From the title page of the first edition of "The Merry Muses of Caledonia" published in 1800 -
"Say Puritan, can it be wrong
To dress plain truth in witty song?"

The frontispiece of my 1966 edition has the following quote -
"Poetry has somehow acquired a boring, prissy brand-image. "Poetry lovers" have given it a bad name.
It might get a glorious reversal if all the bawdy verse that all the poets invariably write - even that stately old Tennyson, so scholars tell me - were published in pocket-size bar-room editions.
In the meantime we have at least got a great rollicking collection by Robert Burns"
Elizabeth Smart in "The Queen"

Subsitute "folk song" for "poetry" !