The tune shares with ' Jack and Jill' and English language nursery rhyme ' Lucy Locket'. The earliest known version of the lyrics comes from 1755 or 1758, as the date of origin is disputed: Upon their return to Boston, one asked his brother officer how he liked the tune now, - 'Dang them', returned he, 'they made us dance it till we were tired' - since which Yankee Doodle sounds less sweet to their ears.

After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, a Boston newspaper reported: Ī bill was introduced to the House of Representatives on J recognizing Billerica, Massachusetts, as 'America's Yankee Doodle Town'. According to Etymology Online, 'the current version seems to have been written in 1776 by Edward Bangs, a Harvard sophomore who also was a Minuteman.' He wrote a ballad with 15 verses which circulated in Boston and surrounding towns in 1775 or 1776. Īccording to one account, Shuckburgh wrote the original lyrics after seeing the appearance of Colonial troops under Colonel Thomas Fitch, the son of Connecticut Governor Thomas Fitch. By 1781, Yankee Doodle had turned from being an insult to being a song of national pride. It was also popular among the Americans as a song of defiance, and they added verses to it that mocked the British troops and hailed George Washington as the Commander of the Continental army.

The British troops sang it to make fun of their stereotype of the American soldier as a Yankee simpleton who thought that he was stylish if he simply stuck a feather in his cap. It was written at Fort Crailo around 1755 by British Army surgeon Richard Shuckburgh while campaigning in Rensselaer, New York. The song was a pre- Revolutionary War song originally sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, disorganized colonial ' Yankees' with whom they served in the French and Indian War. Peter McNeil, a professor of fashion studies, claims that the British were insinuating that the colonists were lower-class men who lacked masculinity, emphasizing that the American men were womanly. In British conversation, the term 'Yankee doodle dandy' implied unsophisticated misappropriation of upper-class fashion, as though simply sticking a feather in one's cap would transform the wearer into a noble. The term pejoratively referred to a man who 'exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion' in terms of clothes, fastidious eating, and gambling. The term macaroni was used to describe a fashionable man who dressed and spoke in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner. The macaroni wig was an example of such Rococo dandy fashion, popular in elite circles in Western Europe and much mocked in the London press. A real Character at the late Masquerade', mezzotint by Philip Dawe, 1773 They notably wore silk strip cloth, stuck feathers in their hats, and carried two pocket watches with chains-'one to tell what time it was and the other to tell what time it was not'. A self-made dandy was a British middle-class man who impersonated an aristocratic lifestyle. Dandies were men who placed particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisure hobbies. The Macaroni wig was an extreme fashion in the 1770s and became slang for being a fop. The term Doodle first appeared in English in the early 17th century and is thought to be derived from the Low German dudel, meaning 'playing music badly', or Dödel, meaning 'fool' or 'simpleton'. It contained mostly nonsensical words in English and Dutch: 'Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther.' Farm laborers in Holland were paid 'as much buttermilk ( Botermelk) as they could drink, and a tenth ( tanther) of the grain'. The earliest words of 'Yankee Doodle' came from a Middle Dutch harvest song which is thought to have followed the same tune, possibly dating back as far as 15th-century Holland.

The melody of the song may have originated from an Irish tune 'All the way to Galway' in which the second strain is identical to Yankee Doodle. The tune of 'Yankee Doodle' is thought to be much older than the lyrics, being well known across western Europe, including England, France, Netherlands, Hungary, and Spain.

Dooble traduction