On the Western plains of nineteenth century North America, intoxicating Gaelic melodies drifted through the evening air at many a cowboy campfire and during lonely shifts at night guard. When you're in the middle of nowhere, nothing lifts your spirits more than a familiar tune from home.

Cowboys chose, like the drovers in the Old World, only the sloWest and most haunting songs to bed down their scary herds at night. Hence the love of so many fine Scots, Irish, English and Welsh ballads in the cowboy repertoire.

While the tales of the emigrants from the old to the new world is well documented, the stories and songs of the Celtic drovers who became North American cowboys are less well known. Cattle were the most precious possession of Celtic tribes. That's why cattle raids were so important to gather more wealth. The skills of driving cattle over rough hills and glens were the very skills needed to drive cattle to distant markets in the country's big towns when these grew up from the 1500s onwards. Great cattle fairs at Crieff, Perthshire in the 1700s and Falkirk in the 1800s were very colourful.

Many Scots had to look for new futures across the Atlantic during the Highland Clearances, those with cattle and sheep herding skills headed West. So did the companies that set up huge ranches in Texas, Wyoming, Montana and Alberta.

Many were run from Scotland from the 1880s onwards. The lives of cattle drovers whether in Highland Scotland or Texas were hard. Their songs and stories around a campfire kept up their spirits and since Scots went West to work they often sang in Gaelic or Scots. Some of their tunes were used to make cowboy songs.

To this day areas of the American West where Scots went to work keep up contacts with communities and families here. Achiltibuie in Wester Ross is one such community with strong family connections to Montana'.

Courtesy of Rob Gibson,MSP