Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. II., Supplement XIV.

PICTORIAL FIELD BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION.

VOLUME II.

BY BENSON J. LOSSING

1850.

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SUPPLEMENT.

XIV.

YANKEE DOODLE.

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In the first volume, I have twice referred to our national air, Yankee Doodle. The following facts in relation to its origin may interest the literary antiquarian. The air (Nancy Dawson), as well as the style of words, antedates the American Revolution by at least a century and a quarter. A song, composed in derision of Cromwell by a loyal poet, commenced with

"Nankey Doodle came to town,

Riding on a pony,
 With a feather in his hat,
Upon a macaroni."

A "doodle" is defined in the old English dictionaries to be "a sorry, trifling fellow," and the term was applied to Cromwell in that sense. A "macaroni" was a knot on which the feather was fastened. In a satirical poem accompanying a caricature of William Pitt in 1766, in which he appears on stilts, the following verse occurs:

"Stamp Act! le diable! dat is de job, sir;
Dat is in de Stiltman’s nob, sir,
To be America’s nabob, sir,

Doodle, noodle, do."

Long before our Revolution, the air was known in New England as "Lydia Fisher’s Jig;" and among other words was this verse:

"Lucy Locket lost her pocket,

Lydia Fisher found it;
 Not a bit of money in it;
Only binding round it."

A surgeon in the British army at Albany, in 1755, composed a song to that air, in derision of the uncouth appearance of the New England troops assembled there, and called it "Yankey" instead of "Nankey Doodle." The air was popular as martial music; and when, in 1768, British troops arrived in Boston harbor, "the Yankey Doodle tune," says a writer at that time, "was the capital piece in the band of music" at Castle William. The change in the spelling of Yankey was not made until after the Revolution. Trumbull, in his M‘Fingal, uses the original orthography. While the British were yet in Boston, after the arrival of Washington at Cambridge in 1775, some poet among them wrote the following piece, in derision of the New England people. This is the original Yankee Doodle Song of the Revolution:

"Father and I went down to camp,

Along with Captain Goodwin,
 Where we see the men and boys
As thick as hasty-puddin’.
"There was Captain Washington
Upon a slapping stallion,
 A giving orders to his men
I guess there was a million.
"And then the feathers on his hat,
They look’d so tarnal fina,
 I wanted pockily to get,
To give to my Jemima.
"And then they had a swampin gun,
As large as log of maple,
 On a deuced little cart –
A load for father’s cattle.
"And every time they fired it off,
It took a horn of powder.
 It made a noise like father’s gun,
Only a nation louder.
"I went as near to it myself
As Jacob’s underpinnin,
 And father went as near again –
I thought the deuce was in him.
"Cousin Simon grew so bold,
I thought he would have cocked it;
 It scared me so, I shrinked off
And hung by father’s pocket.
"And Captain Davis had a gun,
He kind a clapp’d his hand on’t,
 And stuck a crooked stabbing-iron
Upon the little end on’t.
"And there I see a pumpkin shell
As big as mother’s basin,
 And every time they touched it off
They scamper’d like the nation.
"And there I see a little keg,
Its heads were made of leather:
 They knocked upon ’t with little sticks,
To call the folks together.
"And then they’d fife away like fun,
And play on cornstalk fiddles,
 And some had ribbons red as blood,
All wound about their middles
"The troopers, too, would gallop up
And fire right in our faces;
 It scared me almost half to death
To see them run such races.
"Old Uncle Sam come then to change
Some pancakes and some onions,
 For ’lasses cakes, to carry home
To give his wife and young ones.
"I see another snarl of men
A digging graves, they told me,
 So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,
They ’tended they should hold me.
"It scared me so, I hooked it off,
Nor slept, as I remember,
 Nor turned about till I got home.
Locked up in mother’s chamber."

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ENDNOTES

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