Barry:

I looked at jc's and found these Crossings of the Minches. They are all versions of the tune you gave midi for, and it's clearly a hornpipe, so whoever mentioned it in the marches thread must have been confused or a very quick-fingered piper. Some of the versions have the dots/quavers written in and some leave them to be assumed; the most interesting one is the last on the list, which has the whole shebang in double stops, combining notes that can't be played in first position on the fiddle.

I've also read somewhere recently that another name for Crossing the Minch is McNab's Hornpipe, which I've read is a standard Cape Breton tune but I haven't found sheet for it... does this ring a bell?

Rich:

I didn't think your post was curt at all - nothing rude about correcting misinformation, we're all here to learn - and now you've apologized for it three times. You Canadian or something? :)

Thanks for the info on set dances. Are there inherent differences between tunes called hornpipes and tunes called set dances, or is it just a question of how they're used? (Kind of reminds me of the violin vs. fiddle question I hear all the time.) You mention that set dances might have odd structure, like 12 bar parts. I usually see tunes with an 8 bar A part and an 8 bar B part, but I fairly frequently see tunes with more than two parts, and parts that are 4 or 16 bars long... is this a clue that the tune is for a specific choreography rather than being a generic reel or jig or whatever?

Thanks, Marion