Is there any truth in the statement that I came across, I forget where, that the ribbon was yellow because this was originally a Civil War song from the Yankee side, and the yellow ribbon the girl was to wear in memory of her absent lover serving in the war was to represent the gold stripe down the side of the Yankee cavalrymen's blue trousers?

All this, of course, before all the IMO tiresome 'wheeling perambulators &c' variants caught on, to ruin and render unsingable ever again with infantile sniggering suggestiveness yet another good song, alas.

The John Wayne film She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, based on the song, one of the Fort Apache trilogy, is certainly about a US Cavalryman, in the Sioux Wars [Little Bighorn], 1876.

And wasn't the pop song about Tying A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree, 1973, about the returning prisoner hoping his girlfriend will thus welcome him home, based on the same tradition? See Wikipedia entry 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree'.

~M~