What is Scottish music?

This question has arisen as I write my fiddle concerto. In doing this I have written a march in F as my opening theme but it has no scotch snaps in it, it's not a strathspey nor does it utililise the bagpipe scale (A mixolydian starting on G). These are the common things that if asked I would describe as the Scottish sound. When I play my tune I think it sounds Scottish and when played by fiddler Gordon Gunn  complete with ornamention it will sound right. It makes me wonder if the above description is a lot baloney and infact the 'Scottish sound' is actually bourne out of ornamentation and phrasing.

When I go abroad and pick up a book of say Breton tunes and play them I don't feel like I've cracked the culture and I sound like their musicians - the tunes instantly become quite Scottish. Same when you look at Brahms' Hungarian Dances or Bulgarian traditional music - they all look very simple on the page but when the local musicians play them they transform into something that is not on the page, not even near. It's the ornamentation and phrasing that makes these tunes sound Breton or Bulgarian not the notes on the page.

So when I (or any other Scottish musician) play a tune the first thing we do is to not think about it. We don't worry about inserting scotch snaps or g naturals, we just phrase it in a way that feels right and use ornaments that seem to work.

I wonder if Scotland has a set of 'phrases' and 'ornaments' and each region of the country dips into these, makes them their own but never deviates far enough away from the originals to become their own national style - subsets of something bigger. Shetland music does sound different to other parts of Scotland but you can still here the Scottish links.

This is something to mull over for a while although I better not take too long as I feel the deadline for the concerto is fast approaching alongside everything else including the Trad Music Awards.

The strange thing that has happened to me in the last week is our first born child Charlie has started school. I was the most worried about it as I couldn't believe 5 years has passed so quickly and my wee boy has grown up! Anyway as my wife said Charlie is loving it and from the first day he hides when I go to pick him up rather than come home with me! I'll take that as a positive!