Yankee Doodle

For other uses, see Yankee Doodle (disambiguation).

"Yankee Doodle"
The first verse and refrain of "Yankee Doodle", engraved on the footpath in a park
Song
Published	1780s

"Yankee Doodle" is a traditional song and nursery rhyme, the early versions of which predate the Seven Years' War and American Revolutionary War.^[1] It is often sung patriotically in the United States today. It is the state song of the U.S. state of Connecticut.^[2] Its Roud Folk Song Index number is 4501.

Origin

"The Macaroni. A real Character at the late Masquerade", a 1773 mezzotint by Philip Dawe

The tune of "Yankee Doodle" is thought to be much older than the lyrics, being well known across western Europe, including England, France, Netherlands, Hungary, and Spain.^[3] The melody of the song may have originated from an Irish tune "All the way to Galway" in which the second strain is identical to Yankee Doodle.^[4][5] There are rumors that the earliest words of "Yankee Doodle" came from a Middle Dutch harvest song which is thought to have followed the same tune, supposedly dating back as far as 15th-century Holland.^[6][7] It supposedly contained mostly nonsense words in English and Dutch: "Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther."^[3][8][7] Farm laborers in Holland were paid "as much buttermilk (Botermelk) as they could drink, and a tenth (tanther) of the grain".^[8][7]

The term Doodle first appeared in English in the early 17th century^[9] and is thought to be derived from the Low German dudel, meaning "playing music badly", or Dödel, meaning "fool" or "simpleton". The Macaroni wig was an extreme fashion in the 1770s and became slang for being a fop.^[10] Dandies were men who placed particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisure hobbies. A self-made dandy was a British middle-class man who impersonated an aristocratic lifestyle. They notably wore silk strip cloth, stuck feathers in their hats, and carried two pocket watches with chains—"one to tell what time it was and the other to tell what time it was not".^[11]

The macaroni wig was an example of such Rococo dandy fashion, popular in elite circles in Western Europe and much mocked in the London press. The term macaroni was used to describe a fashionable man who dressed and spoke in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion"^[12] in terms of clothes, fastidious eating, and gambling.

In British conversation, the term "Yankee doodle dandy" implied unsophisticated misappropriation of upper-class fashion, as though simply sticking a feather in one's cap would transform the wearer into a noble.^[13] Peter McNeil, a professor of fashion studies, claims that the British were insinuating that the colonists were lower-class men who lacked masculinity, emphasizing that the American men were womanly.^[14]

Early versions

The song was a pre-Revolutionary War song originally sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, disorganized colonial "Yankees" with whom they served in the French and Indian War. It was written at Fort Crailo around 1755 by British Army surgeon Richard Shuckburgh while campaigning in Rensselaer, New York.^[15] The British troops sang it to mock their stereotype of the American soldier as a Yankee simpleton who thought that he was stylish if he simply stuck a feather in his cap.^[1] It was also popular among the Americans as a song of defiance,^[1] and they added verses to it that mocked the British and hailed George Washington as the Commander of the Continental army. By 1781, "Yankee Doodle" had turned from being an insult to being a song of national pride.^[16][17]

According to one account, Shuckburgh wrote the original lyrics after seeing the appearance of Colonial troops under Colonel Thomas Fitch, the son of Connecticut Governor Thomas Fitch.^[18] According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "the current version seems to have been written in 1776 by Edward Bangs, a Harvard sophomore who also was a Minuteman."^[15] He wrote a ballad with 15 verses which circulated in Boston and surrounding towns in 1775 or 1776.^[19]

A bill was introduced to the House of Representatives on July 25, 1999,^[20] recognizing Billerica, Massachusetts, as "America's Yankee Doodle Town". After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, a Boston newspaper reported:

Upon their return to Boston [pursued by the Minutemen], one [Briton] asked his brother officer how he liked the tune now, – "Dang them", returned he, "they made us dance it till we were tired" – since which Yankee Doodle sounds less sweet to their ears.

The earliest known version of the lyrics comes from 1755 or 1758 (the date of origin is disputed):^[21]

Brother Ephraim sold his Cow
And bought him a Commission;
And then he went to Canada
To fight for the Nation;

But when Ephraim he came home
He proved an arrant Coward,
He wouldn't fight the Frenchmen there
For fear of being devoured.

The sheet music which accompanies these lyrics reads, "The Words to be Sung through the Nose, & in the West Country drawl & dialect." The tune also appeared in 1762 in one of America's first comic operas The Disappointment, with bawdy lyrics about the search for Blackbeard's buried treasure by a team from Philadelphia.^[22] An alternate verse that the British are said to have marched to is attributed to an incident involving Thomas Ditson of Billerica, Massachusetts.^[23] Ditson attempted to purchase a Brown Bess musket from a British soldier in the 47th Regiment of Foot in Boston in March 1775; after a group of the soldier's comrades spotted the transaction as it was occurring, they tarred and feathered Ditson in order to prevent any such illegal purchases from happening in the future. Ditson eventually managed to secure a musket and fought at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.^[24] For this reason, the town of Billerica is called the home of "Yankee Doodle":^[25][26]

Yankee Doodle came to town,
For to buy a firelock,
We will tar and feather him,
And so we will John Hancock.

