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First, What Exactly Is A Yankee?
Yankee is a term used by Americans generally in reference to a native of New England and by non-Americans, especially the British, in reference to an American of any section. The word is most likely from the Dutch and was apparently derived either from Janke, diminutive of Jan, or from Jankees, a combination of Jan and kees [cheese], thus signifying John Cheese. As early as 1683, Yankey was a common nickname among the pirates of the Spanish Main; always, however, it was borne by Dutchmen. There is no satisfactory explanation of how it came to be applied to the English settlers of colonial America and particularly to New Englanders. By 1765 it was in use as a term of contempt or derision, but by the opening of the American Revolution , New Englanders were proud to be called Yankees. The popularity of the marching song Yankee Doodle probably had much to do with the term's subsequent wide usage. In the Civil War it was applied disparagingly by the Confederates to Union soldiers and Northerners generally, and with Southern hatred for the North rekindled by the Reconstruction period it survived long after the war was over. In World War I, the English began calling American soldiers, both Southerners and Northerners, Yankees. At that time too the shortened form Yank became popular in the United States, with George M. Cohan's war song Over There; contributing largely to its increased usage. However, Yank, too, was known in the 18th cent., as early as 1778, and the Confederates also used that form in the Civil War. Yankee and Yank were again popular designations for the American soldier in World War II. In Latin America the term Yanqui is applied to U.S. citizens, oftenespecially after the Cuba revolutionwith a note of hostility.
Yankee Doodle The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (190721).
VOLUME XVIII. Later National Literature, Part III.
XXVI. Patriotic Songs and Hymns .
2. Yankee Doodle.
Yankee Doodle, for example, is full of surprises, inconsistencies, paradoxes in its career. It is not really a song, but it is a band tune which no existing adult audience has ever sung together. The single stanza known to everyone is not a part of the Revolutionary War ballad, but belongs to an earlier period in its history. The music is unheroic; the title (a New England Noodle) is derogatory to the people who adopted it in spite of its ridicule. And yet it has become a piece of jovial defiance as stirring as The Campbells Are Coming. The melody, as has often been the case, was generally known for several years before it was turned to patriotic account. As early as 1764 the familiar quatrain was current in England, and by 1767 the tune was familiar enough in America to be cited in Bartonss (or Colonel Forrestss) comic opera, Disappointment, or The Force of Credulity. In derision of the foolish Yankee there soon began to multiply variants, most of which have come down by hearsay, and are very vague as to date; but one was a broadside and attests in the title to its currency before April, 1775: Yankee Doodle; or, (as now christened by the Saints of New England) the Lexington March. N.B. The Words to be Sung throus the Nose, & in the West Country drawl and dialect. The text of The Yankeess Return from Campthe famous but forgotten versionis attributed to Edward Bangs, a Harvard student, and was written in 1775 or 1776. Tory derision did not cease with its appearance, and between the accumulating stanzas in rejoinder and those in supplement gave ground for the speech of Jonathan in Tylerss The Contrast of 1787: Some other time, when you and I are better acquainted, Isll sing the whole of itno, no, thatss a fibI canst sing but a hundred and ninety verses; our Tabitha at home can sing it all. In time, however, the words lost interest for all but antiquarians, so that the stanza in The Songsterss Museum was literally true in 1826 as it is to-day:
Yankee Doodle is the tune
Americans delight in.
Twill do to whistle, sing or play,
And just the thing for fighting.
Yankee Doodle Boy
Yankee Doodle
Father and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding;
And there we saw the men and boys,
As thick as hasty pudding.
Yankee doodle, keep it up,
Yankee doodle dandy;
Mind the musie and the step,
And with the girls be handy.
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 looked so' tarnal fin-a,
I wanted pockily to get
To give to my Jemima.
And then we saw a swamping gun,
Large as a log of maple;
Upon a deuced little cart,
A load for father's cattle.
And every time they shoot it off,
It takes a horn of powder;
It makes a noise like father's gun,
Only a nation louder.
I went as nigh to one myself,
As' Siah's underpinning;
And father went as nigh agin,
I thought the deuce was in him.
We saw a little barrel, too,
The heads were made of leather;
They knocked upon it with little clubs,
And called the folks together.
And there they'd fife away like fun,
And play on cornstalk fiddles,
And some had ribbons red as blood,
All bound around their middles.
The troopers, too, would gallop up
And fire right in our faces;
It scared me almost to death
To see them run such races.
Uncle Sam came there to change
Some pancakes and some onions,
For' lasses cake to carry home
To give his wife and young ones.
But I can't tell half I see
They kept up such a smother;
So I took my hat off, made a bow,
And scampered home to mother.
Cousin Simon grew so bold,
I thought he would have cocked it;
It scared me so I streaked it off,
And hung by father's pocket.
And there I saw a pumpkin shell,
As big as mother's basin;
And every time they touched it off,
They scampered like the nation.
Yankee doodle, keep it up,
Yankee doodle dandy;
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy
Lyrics to Yankee Doodle Dandy
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The U. S. Constitution
