I'm listening to part of a C.A.R.E. package from Sandy Paton, a wonderful CD called Joe Hickerson With a Gathering of Friends, a reissue of a 1970 LP (Folk-Legacy CD-39). I'm having trouble understanding exactly what Hickerson has to say about the melody in the notes, but I gather that Hickerson's tune was folk-processed, and that the Chad Mitchell Trio version may be closer to the original tune. The notes are very interesting, and the lyrics are different enough from the DT version to be worth posting.

Hickerson's Notes:
9. HANG ON THE BELL, NELLIE (2:49)
Mike Smith brought this hit of tomfoolery to Bloomington, and we all sang it with him until he left, after which we had to fend with it for ourselves. It's a song suitable for such occasions as foot-stomping group-rowdy and informal bluegrassing (Paul Prestopino, Danny Kalb and I once tried this during a concert in Madison, WI, some ten years ago. Mike had learned the song in his native Omaha from a girl visiting from Alaska; she had learned it from someone in the Boston area.
Some of you may have run across "Nellie" swinging to an entirely different tune, as on a Raphael Boguslav LP (Monitor MF 359) entitled, after the sung, Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight or, with a rewritten final verse, on Kapp KL 1262, Mighty Day on Campus, by the Chad Mitchell Trio. Several people, including John Cohen, Bob Keppel, and Jerome Wenker, have told me that "Nellie" was sung with this tune in the Boston area in the early 1950s at folksong gatherings. How the tune changed in the next ten years from Boston to Alaska to Mike Smith remains a mystery, but I, for one, am glad the transformation took place.
Until recently I had thought that "Nellie" originated years ago as a parody of "Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night," a once overly-popular poem written on April 5, 1867, by Rose Hartwick Thorpe, aged 16, of Litchfield, Michigan (it was not published until 1870, when it appeared in an issue of the Detroit Commercial Examiner. For further information on Miss Thorpe and her literary effort (?), see George Wharton James' informative pamphlet Rose Hartwick Thorpe and the Story of "Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night" (Pasadena Calif. The Radiant Life Press, 1918).
My thoughts of an early origin of the "Nellie" parody waned, however, since I could only document it as far back as a 1948 sheet music printing in London, with composition credited to Tommie Connor, Clive Erard, and Ross Parker, and with a tune corresponding to the Boston-Boguslav-Mitchell versions. Recently, Dick Greenhaus sent me (via Lani Herrmann) a crucial lead: "Hang on the Bell, Nellie" had been recorded by, and perhaps written for, Beatrice Kay, an English songstress of the 1940's and 50's who specialized in the songs of the Gay and Naughty Nineties and their ilk. Armed with this lead, I located a 1949 catalog which listed a Columbia 78 rpm recording no. 38528 entitled Hang on the Bell, Nellie, sung by Beatrice Kay and credited to Connor, Erard, and Parker (reissued in 1960 on Harmony LP no. HL-7253).
The theme had certainly been parodied before, however. There was a clappered heroine named Maryland Calvert in a "Drama in Four Acts" by David Belasco entitled The Heart of Maryland, which was first performed on October 9, 1895, in Washington, DC. John Held, Jr., did a characteristic woodcut of the crucial scene in the play (see The Works of John Held Jr., New York, 1931, p. and the cover of the Boguslav LP).
The "Oh, no!" and "Stop!" on our recording are brought to you through the courtesy of Cinny Dildine and Barry O'Neill, respectively.

Hang on the Bell, Nellie
(Tommie Connor, Clive Erard, and Ross Parker - 1949?)

The scene is in a jailhouse; if the curfew rings tonight
The guy in number 13 cell will go out like a light.
She knew her dad was innocent, and so our little Nell
Tied her tender torso to the clapper of the bell.

CHORUS
Hang on the bell, Nellie, hang on the bell!
Your poor father's locked in the old prison cell
As you swing to the left and you swing to the right,
Remember that curfew must never ring tonight.

It all began when Nellie said, "Oh no!" to handsome Jack.
She struggled as he tried to kiss her down by the railroad track.
Daddy came a-running as the train sped down the line.
Jack stepped back across the track and paid the price of crime.

They arrested dear old Daddy and they took him before the law.
The coppers said that handsome Jack weren't handsome anymore.
Nell she came and pleaded but the jury did not care.
They did not have a sofa, so they sent him to the chair.

They tugged upon the bell-rope but there was no ting-a-ling.
They could not get the job done, no, the curfew would not ring.
Upstairs poor Nell was swingin' as below they tugged and heaved,
And suddenly a voice cries "Stop! The geezer been reprieved."

This is the bedtime story that the warden loves to tell.
The convicts listen to the tale of plucky little Nell,
And how she saved her dad that night when the curfew would not ring:
And tears stream down their faces as in harmony they sing.