Rythym is by stressed notes, and it can be tricky. I asked on another list where there are experts as to where to find very specific information about stressed notes and go no answer, so I'm muddeling through by looking at examples in Huntington and Hermann's 'Sam Henry's Songs of the People'. In general for 4/4 time the stressed notes are those at the 1st and 3rd quarter not positions, but some tunes cram more shorter notes into a measure and its the 4 at the odd eighth note positions (same for 2/2 and 2/4). 3/4 is usually the 1st note of the measure, but with note splitting it's sometimes to all odd eighth note positions (Dusty Miller is found in 3/2, 3/4 and 6/4 and there are 3 stressed notes per measure in the 3/2 and 3/4 ones and 6 in the 6/4 one.) For the non-usual ones I try to remember to put the number of stressed notes I actually use in parenthesis. A huge index of Scottish tunes used fixed by timing note positions, and the same tune in 3/4 and 6/8 has different codes for the two timings, not a very good way to find the same tune under different names by use of that code.

I just sent off a note to another list pointing out that the indicated timing of a tune was an incorrect 6/4 rather than 9/4 in several early publications, and later versions of the tune were forced to fit this model and all versions ended up being incorrectly coded in a huge index of coded tunes. [That was a trivial part of the posting]

I was up to the not too small hours of last night (this morning) trying to figure out why there were so many different key-mode combinations for the tunes referenced to |456| and |738| in the Irish tune index on my website. In short the final of the tune (the keynote) is totally misleading. The 1st strain is always minor with a code 337 441H or nearly that for all, and the ending of the second strain is irrlevant, nay misleading, for the coded part.