[Ads-l] =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=9CDixie=E2=80=9D_?=in the New Yorker

Fri Jul 24 15:48:56 UTC 2020

OK, maybe not especially "long."

JL

On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 11:37 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> >  the claim that D. D. Emmett was necessarily the first to use the word
> "Dixie" in reference to the south, is, at least, less than a given.
>
> Strictly this is true.  But I think the larger question is whether any
> person, or ten thousand persons, randomly chosen from the U.S. population,
> was in any degree likely to have heard the word in this sense before 1859,
> and I think the answer is no.  Every indication is that "Dixie = the South"
> was "introduced into the language" by Emmett and his song. Over thirty
> million people alive in 1858 lived long and productive lives in ignorance
> of it.
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 10:38 AM Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> I agree that D. D. Emmett--as far as I know--did write the music for
>> Dixie.
>>
>> Yet, given the several newspaper uses of "south of Dixon's line" (e.g.
>> 1838, 1841, etc. and...1858) and "south of.... Dixon's land," and given the
>> Dixie kid's games, with borders and two sides, and given Ben Zimmer in The
>> Atlantic writing "Jonathan Lighter, the editor of the Historical Dictionary
>> of American Slang, pieced together evidence that connects the Mason-Dixon
>> line to Dixie via an unexpected intermediary: a children’s game played in
>> New York City," and given additional finds by Barry Popik, and others--and
>> maybe given the D. Dix asylum proposal in 1858 and following backlashes
>> (she did manage a state not federal hospital in Raleigh)--the claim that D.
>> D. Emmett was necessarily the first to use the word "Dixie" in reference to
>> the south, is, at least, less than a given.
>>
>> Stephen Goranson
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
>> Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 9:50 AM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Subject: Re: “Dixie” in the New Yorker
>>
>> I read the book about the Snowdens not long after it appeared. Indications
>> that the Snowdens composed "Dixie," and that Emmett then "stole" it, are,
>> IMO, almost non-existent.
>>
>> As I posted elsewhere some fifteen years ago:
>>
>> > Prof. Sacks is to be commended for being able to retain her good humor
>> despite criticisms of "Way Up North in Dixie." As earlier reviewers have
>> noted, "Way Up North in Dixie" really does provide a new and unique
>> picture
>> of a free African American family in Ohio before the Civil War.
>>
>> But the question here is whether Daniel Emmett wrote "Dixie." The evidence
>> all together, including that unearthed through dedicated work by the
>> authors of "Way Up North in Dixie," says that yes, he really did. To
>> assume
>> otherwise on the basis of hearsay and conjecture is, I think, to engage in
>> wishful thinking - as is pressing a position that has so few facts to
>> recommend it.
>>
>> I wonder, for example, what substantive resemblance there is between the
>> melody of "Dixie" (surely the song's strongest and most defining feature)
>> and African American melodies in general? There's no first-hand
>> contemporary counterclaim of authorship by anyone, and the circumstantial
>> evidence for the Snowdens' involvement is limited. Whereas Emmett was a
>> professional pop musician, there's no evidence that any of the Snowdens
>> composed striking new melodies in a European style, and no demonstrated
>> connection of "Dixie" to black musical idioms.
>>
>> It's no surprise, but Daniel Emmett wrote "Dixie."  <
>>
>> JL
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 10:30 PM Andy Bach <afbach at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > “ Its use as a doting nickname for the Confederacy was popularized by “I
>> > Wish I Was in Dixie’s Land,” a minstrel song published in 1860 and
>> usually
>> > performed in blackface. The song is credited to Daniel Decatur Emmett, a
>> > white man from Knox County, Ohio, though the scholars Howard and Judith
>> > Sacks have suggested that Emmett stole the tune from the Snowdens, a
>> family
>> > of freed slaves who performed and farmed around Emmett’s home town.”
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/why-the-chicks-dropped-their-dixie__;!!OToaGQ!-LEgrJWpiJ_eoeV2MRoVIDfcKnOuKolzpu6PGcEsrcqvnlali3bQQl9nOzYoCs_0$
>> >
>> > --
>> > Andy Bach
>> > Afbach at gmail.com
>> > Not at my desk
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society -
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.americandialect.org__;!!OToaGQ!-LEgrJWpiJ_eoeV2MRoVIDfcKnOuKolzpu6PGcEsrcqvnlali3bQQl9nO1yNSbHQ$
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>> truth."
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society -
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.americandialect.org__;!!OToaGQ!-LEgrJWpiJ_eoeV2MRoVIDfcKnOuKolzpu6PGcEsrcqvnlali3bQQl9nO1yNSbHQ$
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> 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