[Ads-l] 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall - about flies?

[Peter Reitan]

I researched the history of 99 bottles of beer on the wall and learned several things.

It dates to about the mid 1940s.

There is a well-known British analog called “Ten Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall” which I had never heard of.  It dates to the late-1920s.

Both British and American troops sang an earlier version of the song during WW I, which the Brits may have picked up from the Americans.

There was an earlier American version, usually sung as “99 (or 49) Blue Bottles Hanging on the Wall,” which appears to have had the same tune as the modern British version.   The earlier American version dates to about 1884.

When I tried to figure out what “blue bottles” referred to, the one thing that seems to have been in common use at the time related to flies – “blue bottle flies,” commonly called simply “blue bottles” at the time.  That might explain why the bottles are hanging on the wall, which doesn’t seem to make much sense.

https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2022/10/blue-bottles-green-bottles-and-flies.html


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