The Official Song of the Commonwealth of Virginia

 We just returned from a visit to Linda’s uncle in Newport News, Virginia.  No Wi-Fi, which explains why no new posts the last two days.  But I’m back now, and I want to share the former official song of the State of Virginia, adopted on Feb. 22, 1940, by House Joint Resolution No. 10.  Over the years the legislature made some word changes, and the song was dropped in 1997.  It was written by James Bland, a Black songwriter known as “the Black Stephen Foster.”  I found it when I was picking through some material I had collected on Virginia.  The sheet also included the state tree, state flower, state bird, state flag, and the state dog.  No, the state dog was not the bloodhound, and no, the state bird was not Jim Crow, although I would not have been surprised.  

Here is the song “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia.”

Carry me back to old Virginia,

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

There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,

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

There’s where I labor’d 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 Virginia, the State where I was born.

The Chorus is the first four lines above.  The second verse goes like this:

Carry me back to old Virginia.

There let me live ‘till I wither and decay,

Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wander’d,

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

Massa and Missis have long gone before me,

Soon will we 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.