Mick, in quite a few cases it'll be the other way round. Whilst the Victorians loved writing words to perfectly good songs, meantime some songs survived only as tunes without words, presumably bcos instrumentalists would play instrumental arrangements of songs (as they still do) and maybe some other musician only ever heard the instrumental version.

Re Rocky Road, a friend and I used to do that, with him playing fiddle and me singing. Nominally it's slip-jig time (9/8); however there are two places where the song reverts to 6/8 time and the fiddler has to delete the triplets in those places if you want to do the song and tune together. I can't remember exactly where - I'd need to sing it and I'm in work right now ;) - but you get the idea. It works very well actually, bcos you've got the fiddle doing stuff which is similar but not identical to the song, and then the verse stops while the fiddle carries on with a solo bit and the singer gets their breath back!

Graham.