I .
( also Dixieland )
an informal US name for the south-eastern states. It came from the song Dixie but has never been fully explained. It may refer to the imaginary Mason-Dixon line that separates the North from the South.
II .
the battle song of the Confederate States . It was written in 1859 in New York as Dixie’s Land by Daniel Emmett, who was later upset that it became the ‘Confederate national anthem’. Dixie was, however, a favourite song of Abraham Lincoln . It begins
I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten;
Look away, look away, look away,
Dixie land!