“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”
Earth Abides“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” survives in the singing of the younger generation as a piece of the Old Times whose words have outlasted their context. They sing about being carried back to a place they cannot identify, making the song a clear instance of cultural memory persisting without the knowledge that once gave it meaning.
The Song in the New Community
The younger generation prefers singing for themselves to listening to the phonograph. Ish takes that preference as a hopeful sign: they want to participate rather than remain an audience. Yet participation does not become invention. They do not compose new tunes or words, and Ish’s occasional attempts at topical verses meet what he suspects is resistance to breaking with tradition.
Melody Without Context
The group sings in unison over the accordion’s standardized chords and bumping bass, favoring simpler tunes. The lyrics matter little to them: they sing “Carry me back to old Virginny” without knowing what Virginny is or who wants to be carried there. The song’s words remain audible, but the place and longing they invoke are inaccessible to the singers.
Inherited Music and Lost Experience
The same repertoire includes “Halleluiah, I'm a bum!” and “Barbara Allen”: the singers do not know what a bum is, and none has known unrequited love. In this setting, old songs travel not as fully understood accounts of particular lives but as tunes that can be taken up and repeated. Their continuity is real, though the experiences and references carried by their words have fallen away.
In these weeks of singing, Ish also thinks often of Robert and Richard, the two boys in the Jeep. A child might ask for “Home on the Range”; as Ish shifts his left hand to the accordion’s G-buttons, the thought of the boys somewhere in the old range country brings a pang. This moment places the inherited songs beside the community’s absences: music can summon a world the children do not know, while for Ish a tune can sharpen awareness of people whose fate remains beyond his reach.
