Rapaire:
I've always defined it a bit differently:

In Europe a Yankee is an American
In America a Yankee is someone from the U.S.
In the U.S. a Yankee is someone from North of the Mason Dixon Line.
In the north, a Yankee is someone from New England.
In New England a Yankee is someone from Massachusetts.
In Massachusetts a Yankee is someone from Boston.
In The City of Boston Yankee is someone from Beacon Hill.
In Boston's Beacon Hill Yankee is someone from the upper part of the hill. These are the Boston Brahmins.

A "Maine Yankee" is something else entirely. Totally calls for a new thread.


Meanwhile, the original version of the Yankee Doodle song was written by an Englishman on seeing New England militiamen practice. It pokes fun at colonial Americans, particularly Boston. A song group in my hometown of Needham Massachusetts issued it on a bicentennial recording:

It starts out:

Brother Ephrem sold his cow and bought him a commission
Then he went to Canada to fight for the nation
But when Ephrem he come home he proved an arrant coward
He wouldn't fight the Frenchmen there for fear of being devoured.

and it ends:

Heigh ho for our Cape cod, Heigh ho Nantasket
To not let the Boston Whites feel your oyster basket
Uncle is a Yankee man, in faith he pays us all off
He has got hisself a fiddle big as Daddy's hogrough.

the chorus is:
First we take a pinch of snuff, then a drink of water
Then we say "How do y'do, and that's a Yankee supper!

Time to move this thread upstairs!


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
And this is goad old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots And the Cabots talk only to God.

John Collins Bossidy,
verse spoken at Holy Cross College alumni
dinner in Boston, Massachusetts, 1910