folk memory

English

Noun

folk memory (usually uncountable, plural folk memories)

1. (uncountable) The collective lore, beliefs, and traditional stories which help to define a society, culture, or nation.
   • 1988 Aug. 21, Julia O'Faolain, "Bard of the Bar" (review of A Letter to Peachtree and Nine Other Stories by Benedict Kiely), New York Times (retrieved 8 June 2014):

     That leisured past . . . is insistently evoked in Mr. Kiely's new collection. A compendium of folk memory, it features great bursts of balladry and doggerel.

   • 1997 June 3, Ruth Dudley Edwards, “No need to apologise for the potato famine”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 8 June 2014:

     James Wilson would have been bewildered and horrified to learn that 150 years later Britain is credited in the Irish folk memory—and general liberal opinion—with callously allowing a million people to starve to death.

   • 2011 October 18, Peter Beresford, “Harassing people on benefits degrades us all”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 8 June 2014:

     Arguments about the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor . . . underpinned the popular fear and loathing of the workhouse that endure in folk memory.

2. (countable) A belief, traditional story, or the like, which is common to the people of a particular culture; especially, such a belief or piece of knowledge that is not consciously held but is nonetheless known.
   • 1898, The Scottish Review, volume XXXII, page 126:

     But behind these folk-memories of national history, extending over more than a thousand years, there is, in the popular consciousness, a dim background of a far earlier period.

   • 1913 December 20, The Fitzroy City Press, Melbourne, page 4, column 5:

     In the island of Lewis, librations [sic] were offered, to "Shoney," a sea fairy, in order to bring seaweed, this being a folk-memory of an ancient sea god or goddess, to whom offerings of ale were made by the Vikings at Halloween.

   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 186:

     Did the watchers retain a folk memory that they themselves resulted from a mating of different types: a black human and a pale Neanderthal?

References

• “folk memory”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.