antedating "folk song"

[Jonathan Lighter]

1870: OED (with "folk's song" in 1847).

1860 John Williamson Palmer, ed. _Folk Songs_ (N.Y.: Scribner).

Palmer's anthology does not consist of "folksongs" in the modern sense: a
good indication that the sense was not then familiar.

JL

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

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