ORIGIN OF YANKEE DODDLE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1522, 12 March 1886, Page 3

ORIGIN OF YANKEE DODDLE.

"Yankee Doodle" was the theme of an interesting paper read by George H. Moore, L.L.D., before the Now York Historical Society. An audience completely filling the hall listened to the reading with unabated interest. "The subject," said Mr Moore, "naturally divides itself into two parts; first, as to the origin of Yankee, and, second, concerning the time with which the word is indissolubly linked. Gordon, writing in 1775, said that Yankee was the favourite word with one Jonathan Hastings, living in Cambridge in 1713, and used as a term of excellence. The students at Harvard thus became acquainted with it, and linking it with Hastings, from whom ! they hired horses, it became a byword j and was scattered over the country. j There is little or no authority to rest this statement of the origin upon. The first registered Yankee was one William Marr, a slave in the Carolina?, I who, in an advertisement in a pmall i English paper in 1725, is thus called." j Mr Moore then passed over in rapid succession the various supposed Indian derivatives of the word, including that ; in Irving's " History of New York," I and the hitherto accepted authority of |of the Moravian missionary in Pennsylvania that it was a corruption of Yengeese, the Indian phonetic spell- ; ing of English, and continued : " The word is not Indian or Greek, but it is pure Dutch, expressive of contempt, and probably the most so in the vocabulary of the early New York Dutch ; ' Yaukin meant in that ': dialect to grumble, snarl, or yelp, and ; its derivative noun yanker meant a \ howling cur. It was not in use save ainoug the lower classes, for reasons ! which now shut out slang from use by educated people, but it was a well-1 known word. In the collisions between i the New Englanders and the New York Dutch bad blood was roused, and the New Euglauders despised the . Dutch, while the latter abominated the former, and both very forvidly. Deuce the u?e of the word to indicate the i coLtempt which existed. Every circum- j stance points to its birth in the collisions between the Dutch and the! colonists To this day tho Yankees are looked upon with distrust by the ■ remnants of the real Dutchmen now outside New England. " Tho word was well known before j the tune," continued Mr Moore, " but! the latter umjuestionably camo from j Eugland, despite the assertions that it is a well known Netherland peasant ; song, or that Kossuth, when here, j recognised it as a Hungarian dance, or j that it is known as the ancient sword I dance of the Biscayans. The words and tune wero undoubtedly first wedded together by Dr. Richard I Shuckberg, who was connected with! the British army when the colonial troops from New England marched in- j to camp at Albany to join the British regulars on the way to fiuht the | Frmch. The doctor knew of the tune i as' Fisher's Jig,' of wbich a verse ran .

Luc.r Lrdia Fisbcr 'ound it, etc.

The appearance of the troops called down the derision of the British officers, and soon the hit of the doctor became known throughout the army ae a method of showing the contempt for the colonials, and this continued

until after Lexington, the British troops leaving in U75, when they tarred and feathered one Thomas Ditcon in Boston, marching to the tune, as tho best known way of heaping contempt on the Yankees. This was changed at Lexington when the British commander was asked how he liked the tune and answered : ' Uow they did make us dance to it!' Doodle," Mr Moore said, "always meant a trifler, and is thus referred to in the 1 Lancashire Hornpipe,' written in 1022."

lie closed his paper by reliting the incident at the surrender of C< rnwallis when the British, not wishing to surrender to the despised colonials, turn.'d to the i'rench contingent and prepared to ground their arms. Seeing this, Lafayette ordered the French bands to play " Yankee Doodle," and to this tune the arms were laid down and the Revolution ended.