Meaning: With the girls be handy?

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Jan 18 - 09:46 PM

You're probably over-thinking that, Lou. And it certainly isn't going to be the answer Sheila will give that curious five-year-old!

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 12:29 AM

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.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Thompson
Date: 11 Jan 18 - 04:02 AM

Dunno about sarcastic - there's such a thing as affectionate ribbing.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 12 Jan 18 - 02:10 PM

&fyi: On explaining any military cadence lyrics to civilians, the traditional opening line is "I don't know, but I've been told..."

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Gurney
Date: 14 Jan 18 - 08:46 PM

Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic Words, 1850: Handy. Ready, Expert, Clever.
Various dialects.
That's English dialects, of course.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 02:44 AM

It's very similar to a line in the shanty ' Paddy Lay Back '

' Bout ship stations boys be handy '
' for we're bound for Valaparaiso round the horn '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 10:08 AM

Since Yankee Doodle is a "dandy" (a fop), his proper place is "with the girls," ready to be "handy" (deft or available) - but only when required.

At least that's how I read it.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: meself
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 10:52 AM

Is "handy" not in common use in some places? It's a term I've heard and used all my life, and there is nothing remotely unusual in the way it's used in this ditty ... ?

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 02:49 PM

>Since Yankee Doodle is a "dandy" (a fop), his proper place is "with the girls," ready to be "handy" (deft or available) - but only when required.

Well that explains the pony

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 15 Jan 18 - 08:41 PM

Now about that usurper Yankees Doodle


I know only two tunes: one of them is 'Yankee Doodle', and the other one isn't. -U.S. Grant

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 09:48 AM

And since YD is advised to "Mind the music and the step," I assume we're also supposed to think he's a foppish and effeminate fun-lover.

It could well be that "with the girls be handy" imply "cleverly ingratiate yourself with the girls," as at a ball. Just a guess.

Otherwise, I agree that "handy," at least in America, is an everyday term meaning skillful (at something) or (also) readily available.

But it no longer means "clever," which may account for some of the uncertainty.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: meself
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 01:08 PM

In Canada, I don't think anyone would be baffled if you said something like, "He's pretty handy with an axe" - whether you prefer that as a synonym for 'skillful' or 'clever', the difference is so fine as to be negligible, and either fits 'Yankee Doodle'. I'm really baffled over all the bafflement about this word and its usage.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 01:28 PM

Have not perused entire thread, although I probably read the OP and immediate responses. Often curious about thread resurrection. Thanks, all and sundry, for your dandy 2018 updates.
keep on pickin
dennis

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Jan 18 - 01:39 PM

"Handy with an axe" sounds fine to me, but "handy with the girls," while understandable, sounds a little weird.

But it may not have 250 years ago.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Helen
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 01:54 PM

I'm with you, Lighter. I still think that the word was chosen, over other more specific or contextually appropriate words, mainly because it rhymes with "Dandy" so it fits the rhyme of the lyrics.

I referred to the line from the Red Green Show before on 10 Jan 18 - 09:39 AM, and the word "handy" makes sense in that context. There is probably some intentional double meaning for comedy effect, but essentially it relates to the handyman's skills and knowledge.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 03:04 PM

Not too many words rhyme with "dandy," and "handy" may have been the easiest to build into a line.

("Randy" has not been found before 1771, according to Oxford.)

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: meself
Date: 17 Jan 18 - 06:44 PM

It was handy, in other words ... !

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Helen
Date: 18 Jan 18 - 11:29 AM

Yes, meself, the word was handy so the lyricist picked it up and put it in the song. LOL

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,Diane
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 12:55 PM

On hand. Readily available.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 07:10 PM

From NPR in 2005 --

Reason Behind the Rhyme

Chris Roberts, author of "Heavy Words Lightly Thrown" says, "One of the many versions ran like this. It goes: 'Yankee Doodle, keep it up. Yankee Doodle, dandy. Mind the music and the step and with the girls be handy.' And this particular version was sung by predominantly the British as a reminder to our American friends that dance steps in Europe and in America, the colonies as it was, were different. And it's a reminder to check you doing the steps right and that you're holding the girl in the correct way, which is--so that's one variation of--apparently, there are hundreds and the book could have been devoted entirely to that."

Basically reminding the provincial colonists that it takes more effort than sticking a feather in one's hat to make one fashionable, and it takes study and practice to do fashionable dance steps as well.

Linn

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 07:41 PM

In Regency literature, both of its time
and the 20th-century homages
by such authors as Georgette Heyer,

a frequent adjective is "deedy,"
and I understand it to mean
the same thing some posts on this thread
suggest for "handy."
capability, capacity.

"Deedy," however,
is an adjective I NEVER hear outside the Regency literary context,
while "handy" persists at least in compounds like "handy man."
(Which last reminds me of a blues by Alberta Hunter,
but that's real suggestive stuff.)

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Senoufou
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 03:40 AM

That's interesting keberoxu, because I've used 'deedy' all my life. It's often heard here in Norfolk, but also in West London in the fifties. It does, as you say, mean the same as 'handy' - useful, capable etc.

Our village shop is looked on as being 'handy' (It's closed at the moment for refurbishment, and we're all saying it'll be handy when it re-opens) In that context it means 'close at hand'.

We also say a gadget can be 'handy', for example I recently bought a tickling-stick duster from a door-to-door lad. It's very handy for getting behind radiators and the tops of curtain rails.
(The lad was a Nottingham Knocker though, and a bit of a crook!)

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,Papa G
Date: 10 Oct 19 - 06:59 PM

I always took that lyric to mean, be there ready for the ladies. They saying, "keep it handy" meaning keep it close by so you have quick access, is how i always took it. Hope that helps.

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Oct 19 - 11:05 AM

Bill D, I could tell you things about Peter Pan / And the wizard of Oz is a dirty old man!

Subject: RE: Meaning:
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 19 - 05:50 PM

With the girls be handy? -not PC these days

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,doodle
Date: 07 Oct 23 - 06:22 PM

even in chaucer hende had the same overtones as here eg in the millers tale "hende nicholas" nicholas being of course a tad foolish --in the nortwest midlands hende had retained a positive meaning as courteous --see Pearl or Sir Gawain

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Oct 23 - 09:40 AM

Mudcat, ever the haven for those who can analyze any song, word or concept with ongoing, ostentatious equivocation, strikes again!

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: GUEST,doodle
Date: 07 Oct 23 - 06:22 PM

even in chaucer hende had the same overtones as here eg in the millers tale "hende nicholas" nicholas being of course a tad foolish --in the nortwest midlands hende had retained a positive meaning as courteous --see Pearl or Sir Gawain

Subject: RE: Meaning: With the girls be handy?
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Oct 23 - 09:40 AM

Mudcat, ever the haven for those who can analyze any song, word or concept with ongoing, ostentatious equivocation, strikes again!