Doodle Dandy

DESCRIPTION: "Doodle, doodle, doodle dandy, Cornstalks, rum, and homemade brandy, Indian pudding and pumpkin pie, And that'll make the Yankees fly! Ev'ry Yankee shall have on his back A great big pumpkin in a sack, A little molasses and a piece of pork...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1941 (Warner-TraditionalAmericanFolkSongsFromAnneAndFrankWarnerColl); the first stanza can be documented from 1840 (see notes)
KEYWORDS: food soldier
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Warner-TraditionalAmericanFolkSongsFromAnneAndFrankWarnerColl 192, "Doodle Dandy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Warner-FolkSongsAndBalladsOfTheEasternSeaboard, pp. 68-69, "Doodle Dandy" (1 text)
ST Wa192 (Full)
Roud #16407
NOTES [358 words]: Said by Roy Walworth (the Warners' informant) to have been sung by Washington's troops as they marched for New York in 1783 after the British left the town following the American Revolution. - RBW
Although the song has only the most tenuous hold in tradition (the Warner version is the only traditional version known; it can be heard on Frank Warner's "Songs and Ballads of America's Wars"), Jonathan Lighter has shown that the first stanza at least was quite popular at one time. The following is a slightly condensed version of his notes to the Ballad-L list:
* Stanza one appears in the one-act farce, Yankee Notes for English Circulation, written by Edward Stirling for Thomas D. Rice's minstrel troupe in 1842:
Yankee doodle doodle dandy,
Corn stalks rum and Gin Sling brandy,
An Indine pudden and a green peach pie,
Golly, how we make de British fly.
[Quoted. in W. T. Lhamon, Jr., Jump Jim Crow (Harvard U.P., 2003), p. 327.]
* From Burton's Gentleman's Magazine And American Monthly Review (Feb., 1840), p. 70:
"Doodle doodle doodle dandy,
Corn-stalk rum, right slick and handy,
Indgian pudding and green peach pie,
And it takes me to make the fried clams fly! "
* Maine Farmer, July 13, 1848, p. 2:
"We couldn't help whistling a stave or two of the old song which the old Continentallers used to sing to the Britishers whenever they had given them a good thrashing, and which ran in this wise:
"Yankee doodle, doodle dandy,
Cornstalk molasses and home-made brandy,
An Indian pudding and a punkin pie
Is the stuff to make the red-coats fly."
* Annals of Iowa (1943), p. 40:
Yankee doodle dandy
Cornstalk rum and cider brandy,
Stinking gin that's made of rye
So we'll make the Yankees fly.
* Mary Philotheta Root, ed., Patron Saints (New Haven: Conn. Daughters of the American Revolution, 1895), p. 475:
"One of his favorite war songs began thus:
"We'll take our knapsacks on our backs,
With a piece o' pork and pumpkin pie,
And gang down to New-York,
To make the red-coats fly!"
Lighter also notes that the second stanza of the Warner version is sung to "a worn down 2/4 version of 'The Campbells are Coming.'"
- JL (RBW)
Last updated in version 4.2
File: Wa192

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography