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The folklore of Yankee Doodle encompasses the song, but also a larger tradition of American perceptions of the British and vice versa, which became a part of American identity by the Revolutionary and early national periods. According to documents in the Music Division of the Library of Congress, there are many theories regarding the origins of the words “Yankee” and “Doodle.”
One theory suggests that “Yankee” (or “Yankey”) was derived from “Nankey,” which can be found in an unpleasant jingle about Oliver Cromwell and his mid-seventeenth-century Roundhead supporters in Parliament’s battle against King Charles I. Another possibility is that the Indians corrupted the pronunciation of “English,” resulting in “Yengees.” A “doodle,” moreover, was a silly person or country bumpkin. It was also a derivation of “do little,” meaning a fool or simpleton.
Along with the many stories about the origin of “Yankee Doodle,” there is a great deal of folklore about people who have sung its famous lyrics. Its first American verses are attributed to British military surgeon Dr. Richard Schackburg who, sources claim, penned his lyrics in 1755 while attending a wounded prisoner of the French and Indian War at the home of the Van Rensselaer family. Schackburg’s lyrics poked fun at the colonials who fought alongside the British troops.
In 1909, the American musicologist Oscar Sonneck further explored the origins of “Yankee Doodle.” He found a reference to the title and famous chorus, without music, in a libretto for Andrew Barton’s 1767 New York comic opera The Disappointment, or the Force of Credulity; an elderly man anxious to discover a buried treasure sang the original stanza. Others credit the melody to an English air, to Irish, Dutch, Hessian, Hungarian, and Pyrenean tunes, or to a New England jig.
The first complete rotation of the verses in America appeared in the New York Journal on October 12, 1768. The British continued to use the song in derision of American troops during the American Revolution as the British and their Loyalist supporters sang the chorus along with a number of new verses as a slur against the rebellious colonists. Troops under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Percy played “Yankee Doodle” as they marched from Boston to reinforce British soldiers at the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. When the battle was over, Yankees returned the favor and sang it to the retreating enemy to the disgust of the British general, Thomas Gage, who exclaimed in exasperation that he never wanted to hear the tune again. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, American patriots co-opted the song as their own. Edward Bangs, a member of Harvard’s Class of 1777, rearranged some of the earlier stanzas and added new ones. “Yankee Doodle” soon became one of the most popular of colonial anthems. As an American patriotic air, it was later sung by American school children as part of their national heritage.
By 1777, “Yankee Doodle” had become an unofficial American anthem. The best known version of “Yankee Doodle,” which satirically describes the wandering visit of a thoroughly provincial New England farm boy to Washington’s army besieging Boston, was adopted by American troops everywhere as a rallying tune. After the surrender of the British at the Battle of Saratoga, Continental Army fifers and drummers reportedly played the tune in triumph. Another legend is that the tune was performed at the time of Cornwallis’s surrender to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781.
After the Revolutionary War, “Yankee Doodle” surfaced in stage plays, classical music, and opera. The first known British printing of “Yankee Doodle” was in Scotland between 1775 and 1776 by James Aird, a Glasgow music dealer, in Volume One of his Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, for the Fife, Violin, or German Flute. One version of “Yankee Doodle” was mentioned in the first American opera libretto, Andrew Barton’s The Disappointment (1767). An early printing of the tune in America was as one of the themes of Benjamin Carr’s Federal Overture (1794), the same year that the music to “Yankee Doodle” was published in the United States. Topical lyrics were composed during both the War of 1812 and the War with Mexico but the tune was retained. In several instances, black Union Army troops during the Civil War marched off to battle as a band played “Yankee Doodle,” but the song became a negative and unbearable tune to Southerners as it represented humiliation and defeat to the occupied South. It was hissed and forbidden in many theaters.
“Yankee Doodle” is also present in popular culture, often featuring a playful twist on its title or its tune. George M. Cohan revived the tune in his “Yankee Doodle Boy” (better known by the first line of its chorus: “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy”) of 1904, which later reached an even larger audience with the film version of Cohan’s story under the same title in 1942, with James Cagney in an Oscar-winning performance and a rousing version of the title song. There was an earlier version of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as a musical production in 1898, with its parody, “Mr. Johnson’s Chowder: March Song.” California’s Federal Theatre Project (1936) presented its production of Follow the Parade with the song “Try a Yankee Doodle Cocktail.”
Bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa was very happy to perform the song in many of his arrangements and patriotic marches. In one case, he used it as a counter-melody in his march “America First.” As late as World War II, other songwriters were encouraging home front Americans to get a “Yankee Doodle Spirit” as they all cooperated in the war effort to defeat the Axis Powers. Although originally “Yankee Doodle” was a comic song and a parody, the state of Connecticut adopted “Yankee Doodle” as its state song in 1978. Today, “Yankee Doodle” is a popular standard, especially with high school bands at football games and at patriotic events, as it remains one of the nation’s most enduring cultural icons.
The Boston Tea Party (1773)
On December 16, 1773, radical patriots disguised as Mohawks dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest both the tax on tea and the hegemony of the East India Company. This “Boston Tea Party,” seen by the British as a criminal act of hooliganism, has risen to iconic status in the American mythic imagination, representing the fearless act of patriotic Americans to stand up for themselves and to reject the unfair policies of “taxation without representation” imposed by the fiat of Parliament over the colonies. Dressing in costumes and describing this act of civil disobedience as a “party” underscores the same subversive colonial humor that caused Americans to embrace the originally derisive song “Yankee Doodle.” “Tea Party” today has been embraced as an icon of confrontation against what is seen as oppressive taxes and policies imposed by the fiat of Washington.
C. Fee
Martin J. Manning
See also Attucks, Crispus; Founding Myths; Key, Francis Scott; Uncle Sam; Washington, George
Further Reading
Dunaway, David K. 1987. “Music and Politics in the United States.” Folk Music Journal 5 (3): 268–294.
Fedor, Ferenz. 1976. The Birth of the Yankee Doodle. New York: Vantage Press.
Holsinger, M. Paul, ed. 1999. War and American Popular Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Kraske, Robert. 1972. America the Beautiful: Stories of Patriotic Songs. Champaign, IL: Garrard.
Murray, Stuart. 1999. America’s Song: The Story of “Yankee Doodle.” Bennington, VT: Images from the Past.
Sonneck, Oscar G. T. 1972. Report on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia,” “America,” and “Yankee Doodle.” New York: Dover.