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love song noun Usually a traditional Child ballad, but occasionally a secular song of another type, as opposed to a hymn.

1824 (in 1912 Doddridge Notes on Settlement 125) Singing was another, but no very common, amusement among our first settlers. Their tunes were rude enough, to be sure. Robin Hood furnished a number of our songs, the balance were mostly tragical. These last were denominated “love songs about murder.” 1907 Parker Folk-lore of NC 246 I am constrained to think that religion’s austere disapproval of the banjo, the violin, the wicked “love songs,” and all such ungodliness, has practically destroyed minstrelsy, and the memory of most of the old ballads. 1932 Sharp Folk Songs xxvi Very often they misunderstood our requirements and would give us hymns instead of the secular songs and ballads which we wanted; but that was before we had learned to ask for “love-songs,” which is their name for the ditties. 1939 Hall Coll (Emerts Cove TN) I’ve heard her sing religious songs, [but] I never did hear her sing any love songs. 1978 Burton Ballad Folks 1 Mrs. Rena kept a “ballit” box. It wasn’t a fancy one, rather it was a lap-sized cardboard box she had whipstitched along one edge for a hinge. It was in this box that she kept the “ballits” or words written down of “the lovesongs or mountain songs, old people’s songs”—the songs she had learned through the years. 1995 Williams Smoky Mts Folklife 39 The category “love songs” covered the whole spectrum of secular song ... While they included the Child ballads, these antiquated ballads hardly exhausted the category of love songs.