And there I saw a pumpkin shell
As big as mother’s basin;
And every time they sent one off,
They scampered like tarnation.
I saw a little bar’el, too,
Its heads were made of leather;
They knocked on it with little plugs,
To call the folks together.
And there was Captain Washington,
With grand folks all about him;
They says he’s grown so tarnal proud,
He cannot ride without them.
He had on his meeting-clothes,
And rode a slapping stallion,
And gave his orders to the men,—
I guess there was a million.
And then the feathers in his hat,
They were so tarnal fine-ah,
I wanted peskily to get
To hand to my Jemima.
And then they’d fife away like fun
And play on cornstalk fiddles;
And some had ribbons red as blood
All wound about their middles.
The troopers, too, would gallop up,
And fire right in our faces;
It scared me a’most to death
To see them run such races.
And then I saw a snarl of men
A-digging graves, they told me,
So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,—
They allowed they were to hold me.
It scared me so I hooked it off,
Nor stopped as I remember,
Nor turned about, till I got home,
Locked up in mother’s chamber.
It is certainly the tune of Yankee Doodle, and not the words of this old song, which captured the fancy of the country and held its sway in America for nearly a hundred and fifty years.