Any sufficiently self-righteous Southerner is always significantly and appropriately indignant whenever we’re chastised for using the word “Dixie.”

And heaven forbid we should ever consider humming the song by the same name. In my last earthly act of rebellion, I am demanding that the song be played at my funeral, just before the church choir sings “I’ll Fly Away.” I am of good faith that I will make it to Heaven for my just rewards, but should I not, I will definitely be wishing that I was home in Dixie.

The song “Dixie” was a childhood favorite of mine. I remember clearly that as a young schoolgirl, my class would rise each morning to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer and alternately sing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” or “Dixie.”

Now I discover that my childhood was politically incorrect. Civil liberty radicals now say that you shouldn’t be praying in school, pledging allegiance to a country “under God” or singing “Dixie.”

Critics say their opposition to both the word “Dixie” and the song is linked to the dark past of the South and the slavery associated with a tiny minority of Southerners. My Scotch-Irish ancestors couldn’t afford slaves. Goodness gracious, they could barely afford to eat and, in fact, many times, they didn’t. They were enslaved to the stubborn soil that sometimes refused to yield crops and a poverty that was often relentless.

Yet, I feel confident that those same ancestors, who sought comfort from stories and songs, often played “Dixie” on their fiddles and sang the toe-tapping, joyous song.

Here’s a news flash: That song for which Southerners are beat up and ridiculed was, in actuality, written by a Yankee.

Yep, that’s right. A Yankee wrote the song that Southerners latched onto and stick to like a bowl of hot, creamy grits stick to an empty stomach.

When “Dixie” was written almost 150 years ago in 1857, it was, most likely, part of a well thought-out conspiracy. That Yankee, Ohio native Daniel Emmett, was probably thinking, “There’s going to be a Civil War and this song will become the anthem for the Confederacy. It’ll even be played at the inauguration of their president, who will probably be Jefferson Davis. We’ll beat ‘em in the war and then we’ll turn around and use this song against them as ammunition for the rest of eternity. We’ll claim that them singing this song proves just how wedded to social injustice they all are.”

It was all part of an elaborate conspiracy.

Now, here’s the official story (wink) of how “Dixie” came to be written. Daniel Emmett was a wandering minstrel who played in circus bands. As a side note, he also happens to be the composer of “Turkey In The Straw,” a song that turkeys have yet to disavow.

Emmett and his band members were in need of a knee-slapping ditty, so he composed the melody then added the lyrics. The first line of the song, “I wish I were in the land of cotton,” was inspired by a colloquial phrase of the circus workers. Each year when autumn arrived and the chilly frost chased them down, the tent men would repeatedly mumble among themselves, “I wish I was down in Dixie,” a bow to the warmer climate.

Now, that’s what the legend says, but you and I (wink) know it was all a big conspiracy. We were being set up years before the Civil War broke out. And then we, in all of our Southern naiveté with our sweet-spirited ways, fell for it. Swooshhh. Just like that, we fell prey to the Northern buzzards that now pick the bones of our innocent flesh.

And just where did the word “Dixie” originate? Some say it was a slang term for the land below the Mason-Dixon Line, but more evidence points to New Orleans and a French influence. Dix means ten in French so a ten-dollar note became known as a “Dixie” in the early 1800s.

Again. A perfectly innocent word twisted into guilt by association. Or was that, too, a conspiracy designed to haunt Southerners into eternity?
Here’s what I do know: Even back in the mid-1800s, as evidenced by the circus legend, Yankees were pining away to move South. Now, they don’t just pine for it, they do it.

Which proves that it can’t be too bad way down here in Dixie.