YANKEE DOODLE. Father and I went down to camp And there we saw the men and boys, Yankee Doodle, keep it up, And there we see a thousand men 'The 'lasses they eat up every day Would keep our house all winter,They have so much that I'll be bound They eat whene'er they've a mind to. And there we see a whopping gun, As big as a log of maple, Mounted on a little cart,— A load for father's cattle. And every time they fired it off And made a noise like father's gun, 7 I went as near to it As 'Siah's underpinning; Father went as nigh agin, I thought the devil was in him. Cousin Simon grew so bold, I thought he meant to cock it; And Captain Davis had a gun And there I saw a pumpkin shell I saw a little bar'el, too, Its heads were made of leather; They knocked on it with little plugs, To call the folks together. And there was Captain Washington, He had on his meeting-clothes, And then they'd fife away like fun The troopers, too, would gallop up, And then I saw a snarl of men A-digging graves, they told me, So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,- It scared me so I hooked it off, Nor stopped as I remember, Locked up in mother's chamber. It is certainly the tune of Yankee Doodle, and not the words of this old song, which captured the fancy of the country and held its sway in America for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The tune, however, is much older than that. It has been claimed in many lands. When Kossuth was in this country making his plea for liberty for Hungary, he informed a writer of the Boston Post that, when the Hungarians that accompanied him first heard Yankee Doodle on a Mississippi River steamer, they immediately recognized it as one of the old national airs of their native land, one played in the dances of that country, and they began to caper and dance as they had been accustomed to do in Hungary. It has been claimed also in Holland as an old harvest song. It is said that when the laborers received for wages as much buttermilk as they could drink, and a tenth of the grain," they used to sing as they reaped, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, the words, "Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther." From Spain, also, comes a claim. The American Secretary of Legation, Mr. Buckingham Smith, wrote from Madrid under date of June 3, 1858: The tune of Yankee Doodle, from the first of my showing it here, has been acknowledged, by persons acquainted with music, to bear a strong resemblance to the popular airs of Biscay; and yesterday, |