The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #54140   Message #840022
Posted By: GUEST,.gargoyle
03-Dec-02 - 09:11 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Dixie
Subject: RE: Origins: Dixie
If the scholars are in doubt – it becomes a mudcat shout.

Sorry folks, I weigh in with Mason Dixon. (btw …Penchyon's book is a grand read….lively and full of fun….(of course cherry coke appears.))

Oxford Companion to American Literature James D. Hart, Fifth Edition, New York, 1983, p 205.
>

"Dixie" patriotic song, probably composed by Dan Emmett (1859), member of Don Bryant's minstrel troupe. Its greatest popularity has been in the South, where it was sung by Confederate soldiers. Dixie signifies "de land ob cotton," but the origin of the name is uncertain. It is sometimes supposed to be a corruption of the name of Jeremiah Dixon who with Charles Mason (1763-67) surveyed the boundary which later separated slave and free states.

New Dictionary of American Slang Robert L. Chyapman, Harper and Row Publisher, New York, 1980, p105.

Dixie n.The southern United States. Modifier Dixieland [probably because the region is south of the Mason-Dixon line]

Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Jess Stein, New York, 1973, p 421.

[? (Mason-)Dix (on-line) + ie]

Sincerely,
Gargoyle