Isla, if I'm not mistaken, is from the Aberdeen area and before her TV career was in fact a purely traditional singer--I think as a youngster she recorded some songs for the School of Scottish Studies. She went into being a folk club performer in her teens, then the famous TV gigs followed, etc.

She suffers from her publicity a bit, I think. Because her publicists call her Scotland's leading traditional singer, we folkies rebel against what we rightly perceive to be unfair hype and decide that she's crap! But in fact, as several have said here, she's very good. I bought two recent CDs she put out of trad ballads. The only complaint I have is that they were only about 35 minutes long, so they both would have fit on one CD!