Shay's My Pious Friends and Drunken Companions has fragments of two versions. The version in the Digital Tradition is based on Shay, but I don't know where the tune comes from. The version below is my attempt to combine the lyrics from Shay with those in Arthur Loesser's Humor in American Song. The lyrics are almost the same in these two versions, and they use almost the same tune (which is not the tune in the DT).
-Joe Offer-


The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham

CHORUS
Sing, oh sing of Lydia Pinkham
And her love of the human race
How she sells her vegetable compound
And the papers publish her face.


O, Mrs. Brown could do no housework,
O, Mrs. Brown could do no housework,
She took three bottles of Lydia's compound,
And now there's nothing she will shirk.

O, Mrs. Jones she had no children,
And she loved them very dear.
So she took six bottles of Pinkham's
Now she has twins every year.

Lottie Smyth ne'er had a lover,
Blotchy pimples caused her plight;
But she took nine bottles of Pinkham's--
Sweethearts swarm about her each night.

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Click to play Shay/Loesser tune

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Here's the entry from the Traditional Ballad Index:

Lydia Pinkham

DESCRIPTION: A bawdy and scatological testimonial in multiple stanzas for the restorative powers of Mrs. Pinkham's patent medicine for women.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Sandburg)
KEYWORDS: bawdy scatological sex drugs
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Randolph-Legman I, p. 485-489, "Lydia Pinkham" (5 texts, 1 tune)
Sandburg, p. 210, "Lydia Pinkham" (1 text, 1 tune, expurgated)
DT, LYDIAPNK
Roud #8368
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "I Will Sing of My Redeemer" (tune)
Notes: This is sung to the Protestant hymn tune "I Will Sing of My Redeemer," Legman notes in his extensive annotations in Randolph-Legman I. - EC
File: RL485

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The Ballad Index Copyright 2003 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.