How "Yankee Doodle Came to Town."

The Famous Air Had a Checkered Career and Hobnobbed With Some Queer Lyrics Before a British Surgeon Unwittingly Gave to the American Patriots a Battle Song.

An original article written for The Scrap Book.

Our oldest national nickname is "Yankee." In the early Colonial days, the Indians stumbling over the pronunciation of the language of the pale-face, called the English "Yenghies." By corruption, "Yenghies" became "Yanghies" and "Yankees." The settlers took the word "Yankees" back again from their copper-skinned neighbors, and they seem to have used it in a slangy way.

As early as 1713 Jonathan Hastings, a farmer of Cambridge, in New England, used the word as a synonym for excellence, saying of anything which he especially admired:

"It is Yankee good"—that is, probably: "It is as good as if English made."

However, it is worthy of note that Jamieson's "Scottish Dictionary" gives a Scottish word, "Yankie," with the definition: "A sharp, clever woman, at the same time including an idea of forwardness."

The modern notion of Yankee shrewdness might seem to justify the derivation from the Scottish, but, as it happens, the Yankee was not generally considered shrewd and clever until a much later period than the pre-Revolutionary days.

Perhaps, as the occasional explanation has it, the people of the other colonies got to calling New Englanders "Jonathan Yankees," after Jonathan Hastings. Also it may be true that the word has more than one derivation—a possibility which will become apparent when we consider the origin of the song "Yankee Doodle."

Everybody knows the tune of "Yankee Doodle," but few people know the words. The air has been ascribed to several different countries. Kossuth, during his visit to the United States, recognized it as Hungarian, and it has also been identified with an ancient Biscayan sword-dance. In the Netherlands there is, or used to be, a harvesting song, sung by laborers, who were paid with a tenth of the grain and all the buttermilk they could drink:

In other words, "buttermilk and a tenth." Old Hollanders in the United States may recall the stanza.

In the days of Cromwell, one of the nicknames which the Cavaliers bestowed upon the Puritans was "Nankee Doodle." When Cromwell entered Oxford this stanza was written:

Another and more common version was as follows:

In the reign of Charles II we first hear beyond any doubt the air to which "Yankee Doodle" is now sung. To it were set the following lines, which remain as a nursery rhyme:

The air came to be known as "Kitty Fisher," or "Kitty Fisher's Jig."

In 1755, when the Colonial troops were joining the British regulars in the invasion of Canada, by way of Albany, Dr. Schuckburgh, a surgeon attached to Lord Amherst's forces, is said to have derisively adopted the tune for the use of the Colonials, who apparently accepted it in good faith as an established martial air.

To attribute to Dr. Schuckburgh the words which were afterward sung to the air is to disregard the internal evidence of the words themselves—unless, as is possible, though not probable, the stanzas referring to Washington were added later.

The full set of stanzas, entitled "The Yankee's Return from Camp," appear to date from the latter part of 1775, after the battle of Bunker Hill, when the Continental army, under General Washington's command, was encamped in the vicinity of Boston.

The Tories were then singing to the old tune of "Kitty Fisher" these lines:

The original Tory quatrain referred to the smuggling of muskets into the country by the patriots. The stanzas substituted by some unknown Colonial rimester run as follows: