The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-01-09
Yankee Doodle. rnr .

lNew Xork IimeS.I
 Yankee Doodle" was the theme of an interesting paper recently read by MT. George Fl. Moore, IL. D., before the New York Historical society. An aud. fence completely filling the hall listened to the reading with unabated interest. "The subject" said MT. Moore, "natur- ally divides itself into two parts first, as to the origin of Yankee, and, second, concerning the time with which the word is indissolubly linked. Gordon, writing g in I775, says Yankee was the favorite word of one Jonathan Hastings, living in Cambridge in I7I3, and used as a term of excellence. The students at Harvard thus became acquainted with it, and, link ing it with Hastings, from whom they hired horses, it became a byword and was scattered over the country. There is little or no authority to rest this state ment of the origin upon. The first reg istered Yankee was one William Mar, a slave in the Carolinas, who, in an adver- tisement in small English paper in I725, is thus called" MT. Moore then passed over in rapid succession the various sup posed Indian derivatives of the word, including that in lrving's History of New York;" and the hitherto accepted authority of the Morovian missionary in Pennsylvania that it was a corruptiea of Yengeese, the Indian phonetic spelling of English, and continued:
 "The word is net Indian or Greek, but pure Dutch, expressive of contempt and probably the most so in the vocabulary of the early New York Dutch. 'Yankin' meant in that dialect to grumble. snarl or yelP, and its derivative noun Tanker meant bowling cur It was not in use save among the lower classes, for reasons which now cut out slang from use by ed ucated people, but it was a we'll known word. In the collisions between the New Englanders and the New York Dutch bad blood was aroused, and the New Englanders despised the Dutch, while the latter abominated the former, and both very fervidly. Hence the use of the word to indicate the contempt which existed. Every circumstance point ed to its birth in the collisions between the Dutch and the colonists. To this day the Yankees are looked upon with distrust by the remnants of the real Dutchmen now outside New England.
 
 tune," continued Mir. Moore, "but the latter unquestionably came from Eng land, despite the assertions that it is well known Netherland peasant song, or that Kossuth, when here, recognized it as Hungarian dance, or that it is known as the ancient sword dance, of the Biscay- ans. The words and tune were undoubt- edly first welded together by Dr. Rich- ard Shuckberg, who was connected with the British army when the colonial troops from New England marched into camp at Albany to join the British regulars on the way to fight the French. The doctor knew of the tune as Fishers Jig,' of which verse ran
 "Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
 Lyda fisher found it, etc."
 The appearance of the troops called down the derision of the British officers, and soon the hit of the doctor became known throughout the army as a method of showing the contempt for the colonials, and this continued until after Lexington, the British troops leaving in I775, when they tarred and feathered one Thomas Ditson, in Boston, marching to the tune as the best known way of heaping con- tempt on the Yankees. This was changed at Lexington, when the British comman- der was asked how he liked the tune and answered: How they did make us dance to itl" Doodle, Mir. Moore said, always meant triAer, and is thus re- ferred to in the Lancashire hornpipe, written in 1922.
 He closed his paper by relating the incident at the surrender of Corn wallis when the British, not wishing to surrender to the despised colonials, turned to the French contingent and prepared to ground arms. Seeing this Lafayette ordered the French bands to play Yankee Doodle," and to this tune the arms were laid down and the revolution ended.