The tune, however, is much older than that. It has been claimed in many lands. When Kossuth was in this country making his plea for liberty for Hungary, he informed a writer of the Boston Post that, when the Hungarians that accompanied him first heard Yankee Doodle on a Mississippi River steamer, they immediately recognized it as one of the old national airs of their native land, one played in the dances of that country, and they began to caper and dance as they had been accustomed to do in Hungary.
It has been claimed also in Holland as an old harvest song. It is said that when the laborers received for wages “as much buttermilk as they could drink, and a tenth of the grain,” they used to sing as they reaped, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, the words,—
“Yanker, didel, doodle down,
Diddle, dudel, lanther,
Yanke viver, voover vown,
Botermilk und tanther.”
BOSTON COMMON
(Beacon Street Mall)
From Spain, also, comes a claim. The American Secretary of Legation, Mr. Buckingham Smith, wrote from Madrid under date of June 3, 1858: “The tune of Yankee Doodle, from the first of my showing it here, has been acknowledged, by persons acquainted with music, to bear a strong resemblance to the popular airs of Biscay; and yesterday, a professor from the north recognized it as being much like the ancient sword-dance played on solemn occasions by the people of San Sebastian. He says the tune varies in those provinces. The first strains are identically those of the heroic Danza Esparta of brave old Biscay.”
France puts in a claim, and declares that Yankee Doodle is an old vintage song from the southern part of that land of grapes; while Italy, too, claims Yankee Doodle for her own.
The probabilities are that it was introduced into England from Holland.
Yankee Doodle became an American institution in June, 1755. General Braddock, of melancholy fate, was gathering the colonists to an encampment near Albany for an attack on the French and Indians at Niagara. The countrymen came into camp in a medley of costumes, from the buckskins and furs of the American Indian to some quaint old-fashioned military heirloom of a century past. The British soldiers made great sport of their ragged clothes and the quaint music to which they marched. There was among these regular troops from England a certain Dr. Richard Shuckburg, who could not only patch up human bodies, but had a great facility in patching up tunes as well. As these grotesque countrymen marched into camp, this quick-witted doctor recalled the old air which was sung by the cavaliers in ridicule of Cromwell, who was said to have ridden into Oxford on a small horse with his single plume fastened into a sort of knot which was derisively called a “macaroni.” The words were,—
“Yankee Doodle came to town,
Upon a Kentish pony;
He stuck a feather in his cap,
Upon a macaroni.”