I agree with Noreen. Several times I've looked for help with Irish and Scottish "ballads" and have always gotten the information I needed here.

My favorites: "Flower of Scotland" and "The Fields of Ardmourn (sp?) My thinking is, as much as I liked the songs, I liked the version of the singer. In these cases the singers were the Corries, a Scottish group that is no longer around. For some reason when they sang I could see, feel and even smell the things the singer or the writer of the song was seeing, feeling and smelling when the songs were written / sung. There is a line in "The Fields of..." something about "in fields newly turned.." I swear I can smell freshly plowed earth every time I hear the song. Celtic and gaelic ballads do that for me more than any form of music. Z.