This is a very old thread, and was pretty pointless in the first place, founded as it was on a bizarre misapprehension. It's a pity that it wasn't allowed to rest in peace, in the oblivion which it deserved. If there is any connection whatever here with the Gaelic sliabh, then I am certainly Genghis Khan.

The idea is ridiculous, and could only could have been suggested by somebody who understood nothing of linguistic or musical history; but folk music studies are bedevilled with such foolishness, as anyone who has spent even a little while looking at such things will know all too well. Everybody is an expert; everybody has a theory. They never seem to have any evidence, curiously enough.

It is time to consign this thread once more to the grave. It was unkind to exhume it; it would be worse to force it to drag on out here in some sort of painful half-life, which is all that is left to it.