“Unraveling the Mystery: Why Uncle Sam Really Calls Americans ‘Yankees’—The Surprising History You Never Knew!”
Over the next two centuries, that particular melody bounced around Europe and was re-appropriated for various other little jingles – like describing the struggles of English Puritans or used in nursery rhymes. For instance:
“Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Kitty Fisher found it, nothing in it, nothing in it, but the binding round it”
– a rhyme that may or may not have been written before the tune started being used for Yankee Doodle). Another theory is the Hessians were the ones who originally brought the tune to the colonies from Germany, where it was being used in a drinking song.
Much like the origin of the melody, where the well-known lyrics came from is also not definitively known. One popular theory is that similar lyrics were first used to make fun of Oliver Cromwell, the 17th century English political and military leader, for fancying himself a fashionable person. The purported lyrics are sometimes said to have begun
“Yankee doodle come to town, upon on a Kentish pony.”
However, this seems unlikely considering the word “Yankee” didn’t come along until years after Cromwell, with the first known documented instance appearing in 1683- used by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (today’s New York) to disparage their English colonist neighbors in Connecticut.
Stemming from the Dutch “Janke” meaning “Little John,” “Yankee” was definitely intended as a belittling remark and became the European way to describe all American colonists, more or less being the equivalent of calling someone a “country bumpkin”, “redneck,” or “dumb hick” today.
