#190 - Yankee Doodle

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• Composer:
  • traditional
• Early Arrangements
• Photos
• MIDI | show
  
• Incipit: 511231327112317511234321756711
• Condensed Incipit: 51231327123175123432175671
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• Lyrics:
  Father and I went down to eamp,
  Along with Captain Gooding;
  And there we saw the men and boys,
  As thiek as hasty pudding.
  
  chorus:
  Yankee doodle, keep it up,
  Yankee doodle dandy;
  Mind the music and the step,
  And with the girls be handy.
  
  There was Captain Washington
  Upon a slapping stallion,
  A-giving orders to his men,
  I guess there was a million.
  
  And then the feathers on his hat,
  They looked so' tarnal fin-a,
  I wanted pockily to get
  To give to my Jemima.
  
  And then we saw a swamping gun,
  Large as a log of maple;
  Upon a deuced little cart,
  A load for father's cattle.
  
  And every time they shoot it off,
  It takes a horn of powder;
  It makes a noise like father's gun,
  Only a nation louder.
  
  I went as nigh to one myself,
  As' Siah's underpinning;
  And father went as nigh agin,
  I thought the deuce was in him.
  
  We saw a little barrel, too,
  The heads were made of leather;
  They knocked upon it with little clubs,
  And called the folks together.
  
  And there they'd fife away like fun,
  And play on cornstalk fiddles,
  And some had ribbons red as blood,
  All bound around their middles.
  
  The troopers, too, would gallop up
  And fire right in our faces;
  It scared me almost to death
  To see them run such races.
  
  Uncle Sam came there to change
  Some pancakes and some onions,
  For' lasses cake to carry home
  To give his wife and young ones.
  
  But I can't tell half I see
  They kept up such a smother;
  So I took my hat off, made a bow,
  And scampered home to mother.
  
  Cousin Simon grew so bold,
  I thought he would have cocked it;
  It scared me so I streaked it off,
  And hung by father's pocket.
  
  And there I saw a pumpkin shell,
  As big as mother's basin;
  And every time they touched it off,
  They scampered like the nation.
  
  
  • traditional
• See also:
  • #2090 - 1. Yankee Doodle / 2. My Old Kentucky Home

This song was adopted as the official state song of Connecticut in 1978.