Explore "Old Country Life" by Sabine Baring-Gould on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the _Vicar of Wakefield_, the parsonage is visited periodically by a poor man of the name of Burchell. "He was fondest of the company of children, whom he used to call harmless little men. He was famous, I found, for singing them ballads and telling them stories. He generally came for a few days into our neighbourhood once a year, and lived upon the neighbours' hospitality. He sat down to supper among us, and my wife was not sparing of her gooseberry wine. The tale went round; he sung us old songs, and gave the children the story of the Buck of Beverland, with the history of Patient Grizzel, the Adventures of Catskin, and then Fair Rosamund's Bower."
How completely the itinerant singer of ballads and teller of folk-tales has disappeared -- driven from the houses of the gentle, because the young people have books now, and amuse themselves with them, and he lingers on only in the ale-houses; such men are few and far between, feeble old men, who can now hardly obtain a hearing for their quaint stories, and whose minor melodies are voted intolerable by young ears, disciplined only to appreciate music-hall inanities.