Folk song writers and poets often write in the idiom utilising a dying dialect. Many dialects are now diluted because of the way in which people migrate from town to town, a thing that didn't occur very much until the 60's. In Manchester, from whence I hail, I could tell which town people came from and accents would vary over a distance of as little as 3 miles.
However where I live now, The West Riding of Yorkshire, many people still speak with quite bopard accents and utilise such words as thee and thou although they are generally pronounced thi, tha, as in "are thi cumin' t'pub" or "tha's a gobbin" meaning you are gormless.