Some Questions about Okeghem

Abstract

tune of Land, although original in its total effect, owes its existence to various foreign elements. Its opening measures date back to Gumbo Chaff, a minstrel song of the thirties. opening and closing sections of its chorus are strongly reminiscent of melodic patterns in Scotch folk songs. There exist a few relations between the tune of and the song If had a donkey wot wouldn't go (the American version, well known in the South, of Henry R. Bishop's Dashing White Sergeant) on the one hand and, on the other, the children's song Come Philanders let's be marchin. But they are so slight that Emmett cannot be charged with plagiarism. There is no evidence whatsoever that the name was generally or locally known in the South before '59. It seems to be significant that the name turns up for the very first time, to our knowledge on the northern minstrel stage in 1850 in a blackface minstrel play entitled United States Mail or in Difficulties. was the colored post-boy. This leads one to give credence to the hypothesis that the phrase Dixie's (as used by Emmett eight years later) means Land of Dixie where designates The Negro. Thus was originally a nickname given the Negro by the white man. name was probably part of the jargon of Northern blackface minstrels. For Emmett himself assures us (The New, York Clipper, April 6, 1872) that the phrase I wish was.in was an old saying resorted to by Northern showmen before going South. It was finally Emmett who brought the expression Dixie's (or Dixie) into our vocabulary.