Vinegar and brown paper is recommended in the third paragraph of this page as a cold remedy. Perhaps some mothers of Jack and Jill’s “era” saw such a poultice as a cure-all. There’s also a third verse to the rhyme:
Jill came in, and she did grin
To see a mustard plaster
Mother, vexed, did whip her next
For causing Jack’s disaster*
A variant of this line is Old Dame Dob did smack her knob. No, I don’t know how the vinegar-paper combination was replaced by a mustard plaster. Perhaps we’ve stumbled upon one of the first continuity errors.
Baker: I’d guess the “Yellow Rose” is supposed to be a mulatto (or “mulatta”, if you prefer the feminine version of the admittedly archaic term). The phrase “high yellow” (as well as such variants as high yeller and high yaller) was frequently used to refer to such people of mixed race, particularly the ones who could at least try to “pass for white”.
Nowadays (at least out here in the good ol’ sunny Peoples’ Republic of California, anyway), alot of schools are changing “bopping” to “kissing”, I reckon so as not to traumatize them…
Gene’s lyrics call for breaking the last note of the first two lines in half.
They are not the most shining examples of lyrics ever written, and they were added long after the original tune was composed. But presumably Gene’s estate is still collecting half of Alexander Courage’s royalties …
The All in the Family opening theme, “Those Were the Days”, includes lyrics which are not sung during the opening credits. The linked page also includes lyrics to the closing theme, “Remembering You”, which is only heard as an instrumental on the program.
There are a couple of alternate sets of lyrics to the Bonanza theme.