What could he mean by saying “all the bells were ringing”? Again, I think Robbie Robertson rather brilliantly gives us a double meaning: in the South, the bells were tolling for the death of the lost cause, but in the North, the bells were sounding victory for the defeat of slavery and the defense of the Union. In any case, the death of Virgil’s brother has resigned him to accepting the loss of old Dixie. Plus, if you think of the Civil War as a war between brothers, as it is often described, Abel slew Cain - the righteous brother slew the unrighteous one, in a reversal of the Biblical story. The pun of “feet” and “defeat” can be read as saying that Virgil’s brother is dead and buried, and there will be no resurrection of him or of the Confederate cause.
This seems to be Robbie Robertson, the songwriter, saying that the South’s defeat has been so thorough that it will not rage again. To “raise Cain” is an expression meaning to be rowdy and violent. I always thought that the line “you can’t raise a Caine up when he’s in defeat” was just a bad pun, but thinking about it, I think it has a deeper meaning. His young brother died fighting, and his lament about how they “have taken the very best” is a bitter protest against the waste of war. The Confederacy surrenders, and he returns home to his wife, but the tragic figure of Robert E. This is what Virgil Caine means when he says they were starving nearly to death at the end. Stoneman’s troops were under orders to wage total war on the Southern population, including destroying their food supply to starve Lee’s army defending Richmond. He was not a patrician or an officer, but a small farmer. It’s told in the voice of a Southern man who survived the end of the Civil War.
It is a song of defeat, of what it can mean to lose a war: it means losing your brother, it means going hungry, it means watching everything that gave meaning to your life crushed to dust. I have always loved that song, and I still do. I was right back there, even though I was on the other side of the ocean, and about 20 hours away. We were driving through exurban Rome, and there I was listening to a song that makes me love my Southern home like no other.
0 kommentar(er)
