He makes the point that lots of Scots handled cattle in the Highlands, and came to America in the Clearances in the 1700s and 1800s. They didn't have much of a horse culture, although Scotland during the War of Independence in the 1280s-1330s had a famous pony cavalry that could manage much more difficult passages than English war horses and consequently could traverse areas that the English cavalry couldn't cross or where they couldn't follow.
Still, once they got to America the Highlanders could learn to ride if they didn't know how to do. It's an interesting project to hear what the old cowboy songs might have sounded like in a Scottish burr.
David Wilkie's band, Cowboy Celtic, recorded a Canadian cowboy song that's in Gaelic. It might be the only one, or at least, was the only one known in the early 1990s.
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