5. BEYOND VIRGINIA

The impact of traditional English folkmusic on North American musicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is certain with respect to some folk-dance music and ballads of the Appalachian region. The isolation of the Appalachians provided a shelter from many of the influences of popular music, allowing some English ballads to survive in America while they died out in England itself. The folkmusic of the Gaelic peoples also had a profound effect on American forms. This fact was somewhat obscured by the Victorian opinion that whenever a Scottish or Irish version of a song existed alongside an English one, it represented a degeneration of the English. Today the longer, more lurid Scottish versions are viewed as the older generation. In the old colonies, such distinctions have been pretty well blurred, but in the Midwest the Irish influence is unmistakeable. Many cowboy ballads are directly related to Irish songs. Even such California classics as ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike’, ‘Mountains of Snow’ (sung to the tune of ‘Rosin the Bow’), and ‘He’s the Man for Me’ have clearly Irish roots. The interdependence of Irish, Scot, and English forms has long been acknowledged by folksingers in the west of England. Liverpool, the home of the Beatles, was a center that drew on influences as far away as Hawai’i (Liverpool once even had a Hawai’ian neighborhood) because of its maritime history. Ukuleles, banjos, marimbas and everything else flowed through its pawn shops. The music of the Beatles drew on this rich heritage.