“The British, preceding the war, when disposed to ridicule the simplicity of the Yankee manners and hilarity, were accustomed to sing airs or songs set to words invented for the passing occasion, having for their object to satirize and sneer at the New Englanders. This, as I believe, they called Yankee Doodle, by way of reproach, and as a slur upon their favorite ‘Lydia Fisher.’ It is remembered that the English officers then among us, acting under civil and military appointments, often felt lordly over us as colonists, and by countenancing such slurs they sometimes expressed their superciliousness. When the battles of Concord and Lexington began the war, the English, when advancing in triumph, played along the road, ‘God save the King;’ but when the Americans had made the retreat so disastrous to the invaders, these then struck up the scouted _Yankee Doodle_,—as if to say, ‘See what we simple Jonathans can do!’ From that time the term of intended derision was assumed throughout all the American colonies, as the national air of the Sons of Liberty; even as the Methodists—once reproachfully so called—assumed it as their acceptable appellation. Even the name of ‘Sons of Liberty,’ which was so popular at the outset, was a name adopted from the appellation given us in Parliament by Colonel Barré in his speech! Judge Martin, in his History of North Carolina, has lately given another reason for the origin of ‘Yankee Doodle,’ saying it was first formed at Albany, in 1755, by a British officer, then there, indulging his pleasantry on the homely array of the motley Americans then assembling to join the expedition of General Johnston and Governor Shirley. To ascertain the truth in the premises, both his and my accounts were published in the gazettes, to elicit, if possible, further information, and the additional facts ascertained seem to corroborate the foregoing idea. The tune and quaint words, says a writer in the ‘Columbian Gazette,’ at Washington, were known as early as the time of Cromwell, and were so applied to him then, in a song called ‘Nankee Doodle,’ as ascertained from the collection he had seen of a gentleman at Cheltenham, in England, called ‘Musical Antiquities of England,’ to wit:— “‘Nankee Doodle came to town Upon a little pony, With a feather in his hat, Upon a macaroni,’ &c. “The term feather, &c. alluded to Cromwell’s going into Oxford on a small horse, with his single plume fastened in a sort of knot called a ‘macaroni.’ The idea that such an early origin may have existed seems strengthened by the fact communicated by an aged gentleman of Massachusetts, who well remembered that, about the time the strife was engendering at Boston, they sometimes conveyed muskets to the country concealed in their loads of manure, &c. Then came abroad verses, as if set forth from their military masters, saying,—