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Show Origin of 'Yankee Doodle' Is Traced to Dutch Words Meaning 'Little John's Toot' . "Yankee," Pike said, quite likely came from "Jan-tje," meaning "Little "Lit-tle John." "Doodle" probably came from "doedel" 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 "Jan-tje Doedel," meaning "Little John's toot." From "The Pleasures of Publishing" (Columbia University Univer-sity Press). 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 de-termined with certainty. So Harold Har-old Davis reminds us in the current issue of American Speech. Mr. Davis reviews the various arguments ar-guments and shows that any number num-ber of derivations have been suggested, sug-gested, 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 be-longed 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 rom Holland in 1864, "To the Ed. of the Boston Advertiser. This letter reports on Pike's investiga-ra investiga-ra i into "Yankee Doodle" and a St enjoyable letter it Here, we can only give you a summary. |