The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #161787   Message #3847609
Posted By: Joe Offer
30-Mar-17 - 12:20 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
Subject: RE: Origins: Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer
There is, of course, a Wikipedia article on this song:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Bottles_of_Beer

The Traditional Ballad Index also has an entry:

Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer

DESCRIPTION: Need I really tell you? "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, Ninety-nine bottles of beer, Take one down and pass it around, Ninety-eight bottles of beer...." And so on, ad nauseum, drunkenness, or exhaustion
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: drink nonballad
FOUND IN: US(MW,So)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Randolph 456, "Ninety-Nine Blue Bottles" (1 text, 1 tune)
BrownIII 190, "Ninety-Nine Blue Bottles" (1 text)
DT, BOT99*

Roud #7603
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Eight Little Cylinders" (counting)
cf. "Ten Little Injuns" (counting)
NOTES: Randolph's and Brown's texts, obviously, refers to "blue bottles" rather than "bottles of beer"; might this be an attempt to clean up the song for a temperate audience?
I will admit amazement that neither Randolph nor Brown seems to know this in its common form -- but then, they probably were born in the days before school buses took students on field trips. - RBW
File: R456

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Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2016 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.

Is it in the World's Greatest Songbook, the Digital Tradition? Of course: /@displaysong.cfm?SongID=4239

And yes, friends, the entire, unedited text of this song was posted at Mudcat by The Honorable Toadfrog: /detail.cfm?messages__Message_ID=814677