Andrew Peyton Thomas is an excellent historian of country music, but he is a little shaky on the history of colonial immigration ("'I See by Your Outfit,'" March 8).
"Scotch-Irish" is a self-referential term of art which applies to Irish Protestants (mostly Presbyterians) who immigrated to the American colonies between roughly 1718 and 1775. They came mostly from the eastern part of Ulster -- now Northern Ireland.
The term "Scotch-Irish" was not used in Ireland -- nor in America -- until the 19th century, when the descendants of these immigrants adopted it to distinguish themselves from the Irish Catholics who were then coming to America.
I am not familiar with the song "Sallie Gooden," but if it is indeed "Scotch-Irish," it is from the 18th, not the 19th, century.
JOHN A. MCCREARY SR., WELLSBURG, WV