Talk:Yankee Doodle (traditional)

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History and Versions[edit]

There are a lot of different versions of this work, all mixed up as it were.

  • The melody appears to be mediaeval European in origin
  • A Middle Dutch harvest song "Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther" dates to the 15th century
  • The well known first verse, with the words "Nankee Doodle came to town upon a little pony", has been claimed to date to the English Civil War as a satire of Oliver Cromwell, but this is disputed
    • John W. Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia (1844) is is the source of this claim, cites "a writer in the Columbian Gazette" who claimed to have seen it in the collection of "a gentleman at Cheltenham in England".
    • Oscar Sonneck [1] calls Watson's work a "bouquet of historical gossip and blunder".
    • Edward F. Rimbault in his article "American National Songs" (1876) also doubts this account
    • S. Foster Damon in Yankee Doodle (1959) says "The theory . . . has been discredited"
  • Richard Shuckburgh supposedly 'wrote the song' in 1755, according to "the earliest sources" (Sonneck), but this is also disputed
    • Sonneck's source is '"The Origin of Yankee Doodle" published in a Farmer and Moore’s Collections in July 1824 (vol. 3, 217-18) by an anonymous reporter whose source was "an old file of the Albany Statesman, edited by N. H. Carter," who cites "the recollection of some of our oldest inhabitants" and "my worthy ancestor, who relates to me the story."' [2]
    • The version Sonneck puts forth as Shuckburgh's [3] begins "Brother Ephraim sold his Cow And bought him a Commission"
    • Leo Lemay believes that the "Brother Ephraim" verses "were in oral circulation as a song by the end of the 1740s" ( "The American Origins of "Yankee Doodle." 1976)
  • The "standard" version (minus the famous verse about macaroni) was "The Farmer and his Son’s return from a visit to the CAMP" traditinally attributed to Edward Bangs
    • 'The attribution of these verses to Edward Bangs rests on a note from Judge Thomas Dawes to Edward Everett Hale’s father, editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser (1824)' [4]
    • Eight verses of this are taken from the Shuckburg version
  • There are also other songs popularly sung to this tune, notably "Ye Gallant Sons of Liberty"

Useful historical sources:

—Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:58, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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