| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
FAMOUS SONGS
intercourse with Jonathan, and hearing him employ the word on all occasions when he desired to express his approbation, applied it sarcastically, and called him Yankee Jonathan. It soon became a slang phrase among the col-legians to designate a simple, awkward person; thence it spread over the country till from its currency in New England it was at length taken up and applied to the New Englanders indiscriminately. It was in consequence of this, says a recent writer, that the song called " Yankee Doodle" was composed. As this last statement is erroneous, it will be just as well to take the rest of the story with a pinch of salt.
From Sir George Grove's " Dictionary of Music and Musicians" I extract the following: "The origin of the American national air is enveloped in almost as great obscurity as that which surmounts the authorship of i God Save the King.' Though the song is but little more than a century old, the number of different ac-counts of its origin which are given in American works is extremely bewildering." Precisely, each " authority" seems to have lighted upon a first legend concerning it. One writer says, " The time-honoured tune of ' Yankee Doodle/ which was our only national anthem in con-i35 |
||