I learned my American songs from Alex Campbell which is why you'll hear me singing:

As I rode oot in the streets o' Laredo... etc. etc.

Many of the ballads I love to sing are Scots (as most good Child ballads are, because more collectors in the 18th and 19th centuries looked in Scotland than elsewhere, because... ). I've learned many of them from Ewan MacColl, a Mancunian with a Mancunian/London accent, whose Scots sounds (in comparison with other Scots singers) a tad overdetermined. I've been in a quandary too, Sharyn, about what to do with these songs. My partner Rika often "Englishes" them, but sometimes the rhyme or the metre goes astray when you do that. Yet it's often possible to *tone down* the accent to make the song comprehensible to people not familiar with the (various) Scots tongues.

I think it's (paradoxically) easier for Americans to sing Scots songs than for Brits such as myself to sing them - there's a closer similarity, I think. Yes?

Jon Bartlett