It’s Patriot’s Day in New England (formerly April 19th, now the third Monday in April — today both). Patriot’s Day commemorates the action at Lexington and Concord on this date in 1775, when British troops marching to arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams were met with armed resistance, first at Lexington Green where “the shot heard ’round the world was fired,” and then at Concord where the British were forced to turn back to Boston. It was the beginning of the American War for Independence.
The Library of Congress informs us that:
On April 19, 1775, troops under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Percy, played “Yankee Doodle” as they marched from Boston to reinforce British soldiers already fighting the Americans at Lexington and Concord. Whether sung or played on that occasion, the tune was martial and intended to deride the colonials:
Yankee Doodle came to town,
For to buy a firelock;
We will tar and feather him
And so we will John Hancock.(CHORUS)
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle Dandy,
Mind the Music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.There are numerous conflicting accounts of the origin of “Yankee Doodle.” Some credit its melody to an English air, others to Irish, Dutch, Hessian, Hungarian and Pyrenean tunes or a New England jig. Its first American verses are attributed to British military surgeon, Dr. Richard Schackburg. Tradition holds that Schackburg invented his lyrics in 1755 while at the home of the Van Rensselaer family attending a wounded prisoner of the French and Indian War.
“Yankee Doodle’s” catchy tune has allowed for seemingly endless adaptation and expansion. This early verse, probably Schackburg’s, comments on the difference between the commissioned officers of the British military and those of the motley dressed Americans who then fought with them against the French:
There is a man in our town,
I pity his condition,
He sold his oxen and his sheep
To buy him a commission.“Yankee Doodle” was well known in the New England colonies before Lexington and Concord but only after the skirmishes there did the American militia appropriate it. Tradition holds that the colonials began to sing it as they forced the British back to Boston on April 19, 1775, after the battles of Lexington and Concord. It is documented that the American’s sang the following verse at Bunker Hill:
Father and I went down to camp,
along with Captain Good’in,
And there we see the men and boys
as thick as hasty puddin’.As George Washington received his commission and took command of the nascent Continental Army on Cambridge Common, additional verses evolved and were incorporated:
And there was Captain Washington,
And gentlefolks about him,
They say he’s grown so tarnal proud,
He will not ride without them.and
And there was Captain Washington
upon a slapping stallion,
A giving orders to his men;
I guess there was a million.By the end of the summer of 1775, the colonists had confined the British army to Boston and destroyed the royal governor’s power. An 18th century copy of “Yankee Doodle,” published in London, reflected this triumph. The following verse was included under the published title “Yankee Doodle; or, (as now christened by the Saints of New England) The Lexington March.”
Sheep’s Head and Vinegar,
ButterMilk and Tansy,
Boston is a Yankee town,
Sing Hey Doodle Dandy.By 1777, “Yankee Doodle” had certainly become an unofficial American anthem. Following General Burgoyne’s surrender of British troops to the Continental Army on October 17, 1777, British officer Thomas Anburey wrote:
. . . the name [of Yankee] has been more prevalent since the commencement of hostilities. . . . The soldiers at Boston used it as a term of reproach, but after the affair at Bunker’s Hill, the Americans gloried in it. Yankee Doodle is now their paean, a favorite of favorites, played in their army, esteemed as warlike as the Genadier’s March — it is the lover’s spell, the nurse’s lullaby . . . it was not a little mortifying to hear them play this tune, when their army marched down to our surrender.Fittingly, “Yankee Doodle” is also said to have been played at Yorktown, along with “The World Turned Upside Down,” when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at the end of the war.
After the Revolutionary War, “Yankee Doodle” surfaced in stage plays, classical music, and opera. An 1887 theater piece jokingly referred to the song having 199 verses.
The writer, producer, and composer George M. Cohan adapted “Yankee Doodle” for his Broadway play Little Johnny Jones, the story of an American jockey who goes to England to win a derby. A portion of Cohan’s 1904 play was incorporated into the biographical 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy staring James Cagney as Cohan, and again into the 1955 movie The Seven Little Foys starring Bob Hope and Cagney. [Eddie Foy (1854-1928) was vaudevillian who performed with his seven children.]