"Yankee Doodle"

"Yankee Doodle" is a well-known American song, whose exact origin is unkown. It is believed to have been composed in the time of the Seven Years' War, and to have originally expressed the mockery of British military officers to the disheveled, disorganized colonial "Yankees" with whom they served, abd this was expressed in many of its original lyrics. Later on, in tense times which led to the outbreak of the American war of Independendce and during that war itself, the "Yankees" themselves took up the song and composed different lyrics expressing American petriotism and disparagement of the British. It is often sung patriotically in the United States today and is the state anthem of Connecticut. Among the general public the most well-known words are the first verse and refrain (which, ironically, express the original British contempt for the American colonials:
 * Yankee Doodle went to town,
 * A-riding on a pony;
 * He stuck a feather in his cap,
 * And called it macaroni.

Yankee Doodle in The Two Georges
In the tense 1760's, when secession of the American colonies from Britian seemed a very real possiiblity, rebeliously-minded colonists took up "Yankee Doodle", originallly composed in mockery of themselves. After George Washington's historical meeting with King George III firmly established the reformed British rule in North America with the consent of the mainstream in the colonies, "Yankee Doodle" was retained by the diehard malcontets who regarded Washington's act as a betrayal and continued to hold out for an independent North America.

The tune retained this significance over the next two centuries, and in the later 20th Century was especially indeitifed with the undeground Sons of Libery, who had the habit of leaving shellac platters that played the tune at the scene of their various violent attacks. Police officers such as Thomas Bushell thoughly detested this "jaunty, hateful tune". In general, though in many of its versions "Yankee Doodle" had nothing subversive as such, the song and and its tune gained a very thorough subversive connotation and would hardly ever be sung or performed except bt any except outspoken radicals.