I was listening to the Tommy Sands song "Come home to the County Down" (and if anyone's got the words, let's have them), and it just occurred to me that whereas in Ireland the normal thing is to talk about "the County Down" or "the County Galway", no one in England that I've ever heard would say "the County Yorkshire" or "the County Devon" and so forth, in that way.

And that set me speculating about what Americans would say when talking about their counties, And that set me wondering whether over there people feel about counties in the same way as they do in Ireland or England. In many ways the sense of loyalty to a county here can sometimes rival or even be stronger than to the nation as a whole. And that makes sense, because counties are more on a human scale, unlike most countries, even in Europe. Does this apply in America, with loyalty to county sometimes rivalling loyalty to State?

Every county in Ireland probably has songs specifically about it; and the same applies to quite a number of English counties. I've heard a few songs about States in the USA, but never about counties. Is it just that they don't travel? Or can it be people don't write them?