PRIMARY DOCUMENT

“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” (1878)

ORIGINAL IMAGES
Doug Wilder Addresses the Senate
CONTEXT

Written in 1878 by famed Black minstrel composer and performer James A. Bland, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” was named the official state song of Virginia in 1940. The song’s lyrics are sung from the perspective of a freedperson longing to return to the days of slavery, an assertion of the Lost Cause.

 

 

 

 

 

FULL TEXT

Carry me back to old Virginny,

There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,

There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time,

There’s where the old darkey’s heart am long’d to go,

There’s where I labored so hard for old massa,

Day after day in the field of yellow corn,

No place on earth do I love more sincerely,

Than old Virginny, the place where I was born.

Chorus.

Carry me back to old Virginny,

There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,

There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time,

There’s where this old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.

Carry me back to old Virginny,

There let me live ’till I wither and decay,

Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered,

There’s where this old darkey’s life will pass away.

Massa and missis have long gone before me,

Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore,

There we’ll be happy and free from all sorrow,

There’s where we’ll meet and we’ll never part no more.

FURTHER READING
“Oh! Carry Me Back to Ole Virginney” (1847)
CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
Anonymous. “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” (1878). (2021, March 16). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/carry-me-back-to-old-virginny-1878.
MLA Citation:
Anonymous. "“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” (1878)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (16 Mar. 2021). Web. 31 May. 2023
Last updated: 2021, March 16
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