ballad-muse

Updated: May 11, 2025

But we question whether he was understood; whether, if that very flowery and magniloquent style which we now consider his great failing had been away, he would not have been passed over by the many as a writer of vulgar doggrel. True, the old simple ballad-muse of Scotland still dropped a gem from her treasures, here and there, even in the eighteenth century itself witness "Auld Robin Gray."

Charles Kingsley - Literary and General Lectures and Essays