ORIGIN OF “DIXIE.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20269, 30 November 1927, Page 17

ORIGIN OF “DIXIE.”

AN AMERICAN CONTROVERSY. j How the name Dixie came into being has I been under debate again (says the New York Times). The germ of another instalment of controversy on this subject was let loose in a recent magazin© article in which the writer asserted that Southerners singing of their native land were in reality honouring a bit of Vankee-dom, the ; original Dixieland. As might have been | expected, resentment hag been aroused and I Southerners have been set to explaining I whence and how the term Dixie originated. I The magazine writer’s theory is based | on the fact that a man by the name of Dixy owned a farm on Manhattan in the early 1800’s and sold a number of home sick slaves to the Sotuh. Dixy was ‘ slave poor,” it is said. He had so many hands on his place that work was rather scarce and the lazy-bones had a fine time of it, food always being abundant. After a while, however, their master became so pressed I with debts, practically all his property | being in slaves, that he was forced to sell a large number of the negroes. | In their hew homes in the South they ; had to work very hard, and so they began singing longingly of '‘Dixy’s land.” Dim Emmett, it is presumed picked up the song as sung by their descendants in the South, and worked it over into his ballet, 1 composed in 1859 at a " walk around ” for 1 Bryant’s Minstrelf, performing in New i York. 1 The word Dixie really belongs to the ! Rue Royals in New Orleans’ Vieux Carreo, so that city asserts, and the building designated as its birthplace may still be seen. Its origin is said to be neither Northern nor Southern, but French. Almost a century ago the Banque des Citoyens de la Louisiano had a way _of issuing its notes of various* denominations in French, the proper language for finance, it was considered. When the steamboat men brought their freight bill checks to the bank for payment they received these notes, which wore thus circulated throughout the Mississippi Valley, and even In the East. Those who used them could not call many of them by the French names on their face, but “dix.” boldly inscribed on the ten-dollar note, with within the ability of ah.