I can't believe I found this link! I have known a version of this song since I was little (I'm 56). It's an old family favorite, and I've NEVER known anyone else who'd heard any part of it.

It's the only song I ever knew my Grandfather John Paulk to sing. He'd sing it when he held a couple of us grandchildren on his knees (which made us giggle).

Grandpa Paulk was born in 1890 in a dugout in "Indian Territory"(later Oklahoma) and grew up there and in Arkansas in a dirt-poor family of eight children who lived past infancy. My grandfather had less than a year of formal schooling (in a "brush arbor") and owned no shoes until he was an adult and bought them himself. He lived, worked, and raised a family in Coffeyville, Kansas, and was proud to have paid cash for every car he ever owned. In the 1950s he drove Cadillacs; in the 1960s and 70s, he switched to Mercedes Benzes, because "they're the best car you can buy."

I am quite sure Grandpa said he learned this song from his father, Selden Paulk, after Selden returned home from the Civil War (Selden joined the Union Army near the end of the war at about age 16 and received an Army pension until his death in 1940.) This is how my grandfather, aunts and cousins all sang it:

Cross-eyed baby on each knee
And a woman with a plaster on her nose.
I tell you, boys, it ain't no fun
When you have to wear second-hand clothes.

Stay away from the girls, I say,
And give them plenty of room.
For when you're wed, they'll beat you till you're dead
With the bald-headed end of the broom.

If I can figure out how to post the tune, I will. Can anyone tell me how to listen to the tunes on this site?