[Ads-l] Dixie notes

[Jonathan Lighter]

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]
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> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2007-November/075982.html
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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