Concerning "Bingo", the song in the message that started this thread, did you just sing the same verse over and over? We did it as a "progressive" song, if that's the right word: the first time, we spelled out B-I-N-G-O, then the second time we didn't say the B (but left a space for it - I guess you could call it a quarter note rest, not that any of us would have known what that meant: ( ) - I - N - G - O), then ( ) - ( ) - N - G - O, until the 6th time it was

There was a farmer who had a dog
And Bingo was his name-o
( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( )
( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( )
( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( ) - ( )
And Bingo was his name.

I never sang this at school, but on the bus on the way to day camp in the summer. If we really got into it, we'd do a few more verses, bringing the name back, one letter at a time.

I was astonished when Jerry wrote that he sang Barnacle Bill at school - the only version I've ever heard is the obscene one, and I couldn't imagine a teacher having a class sing that. I wasn't aware that the version I knew was a parody.

I don't remember a lot of songs we sang "officially" at school. There was this one:

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing
He chastens and hastens His will to make known
The wicked oppressing
Cease them from distressing
Sing praises to His name
He forgets not His own.

There was a second verse, now forgotten. The first verse was torture for the lispers, with all those esses. I was puzzled at the time as to why the author felt obliged to point out that the Lord didn't forget His own name, but eventually I got what he meant.

The only one I remember that they made us sing that I didn't like went like this:

If I had the wings of a turtle dove
Back to one-fifty-two I would fly [this was Public School 152]
And there I would play with those students
I would play til the day that I die.