And there we see a whopping gun, As big as a log of maple, Mounted on a little cart,-- A load for father's cattle. And every time they fired it off It took a horn of powder, And made a noise like father's gun, Only a nation louder. I went as near to it As 'Siah's underpinning; Father went as nigh agin,-- I thought the devil was in him. Cousin Simon grew so bold, I thought he meant to cock it; He scared me so, I streaked it off, And hung to father's pocket. And Captain Davis had a gun He kind o' clapped his hand on, And stuck a crooked stabbing-iron Upon the little end on 't. And there I saw a pumpkin shell As big as mother's basin; And every time they sent one off, They scampered like tarnation. I saw a little bar'el, too, Its heads were made of leather; They knocked on it with little plugs, To call the folks together. And there was Captain Washington, With grand folks all about him; They says he's grown so tarnal proud, He cannot ride without them. He had on his meeting-clothes, And rode a slapping stallion, And gave his orders to the men,-- I guess there was a million. And then the feathers in his hat, They were so tarnal fine-ah, I wanted peskily to get To hand to my Jemima. And then they'd fife away like fun And play on cornstalk fiddles; And some had ribbons red as blood All wound about their middles. The troopers, too, would gallop up, And fire right in our faces; It scared me a'most to death To see them run such races. And then I saw a snarl of men A-digging graves, they told me, So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,-- They allowed they were to hold me. 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. It is certainly the tune of _Yankee Doodle_, and not the words of this old song, which captured the fancy of the country and held its sway in America for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The tune, however, is much older than that. It has been claimed in many lands. When Kossuth was in this country making his plea for liberty for Hungary, he informed a writer of the Boston _Post_ that, when the Hungarians that accompanied him first heard _Yankee Doodle_ on a Mississippi River steamer, they immediately recognized it as one of the old national airs of their native land, one played in the dances of that country, and they began to caper and dance as they had been accustomed to do in Hungary. It has been claimed also in Holland as an old harvest song. It is said that when the laborers received for wages "as much buttermilk as they could drink, and a tenth of the grain," they used to sing as they reaped, to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_, the words,--