{"collection":"ETC Sacred Texts","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_etc_bnm_bnm53_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_etc_bnm_bnm53_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_etc_bnm_bnm53_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/etc/bnm/bnm53.htm","summary":"This is a short fantasy story in the fairy-tale tradition, functioning as an origin myth and literary expansion of the \"Jack and Jill\" nursery rhyme. Two children of unknown origin live on a hill under the care of what they believe is an old man, compelled daily to haul water up the hill \u2014 a chore that frustrates them because it interrupts their play. The familiar tumble occurs one moonlit night, but the story reframes it: the \"old man's\" voice was actually the sound of water flowing around a rock, and the water-carrying was secretly sustaining a hillside stream. The moon, personified as a gentle maternal figure, reveals these truths, claims the children as her own, and invites them to live with her \u2014 explaining the folk-belief that figures can be seen on the moon's surface. The story's distinctive move is treating the nursery rhyme's nonsense details (the crown, the tumbling) as clues to a hidden natural allegory about the water cycle, where sun and clouds, not children, are the true water-carriers. It reads as a piece of late Victorian or Edwardian children's literature, blending nature myth with the cozy whimsy typical of that era's retellings of traditional verse.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Book of Nature Myths: The Children In The Moon.","tradition":"ETC Sacred Texts","translated_text":null,"word_count":631}