The roots of Appalachian music run deep; deep enough to traverse an ocean and long enough to wind themselves back into the misty moors and graceful glens of an ancient civilization, long ago lost to historical accuracy, but alive in mythology and folklore.

Appalachian music and one of its offspring, modern country music, now a multimillion-dollar worldwide business, are cultural throwbacks to the ancient Celtic society in which the bardic poets wove their epic stories and songs for an enchanted audience to hear. It was their charge to memorize vast quantities of knowledge such as the history of their people, the genealogy of their tribe, the laws of their society, and the customs of their people. These were epic story cycles that explained the origins and existence of their people, and the many poems and songs that were used for entertainment and the encapsulation of all their Celtic cultural consciousness.

These bards were raised to an extremely high status within the Celtic society and were often viewed as being more important than the king himself. The king was merely a political leader whose duties included taking care of the present while the bards had the responsibility of keeping their culture’s past and most salient ideas within their melodic memories.

So important were these purveyors of song and story that the king was actually not allowed to speak until the bard had his say. The bard’s word was sacred and to receive praise from such a poet was considered the highest honor in the ancient Celtic culture. And if you were to invoke the scorn of the bard, his biting satire would be such an insult as to be tantamount to a social death sentence. This was an oral tradition of passing down their culture and stories and songs to each succeeding generation. Much of this passing eventually comes to Appalachia.

The bardic system evolved into a form of minstrelsy and remained an important aspect of Irish and Scottish life. Important to the cultural transmission of music to Appalachia is when, in 1603, King James VI of Scotland ascended to the throne of England and became King James I. Besides being noted for the King James translation of the Bible, he unknowingly set into motion a series of events that would affect millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic from that time on.

In 1607, King James I began the Ulster Plantation Project in which he began sending Protestant, English-speaking lowland Scots to settle the Catholic, Gaelic-speaking, Celtic ancestry northern portion of Ireland, called Ulster.

This was the beginning of the sectarianism that would tear at the heart and soul of that part of the world until this day. But after a couple of generations or so, these Scottish settlers, now solidly entrenched in Irish life, began migrating to America. Between 1725 and 1775, there were more than a quarter of a million Protestant, English-speaking Irish emigrants from the north of Ireland who came to America; emigrants who would later be known as the Ulster-Scots, Scotch-Irish, or Scots-Irish.

In another couple of generations, many of these families made their way down Interstate 81, or what would become I-81 centuries later, the Shenandoah Valley, and into the Appalachian Mountains. Depending upon the source, 40 to 60 percent of the settlers who nested into the Appalachian region were of Ulster-Scots descent, by far the largest ethnic group to call Appalachia home save for the Native Americans who had been here for quite some time. These settlers brought with them their cultural baggage, which included the many ballads, stories, and instrumental tunes from their Irish and Scottish heritage, much influenced by the Celtic tradition before their departure. Some of these tunes and lyrics go back to the bardic period of Celtic and British assimilation, thus culturally connecting Appalachia with its Celtic ancestry.

Even though many instrumental tunes made the journey from the old country, the staple of this musical legacy that came from the ancient land to Appalachia is in the form of the ballad. Beginning with the ancient bards, the ballad, a poem or song that tells a dramatic story in a simple, direct style and set to music, became a popular form of telling stories. There was the magical weavings of the storyteller, but the balladeer was able to combine that storytelling tradition with melodies making the listening more palatable and in some ways more special.

A ballad is not really complete without its musical accompaniment because it is the melody and chord structure that gives this form of storytelling its drive. Imagine watching a dramatic movie without its musical soundtrack. The Celts, which included the Irish, Scottish, and the Welsh, through a history far too vast for such an article as this, held a two-way assimilation with the British cultural conquerors. But, the important point here is that it was two-way exchange of musical traditions.

Many of the British ballads from this oral tradition have survived today in Americanized and Appalachian versions. Sometimes composed ballads would make their way into the oral tradition. In Britain, the broadside form of ballad was printed on large double-sided sheets of paper. Many of those made it to Appalachia. These ballads specialized in human interest and sometimes sensational subject matter and served the function of the modern tabloid newspaper of today, such as The National Enquirer. Many British and Appalachian ballads are “ripped from the headlines.” An analogy of ballads is that they are often like a modern-day television dramas of the ilk of CSI and Law and Order. Some of these ballads are equally as R-rated.

There is much variation in the balladry that came to Appalachia, but suffice it to say that the journey was made successfully. As proof of this, in the late 1800s, a Harvard scholar by the name of Francis James Child went to Britain and collected hundreds of oral ballads that he eventually published. In the early 20th century, an Englishman, Cecil Sharp, came to Appalachia to collect ballads. (Some of these were published collaboratively in 1917 with Olive Campbell, inspiration for the film Songcatcher.) Sharp’s travels and ballad collecting even took him through the New River Valley as he amazingly discovered that most of the ballads he collected were the same or were variations of what Child had found in Britain, even though there had been a cultural break of two centuries.

The cornerstone of Appalachian music and its progenitors Old-Time, Bluegrass, and Country Music, like its Celtic and British predecessor, is the ballad. When Ralph Peer came down to Appalachia in Bristol Tennessee-Virginia from New York City in the 1920s to make recordings of traditional singers, he unknowingly and unmistakably recorded the folk culture of Scotland and Ireland, several generations removed. Along with the likes of the Carter Family and the Stonemans, many of these first recordings were of traditional ballads that now have been replaced with the modern songwriter, recording artist, steel guitar, and cowboy hat. When Kenny Chesney or Carrie Underwood sings of heartbreak and hardships, they are merely harking back to that cultural period and removing the echo from the cultural baggage of the ancient misty moors and the Celtic bards. These ancient “Celtic Idols” have given to their modern versions.

Stevan Jackson is a freelance writer, musician on Celtic harp and fingerstyle guitar, ethnomusicologist, and Irish scholar. (www.stevanjackson.com)