| Show origin of yankee doodle Is traced to dutch words meaning little johns toot for all our american pride and pleasure in the song yankee doodle neither the origin of the tune nor the derivation of the two words in the title has ever been determined ter mined with certainty so harold davis reminds us in a recent issue of american speech mr davis reviews the various arguments and shows that any number of derivations have been suggested but the real purpose of his article is to make known some new evidence it seems that there were recently discovered in the basement of the calais free library in calais maine 42 diary notebooks which once belonged to james S pike this pike was a versatile fellow having been a famous newspaper correspondent and american minister to holland from 1861 to 1866 in one of these notebooks was found a draft of a letter written from holland in 1864 to the ed of the boston advertiser this letter reports on pikes investigation into yankee doodle and a most enjoyable letter it is here we can only give you a summary yankee pike said quite likely came from jantje jantie jan tie meaning little john doodle probably came from diedel do edel which the dutch used as a part of their description of a scotch bagpipe it meant toot thus pike found the origins of yankee doodle in the dutch jantje jan diedel meaning little blittle johns toot from the pleasures of publishing columbia university press |
