Yesterday I went to the Maine Highland Games and while there was reminded of a question that has bothered me for some time.

When is it acceptable to try to immitate an accent in a song?

Consider that you wouldn't want to try to immitate the slave dialect in the old Stephen Foster songs and it isn't necessary but some Scots songs depend on the pronunciation for rhymes. Yesterday I heard a perfectly normal United Statesian accent trying to ryhme "aine" (own) with "again" which sounded odd to my ear. There are words in Gaelic mixed into some songs that our untrained tongues cannot wrap around. What are we to do?