Yankee Doodle

“ I may not succeed in a contest with you, but I will die at my quarters before a man shall be taken from my ship!"
The crew gave three cheers, hastened with alacrity to their guns, and called for "Yankee Doodle." The captain of the Surprise, although one of the bravest officers in the British service, on hearing the determination of the Yankee, chose rather to continue on his cruise than do battle for dead men. ”

“ And for King George they would not care,
⁠Nor yet for his descendant.
⁠Yankee Doodle, &c.
British tars think that they can
⁠Whip Yankees one to two, sirs,
But only give us man to man,
⁠They'll see what we can do, sirs. ”

“ Men out there in the Northwest spoke of "passing the Yankee Doodle Glory" as men in other places speak of "passing the buck"; and now laughing Tom Graves was the owner.
But though he had had half-a-dozen chances of palming it off on newcomers fresh from the East he had always stoutly refused to do so. ”

“ Chorus—Yankee Doodle, etc.
Tho’ rough and little is his farm,
That little is his own, Sir,
His hand is strong, his heart is warm,
’Tis truth and honor’s throne, Sir.
Chorus—Yankee Doodle, etc.
His country is his pride and boast,
He’ll ever prove true blue, Sir,
When call’d upon to give his toast,
’Tis “Yankee-doodle-doo,” Sir.
Chorus—Yankee Doodle, etc.
The following verses are cited from an American Paper, “The Transcript,” in Willis’s Current Notes for 1852:—
The Origin of Yankee Doodle. ”

“ Yes, sir,” said he proudly, as he hummed,—
“There's not a man beneath the moon, Nor lives in any land he That hasn't heard the pleasant time Of Yankee doodle dandy! “In coolin' drinks, and clipper ships, The Yankee has the way shown! On land and sea 't is he that whips Old Bull and all creation.”
Quackinboss gradually dropped his voice, till at the concluding line the words sank into an undistinguishable murmur ”

“ Mr. Flood is a responsible authority and is not given to unqualified statements, so his claim for Irish origin deserves consideration.
“My publishers duly forwarded me your letter, and I have much pleasure in answering it, if only to vindicate the Irish origin of ‘Yankee Doodle.’ ... Marion Harland merely repeats the exploded myth as told for the past century in all published accounts of the origin of ‘Yankee Doodle’ until Charles I. and Cromwell Association was shown to be utterly absurd by Bartley Squire of the British Museum. ”

“ But the worst of it was, the infernal Yankee spoiled all the music I ever had in me; when I come out of the school, I thought the gals at home would have killed themselves laughin' at me. They said [Pg 26] I ground up Yankee Doodle and Old Hundred together, all in a hodge-podge, so I never sings to no one now but the dumb brutes in the stable, when they gits melancholy of a rainy day. Old Pete here raises his ears, and begins to snort the minute I raises a tune."
"Your singing-master was, like his scholar, an original." ”

“ When the British troops arrived at Boston in 1768 it was stated, under date of September 29 of that year, that "the Yankey Doodle Song was the Capital Piece in their Band of Music;" [113] and, much to the annoyance of the good people of Boston, the British persisted in playing the air at intervals for another seven years. As the "Father and I" song was written not earlier than 1775, obviously it could not have been "the original" Yankee Doodle song. In 1824, J. Farmer and J. B. Moore, believing that "the burlesque song . . . ”

“ If you can play the fife, I'll beat the drum; and if we are hidden from sight they may think there are troops ready to receive them if they come ashore, and so be afraid to land.'
"So they went around behind some sand-hills and played 'Yankee Doodle' in a lively way that had exactly the desired effect.
"The British ship had sent out boats filled with armed men who were pulling for the shore ”

“ All things are in harmony. A crow in the distance says caw, caw in a meditative voice, as if he, too, were thinking of days past; and not even the scream of a hen-hawk, off in the pine-woods, breaks the spell that is upon us. A quail whistles,—a true Yankee Bob White, to judge him by his voice,—and the white-eyed chewink (he is not a Yankee) whistles and sings by turns. The bluebird's warble and the pine warbler's trill could never be disturbing to the quietest mood. Only one voice seems out of tune: the white-eyed vireo, even to-day, cannot forget his saucy accent. ”

