Annotation:Nanky Doodle
X:1 T:Nanky Doodle M:2/4 L:1/8 R:Air B:Stephen Grier music manuscript collection (Book 3, c. 1883, No. 208, p. 63) B:http://grier.itma.ie/book-three#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=62&z=116.5801%2C109.8861%2C3098.831%2C1290.4289 N:Stephen Grier (c. 1824-1894) was a piper and fiddler from N:Newpark, Bohey, Gortletteragh, south Co. Leitrim. Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:Ador AcBA|GFEF|GABc|d2G2|AcBA GFEg|edcB|A2A2:| |:cBcA|dddG|cBcA|d2G2|cBcA|Bcdg|edcB|A2A2:|]
NANKY DOODLE. Irish, Air (2/4 time). A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. "Nanky Doodle" is an air that was entered into Book 3 of the large c. 1883 music manuscript collection of County Leitrim piper and fiddler biography:Stephen Grier (c. 1824-1894). The title is very close to the familiar "Yankee Doodle," however there is no musical relation between the tunes. However, the title was a precursor to the "Yankee Doodle" title. During the English Civil War the air "Nancy Dawson (1)" was composed (familiar nowadays as the children's rhyme "Here we go round the mulberry bush"), and alternate words were set to it by a Loyalist, deriding Oliver Cromwell. One of the verses was:
Nanky Doodle came to town,
Riding on a pony;
With a feather in his hat
Upon a macaroni.
A 'doodle' formerly referred to "a sorry trifling fellow", while a macaroni was the know on which the feather was fastened. The air familiar to us as "Yankee Doodle" began life as the vehicle for "Lydia Fisher's Jig," one verse of which goes:
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Lydia Fisher found it;
Not a bit of money in it,
Only binding round it.
