In Irish music - probably because it has always been played by so many thousands of people - categorisation of tunes and the formats of tune-types is pretty clear-cut, with little ambiguity. Not so in English music, I find. (the OP)

I wonder if the Irish dance tradition, and maybe competition tradition, has led to Irish tunes being more strongly categorised and maybe even the styles converging into the categories. Particulary in the north there seem to be a lot of different ways of playing 2/4 and 4/4 tunes that, to me, begins to sound more like the variety in English tunes.

I remember reading somewhere that the 18th an 19th century English musician was take a melody and fit it to the needs of a particular dance.