[Ads-l] Dixie notes

[Jonathan Lighter]

I posted a number of significant observations to the Forum for Ballad
Scholars in 2007:

BALLAD-L at LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU

JL

On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 11:29 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Emmett did not claim to have coined the words "Dixie" or "Dixie's Land"
> (the actual name of the song).
>
> JL
>
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 11:13 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> *If*--not yet established--Dixie (as in Dixie's Land, Dixie Land, Land of
>> Dixey, etc.) was derived from the Mason-Dixon Line, and one side of that,
>> did the children's dance (?) "Dixey's Land" published in NY but set as a
>> sequel to "The [sic, A] Christmas Carol" [1] also so derive or not, but a
>> coincidence?
>>
>>
>> [Among semi-skeptics, after favorably quoting HDAS, D. Gold, St. in Ety.
>> 155,  the Mason and Dixon line "...may have been too little known to the
>> average person to give rise to a word as informal as Dixie."]
>>
>>
>> Plain Dealer [Cleveland OH] Feb. 18, 1856:
>>
>> The Petersburg (Va.) Democrat, of the 5th inst., states that, at
>> Richmond, the week previous, Susan Denin, the noted actress, was married to
>> Mr. Huntington, a member of Christy's Minstrels. Huntington is better known
>> as "Dan Emmett."
>>
>>
>> Give the above, note that Susan Denin, reportedly, sang a rousing version
>> of Dixie in 1961 in New Orleans. Not mentioned in Hans Nathan's Minstrelsy
>> 1962 book (1977 2nd. ed., non vide).
>>
>>
>> Speaking of N. O., the Dix-s, French-voiced Ten, bills, seem an unlikely
>> source.
>>
>>
>> Can Henry Hotze, Confederate propagandist and racist and editor of The
>> Index [London] be taken as a reliable witness in claiming that northern
>> blacks had before 1859 "for years" exclaimed "I wish I were in Dixie"?
>>
>>
>> Were the reports of kind slave owner Dix or Dixey (etc.) in New York
>> claimed counter nostalgia propaganda (fake news fighting fake news?)?
>>
>>
>> Dan Emmett did claim--in contradictory accounts--composing the song (Way
>> Up North in Dixie by H. and J. Sacks claims otherwise) but--correct me if
>> not so--did not claim the origin of the term Dixie?
>>
>>
>> If Dixie were overdetermined (avant la lettre?) might we recall that
>> Dorothea Dix championed a bill in the US Congress 1852-1856 for federal
>> land to be given for asylum and treatment of the mentally ill? And that
>> this bill was referred to as, among other things, Miss Dix's Land Bill and
>> Miss Dix's Land Grant Bill. (Passed by both chambers in 1856 but vetoed by
>> F. Pierce)
>>
>>
>> Be that as it may, in 1861 an odd note was published apparently concerned
>> with Miss Dix, who also urged prison reform:
>>
>>
>> [headline] Miss Dix's Land
>>
>>
>> [text] Sing-Sing, [sic: sing hyphen sing comma vacat]
>>
>>
>> Stephen Goranson
>>
>> http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [1]
>>
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2007-Novemb
>> er/075982.html
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org