I have two 3/2 Welsh hornpipes, Y Gwr A'i Farch (The Man And His Horse) and The Roaring Hornpipe, an acrobatic feat of musicianship which was published in the Llangadfan Dances c. 1770. (Llangadfan is a little village, about 15 miles west of Welshpool on the A458.) Y Gwr A'i Farch crops up in the Edward Jones collection (1784 onwards.) Jones (Bardd y Brenin, Harper to the King) describes it as accompanying a North Wales dance for five dancers, but does not give details.

In his 1987 book Tro Llaw, a collection of 200 Welsh hornpipes published by the National Library Of Wales, the harper Robin Huw Bowen says: "Originally, the Hornpipe was a tune in 3/2 or 6/4 time. It was considered to be very English rhythm in the 17th and 18th centuries. At that time the word 'hornpipe' was not for any other dance tune. In the old collections, however, there was also a type of tune in common time, and this was recognised as Scottish. By the end of the 18th century, it began to be referred to as a 'double hornpipe', and this is most likely to have been the forefather of the type of tune called 'hornpipe' since then.

"There never was any essential connection between the hornpipe and the hornpipe and the sailors' world. The term was used to mean any solo step dance (just as does 'jig' in the Morris tradition today), whatever the tune and rhythm might be. This was greatly strengthened in the theatres of the 18th century by the stage tradition of the 'character-dance', which was more pantomimic than traditional."

Incidentally, there are a lot of beautiful 3/2 Hanter-dro dances from the Vannes region in Brittany. It would be a little far-fetched to call these hornpipes - but Olly and I try to combine The Roaring Hornpipe and Jeune Fille De La Rose, which makes an interesting and absorbing exercise!