Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia

This comprehensive look at intertwined musical traditions from radio host Ritchie (NPR's The Thistle and the Shamrock) and Orr (president emeritus, Warren Wilson Coll.) provides a detailed look at the migration patterns that fostered close connections between Appalachian and Scots-Irish ballad traditions, while still remaining accessible. A conversational tone, along with plentiful illustrations and photographs, makes this historically complex topic easy for the layperson to digest. The work has a textbooklike layout and includes a supplementary CD of recordings by musicians including Dolly Parton and Anais Mitchell, expanding on the approach of Mick Moloney's modest but insightful Far from the Shamrock Shore: The Story of Irish-American Immigration Through Song (2002). The authors further contextualize the broader Scots-Irish experience by covering everything from early Scottish balladry to American folkies such as Pete Seeger and the Carter Family, and also take time to detail their scholarly forebears in the tradition of ballad collecting, including such important figures as Sir Walter Scott, Francis James Child, and John and Alan Lomax.