In the sessions I play at in the Manchester (England) area there seem to be two basic hornpipe rythms one swingy, triplety, and the other not.The foremer can be accomponied on the Bodhran in a similar rythm to jigs and the latter not.Perhaps some hornpipes could be written in 12/8 time to make them clearer(I've seen Strathspeys written as jigs in some collectoins).If you have music software on your computer (Cubase VST,Cakewalk etc)it's possible to use "gruve quantise" to change the time in increments till it sounds right.if you then go to the score display you'll see why hornpipes(and meny other traitional tunes)cannot be written down accurately without bieng to difficult to read. It all comes down to feel in the end so keep listening and playing regularely and you'll soon get it. Good luck Pied piper