Transcript The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

By Travis McAuliffe
For song discussions click here
Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on
the Danville train ,
Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore
up the tracks again.
In the winter of '65 , We were hungry,
just barely alive.
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it's
a time I remember, oh so well,
(Chorus)
The night they drove old Dixie down, and
the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down, and the
people were singin'.
They went
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,
Back with my wife in Tennessee, when one day
she called to me,
"Virgil , quick, come see, there goes the Robert
E. Lee !"
Now I don't mind choppin' wood, and I don't care
if the money's no good.
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest,
But they should never have taken the very best.
(Chorus)
Like my father before me, I will work the land,
Like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand.
He was just eighteen, proud and brave,
But a Yankee laid him in his grave,
I swear by the mud below my feet,
You can't raise a Cain back up when he's in defeat.
(Chorus and fade)
"Joan Baez." Contemporary Musicians, Volume 1. Gale Research, 1989.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale,
2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
"Chorus." Glassary of Literary Terms. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2010.
<http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_a.htm>.
"Quatrain." Glossary of Literary Terms. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2010.
<http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_p.htm>.
"Allusion." Glossary of Literary Terms. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 June 2010.
<http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_a.htm>.
Songfacts. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 June 2010. <http://www.songfacts.com/
detail.php?id=1106>.
"Major General George Stoneman Led the Last American Civil War Cavalry Raid."
history.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 June 2010.
<http://www.historynet.com/
major-general-george-stoneman-led-the-last-american-civil-war-cavalry-raid.htm>.
"Winter." Crater road. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 June 2010.
<http://www.craterroad.com/Winter1864.html>.
Joan Baez was born on January 9, 1941, in
Staten Island New York. Her time in Boston got
her noticed by Bob Gibson, who invited her to play
in the 1959 Newport folk festival. In 1960 she
started her association with vanguard records.
This is the record company that helped her make
her first record Joan Baez. After she ended her
association with vanguard records Joan started
her association. She has been feathered on the
front cover of Time magazine. She was an antiwar and civil rights activist. This song was a good
example of her ideals and beliefs.
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A four-line stanza. Quatrains are the
most common stanzaic form in the
English language; they can have various
meters and rhyme schemes. See also
meter, rhyme, stanza.
Learn more literary terms
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The Danville train was a 140 miles
track that linked Richmond to the
rest of the confederacy.
Learn more
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Stoneman’s cavalry is talking
about the Major General
George Stoneman witch Led
the Last American Civil War
Cavalry Raid.
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Learn more
The winter of 1865 was a harsh cold
winter the food was expensive the
people were hungry and the food was
rotting.
Learn more
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Old Dixie in this context refers to
Richmond when it was the capital of
the confederacy during the civil war.
By the fraise the night they blow old
Dixie down they mean the night the
union besieged the capital of
Richmond.
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Repetition is the repeating of a
word, phrase, or sound. This
can be used to make a point, as
a break, or to help remember.
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A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or
idea in history or literature. Allusions conjure up
biblical authority, scenes from Shakespeare’s plays,
historic figures, wars, great love stories, and
anything else that might enrich an author’s work.
Allusions imply reading and cultural experiences
shared by the writer and reader, functioning as a
kind of shorthand whereby the recalling of
something outside the work supplies an emotional or
intellectual context, such as a poem about current
racial struggles calling up the memory of Abraham
Lincoln.
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Where you would think that this refers to
the general it actually is a boat. It is a
steam engine boat that runs off burning
logs. The of the song is named Virgil and
he is a wood cuter that makes the boat
more relevant than the general
Learn more about the boat
Learn more about the general
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In Greek tragedies (especially those of Aeschylus
and Sophocles), a group of people who serve
mainly as commentators on the characters and
events. They add to the audience’s understanding
of the play by expressing traditional moral,
religious, and social attitudes. The role of the
chorus in dramatic works evolved through the
sixteenth century, and the chorus occasionally is
still used by modern playwrights such as T. S.
Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral. See also drama.
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The rhyme schema to this part
of the song is AA, BB, CC. This
means that the first two lines
rhyme. The second two lines
rhyme. Then the third two lines
rhyme.
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A yankee is a word used to describe a
person from the union. This term is
used mostly used as a person from the
south talking about a person from the
north.
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