"Detroit Free Press," July 1, 1906:

"THE FOURTH IN NICARAGUA...About 12 o'clock that night, seven or eight jolly young Americans, reinforced by no less than forty natives and darkeys, planted themselves in front of the hotel and struck up a doggerel that was new to me, but Drew had crossed the states twenty-six times and he said the thing was old and had been chanted from Seattle to Portland, Maine. I heard so much of it - they were at it an hour and a half - I learned it by heart and certainly have never forgotten it.

"'There were ninety-nine beer bottles hanging on the wall,
Ninety-nine beer bottles, counting them all.
Take one of those beer bottles down from the wall,
Leaves ninety-eight beer bottles hanging on the wall.'

"...This is kept up until there is but one beer bottle 'hanging on the wall'...when the crowd...will run it back to ninety-nine and so on ad infinitum.'"

(Among other melodies, this fits well with "Turkey in the Straw" - but not with the familiar tune of "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.")

I heard it in the Cub Scouts in 1959 as:

"A hundred bottles of beer on the wall,
A hundred bottle of beer;
If one of those bottles should happen to fall:
Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall. ...Etc., etc., (etc.).

The tune is a familiar one, but I can't quite place it. Part of the "Bang Bang Lulu" family.