Another pro-British set of lyrics believed to have used the tune was published in June 1775 following the Battle of Bunker Hill:^[27]

The seventeen of June, at Break of Day,
The Rebels they supriz'd us,
With their strong Works, which they'd thrown up,
To burn the Town and drive us.

"Yankee Doodle" was played at the British surrender at Saratoga in 1777.^[28] A variant is preserved in the 1810 edition of Gammer Gurton's Garland: Or, The Nursery Parnassus, collected by Francis Douce, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford:

Yankey Doodle came to town,
How do you think they serv'd him?
One took his bag, another his scrip,
The quicker for to starve him.^[29]

Full version

The Spirit of '76 (aka Yankee Doodle)
Artist	Archibald Willard
Year	c. 1875
Type	Oil
Dimensions	61 cm × 45 cm (24 in × 18 in)
Location	United States Department of State

The full version of the song as it is known today:^[30][31]

Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.

[Chorus]
Yankee Doodle keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.

Father and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding,^[a]
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.

[Chorus]

And there we saw a thousand men
As rich as Squire David,
And what they wasted every day,
I wish it could be savèd.

[Chorus]

The 'lasses they eat every day,
Would keep a house a winter;
They have so much, that I'll be bound,
They eat it when they've a mind to.

[Chorus]

And there I see a swamping^[b] gun
Large as a log of maple,
Upon a deuced little cart,
A load for father's cattle.

[Chorus]

And every time they shoot it off,
It takes a horn of powder,
And makes a noise like father's gun,
Only a nation^[c] louder.

[Chorus]

I went as nigh to one myself
As 'Siah's underpinning;
And father went as nigh again,
I thought the deuce was in him.

[Chorus]

Cousin Simon grew so bold,
I thought he would have cocked it;
It scared me so I shrinked it off
And hung by father's pocket.

[Chorus]

And Cap'n Davis had a gun,
He kind of clapt his hand on't
And stuck a crooked stabbing iron
Upon the little end on't

[Chorus]

And there I see a pumpkin shell
As big as mother's basin,
And every time they touched it off
They scampered like the nation.

[Chorus]

I see a little barrel too,
The heads were made of leather;
They knocked on it with little clubs
And called the folks together.

[Chorus]

And there was Cap'n Washington,
And gentle folks about him;
They say he's grown so 'tarnal proud
He will not ride without 'em.

[Chorus]

He got him on his meeting clothes,
Upon a slapping stallion;
He sat the world along in rows,
In hundreds and in millions.

[Chorus]

The flaming ribbons in his hat,
They looked so tearing fine, ah,
I wanted dreadfully to get
To give to my Jemima.

[Chorus]

I see another snarl of men
A-digging graves, they told me,
So 'tarnal long, so 'tarnal deep,
They 'tended they should hold me.

[Chorus]

It scared me so, I hooked it off,
Nor stopped, as I remember,
Nor turned about till I got home,
Locked up in mother's chamber.

[Chorus]

Tune

The tune shares with the English language nursery rhymes "Simple Simon", "Jack and Jill", and "Lucy Locket". It also inspired the theme tune for the children's television series, Barney & the Backyard Gang, Barney & Friends, and the 1960s US cartoon series Roger Ramjet. Danish band Toy-Box sampled the tune in their song "E.T".

Notable renditions

The American state broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) uses the tune of Yankee Doodle as their interval signal. There is uncertainty over the origin of the VOA's decision to use the tune. In his 1990 memoir Being Red, Howard Fast claimed that while working as the VOA's chief news writer and news director in 1943, he selected "as a joke" Yankee Doodle for the broadcaster's interval signal.

I established contact at the Soviet embassy with people who spoke English and were willing to feed me important bits and pieces from their side of the wire. I had long ago, somewhat facetiously, suggested “Yankee Doodle” as our musical signal, and now that silly little jingle was a power cue, a note of hope everywhere on earth, conveyed by short wave as well as by our four-hour American BBC. When I sat down to write “Good morning, this is the Voice of America,” I now has a grasp of things.^[35][36]

See also

• Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942 musical film
• "The Yankee Doodle Boy", 1904 song

Notes

1. Captain William Gooding of Dighton, Massachusetts, commanded a militia company during the French and Indian War.^[32]
2. Very large; huge.^[33]
3. A corruption of damnation. Immense, enormous; very, extremely.^[34]

