I tend to be with Auldtimer on this one - -there are some contemporary songs that are great, others that somehow just miss the mark, use spellings /pronunciations that grate (heavy on the 'chs' itherrs, mitherrs and Jeanie's blue een etc) - it is a fine line, maybe you have to be Scottish to feel it - -?
- OK, sometimes (occasionally) it is not the fault of the song, but the delivery of the singer(s)!
One of my pet hates was Bonnie Mary o Argyll, partly because I had only ever heard it sung in a drawn-out, over-exaggerated way that made me want either to laugh or kill myself. At summer school I was sent off to learn it and sing it in a different way - a salutary lesson! It still is not part of my repertoire, but it did open my eayes - as did Runrig when they gave us their version of Loch Lomond which for most Scots had become hackneyed.
To get back to Thistle of Scotland - to me it is one of the 'tartan treasures' not a folk song - part of the sentimental, Brigadoon type of image of Scotland (and we are not the only country to suffer from this!) HOWEVER lets not forget that the National Trust for Scotland has just received a bequest from someone in the USA who appears to have had exactly this type of picture of 'the old country' - and it will be put to good use in the new Burns Museum and similar projects so - - ?