the lake’s surface area has been reduced by over 60%, the lake level has dropped by 45 feet, and the lake salinity has doubled. In the 1970s and 1980s, groundwater pumping in Owens Valley also impacted groundwater dependent natural vegetation north of Owens Lake. Lowered lake levels have exposed dry lake beds at Mono Lake and Owens Valley Lake. Wind blowing the dust from the exposed lake beds causes toxic air quality challenges. Following a 1979 lawsuit by Inyo County and environmental organizations, the City of LA has been required to install dust suppression systems that spray water on the dry lakebed.

It seems ironic that some of the groundwater from wells, and rerouted flow from streams, that formerly maintained vibrant Owens Valley ecosystems, now has to be used for suppressing dust caused by diverting water to Los Angeles.

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See the links below for much more information about this hydrological engineering controversy.
The information in this article shows just the tip of a very big (125 year old hydrological & political) iceberg!

Original aqueduct construction: https://waterandpower.org/museum/Construction_of_the_LA_Aqueduct.html
Mono Craters Tunnel: https://www.monolake.org/today/groundwater-exports-benefit-los-angeles-impact-mono-lake/
1970 Aqueduct: https://waterandpower.org/museum/A_Second_Aqueduct.html Toxic Dust: https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/news/eviner-nas-owens
2025 LA Times report: Ian James reports for the Los Angeles Times October 18, 2025, with photography by Carlin Stiehl
LA Dept of Water & Power – annual report: https://www.ladwp.com/sites/default/files/2024-06/2024%20Final%20Owens%20Valley%20Report.pdf