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Who really said it

I Know Only Two Tunes: One of Them Is Yankee Doodle, and the Other Isn't

Not Abraham Lincoln — an anonymous 1839 joke, later told by Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885 · Union commanding general & 18th U.S. president
Disputed Free to reuse

The “Yankee Doodle” wording is documented from Grant, not Lincoln: Robert C. Winthrop recalled Grant saying it beside him at a Peabody Institute concert in Baltimore, in a letter printed in George W. Childs’s Recollections of General Grant (1890), page 40 ↗. But Grant did not invent it — Quote Investigator ↗ found the gag circulating anonymously in newspapers from 1839, and the one version ever recalled from Lincoln named “Old Hundred,” not “Yankee Doodle.”

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I Know Only Two Tunes: One of Them Is Yankee Doodle, and the Other Isn't” not Abraham Lincoln. The "Yankee Doodle" wording is documented from Ulysses S. Grant, recalled by Robert C. Winthrop in a letter printed in George W. Childs, Recollections of General Grant (Philadelphia: Collins Printing House, 1890), page 40. Grant did not originate it: Quote Investigator's earliest located instance is an anonymous 1839 newspaper item using "Old Hundred" instead. The one version ever recalled from Lincoln — in J. Seymour Currey's Abraham Lincoln's Visit to Evanston in 1860 (1914) — also says "Old Hundred," not "Yankee Doodle." · Verbatim: “I only know two tunes. One is Yankee Doodle, and the other isn't.”

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Provenance

Where the “Yankee Doodle” wording is actually documented

Work
Recollections of General Grant
Author
George W. Childs, quoting a letter from Robert C. Winthrop
Published
Philadelphia: Collins Printing House, 1890 — page 40
Earliest known form
Anonymous, 1839 — with “Old Hundred,” not “Yankee Doodle”

He had no fondness for music, nor could he remember a tune or note, with perhaps the single exception of “Hail to the Chief,” which he had heard so often during and after the war. His old friend, Hon. Hamilton Fish, writes to me: “I do not think that the General knew ‘Hail to the Chief;’ he did know, or thought that he knew, ‘Yankee Doodle.’” My friend, Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, says in a recent letter: “Your allusion to his insensibility to music, and to the saying of Governor Fish, recalls General Grant’s remark to me, when I was sitting next to him at a concert in Baltimore at the Peabody Institute: ‘Why, Mr. Winthrop, I only know two tunes. One is Yankee Doodle, and the other isn’t.’” Recollections of General Grant (1890), p. 40

Note what this is and is not. It is a named eyewitness, Robert C. Winthrop, writing to Childs and placing the remark at a specific concert at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. It is also a memory set down in a letter and published in 1890, five years after Grant’s death in July 1885, with no date given for the concert itself.

Digitised 1890 edition
Read Recollections of General Grant at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator’s full chronology, 1839 to 1985

How the joke travelled

  • 1839 — anonymous. A New Orleans Picayune filler about an organ grinder ends: “we ought to apologize for swearing, but really we suffer considerably from music, and only know two tunes, one of which is ‘Old Hundred,’ and the other isn’t.” It was reprinted in Boston and New York the same year, per Quote Investigator ↗.
  • 1851 and 1888 — new songs, same joke. A Milwaukee paper ran it with “Auld Lang Syne” in 1851; London’s Musical World ran it with “God Save the Queen” in September 1888, both still anonymous — chronology and citations at QI ↗.
  • 1885–1890 — it becomes Grant’s. Weeks after Grant died in July 1885 a profile gave him the “Yankee Doodle” version; in 1890 Robert C. Winthrop’s letter in Childs’s Recollections of General Grant, page 40 ↗ made it the standard telling.
  • 1914 — Lincoln’s turn, with a different song. Henry A. Pearsons, speaking in February 1906 about Lincoln’s 1860 visit to Evanston, recalled him telling a young singer ‘Unfortunately I know only two tunes, one is “Old Hundred,” and the other isn’t’ — printed in Currey’s Abraham Lincoln’s Visit to Evanston in 1860 ↗.
Public domain

Both documented sources are comfortably out of copyright in the United States. George W. Childs’s Recollections of General Grant was published in Philadelphia in 1890, and J. Seymour Currey’s Abraham Lincoln’s Visit to Evanston in 1860 in 1914 — both well before the 1931 cutoff, and both are freely readable in full scans at the Internet Archive. The underlying joke, first traced to anonymous newspaper printings in 1839, has no identifiable rights holder.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who else has been given this line

This is a floating joke, and it has landed on nearly every famous man known to be unmusical. Quote Investigator documents each of the following as a recollection published after its supposed speaker had died.

Abraham Lincoln Popularly credited

No Lincoln source uses “Yankee Doodle.” The single recollection that exists comes from Henry A. Pearsons, speaking at an Evanston banquet in February 1906 about Lincoln’s 1860 visit, and printed in J. Seymour Currey’s Abraham Lincoln’s Visit to Evanston in 1860 (1914) ↗. Pearsons’s Lincoln says: ‘Unfortunately I know only two tunes, one is “Old Hundred,” and the other isn’t.’

