Yankee Doodle

I am reading Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind" which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 (it was her one and only book). Anybody who thinks this a frilly romantic novel sorely mistaken. It is the story of the rape of Georgia during, and after, the Civil War. But this is not my blog. Instead, I have often wondered about the lyrics to "Yankee Doodle" sung by the Confederates known by every American grade-schooler:

Yankee Doodle went to town

A-riding on a pony

Stuck a feather in his hat

And called it macaroni

Why did yankee doodle stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni? In Pre-Revolutionary America the song not referring to a pasta "macaroni"; rather, "macaroni" a fancy ("dandy") style of Italian dress widely imitated in England. By sticking a feather in his cap and calling himself a "dandy," Yankee Doodle was proudly proclaiming himself to be a gentleman of some social standing though, as known by the Southerner humming the tune, he had none.