Show I NKEElQOODlE N OLD CHANT 1 Uncle Sams Favorite Tune Has Belonged inTiirnto l the K GreatFamilies > 1 of the Caucasian Race j BY S JOSEPH KINNEY I Yankee Doodle is one of the oldest songs in the world and at different I periods of an unparalleled career has belonged to England to the once vast i empire of Holland and to the Roman Catholic church where it probably originated somewhere about the year 5 I jr i I I I I I 1Itiic 1I 1I 1 I I = z c i = = THE MOi 1200 A D If you happen to be a musician mu-sician and do not believe that such an undignified ditty ever could have been intended for solemn purposes play it over on a pipe organ very simply and slowly and as the majesty of a grand old papal chant fills your soul all your doubts will vanish away Several hundred years ago the good people of Holland thought so much of Yankee Doodle that they adopted the j tune for a harvest song and made up new words for it Mary Mapes Dodge f gives one of the verses in Hans I Brinker Yankee dideo dudle down I Dideo ilidel launteiv Yankee viver voover vown Botevmelt und taunter Nobody knows exactly what this verse meant but the lines Interest us because they are primely responsible i for the word Yankee etc for the familiar English version of Yankee Doodle Soon after being first sung this quaint verse became so popular among all classes In Holland that it became a truly national song I was sung In livelier time than the old chant which j H i DUE PEA it supplanted While the great naval war of the sixteenth century was in progress the English under Admiral Drake caught I the tune Much to the surprise of everybody every-body England broke the mighty sea power of Holland and when the fighting fight-ing was over the English people sang mccking parodies of the old song against its hated authors Yankee was understood to mean a Dutchman Since the Dutch were sharp traders the popular meaning of the word came to be a shrewd hardheaded ungracious ungra-cious sort of a fellow Holland then tried to forget the song and I thus passed into the hands of another nation na-tion All England sang varying words to i till Oliver Cromwells time But one 1 I q mr nK yfl Vi sr 5 J = G 4 1 I i II t D t l l CSG2Tf7ZLl4 ENTERING OXPOSD i day the day that the great reformer I rode into Oxfordrat the head of the I rebels to battle l with the kings arm t I I he wore an immense ostrick feather fastened to his hat by 1 Jjand of heavy I silk maccarcni cord iark c Doodle then being a term of contemptuous I ridicule one of the courtiers of the J T L JYr boastful kind composed the famous refrain lb I Yankee Doodle came to town Riding on a pony P Stucka pnY his hat n called it maccaronl 4 This rhyme did no hold Its first pop uiarity very long because the rebels ver Iong successful and probably j would have been forgotten entirely had not the old kings son returned to p < wer a few years later Meanwhile th reformer i re-former had sung thetune te mLny innocent I in-nocent nonsense verses which soon spread to America I The best known of these was Lydia Fishers jig which made its apparar i in New England about the year 1713 and became famous as a dance song The words ran Bucky Locket lost her pocket Dyda Fisher found i Not a bit of money In it Only binding round It they Locket was vary popular till 1775iwhen British regulars were encamped en-camped on Boston Common and fia na < tiVs of the city and surrounding towns were organizing Into companl undev John Hancock of minute men Ha otk ninute yet there had been no r1 war the feeling was very bitter amvg the cplonists who were held in rsi j 1L T i l < I 7 N MZffTTCE tEN AT LEXINGTON contempt by the soldiers that they ictire taunted with the familiar tune to the words Yankee Doodle came to town For to buy a ln locke lock-e will tar and feather him And so we will John Hancock This madp the colonists so angry ag I that they declined any lurgor to sing an air put to such conten tuous words against themselves A frw weeks later something happened that changed the r minds for it was the destiny of Yankee Yan-kee Doodle to become Apparently fr ever the undisputed prop of America Amer-ica In April 1775 Lord Percy marched out of Boston with a brigade of Br t ish regulars to disperse the rebels assembled sembled at Lexington and Concord Amid cheering anl Hying flags the I bands played Yankee Doodle and the I redcoated soldiers sang boastfully the I old words which had vainly ridicule 1 i Oliver Cromwell over a hundred years before Perhaps when they hpgan t > sing they had forgotten how even b fore Cromwells time the tune had been turned against its very authors He must have remembered before returning return-ing to Boston for at Lexington th vaunted soldiers of King George HO routed by a handful of patriots who when they saw how things were going go-ing went wild with joy and taking the words right out of the mouths of their adversaries shouted in exultation the song which had been aimed at them in contempt During the flight back to camp the regulars were peppered with shot from behind stone walls and trees s much to their own discomfort that Lord Percy in a fit of disgust next morning confessed that after marching out to the tune of Yankee Doodle they had danced to it all the way home One of the latest and aptest historical if not literary versions o Yankee Dole is a stanza said to have bern suns by some of the rough riders inC in-C after the surrender of Santiago I ran something like this Yankee Dcodle came to town Wearing striped pants on But Spain she saw g many stars That now they need expansion Yankee Doodle has already be 1 Yik j vtW1 Lrj COSEVZLT THE ROUGH RIDER nge1 to the three great families of the aucnsian race the Latin the Teuton j and the AngloSaxon In seven centuries cen-turies it has been carried into the heart r four o me greatest political powers I i history Now that expansion is a iomished fact who can tell what I ew freaks desliny will play with it = J |