Until his album arrived in my life recently, I had not heard of Jack Beck. If that says more about me than about him, it also affirms the reality that even those of us who like to think we have a fairly wide-ranging grasp of folk music know of other countries' performers only when they claim a strong international presence. In other words, the -- relatively speaking -- stars of the genre.

Beck, a respected figure on the Scottish scene since the early 1960s, has visited parts of America sufficiently often to have married an American woman, though he continues to reside in his native land. If I am reading the small print correctly, O Lassie, Lassie was first issued in 1989. The edition I possess came out this past December. I purchased it soon after and have listened to it repeatedly since then.

My introduction to the traditional songs of Scotland occurred when in my college days I encountered a bin selling remaindered LPs by A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl, recorded either together or separately. In short order I snatched up every one I could get my hands on.

Lloyd, MacColl and their contemporaries sought both to preserve the old sounds and to update them for modern, which is to say mid-century, tastes. Since then Scottish (as well as English and Irish) music has evolved, in large part by incorporating non-trad elements which yet, when successful, enhance and highlight its essence. Over time there's been everything from electric folk (sometimes called folk-rock, though there is a difference) to the quasi-orchestral sound marketed as "Celtic music" to experimental efforts with electronic accents.

On this scale Beck is closer to Lloyd and MacColl than to anybody else in particular, though he does have a band -- a fine one -- behind him. His vocals bear MacColl's influence but are frankly more listenable, in fact quite lovely in their way. The album's 10 cuts are good for 46 minutes' playing time and undiluted pleasure. I was familiar with half of them, yet pleased to hear that Beck's readings are as strong as anybody's, and unfailingly welcome in the psychic jukebox.

With the distinction of being that rarity among classic ballads, one ending happily, "Matt Hyland" also has the sort of melody intended to catch listeners' throats every time. If yours doesn't, it's because you're not listening. The magnificent "The Jolly Beggar," known to most through Planxty's pipe-driven arrangement, has no accompaniment here beyond a vocal chorus. I had not come across "Kilbowie Hill," the one number not credited to tradition, till now, but it carries the same tune ("Dawning of the Day") that the Dubliners' Luke Kelly set to Patrick Kavanagh's poem "On Ragland Road." "Bound to Be a Row," a cruelly comic song about a husband cuckolded and then further humiliated, seems based more in the music hall than in the folk tradition.

In any event, if you're in the mood for plain-spoken yet intensely moving evocation of Scotland's homegrown song, your mood elevation is as close as O Lassie, Lassie.

Seamus Egan and Natalie MacMaster, each famous in his or her respective musical realm, are products of a younger generation. Both are North Americans under the sway of ancestral traditions, Irish in Egan's case, Cape Breton's (and behind that Scotland's) in MacMaster's. Early Bright and Sketches are wholly instrumental.

Egan made his mark in the well-known progressive-trad band Solas, currently on hiatus, though on his own he's explored other styles as performer or producer. His new album, his first solo release since the 1990s, consists of original material with an Irish flavor, further touched by classical influences. Though none of it can be characterized as propulsive, it is not to be confused with the "Celtic" easy-listening piffle sold to undiscriminating souls some years ago. This is intelligent and engaging art music as played brilliantly by the multi-instrumentalist Egan and a band of superior musicians steeped in the tradition.

The fiddle-based Sketches features more purely traditional pieces than does the Egan disc, but it also wanders into jazz and pop, even into hints of bluegrass, albeit never with less than commendable restraint. MacMaster, an almost legendary fiddler by now, is probably constitutionally incapable of misjudgment or sketchy taste.

Every cut is a little marvel of what it sets out to be, but the seven-plus minute medley "Killiecrankie," incorporating multiple fiddle tunes, is a thing of transporting beauty.