W. S. Gilbert Also credited

After Gilbert’s death in 1911, George Grossmith recalled him answering a compliment about his sense of rhythm with “I only know two tunes. One is ‘God save the Queen,’ and the other isn’t” — printed in The Bookman, July 1911, per Quote Investigator ↗. The same “God Save the Queen” form had already run anonymously in London’s Musical World in September 1888.

Ulysses S. Grant Said it, didn’t coin it

Grant is the right answer to “who said this wording,” and the wrong answer to “who invented it.” The gag was in the New Orleans Picayune and its reprints in 1839 with “Old Hundred,” and in a Milwaukee paper in 1851 with “Auld Lang Syne” — long before any version was pinned to Grant in 1890 ↗.

The sentence people quote belongs to Grant by testimony and to nobody by origin: an anonymous newspaper joke from 1839, refitted with a new song each time it was retold, and finally attached to whichever famous man had just died. Quote Investigator’s conclusion ↗ is that the earliest evidence points to an anonymous origin, with Grant, Lincoln and Gilbert each telling a version already in circulation.

Context

How a newspaper filler became three famous men’s wit

Nineteenth-century newspapers ran on filler: one-line jokes cut from one paper and pasted into the next, credited to nobody. “I only know two tunes, and one of them isn’t” was exactly that kind of item — portable, endlessly re-fittable, and attached to whichever song the local readership would recognise. It ran with “Old Hundred” in Boston and New York in 1839, with “Auld Lang Syne” in Milwaukee in 1851, with “God Save the Queen” in London in 1888, and with “Hail Columbia” in a Dickens-founded weekly in 1891.

What happened next is the ordinary life cycle of an anonymous joke. A famous man dies; a friend writes a memoir; the friend remembers the joke in the dead man’s voice. Grant died in July 1885 and the “Yankee Doodle” version was in print within weeks. Gilbert died in 1911 and the “God Save the Queen” version surfaced in The Bookman the same year. Lincoln’s turn came latest and thinnest — a townsman’s after-dinner reminiscence, given in February 1906 and printed in 1914, about an evening in Evanston in 1860.

Every one of these attributions is a memory published after the speaker was dead.

Why the recollections are weak evidence even for Grant

Winthrop’s account is the strongest of the three — a named eyewitness, writing directly to Childs, placing the remark at a specific concert at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. It is still a letter written from memory and published after Grant’s death, and it names no date for the concert.

The Lincoln account is weaker on every axis. Henry A. Pearsons was a boy when Lincoln visited Evanston in 1860; he told the story at a Men’s Club banquet at the First Methodist church in February 1906, and Currey printed it in 1914. Pearsons’s Lincoln says “Old Hundred” — so even taken at face value, it is not the sentence people quote.

None of this makes the tellings false. Grant almost certainly did use the line; that is what people do with good jokes. It makes the line unownable, which is a different thing from unsaid.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: I Know Only Two Tunesquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive chronology, from the anonymous 1839 Picayune item through Grant, Gilbert, Lincoln, Sherman and Victor Borge, with full bibliographic notes.
Recollections of General Grant (1890), full scanarchive.org

George W. Childs’s memoir. Page 40 carries Robert C. Winthrop’s letter with the “Yankee Doodle” wording — the primary source for this quote.
Abraham Lincoln’s Visit to Evanston in 1860 (1914)archive.org

J. Seymour Currey’s booklet. Henry A. Pearsons’s recollection has Lincoln say “Old Hundred,” not “Yankee Doodle.”
Ulysses S. Grant on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line among Grant’s quotes and cites it to Winthrop’s letter to George W. Childs, c. 1889.
The Musical Review (New York), 1839 volumegoogle.com

The 1839 periodical volume Quote Investigator cites for the earliest reprinting of the anonymous “Old Hundred” original.
Ulysses S. Grant on Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the man the “Yankee Doodle” version belongs to: born 27 April 1822, died 23 July 1885, president 1869–1877.

The man actually on record saying it

The general who couldn't carry a tune

Ulysses S. Grant

1822–1885 · Union commanding general & 18th President of the United States

Ulysses S. Grant (born 27 April 1822, died 23 July 1885) commanded the Union armies from 1864 and served as the eighteenth President from 1869 to 1877. His tin ear was a standing joke among friends: George W. Childs wrote that Grant “had no fondness for music, nor could he remember a tune or note,” and both Hamilton Fish and Robert C. Winthrop wrote to Childs with versions of the story. What none of them knew is that the line Grant used had been floating through American and British papers since at least 1839 — he was repeating a joke, not coining one.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source & earliest known printing

George W. Childs, Recollections of General Grant (Philadelphia: Collins Printing House, 1890), 40, quoting a letter from Robert C. Winthrop. Earliest instance located by Quote Investigator: an anonymous item — “we…only know two tunes, one of which is ‘Old Hundred,’ and the other isn’t” — credited to the New Orleans Picayune and reprinted in the Boston Saturday Morning Transcript, 20 April 1839, and The Musical Review (New York), 4 May 1839.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Know Only Two Tunes: One of Them Is Yankee Doodle, and the Other Isn’t’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-know-only-two-tunes-one-of-them-is-yankee-doodle-and-the/

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