Songfacts®:

• "Ten Green Bottles" or simply "Green Bottles" is a well known children's song. Sometimes the title is cut down to "Nine Green Bottles" or even "Five Green Bottles."
  
  Unsurprisingly it lends itself readily to parody; during World War II, a variation called "Ten German Bombers" combined the parodied words with the melody of "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain." This variant was also popular with children, though needless to say some parodies are most definitely not suitable for children, at least not for the under fives, such as "Ten Sheep Shaggers," which has been used at soccer matches against Welsh teams. (The Welsh sheep shagging farmer is an old ethnic joke along the same lines as Zip Coon or the Englishman with a stiff upper lip).
• The United States spawned a somewhat awkward variation "99 Bottles Of Beer" which runs:
  
  Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall
  Ninety-nine bottles of beer
  Take one down, pass it around
  Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall
  
  Obviously this takes somewhat longer to sing, and the full version is clearly not suitable for classrooms.
• Like many folk songs, the origin of "Ten Green Bottles" is lost to antiquity. It is believed to be of English, more specifically of Yorkshire origin, although one suggestion is that greenbottles refers to officers of the Metropolitan Police, apparently underworld jargon for the new force founded by Act of Parliament in 1829. This could explain why the bottles were said to be hanging on the wall rather than sitting on it. This explanation sounds plausible, but in September 1998, a French academic found a fragment of a manuscript, apparently dating from the late 14th Century, which appears to be the earliest extant version. It runs:
  
  Syxthene boetell gryne
  Yhangen, Yhangen
  Yhangen, Yhangen
  Syxthene boetell gryne
  Doonfal won
  Syxthene boetell gryne
  Yhangen, Yhangen
  An...
  
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  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for all above