HIS heartfelt anthems evoke the windswept prairies of the American Midwest and the cotton fields of the deep south.

However, Bob Dylan’s debt to the hills and glens of the Scottish Highlands has been revealed in the first encyclopedia of the celebrated singer.

In his new book, Michael Gray, one of Dylan’s leading biographers, claims that Scottish folk music and poetry have had a significant influence on the singer-songwriter.

Dylan, 65, admitted recently that his most famous protest anthem, The Times They Are A-Changin’, was inspired by a Scottish folk tune.

Gray has also discovered several Scottish sources that Dylan used in his melodies and lyrics.

Gray believes Dylan was first introduced to Scottish folk music through singers such as Jean Redpath and his former lover, Joan Baez, whose mother was Scottish.

He later sought the company of Scots and Irish folk musicians while in New York’s Greenwich Village, the epicentre of the American folk scene during the 1960s.

Pretty Peggy-O, released in 1962 and based on The Bonnie Lass O’Fyvie, is the earliest of Dylan’s Scottish-inspired works, according to Gray.

An entry on Lone Pilgrim, from the 1993 album World Gone Wrong, claims that Dylan borrowed the melody of The Braes O’Ballquhidder by Robert Tannahill.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune, from the 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin’, is also said to have been inspired by a Scottish folk tune that Dylan was played by Baez.

According to Gray, I Pity the Poor Immigrant, from the 1967 album John Wesley Harding, owes its melody, structure and subject matter to Come All Ye Tramps and Hawkers, a traditional song performed by Jimmy MacBeath, one of Dylan’s contemporaries.

Gray has also traced the roots of Girl of the North Country, on 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan to the Scottish tune Cambric Shirt. Highlands — the final song on Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out of Mind, is also said to be inspired by the Robert Burns poem My Heart Is in the Highlands.

Gray said the fact that Dylan had chosen to accept an honorary degree from St Andrews University in 2004 reflected his debt of gratitude to Scotland. Despite many offers, he has only accepted one other degree, from Princetown in 1970.

“I am certain that he accepted the honorary degree from St Andrews University as a way of recognising the importance of Scottish culture in his work,” Gray said.

Though the influence of the Highlands was a minor one compared with that of blues and bluegrass, Gray believes it has never been recognised properly.

“The extent of his debt to Scottish folk music is really only appreciated by the real Dylan specialists,” he said.

“Many of the US ballads originated from Scotland and Ireland, and Dylan sought out people who were experts in the original Celtic music.”

Dylan’s admission in 2004 that The Times They Are A-Changin’ was inspired by a Scottish tune led the Scots singer-songwriter Rab Noakes to identify Hamish Henderson’s The 51st (Highland) Division’s Farewell to Sicily as the source.

Last night Noakes, who has studied the singer’s Scottish influences, welcomed Gray’s decision to include them in his encyclopedia.

“He did play a lot of what I call the Maczimmerman Blues,” he said. “Many of these may just be subliminal connections but he certainly was around people, such as Alan Lomax [the American collector of folk music] and Liam Clancy, who collected songs by Hamish Henderson, so he would have known these songs.”

Larry Bethune, of Berklee College of Music, who is researching the link between Scottish folk tunes and contemporary pop music, added: “The Scottish influence is certainly in there. It’s part of the salad.”

Born Robert Zimmerman in 1941, Dylan is now accepted as the elder statesman of American folk and the greatest singer-songwriter of his generation.

Neil Corcoran, the former professor of English literature at St Andrews University, whom Gray credits for brokering Dylan’s honorary degree, said he was flattered to receive a mention in the encyclopedia “I honestly don’t know why he accepted the degree from St Andrews,” he said. “He didn’t say a great deal on that occasion but contrary to what was reported, he was grateful.”

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