The jigs and reels dominating the “Irish” scene today—like the 6/8 double jigs or 4/4 reels you hear at every pub session—often trace back to Scotland more than Ireland. Scotland had a head start codifying those forms; by the 18th century, you’ve got fiddlers like Niel Gow writing tunes that spread across the British Isles. Reels, especially, were a Scottish export—think The Reel of Tulloch or The Devil’s in the Kitchen—picked up by Irish players in the 19th century as their own dance culture revived post-Famine. England’s in there too; hornpipes, with that swinging, dotted rhythm, came from English country dance traditions—think Fisher’s Hornpipe—and crossed over via sailors and trade. Ireland adopted and tweaked these, sure, but the bones of the tunes weren’t forged in Galway or Donegal.
What’s authentically Irish from deeper roots—like pre-1800s—is trickier to pin down. You’ve got sean-nós singing, raw and unaccompanied, from the Gaelic west, or slow airs like The Coolin that echo the lost harp tradition. Those don’t fill dance floors, though, so they’re sidelined for the flashier, borrowed stuff. When “traditional Irish” bands—say, The Chieftains or modern session players—crank out Drowsy Maggie or The Mason’s Apron, they’re often playing tunes that hopped over from Scotland or got polished in the 19th-century revival, not the older, suppressed Irish veins. The “Celtic” tag just makes it worse, tossing everything into a blender—Scottish strathspeys, English morris jigs, whatever—until it’s all one vague, green-tinted mush.
It’s not fraud exactly—music migrates, adapts—but it’s sloppy branding. Irish musicians historically made these imports their own, adding wild ornamentation or a looser swing, but today’s players lean on the crowd-pleasers without splitting hairs over origins. For you, with that Irish grandfather, it might feel like a diss to his heritage—like the real Irish sound got drowned out by a louder, borrowed playlist.
