The Only True Folksongs in English

The Only True Folksongs in English: American Ballad Scholarship, 1855–1915 uncovers how nineteenth-century American scholars including the children of farmers, sail makers, and ministers set out to prove that a young republic could, in fact, have its own folk tradition.

According to nationalist thought of the time, a true nation required a “folk”—an ancient, undivided people with a distinct spirit expressed in timeless ballads. The United States, as the first modern state, lacked this past and therefore, supposedly, lacked any authentic folk culture. Yet between 1855 and 1915, a group of scholars—James Russell Lowell, Francis James Child, William Wells Newell, Francis Barton Gummere, George Lyman Kittredge, and John Avery Lomax—along with poet Katharine Lee Bates, rose to the challenge.

Through their writings, these intellectuals defined what counted as “traditional popular poetry,” discovered homegrown American ballads, and established ballad study as central to emerging disciplines like literary studies, anthropology, and folklore. Their work paved the way for the collection of hundreds of American-made folksongs and helped forge a national identity rooted not in race or ancestry but in the songs of ordinary people.