Most interesting, John and Brian. Perhaps it would be good to rename the "Scotch-Irish" and the "Ulster Scots" the "Anglo-Celts."

But I don't see it catching on.

Another point: even actual Ultonian immigrants could have been "Irish" for only a generation. Any Irish culture they might have absorbed in that time would have been quite minimal. (I'm inclined to believe that it would have been minimal for longer than that: the native Irish were not exactly held up as role models.)

And "ethnically" (i.e., "racially"), which is what much of the whole "Scotch-Irish" subject is about, the discussion is meaningless. The "Scotch-Irish" are at best a subculture of the broader English-speaking culture. They're obviously not a "race" in any non-poetic sense of the word. Even if they were, folk music is not carried by the genes.

As I've suggested, much of "Scotch-Irish" theory is based on nineteenth-century romanticism, which in the USA was an intellectual force well into the 1920s. (If you listen to the Republican candidates, you'll see that it's never gone away completely.)