References

1. "'Yankee Doodle Dandy' Explained and Other Revolutionary Facts". ABC News. 4 July 2014. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
2. "Sites º Seals º Symbols - State song". STATE OF CONNECTICUT. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017.
3. Johnson, Helen Kendrick
4. Traditional Tune Archive (23 September 2020). "All the Way to Galway (1) - Traditional Tune Archive". Tunearch.org. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
5. The Meaning of Song" in The North American Review vol.138, no.330 (1884): p.491. Retrieved 17 June 2016 from JSTOR 25118383
6. Yankee Doodle Dandy, The New York Times
7. Elson, Louis Charles (1912). University Musical Encyclopedia: A history of music. Vol. 2. p. 82.
8. Banks, Louis Albert (1898). Immortal Songs of Camp and Field: The Story of Their Inspiration, Together with Striking Anecdotes Connected with Their History. Burrows Brothers Company. p. 44.
9. "doodle", n, Oxford English Dictionary; accessed April 29, 2009.
10. J. Woodforde, The Strange Story of False Hair (London: Taylor & Francis, 1971), p. 40.
11. Grose, Francis; Egan, Pierce (1823). Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: Revised and Corrected with the Addition of Numerous Slang Phrases Collected from Tried Authorities. London.
12. The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine, inaugural issue, 1772, quoted in Amelia Rauser, "Hair, Authenticity, and the Self-Made Macaroni", Eighteenth-Century Studies 38.1 (2004:101-117) (on-line abstract).
13. R. Ross, Clothing: a global history: or, The Imperialists' new clothes (Polity, 2008), p. 51.
14. Peter McNeil, That Doubtful Gender: Macaroni Dress and Male Sexualities (Fashion Theory, 1998), pp. 411-48.
15. "Yankee Doodle". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
16. "Historical Period: The American Revolution, 1763-1783 - Lyrical legacy - Yankee doodle song". Loc.gov. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
17. Lomax, Alan (1994). Lomax, John Avery (ed.). American ballads and f-28276-3. Courier Corporation. p. 521. ISBN 9780486282763.
18. Sonneck, Oscar George Theodore (1972). Report on The Star-spangled Banner, Hail Columbia, America, Yankee Doodle. New York, Dover Publications [1972]. ISBN 978-0-486-22237-0.
19. "Boston Yankee Doodle Ballad - "Father And I Went Down To Camp"". www.americanmusicpreservation.com.
20. Expressing the sense of Congress that Billerica, Massachusetts, should be recognized as "America's Yankee Doodle Town" (H. CON. RES. 143). 25 June 1999.
21. Carola, Chris (5 July 2008). "Dandy new theory suggests 'Yankee Doodle' is now 250". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 10 September 2009.
22. Bobrick, 148
23. "Thomas Ditson". Billerica Public Library. Archived from the original on 28 December 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
24. Hawes, Dick; Brimer, Bill (16 August 2017). "Yankee Doodle Story". Billerica Colonial Minute Men. The Thomas Ditson Story. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
25. The Billerica Colonial Minute Men; The Thomas Ditson story; retrieved January 31, 2013.
26. Town History and Genealogy; Web.archive.org, retrieved October 20, 2008.
27. "What's the song 'Yankee Doodle' all about?". The Straight Dope. 4 January 2001. Retrieved 31 August 2016.
28. Luzader, John F. (2008). Saratoga: A Military History of the Decisive Campaign of the American Revolution. New York: Savas Beatie. p. 335. ISBN 978-1-932714-44-9.
29. Gammer Gurton's Garland: Or, The Nursery Parnassus, collected by Francis Douce, London: R[obert] Triphook, 1810, p. 35. See in HathiTrust.
30. Gen. George P. Morris - "Original Yankee Words", The Patriotic Anthology, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. publishers, 1941. Introduction by Carl Van Doren. Literary Guild of America, Inc., New York, NY.
31. Penrhyn Wingfield Coussens, editor. Poems Children Love: A Collection of Poems Arranged for Children and Young People of Various Ages. Dodge Publishing Company, New York, 1908. pp. 183-5.
32. Connelley, William E. (1918). A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans: Volume IV. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company. p. 2061. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
33. Bartlett, John Russell (1877). Dictionary of Americanisms, enlarged (4th ed.). Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. p. 684. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
34. Bartlett, John Russell (1877). Dictionary of Americanisms, enlarged (4th ed.). Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. p. 419. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
35. "Voice Of America (VoA) Signature Tune (Yankee Doodle)". 10 November 2011 – via YouTube.
36. "80 Years of VOA: Different Names of the Voice of America – BBG and USAGM Watch".

Further reading

• Bobrick, Benson (1997). Angel in the Whirlwind. Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 978-0-684-81060-7.

External links

• Library of Congress Yankee Doodle music website
• #4d5a6b Hex Color - Yankee Doodle - Color Hex Map
• The Boston Yankee Doodle Ballad
• The free sheet music

Writings

• Report on "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia," "America," "Yankee Doodle" by Oscar George Theodore Sonneck (1909) 2 3 4
• Famous American songs (1906)

Historical audio

• Yankee Doodle (archive.org)
• John H. Hewitt wrote the song The Fall of Mexico in 1847, which quotes from Yankee Doodle in measure 237.