I am mindful of the old question: How can you tell one Irish jig from another? By the title!
I think that many of the tunes have evolved from the playing of many folk who learned by ear and carried the tunes in their heads then played them as they remembered to others who then picked up what they heard and played that in turn. Over time the tunes would mutate as players might combine bits from one tune into another.
There is a sort of parallel in the world of Shakespeare with the "good" and "bad" versions of the plays, stemming from the fact that at times, when the theatres were closed by fear of plague or possible insurrection, the actors were forced to move out to the provinces to earn their living and would put together their remembered versions of the plays they had performed in, resulting in words and lines being changed. So, who was an English teacher in his pre-retirement life?
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