“Yankee Doodle Dandy” Is Actually An Anti-Gay British Fight Song

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As we celebrate the Fourth of July, we remember that gays and lesbians have been a part of American history from the beginning: Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who fled sodomy charges in Prussia, was an integral member of the Continental Army, training the troops and serving as General George Washington’s chief of staff.

Some historical notes, though, are less inspiring—take the patriotic ditty “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Most of us know it as a silly children’s song used to teach about the War for Independence. But in The New York Times this weekend, David Segal revealed its much more insidious origins.

George M. Cohan popularized the tune with his adaptation, “The Yankee Doodle Boy,” from the 1904 musical Little Johnny Jones. But the original “Yankee Doodle” was sung by British troops during the Revolutionary War to suggest American soldiers were, in Segal’s words “gay and bumbling.”

The song is a play on the word “dandy,” referring to a fop or self-absorbed, overly stylish man. The “macaroni” mentioned in the chorus isn’t pasta, but rather a 18th century slang word for the British dandies who eschewed English drabness in favor of cinched waistcoats, tall white wigs, slippers, and colored stockings.

Philip Dawe

In another time, they might have been drag queens.

“Such a figure, essenced and perfumed, with a bunch of lace sticking out under its chin, puzzles the common passenger to determine the thing’s sex,” Town and Country declared of the macaronis in 1772. “And many a time an honest laboring porter has said, ‘By your leave, madam,’ without intending to give offense.’”

Assumptions about the macaronis sexuality was widespread: In the 1770s, gossip about gays in respectable society flooded Britain after the arrests of Captain Robert Jones on sodomy charges. An article in the Public Ledger declared “the country is over-run with Catamites, with monsters of Captain Jones’s taste, or, to speak in a language which all may understand, with MACCARONIES.”

Fight songs have been a part of war since history began, and the British had plenty that parodied their American foes. Segal reveals “Yankee Doodle Dandy” was actually the most popular chant of its day. A “yankee,” of course, is a derogatory term for an American. A “doodle,” now meaning a worthless drawing, referred to a fool or patsy. And a dandy was, well, a dandy.

So, essentially, the colonists were stupid faggots. Only they couldn’t even do that right:

Here’s the clincher: The doodle can’t pull it off. He thinks that sticking a feather in his cap will suffice to join Britain’s most effete club. In reality, he needs an elaborate costume. The subtext — actually, it might just be the text — is that this quintessential American is a homosexual so daft that he can’t even demonstrate his homosexuality.

The delicious irony is that, as the colonists began to win the war, they embraced “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as their own. After the Battle of Saratoga, an English officer reported hearing American troops singing the song in victory.

“’Yankee Doodle’ is now their paean, a favorite of favorites, played in their army… It is the lover’s spell, the nurse’s lullaby,” he wrote. “It was not a little mortifying to hear them play this tune, when their army marched down to our surrender.”

The point, says Segal, is not to stop singing “Yankee Doodle.” It’s to realize that reappropriating slurs is as American as apple pie. (Something the LGBT community knows a little something about.)

Reappropriation is an American specialty—a rhetorical stratagem practiced even before the Declaration of Independence was signed. So by singing “Yankee Doodle,” you’re not just celebrating the country’s birth. You are belting out words used by the soldiers who made that birth possible, and with a taunt that boomeranged for the ages.

Below, read the full lyrics of both the kids version of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and the original.

Kids Version of Yankee Doodle:
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony
He stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni

Chorus:
Yankee Doodle, keep it up
Yankee Doodle dandy
Mind the music and the step
and with the girls be handy!

Father and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Gooding
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.

Chorus
And there was Captain Washington
And gentle folks about him
They say he’s grown so tarnal proud
He will not ride without them.

Chorus

Full version of Yankee Doodle:
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni’.

Chorus:
Yankee Doodle keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.

Fath’r and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding,
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.

Chorus
And there we saw a thousand men
As rich as Squire David,
And what they wasted every day,
I wish it could be saved.

Chorus
The ’lasses they eat it every day,
Would keep a house a winter;
They have so much, that I’ll be bound,
They eat it when they’ve mind ter.

Chorus
And there I see a swamping gun
Large as a log of maple,
Upon a deuced little cart,
A load for father’s cattle.

Chorus
And every time they shoot it off,
It takes a horn of powder,
and makes a noise like father’s gun,
Only a nation louder.

Chorus
I went as nigh to one myself
As ’Siah’s inderpinning;
And father went as nigh again,
I thought the deuce was in him.

Chorus
Cousin Simon grew so bold,
I thought he would have cocked it;
It scared me so I shrinked it off
And hung by father’s pocket.

Chorus
And Cap’n Davis had a gun,
He kind of clapt his hand on’t
And stuck a crooked stabbing iron
Upon the little end on’t

Chorus
And there I see a pumpkin shell
As big as mother’s bason,
And every time they touched it off
They scampered like the nation.

Chorus
I see a little barrel too,
The heads were made of leather;
They knocked on it with little clubs
And called the folks together.

Chorus
And there was Cap’n Washington,
And gentle folks about him;
They say he’s grown so ’tarnal proud
He will not ride without em’.

Chorus
He got him on his meeting clothes,
Upon a slapping stallion;
He sat the world along in rows,
In hundreds and in millions.

Chorus
The flaming ribbons in his hat,
They looked so tearing fine, ah,
I wanted dreadfully to get
To give to my Jemima.

Chorus
I see another snarl of men
A digging graves they told me,
So ’tarnal long, so ’tarnal deep,
They ’tended they should hold me.

Chorus
It scared me so, I hooked it off,
Nor stopped, as I remember,
Nor turned about till I got home,
Locked up in mother’s chamber.

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