“ Loading a wagon with a plough, a bed, a barrel of salt meat, the indispensable supply of tea and molasses, a Bible and a wife, and with his axe on his shoulder, the Yankee sets out for the West, without a servant, without an assistant, often without a companion, to build himself a log hut, six hundred miles from his father's roof, and clear away a spot for a farm in the midst of the boundless forest.... He is incomparable as a pioneer, unequalled as a settler of the wilderness. ”

“ He has nothing chivalric about him and yet he is adventurous, and he loves a roving life. His imagination is active and original, producing, however, not poetry but drollery. The Yankee is the laborious ant; he is industrious and sober and, on the sterile soil of New England, niggardly ”

“ There have been races almost as exciting as a Harvard-Yale race when the boats of different nations have been dashing for a whale, which is prized at between three thousand and four thousand dollars. Many years ago an English, a French, a Dutch, and an American ship lay becalmed in the Pacific, when suddenly a whale was “raised.” All four ships lowered and raced across the waters, with the American in the rear. In a few minutes the Yankee passed the Dutchman, who yelled “donner und blitzen!” ”

“ A dazzling array of steel-headed boarding pikes formed a glittering crescent half around the main-mast. Her decks evinced the free use of the "holy-stone," and in snowy whiteness, would have put to the blush the unsoiled floors of the most fastidious Yankee housewife. Her rigging was not hung on pins, but run and coiled "man-o'-war fashion," upon her decks. Her long boat, amidships, was rather an ornament than an excrescence, as in most merchantmen. ”

“ New England Yankees are not always so filled with the Puritan spirit as to reject unlawful means of money-making. Even the Massachusetts common schools and prim Connecticut meeting-houses turn out their black sheep into the world. At Center Harbor, in New Hampshire, I met with an example of the “Yankee spawn” in a Maine man—a shrewd, sailor-looking fellow. ”

“ The Yankees have plundered us with their custom-houses and duties long enough.” An old gentleman here stopped us. “You will do me the greatest favour,” he said to one of our party who knew him, “if you will get me something to do for our glorious cause. Old as I am, I can carry a musket—not far, to be sure, but I can kill a Yankee if he comes near.” When he had gone, my friend told me the speaker was a man of fortune, two of whose sons were in camp at Morris’ Island, but that he was suspected of Union sentiments, as he had a Northern wife, and hence his extreme vehemence and devotion. ”

“ He paid no attention to the questions addressed to him, took no heed of the merriment (for men will jest on strange occasions) ; but kept his eyes shifting from the group of officers on the quarter-deck, to the oncoming vessel that was plunging heavily in the great seas. When he had seen the Spanish flag, his face had fallen; but Bill Roberts was standing close beside him.
"Never mind that, my lads!" he roared to those about him. "No one but a John Bull or a Yankee would bring his ship along like that; take my word for it, my hearties!" and then had come the order to shorten sail. ”

“ When the Yankee was convinced, by his farm paper or by the exhibitions, that a purebred animal was a good investment, his speculative spirit sent him to his banker to borrow a thousand dollars, and to a distant breeder to make what his more timid German neighbor would call a "mighty risky investment"—for the animal might die! ”

“ Camping out was no novelty, but fresh trout was a revelation, and that night we had no bad dreams under our canvas. The next evening found us preparing nearly, what a Yankee would call, two patent pails, of trout to take home to our friends and neighbors.
And here I am moved to say that ours is a noble fellowship; it is a gentle craft we cultivate, one that should beget brotherly love and all things charitable ”

“ If men were pigmies, they would be lost in the grass and rushes, and their children would be carried off by birds of prey. Every one can see, that, other things being as they are, man would suffer by being either much larger or smaller than he is.
Yankee Energy.—A few days since, a gentleman of the city of New York was standing near the canal, at Albany, when he saw a small yawl-boat approaching him, propelled by a lad about seventeen years of age. ”

