Note 115 — Chapter III · A TALE OF TROY

Jonnock is probably cognate with yankee, which was in old times used in the New England States as an adjective meaning “excellent,” “first-class”. Thus, a “yankee” horse would be a first-class horse, just as we talk of English beef and other things English, meaning that they are the best. Another explanation of yankee is that when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, near Massachusetts Bay, in 1620, they were met on the shore by native Indians who called them “Yangees”—meaning “white man”—and the term was finally completed into “Yankees”.