# 100 Bottles of Beer and Eenie Meenie Minie Moe **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 17, 2001, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-bottles-of-beer-and-eenie-meenie-minie-moe/76765 "2001-08-17T17:12:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AnjieFH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@AnjieFH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnjieFH)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2001, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-bottles-of-beer-and-eenie-meenie-minie-moe/76765/1 "2001-08-17T17:12:31Z")
Dear General Staff: ``` Recently I was driving in a car with my Mom and my nephews. In the course of this long drive the song 100 Bottles of Beer was started. My Mom sang "100 Bottles of beer...if one of those bottles should happen to fall...". I told her I had learned that line as "...take one down pass it around..." Can you tell me the orgin of that song, and the original words? A discussion ensued regarding changes of lyrics over time. She said the rhyme Eenie Meenie Minie Moe was different when she was growning up. The saying she learned was"...catch a nigger by the toe". I found those words horrorfying. I can understand why they were changed to tiger, but neither word seems to fit quite right. Can you also tell me the orgin of this saying, and why the N word would have ever been added? ``` Respectfully Yours, Anjie Burbank, CA ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2001, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-bottles-of-beer-and-eenie-meenie-minie-moe/76765/2 "2001-08-17T18:09:42Z")
From [this site](http://afsnet.org/publications/afsnews/feb1999/n28n1p5.htm): > [@](#): > > Eenie meenie minie mo, > Catch a . . . > > What word you fill in depends on where and when you grew up. None of our face-to-face informants would tell us anything but “tiger.” On-line informants were more honest. Jim in Pennsylvania and Mary Ellen in Birmingham, Alabama both knew this rhyme from the 1940s, when the word was the now offensive “nigger.” Through our other on-line informants, we could deduce that by the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement, the rhyme had been altered, not by adults, but by the children themselves. Claire from Maryland added a great deal of background material about her version, including the facts that her mother was initially horrified to hear her recite the rhyme, until she heard the innocuous “tiger,” and that by the late 1960s, she and the other children had no idea there had even been an earlier version. I can attest that, growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s, it was invariably the n-word. However, as kids we had little concept that this might be offensive - it was an Irish-Italian neighborhood and we _never_ saw any black people. ---
**Author:** ![caircair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@caircair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caircair)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2001, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/100-bottles-of-beer-and-eenie-meenie-minie-moe/76765/3 "2001-08-17T20:48:06Z")
And as for the 99 bottles, etc. I’ve learned it both ways. As I recall, the first version I learned was “if one of those bottles should happen to fall” – but only because I was a youngster, and such words were deemed less offensive. The “Take one down, pass it around” version was what was sung when we wanted to feel more daring and grown up.