Confound tall Jemmy's plot,
          Pope, French, and Spanish knot,
               Confound them all:
          Villains notorious,
          Their fears inglorious,
          Never shall conquer us,
               Confound them all.

It was a fortunate accident, if it were not
a profound piece of policy, by which the
present royal house took possession of the
song of their enemies, and turned to their
own glory that which was intended for their
shame.

The origin of Yankee Doodle is about as
mysterious. Nobody knows its authorship,
but almost everbody knows its value to the
American people, and how well the air
expresses their buoyant and aggressive spirit of
nationality. The words, "Yankee Doodle,"
or " Dawdle," according to some etymologists,
seem to have been originally
employed as a term of contempt by the
English towards the Americans, in the days
immediately preceding the Great Revolution,
which culminated in the Independence
of the United States. Others, again, claim
that the words are a corruption of an old
Irish song, called " Nunkie," or Uncle
Doodle, written in derision of Oliver Cromwell,
when he was carrying fire and sword
through that unhappy country; while a
third set of men, claiming to be learned in
derivations, assert, on the authority of
O'Brien, the historian of the Round Towers
of Ireland, that Yankee Doodle is a
perversion of two Persian words, " Yanki
Dooniah," signifying the "New World."
It seems, on the authority of the late
Mr. T. Moncrieff, the author of Tom and
Jerry, and countless other farces and
plays, who made it his pleasure in the
closing years of his life, when afflicted with
blindness, to investigate the history and
origin of old tunes, that the air was
composed for the drum and fife about the
middle of the eighteenth century, by the
Fife-Major of the Grenadier Guards. The
air was not intended for a song, but for a
march, and it was long after it had become
familiar to the ears of the people in towns
where British regiments were stationed that
words became associated with it.
"Probably," says Mr. Moncrieff, " the first person
who brought about the alliance between
the air and the rhymes was a nursemaid—
fond of military display as the nurse-maids
of a hundred and twenty years ago
were as well as those of our own day."

          Yankee Doodle came to town
             On a Kentish pony,
          He stuck a feather in his hat,
             And called him Maccaroni.

The word "Maccaroni" in this well-known
nursery ditty suggests the period of the
composition to have been between 1750 and
1770, or thereabouts, when, according to
Grose, in his Dictionary of the Vulgar
Tongue, there was a club in London, called
"The Maccaroni," composed of gentlemen
who had made the grand tour, and were
fond of Italian cookery. These gentlemen
were the " swells" of the period, and prided
themselves on the fashion and elegance of
their dress. Hence, a person foppishly
dressed and in the extreme of the fashion
was called a " Maccaroni." The story of
the adoption of the air by the Americans
has been told in various ways. The British
soldiers in America had, it appears, a song
to this tune during the war of Independence,
of which the following stanzas—very
poor doggrel, indeed—are specimens:

          There was Captain Washington,
             Upon a slapping stallion
          A-giving orders to his men,
             I guess there was a million.

          And then the feathers in his cap,
             They looked so tarnal fine-a;
          I wanted pe'skily to get
             And give 'em to Jemima.

When the British troops under the Marquis
of Cornwallis were defeated by the Americans,
and on their surrender were allowed to
retire through the American lines, with their
arms reversed, the Americans, in unconscious
imitation of the tactics of the House of
Hanover, borrowed a tune from their foes,
and struck up Yankee Doodle, as a taunt in
the hour of victory; and made it national,
then and for evermore.

The two other patriotic songs of the
Americans—songs of some literary pre-
tensions—Hail Columbia, and the
Star-spangled Banner, have never obtained the
same popularity as their homely predecessor.
In matters of national song,
popularity, like kissing, goes by favour; and
the race is not always to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong. If further proof
were needed that a song cannot be made
to order, but must grow, like liberty itself,
it might be found in the fact, that late in
the year 1861, when the heart of the
Northern people had been "fired" (such
was the expression of the time) by the
attack of the South on Fort Sumter,
and a song to replace Yankee Doodle
seemed to some highly patriotic Americans
to be greatly needed, a reward was
offered for the best lyric poem and
the best melody that the literary and
musical genius of America could produce.
Upwards of twelve hundred compositions