“ He was making money as fast any Yankee is apt on such occasions, and it was a wonder to look at his coarse workmanship, that would hardly stick an opossum, though his pikes were meant for kangaroos and wild dogs. ”

“ At about the same time a shrewd Yankee came and saw the abundance of clams in the long stretches of beach at low tide, and began shipping them away by barrelfuls to Boston and New York. Since this gave work to some eight or ten men in the town, there was no ill-feeling, beyond perhaps a little envy at his cleverness. Between these two new industries, the village began to enjoy a queer kind of mouldering prosperity, so that people had no longer, in the words of Heber Griswold, to live through the winter on a greased rag.
One of the earliest neighbors to go to work for the Yankee was Marden. ”

“ For four months she remained in commission, weaving the threads of a glorious record which will ever redound to the credit and honor of the Volunteer Naval Reserve. Truth is ever stranger than fiction, and the simple story of the boys of the gallant "Yankee," as set forth in the diary of Number Five of the After Port Gun, should appeal to the heart of every reader in this great country of ours—a country made grander and better and more potent in the world's history by the achievements of such brave lads as those who formed the crew of the "Yankee." ”

“ We waited three days for the arrival of Phillip's mule train, which was at Julesburg and with which we expected to proceed, but finally learned that it would not hazard an attempt to ford a river that had proved so disastrous to others. In the meantime we hunted sage hens and jack rabbits, which were numerous in that sage brush country.
It has often been said of Yankee mechanics that they are "Jacks of all trades and masters of none." Necessity has made them self-reliant. ”

“ I never miss any opportunity of killing a Yankee, no matter what I may be doing, or what the risk is to me. I can't help myself. Whenever I see a Yankee in range I let him have it. I never go near their lines without killing at least78 one. ”

“ Yankees can't afford the time. American shipmasters get nearly three weeks' more labor out of their crews, in the course of a year, than the masters of vessels from Catholic countries. As Yankees don't usually keep Christmas, and shipmasters at sea never know when Thanksgiving comes, Jack has no festival at all.
About noon, a man aloft called out ``Sail ho!'' and, looking off, we saw the head sails of a vessel coming round the point. As she drew round, she showed the broadside of a full-rigged brig, with the Yankee ensign at her peak. ”

“ No thin, weasel-faced Yankee was he, looking as if he had lived upon 'cute ideas and speculations all his life; yet Yankee he was by birth, ay, and in mind, too; for a more knowing fellow at a bargain never crossed the lakes to abuse British institutions and locate himself comfortably among despised Britishers. But, then, he had such a good-natured, fat face, such a mischievous, mirth-loving smile, and such a merry, roguish expression in those small, jet-black, glittering eyes, that you suffered yourself to be taken in by him, without offering the least resistance to his impositions. ”

“ Though, to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American whalers ”

“ He hoped the crew would wake up and take some interest in the voyage. If they were only determined to succeed, succeed they would, and they would soon be in ‘Yankee land’ with a good voyage.” At the close of this speech three hearty cheers were given; the men went forward in excellent spirits, threatening the sperm whales on Japan with complete annihilation.
An opportunity soon presented itself; and proved they were in earnest. On Tuesday, July 27th, we raised a “lone” whale, and in less than an hour from the time he was first seen he was lying alongside the ship, dead. ”

“ Ruffin snapped, "that's another question. The Yankees are a race of damned cowards and poltroons, sir. They won't fight."
Lee shook his head gravely.
"I've been in the service more than a quarter of a century, my friend. I've seen a lot of Yankees under fire. I've seen a lot of them die. And I know better. Your idea of a Yankee is about as correct as the Northern notion of Southern fighters. A notion they're beginning to exploit in cartoons which show an effeminate lady killer with an umbrella stuck in the end of his musket and a negro mixing mint juleps for him." ”

“ The monotony of work was broken on the ninth of May, when preparations were made to leave the yard. The destination was only Tompkinsville, but there was not a man on board but felt that, as the last hawser was cast off, we were fairly started on our cruise in search of action. As the "Yankee" was assisted away from the wharf by a Government tug, a number of friends gathered ashore cheered lustily and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. ”