Date:  Wed, 7 Jun 1995 15:16:39 CDT

From:  Randy Roberts <robertsr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EXT.MISSOURI.EDU>

Subject: Yankee



   David, etal.

    I found a few interesting items on Yankee in the Scott-Foresman

   Company citation files we hold. [For those who don't know, this

   collection contains ca. 350 linear feet of citations collected for

   Thorndike-Barnhart, World Book, etc. dictionaries. Includes citations

   collected by Clarence Barnhart and others.]

    First is a variant on your note. A letter to the Wall Street

   Journal (1/7/1977) page 6 reads: "The word Yankee itself is

   ambiguous--depending on one's point of view. To people in other parts

   of the world it simply means someone from the United States; to people

   in the United States it means someone from north of the Mason-Dixon

   line; to us northerners it means someone from New England; to New

   Englanders it means someone from Vermont; to Vermonters it means

   someone from the Green Mountains; to Green Mountain Vermonters it

   means someone who eats apple pie for breakfast; to Green Mountain

   Vermonters who eat apple pie for breakfast it means someone who eats

   it with his knife."

    2. Newsweek (7/31/1978), p. 65. ". . . Perkins was at bottom a

   Vermont Yankee who inherited the conscience and some of the

   eccentricities of his New England forebears."

    3. [The source is simply the acronym NY; maybe New Yorker]

   (4/28/1956), page 43. "Basically, Yankees meant countrypeople who

   were of English settler stock. . . . Their habitat was in particular

   New Hampshire and Vermont, although they were scattered over the rest

   of New England. Their pronunciation of the English language has a

   peculiar salty flavor. . . "

    4. I am curious if you have taken a look at B. A. Botkin, ed., A

   Treasury of New England Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of

   the Yankee People (New York: Crown, 1947. I know it contains

   Mencken's etymology of Yankee and wonder if it might give other

   insights.



   Randy Roberts

   Western Historical Manuscript Collection

   University of Missouri-Columbia

   robertsr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ext.missouri.edu