FILK:The Hogwarts Christmas Play

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) <catlady@wicca.net>]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Anne <anneu53714 at y...>" 

> asking what the word FILK means. I know what a filk IS - it's 
> obviously a song parody, and there are many great filks in the 
> Potterverse. But why the word filk? I can't find it in my New
> World Dictionary of the American Language. So... is it an acronym?

The word 'filksong' began as a typo for 'folksong' and was shortened 
to 'filk'. I can never remember whose typo it was, so I went web- 
searching and found:

"Kay Shapero comments: 

Lee Jacobs. Here's the boilerplate I keep handy on the subject: 

Sometime in the 1950s, Lee Jacobs wrote a zine for the Spectator 
Amateur Press Society, entitled "The Influence of Science Fiction on 
Modern American Folk Music", typoed "Folk" as "Filk", and for reasons 
I can only guess at had the whole thing deemed "unmailable" by Wrai 
Ballard, the OE. (Censorship was a very real problem at the time - 
the PO could have serious fits if you tried to mail anything risque.) 
The publicity from THIS move put the term "Filk" into popular fannish 
circulation. The rest is history. 

The above information culled from A WEALTH OF FABLE by Harry Warner 
Jr."