Yeah, this thread really needed to be revivified to chase down 'handy'!

In any case, the Yankee Doodle lyrics in this thread are not the original lyrics, which were penned as a sarcastic look at New England colonists who were considered at most bumpkins.

The Yankee Doodle lyrics sung 99.9% of the time were the American riposte to the original song and are meant to be complimentary.

I think the use of the term 'handy' can be deduced by context, as in, be attractive to the opposite sex, in this case, girls.

I have a cassette tape from the U.S. Bicentennial era where my Massachusetts town did many celebratory things, two of the most imaginative being:

1) To put up street signs so we could all at last identify and spell the names of the many roads we knew only instinctively.
2) Put out a lovely tape of colonial era songs sung by locals and invaders. One thing they did, was paste new lyrics on existing music, both because it was easier to come up with lyrics than tunes and also because it was a form of one-upmanship between the revolutionists and the tories.
Those original lyrics were not above powerful sexual innuendo but in this case I don't think we have a case.