im putting together a couple of scottish folk mixes bc that’s what i do and im honestly curious if anyone in my country has ever been unequivocally happy about anything ever
scottish trad music genres:
- Everyone I Love Is Dead
- The English Have Stolen All My Sheep
- You Want To Be My Boyfriend? First You Must Answer These Riddles Three
- The Protestants Have Stolen All My Sheep
- I Love You A Lot But You’ve Left Me And It’s Raining [fiddle solo]
- The Sea Is Treacherous, Just Like The English
- One Time Bonnie Prince Charlie Punched Me In The Face And It Was Awesome
- The Fairies Have Stolen All My Sheep
We have of course the traditional Irish music genres to go with them:
* Everyone I Love Is An Allegorical Representation of Ireland
* The English Stole My Farm And Put Sheep On It
* You Were My Boyfriend But Now You Won’t Even Come To The Window To Look Upon Me And Our Dead Infant Child (In The Rain)
* Whack Fol Too La Roo Umptytiddly Good They’ve Stopped Listening Now Let’s Talk About Revolution
* Something In Irish, I Think It’s About Fairies, Or Maybe A Cow
oooo can I add to this? don’t forget Appalachian folk balladry, the American cousin of Scottish and Irish traditional music and just as uplifting as its Anglo-Saxon highland forbears!!!
genres include:
- I Left Everyone I Love Back Home In The Holler To Be With This Guy Who Doesn’t Wear Shoes Or Have Teeth But He Plays A Mean Jug
- The English Told Us Not To Move West Yet, We Ignored Them, My Entire Family Was Killed
- You Were My Boyfriend But You Tied A Sack Of Rocks To My Petticoats And Threw Me In The Creek (And My Baby Too)
- Mama Loves All 14 Of Us A Lot But She’s Weary Of Our Shit And Now She’s Dyin’ (Gather Round)
- The McCleans Stole A Firewood Log From Our Pile So We Won’t Rest Until The Last Of Their Male Kin Is Laid In The Cold Ground
- We Knew The River Would Rise But We Still Didn’t Fix The Levee
- The River Rose, The Levee Broke, Everyone Died, It Was Just As We Reckoned (dulcimer twang-a-lang)
- When The Rebels Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Southern Man And I Feed Their Horses My Best, When The Yankees Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Northern Man And I Feed Their Horses What The Rebels Left
- The Tennessee Valley Authority Killed All My Sheep Somehow
Don’t forget that old standby “The Mine Collapsed and Everyone Died”!
I think someone needs to put in a word for the English folk tradition though:
- I Met a Girl and We Went Hunting (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
- I Met a Girl and We Caught Some Birds (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
- I Met a Girl and We Found Her Lost Pet (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
- I Met a Girl By Staying At Her Parents’ House and She Made My Bed (It Was an Especially Thinly-Veiled Metaphor for Sex)
- I Am a Girl and I Regret Engaging In Metaphors for Sex Because Now I’m Pregnant
- I Met a Girl and Bribed Her Into Sex But She Stole My Horse and Ran Away With It
- I Met a Girl At an Inn and We Had Non-Metaphorical Sex But She Stole My Stuff The Next Morning and Now I Have Syphilis
- Your Fiance Died Either at Trafalgar or Waterloo, Let’s Get Married, I’m Glad You Said No Because I’m Really Him In Disguise
- Lord Nelson Sure Was Awesome
- The Press-Gang Dragged Off All the Important Men in My Life (And Now They Are Dead)
- Farm Laborers Are The Salt of the Earth And Are Never Grindingly Poor
- Begging Is a Completely Viable Career Option With Flexible Hours and Unlimited Access to Alcohol
There’s even a few Australian folk songs:
- I am a Convict and I Miss Home (But I’m Stuck Here)
- I am a Free Settler and I Can’t Afford to go Home
- Someone Stole a Sheep and Now He’s a Hero For Some Reason (We Hate Cops)
- The Sheep Have Taken Over My Brain
- Accommodations on a $0 Budget Really Fucking Suck
- The Gold Rush Fucking Sucks
- Everything is Venomous I Want to go Home
- Even the Dogs Fucking Hate us
- Ok So Gundagai is Pretty Okay
- This is My Country, Fuck Off