antedating "folk music"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED: 1889  (G. B. Shaw).

1852 Andrew Hamilton _Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles_  II (London:
Bentley) 46: The melody was sufficiently simple, and, doubtless, as old as
the words; it had a slight cast of the wildness almost inseparable from
folk-music; but on the whole the ballad airs are in general not so original
as  other kinds of Danish popular music.

1859 H. D'Avenet in _Notes & Queries_  (2nd Ser.) VII (June 4) 451: This
class of artizans [bell-founders], the great purveyors of folk-music.

1861 Richard Grant White _National Hymns_ (N.Y.: Rudd & Carleton)  29: Of
airs properly national, it should be remembered, the composers are not
known. They are found existing among the people, who are ignorant of their
origin. They are, to borrow a German-phrase, folk-music.

The term seems not to have become generally familiar till after 1900.

JL
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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