It's a really interesting moment--there are two really excellent practitioners of the craft, James and Cronin, both skilled performers, and the prevailing authority is his daughter's parlor piano. He does say at one point that she had a good swinging rhythm on dance tunes. But he never even names her. You could argue that for many of the tunes he should not have included a key signature at all, just a mode or just adding the accidentals note by note. There are two worlds in collision there. There's O'Neill always going on about tradition and the crossroads and the mother lilting at her wheel and then poor Cronin, literally poor compared to many of O'Neill's friends who appeared to have gotten quite wealthy as policemen, being told he's all wrong by the boss's daughter.
I suppose I'm a typical modern learner. I set out to learn a tune and then look for both the dots and a good recorded version, and I find a lot of what seem to me bad recorded version on youtube or apple music and then I settle on one I like for a combination of playability and taste. Especially now it's a solitary act. There's nobody in earshot who knows if I played the correct version or not. Comhaltas sponsors a session not too far away and when that was running I'd go and they played different versions of some tunes than I did. I suppose i should regard the Comhaltas sanctified version as correct"
I'm practicing "the Pipe on the Hob" a lot. There are two distinct tunes by that name, and multiple versions of each. I have two nice recordings of the one I prefer, both by Irish people, both different. One from Kevin Henry, and one from a friend who grew up in LImerick and plays in the Templeglantine ceilie band. I guess I'll have to decide myself which is correct?
