In English, I'd guess "Folk Song" was first used towards the end of the Nineteenth Century, when people like Cecil Sharp were collecting material from "the ordinary people" living in the countryside; see, also, what Thomas Hardy writes about "Wessex" traditions in an early chapter of "Tess of the d'Ubervilles", as well as in many other places in his novels and indeed his poetry. My own view is that this collecting was spurred primarily because of the belief that, as rural life changed with the introduction of more machinery and larger, more obviously businesslike farms, so too the longstanding cultural practices - the traditions - of the people would change too. It's likely that the regret felt by gentlemen about the disappearance of the old ways, and the less Romantic nature of up-to-date rural labour, was not much shared by the people who actually did the work. No doubt more detail could be got from the publications of The English Folk-Song Society.

I derive what I've written above from drawing a parallel with the collecting activities of four people in the Eighteenth Century, each of whom in various ways made these points about change in employment and conditions leading to changes in "manners" leading in turn to changes in occupations and, ultimately, a loss of the "auld sangs" (we're talking Scotland here). Although none of them uses the specific term "Folk Song", nevertheless the consciousness is clear. The four people are, from the 1780s, John Pinkerton, from the 1790s Joseph Ritson, from the 1770s until his death in 1796 Robert Burns, and the chief amang them all, David Herd, whose two collections date from 1769 and 1776 ("Ancient and Modern Historical Songs, Heroic Ballads, Pastorals..." in two volumes, with a Preface). One thing that was particularly admired was the "Simplicity of the air and words of many of these pieces"; very different from the learned, "Poetic Diction" of contemporary polite verse, and thought capable of affecting the emotions more immediately, more deeply because more naturally.

It's true that there are earlier publications in which some "traditional" material appears - for instance, Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" 1765, Ramsay's "Evergreen" and "Tea-Table Miscellany" of the 1720s (some tidying-up and provision of new words for old went on in that one, by a team of "ingenious young gentlemen") and James Watson's collection of Scots songs and poetry from 1708, the year after the Union with England was forced upon the Scots by that aristocratic "parcel of rogues in a nation". That the activity of collecting "Folk" material occurred in Scotland more than a century and a half before any comparable level of activity in England, though the pace of agricultural change was, if anything, faster in the South than in the North, strongly implies that regret for the passing of old ways and the loss of traditional songs was not the only motivation of collectors, and I argue that there was in Scotland a national dimension entirely absent from England, due largely to the hatred of the Union felt by the majority of people. The Jacobites expolited this hatred for their own purposes (popular songs as part of a protest movement doesn't belong only to the 1960s!), and as Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun put it some three centuries ago, if you can make all the ballads of a nation, it doesn't matter who makes the laws.

The making of a similar link between a "national consciousness" and the "untutored productions of the unlettered people" may be found in German literary theory from the 1770s onwards (it gathered pace during the domination by France following Napoleon's victory in 1806 and the subsequent "War of Liberation" of 1813-15), and it is in the writing of the linguist Herder from this period that the first usage of "Volkslied", in the sense indicated above above, occurs. Some years ago, I made these points and more as one part of a doctoral thesis at a Scottish University, so if anyone wants to trace this origin of the term "Folk Song" and related material, add a wee posting to this thread and I'll give details on how to trace the whole shooting-match.


Of course, you could put it another way; they're called "FolkSongs" because Folks sing them............

An Buachaill Caol Dubh, feilach.