Heinz .... as you no doubt know the history of traditional music is an aural one ... tunes were passed from player to player and not written down like 'classical' music ... so it's an evolving and fluid genre.
The guitar wasn't seen as an accompanying instrument before the 1920s and wasn't much used at all until the 1960s .... so the style of guitar accompaniment is relatively modern .... to my mind the guitar has two functions ... a melodic one with the chords and a rhythmic one with the strumming beat. If we want to go way back then early tunes were probably played for dancing on a pipe with a hand drum giving rhythm.
Looking at the bit of the tune you mention, the 'off beat' chop on the guitar and bass, although sounding modern, seems to me to hark back to the sort of rhythmic variation an old time drummer might whack out on the tabor or bodhran so works well with the tune.
But, as I said, it's an constantly evolving form so 'what works' tends to survive to the next generation of players to become the norm. I doubt a real old player from the 1500s would recognise our current virtuoso 'break-neck speed' renditions at all.
Essays and books have been written on this so I'll stop there 🙂
K
Ps .... Kathryn Tickell is a great Northumbrian pipe player ... just to rub it in, she's a fine fiddle player (you can see her going to pick it up for the next tune at rhe end of the clip) and whistle player as well ... some people have unreasonable levels of talent! 🙂
One interesting aspect of the evolution of music from traditional to modern rock styles is that much of it crossed the Atlantic twice on its way. The Scots, Irish, and English settlers in America took their fiddle and pipe music with them, and then ran into the guitar (more often just diddley bows and cigar-box) based Blues music of the Black ex-slaves.
A good example is the centuries-old traditional English tune "The Prickly Bush" or "A Maid Saved from the Gallows", which turned into a Blues tune "Gallis Pole" recorded by Leadbelly and others, and was then re-adopted by Led Zeppelin and recorded as 'Gallows Pole'. There are dozens and dozens of versions and variations on this, I do an arrangement which combines the drop-D drone sound of the Willie Watson version (which itself is harking back to the drone sound of pipes) with some of the traditional lines from The Prickly Bush:
Did you bring some silver, maybe a little gold To save my body from the cold hard ground And my neck from the gallows pole
I haven't got a decent recording of me doing it, so you'll have to make do with Willie Watson
Tim H. 1986 4/4 VVTi Sport, 2002 LR Defender, 2022 Mini Cooper SE
1. In the 1400s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have 'the rule of thumb. 2. Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented It was ruled 'Gentlemen Only. Ladies Forbidden'.. and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language. 3. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Hearts - Charlemagne, Clubs -Alexander the Great, Diamonds - Julius Caesar 4. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase. 'goodnight, sleep tight. 5. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon. 6. Since 1966,England fans have said they are going to win the cup at the start of every football competition, hence the phrase "deluded twat'
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