And called it macaroni.
It has been asserted by English writers that the air and words of these lines are as old as Cromwell’s time. The only alteration is in making Yankee Doodle of what was Nankee Doodle. It is asserted that the tune will be found in the Musical Antiquities of England, and that Nankee Doodle was intended to apply to Cromwell, and the other lines were designed to “allude to his going into Oxford with a single plume, fastened in a knot called a macaroni.” The tune was known in New England before the Revolution as Lydia Fisher’s Jig, a name derived from a famous lady of easy virtue in the reign of Charles II., and which has been perpetuated in the following nursery-rhyme:—
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a bit of money in it,
Only binding round it.
The regulars in Boston in 1775 and 1776 are said to have sung verses to the same air:—
Yankee Doodle came to town,
For to buy a firelock;
We will tar and feather him,