On the high country/low country theme--Lomax (Alan) writes that the poorer Scots-Irish immigrants arriving on these shores (early-1700s onward) were soon in conflict with the established (and slave-owning and generally wealthier) planter society of Virginia and the Carolinas. To escape this situation, they headed west, into the Appalachians, and through the Cumberland gap into Kentucky. Union-supporters during the Civil War (another great difference with the Confederate planters), and living a hardscrabble existence on their hill country farms, their music reflected all the difficulties of their existence. (It also preserved in its sources Anglo-Irish ballads from a hundred years before). After the Civil War, and the end of slavery, the planters began moved west as well--but into the lowlands, river valleys--town and city life... Eventually they became the cattle-barrons in Texas and the west...
Another note: the planters were Anglican (here, Episcopalian)--the Scots-Irish Protestant and most often Presbyterian...
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