The Illusion of Antiquity
Yesterday, the song "Easy Come, Easy Go" came into my head, and I decided to look it up. (There are several songs by that title; this is the one with the lines "She wasn't kind / I wasn't smart".) It seemed to me to have a 50s-ish feel to it; I figured it was sung by someone like Frank Sinatra, or maybe Der Bingle. (Not Perry Como, certainly.) Nope; it was first recorded by Bobby Sherman in the late 1960s. Surprise!
Today, I was being earwormed by, um, "Today". (This is the one with the chorus beginning "Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine".) Thematically, it's pretty much the same song as "Gaudeamus Igitur", so I thought it was a fairly old folk song - "fairly old" meaning 16th century, maybe? Wrong again: it was written by one of the New Christy Minstrels, and first recorded by, of all people, Bobby Goldsboro, in 1974.
Arnold Zwicky writes of the Illusion of Recency, in which some linguistic phenomenon is taken to be a novelty (and, usually, reviled). There's evidently an Illusion of Antiquity as well.... (I suppose that would cover things like Scottish tartans and other pseudo-traditions.)
Today, I was being earwormed by, um, "Today". (This is the one with the chorus beginning "Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine".) Thematically, it's pretty much the same song as "Gaudeamus Igitur", so I thought it was a fairly old folk song - "fairly old" meaning 16th century, maybe? Wrong again: it was written by one of the New Christy Minstrels, and first recorded by, of all people, Bobby Goldsboro, in 1974.
Arnold Zwicky writes of the Illusion of Recency, in which some linguistic phenomenon is taken to be a novelty (and, usually, reviled). There's evidently an Illusion of Antiquity as well.... (I suppose that would cover things like Scottish tartans and other pseudo-traditions.)