“Unraveling the Mystery: Why Uncle Sam Really Calls Americans ‘Yankees’—The Surprising History You Never Knew!”
The first known documented instance of the tune and the words “Yankee” and “doodle dandy” being put together in the same song, it seems, was around the 1750s during the French and Indian War. Prior to fighting for their independence against the British, the colonists were, of course, subjects of the English. Therefore, when the French and Brits went to war over territories in the New World in 1753, the colonists were recruited to join in on the English side.
Legend has it, whether true or not is anybody’s guess as no known hard, direct documented evidence has survived supporting this oft-told story, that a British army surgeon named Dr. Richard Shuckburg (who is known to have existed) saw the colonist recruits amble up to join the regular soldiers. Compared to the well-assembled and well-manicured English army, the colonists were a mess. Wearing “fashions that hadn’t been seen in England in a hundred years” and holding every weapon except those “familiar to the fresh, well-drilled British troops,” Dr. Shuckburg couldn’t help but laugh… and write a song. While not exactly the song we’ve come to know, the song that supposedly inspired Yankee Doodle, whether actually written by Dr. Shuckburg or not, went like this:
Brother Ephraim sold his cow
And bought him a commission
And then he went to Canada
To fight for the nation;
But when Ephraim,
he came home
He proved an arrant coward,
He wouldn’t fight the
Frenchmen there
For fear of being devoured.
Sheep’s head and vinegar
Buttermilk and tansy
Boston Is a Yankee town,
Sing “Hey, doodle dandy!”
