He barely even recognized the existence of the accordion and he had no time for pianos or banjos.
I have to wonder. Both
Waifs and Strays and
Selena's popular selections are piano heavy volumes. Perhaps there was something at work like what O'Riada talked about in his piano rant: the old status symbol of an instrument, adding credibility to a music suffering from an inferiority complex.
I think tunepal and thesession.org are creeping in through (young) musicians living on their phones, it's noticeable in the naming of tunes, some directly and incorrectly taken from thesession.org. Settings perhaps are still safe, there are enough musicians in Ireland that will quietly mumble 'THIS is how we play it around here' when a flawed setting enters the scene.
Any reasonably competent musician will adapt a setting, written or otherwise, to their own playing, their instrument and to their treatment of a melody. Learning written versions by heart will never result in a stylistically coherent body of work. Seems common sense to me.
For example I was recently asked to record a video (Arts council funded, dispatches from the bunker type quarantunes, jobbing away during the lockdown), one of the tunes I played was '
the New Road' that I had absorbed without realising from a Paddy Fahy tape but found in Ceol Rinnce 4 one night playing through it. It immediately stuck. A few years later now, going back to the book (I was asked to supply some information on the music in the video) I was amazed how far it has changed in my playing from the setting in the book. I used to think Fahy had had a hand in this tune, especially the third part but recently I read it is one of O'Neill's constructions. He had a two parter and decided to enter the turn of
Corney is Coming in the middle of it to create a three part reel for publication. Works a treat. Mind you, current versions have moved away from his version too. Reavey's tunes are a good example too, very few musicians will play them as he wrote them and, having gone through the hands of several musicians they are usually much more approachable and playable for it.