Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle went to town,
A-Riding on a pony;
He stuck a feather in his hat,
And called it macaroni.
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy;
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy!

"Yankee Doodle" is a well-known American song, often sung with patriotic vigor. It wasn't always that way.


The tune began pre-Revolutionary War and was sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled colonial "Yankees" who served with them during the French and Indian War.

Let's take a look at the lyrics:

Yankee Doodle went to town,

The word "Yankee" was used as a derogatory term for colonists during this era. There are many possible origins for the word:

It was coined after the nickname "John Cheese" which was another mean nickname for the colonists since both John and Cheese were other derogatory names for colonists.

Jeez, they had a bunch of derogatory names for colonists. Hey! Even "colonist" was probably derogatory! It starts with "colon."

So mean.

"Yankee" also could have been taken from the Cherokee word for coward. The British had battled the Cherokee and thought the colonists cowards for not joining.

Or maybe there was a baseball team that couldn't win a World Series in the better part of a decade despite having the deck stacked so significantly in their favor that Las Vegas odds makers had them as the odds on favorite to win the series before the season even started.

Yeah, I'd hate to be called that. Tee hee hee.

Anyway, as for "doodle" it was a word that was commonly used as an insult for someone who was a simpleton. So the song is talking about a stupid Yankee. Not Jason Giambi, though, he hadn't even been born yet.

A-Riding on a pony;

See: a pony not a horse. A horse would be the more respectable thing to ride. A pony on the other hand tastes better.

He stuck a feather in his hat,
And called it macaroni.

This verse always puzzled me. Why did he think the feather was macaroni? I have tasted many a feather and it NEVER tasted like macaroni.
Then I found this on Wikipedia:
A macaroni, in mid-18th-century England, was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected manner. The term pejoratively referred to a person who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling.

See! He put a feather in his stupid hat and now he thought he was important.

Stupid doodle.

Here is the rest of the song:

Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy;
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy!

I am not sure what "with the girls be handy" but I can imagine. Oh yes, I can imagine. Whoo hooo! Be handy, doodle! Whoo hoo!

Anyway, today the song is the state anthem of Connecticut.

But it is much more famous for being the tune to which the Barney the Dinosaur theme is sung:

Barney is a dinosaur,
From our imagination,
And when he's tall he's what we call,
A dinosaur sensation.