"This Is the House That Jack Built" is a popular English nursery rhyme and cumulative tale.

[1] This is perhaps the most common set of modern lyrics: 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".

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.

[3] 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.

The rhyme continues to be a popular choice for illustrated children's books, with recent examples by Simms Taback[8] and Quentin Blake[9] showing how illustrators can introduce a fresh angle and humour into a familiar tale.