I have found this to be an extraordinarily wide and fascinating subject. My own interest stems from brief observations, leading to a belief, that much of the history of minority cultures of the "The British Isles" may be locked up in some of the oral traditions in the lands of the Celtic Diaspora. One gets a very different view of the history of the 'old countries' from traditional song, anecdote and a few texts, than that history taught in mainstream 'English' education, certainly of my generation.

As others have noted on various threads, Cape Breton is a great repository, of song and story, and there are some excellent collections that have been made over the years.

I'd be particularly interested to know if you turn up anything from the Carolinas. For example, I keep coming across references to the slaves in the plantations speaking Scots Gaelic. There has been the pretty well publicised research from a professor at Havard that has led to the observation that some black church music in the South is traceable back to Uist in the Hebrides.   

I've been trying to find some transcripts on the recent conference at the University of Virgina on the contribution of Scots Gaelic to present American culture. If anyone can point me in the right direction I'd be grateful.

I wish you the very best of luck, dig deep, because I feel sure that somewhere, there must be some depositories of little explored material. I know of singers this side of 'the pond' who have been stunned to find what they though of as their traditional music sung by or played by musicians from the most unexpected corners of the 'new world'.

What is even more extraordinary that in some cases this music is little altered in more 250 years. When I come across this sort of thing I feel the hairs tingle on the back of my neck.

It may be my overactive imagination, but when you do come across small morsels of this largely forgotten history, you don't so much notice them, they scream out at you! Perhaps you don't find this stuff, it finds you.

From other websites I am aware that there are small groups of people all over the world re-learning the various languages of their various 'Celtic' forebears. It is fantastic when they are able to tie in stories learned from grandparents into actual historical events.

I look forward to reading how you get on.

SM