Maize Magic in American Folklore 281 



Among the Indians, it was the women who husked the 

 corn. Spelman writes admiringly of their skill: "wringing the 

 eares in peises between their hands and so rubbinge out the 

 corne into a great baskett." But the English who came to the 

 New World brought with them memories of country thresh- 

 ings and harvest merrymakings in which men and maids 

 worked first and then frolicked together. It is possible that 

 some of them may have heard in the Low Countries or in 

 England a harvesters' song which began as a hymn in Italian 

 churches, but which quickened its tempo as it came up 

 through Spain to the Netherlands. There it lost its piety and 

 acquired doggerel verses in Flemish in which the words 

 "Younker, Yanker, Doodle" occurred many times over. The 

 Flemish harvesters carried it to England and sang it up and 

 down the English countryside as they threshed barley. Crom- 

 well brought it to London. The jeering London crowds who 

 loved a king better than a commoner any day, fitted words to 

 the country air deriding a yokel who came to town and 

 thought himself as good as a king because of the feather in his 

 hat. British red-coats took the air to America. They tried to 

 drum the Continentals out of Boston with its derisive jig 

 tune. It is said that Lord Cornwallis exploded one day, "May I 

 never hear that damn tune again." 



He was to hear it played by a band of Continental soldiers 

 as he walked across the grass of a dooryard in Yorktown to 

 hand his sword to the Continentals' Commander-in-Chief. 



It is not beyond the range of possibilities that the early 

 New Englanders may have known the tune and that they 

 may have sung it many times as they husked corn. 



Husking bees were a regular feature of colonial social life 

 in the rural districts. They were looked forward to all sum- 

 mer. October meant not one husking, but as many as there 

 were farmers in the neighborhood who had a larger crop than 

 the hands in their family could handle. Husking-time was 

 courting time. Many blocks of Boston's Back Bay have been 

 populated as a result of New England huskings. Joel Barlow, 



