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The National Music of America. 149
most cases it was only played by a band, is yet far the best of the three songs, which, for lack of better, have until now been called American national airs.
" Of the other two,' Yankee Doodle ' has the claim of long association, and will probably always retain a certain degree of a certain kind of favour. But no sane person would ever dream of regarding it as a national hymn. Its words, as all know who have ever heard them, are mere childish burlesque; and its air, if air it must be called, is as comical as its words, and can scarcely be regarded as being properly music. . . . ' Hail Columbia' is really worse than ' Yankee Doodle.' That has a character, although it is comic; and it is respectable, because it makes no pretence. But both the words and the music of ' Hail Columbia' are commonplace, vulgar, and pretentious; and the people themselves have found all this out."
For all this fierce indictment, we fancy that " Yankee Doodle," especially in its words, may hold its own beside the song which won the English Revolution — " Lilli-burlero."
Through the remainder of our Revolution " Yankee Doodle " was frankly accepted by the Americans as their own. It had been |
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