It's unlikely that Scott Skinner would ever have wanted to play the tune in public without an accompanist - he just didn't work that way at the time wrote it.

Exactly. Composed music with accompaniment in mind is one thing. Old tunes that have to suffer the modern vogue for bolt-on accompaniment can very often stand up to it very well. I'm never going to chuck out my old Bothy Band and Planxty stuff. But they evolved not needing it and they don't need it now, as MacDara triumphantly shows.